Barbell Shrugged - Moving All Your Cells with Katy Bowman

Episode Date: July 12, 2017

“You need to cross-train your balls, is basically what I’m saying.” Biomechanist Katy Bowman gets straight to the point in this week’s podcast. We interviewed Katy at Paleo (f)x Austin, where she’s a featured speaker on the concept of movement -- not to be confused with what we often refer to as “exercise.” “There are more muscles than you’re working in the gym, and those muscles will go on to affect your health,” says Katy. We’re big fans of her book, Move Your DNA, which mentions the various casts we put on or around our bodies, from shoes to mattresses to underpants. So, in fairness to Katy, she didn’t lead with cross-training your balls. It was the first question we brought up. Rather than focusing on the biomechanics of workouts, Katy’s expertise is in the total ecosystem of our movement. How we move, what we move, and when we move, during the full 24 hours of our day. Through this lens, she evaluates health on a cell-by-cell basis, rather than looking just at the muscles developed in the gym. “The difference between [a person who works out] and a couch-potato is like 4% in terms of total movement. So we’re not moving well for health, because we’re teaching to the test. We’ve set up the variables that we think will correspond to better health… You end up getting people who are fit, but unwell, and they’re extremely confused.” Unlike old-school fitness models where athletes are encouraged to basically be sedentary when they’re not working out, Katy emphasizes that the real thing our body trains around will be whatever we spend the most time doing (or not doing). Those of us who work office jobs are usually training our bodies to sit. Then maybe we hit the gym after work. Then we go home and train our bodies to sleep on a soft mattress. So we spend billions of dollars trying to perfect that one hour of exercise we get during the day. Listen in as Katy graciously points out the way we’re screwing up our lives every day, and what tiny and iterative lifestyle changes will improve us in our cells and beyond. Enjoy, Mike  

As someone who went from like an athlete and a full-time mover to a to a parent a full-time parent it was like there goes my whole definition of self as being a mover because it's like I couldn't step away for two hours or three hours of intense training like I like to do yeah and I didn't have any other context for anything else so then when I got this seven pound weight I was like big deal I could lift heavy I can run a marathon whatever but I couldn't carry my seven pound without taking a break after 60 minutes and I was like well there deal. I could lift heavy. I can run a marathon, whatever. But I couldn't carry my seven pound without taking a break after 60 minutes. And I was like, well, there's a definition of strength. Like I'm not even functional enough to carry this kid.

And so then I became, it's like the training program that doesn't end. Like I can't, when the song's over, I can't put the weight down. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Bledsoe here with Doug Larson. And we actually brought Alex Macklin back. Alex is back. Return of the Mack. He's pretty cool. So we're here at Paleo FX in Austin, Texas.

And we are going to be interviewing Katie Bowman today, biomechanist. And yeah, your books are amazing. Like your perspective on how stimulus impacts the body and just the whole systems approach that you take is really, really impressive. I think people are going to get a lot out of this. I think paradigm shifting would be the phrase that would fit here. Definitely made me think differently. Yeah. It seems most people in our fitness, strength, conditioning world, you think biomechanics.

I think like the biomechanics of snatching. What are the forces? And joining was involved in doing one very, very, very specific movement. But from what I've heard from the content that uh that i've seen in your in your book and from podcasts i've listened to uh one perspective i really have enjoyed is how how you see how loads affect the body just in everyday life a couple cool examples that i remember from your book where you're talking about everyone's favorite examples like if you wear boxer briefs versus don't wear boxer brief like how your balls hang normal. Or my balls, maybe not your balls.

My balls hang normal all the time. Like how that affects the loads that are placed on them, and that affects your physiology. And there's muscles there. Should I be free-balling right now? Who's to say should? It's just more like there are more muscles than the ones that you are working in the gym, and those muscles will go on to affect your health.

And your Cremaster, not the – what was it? What did you say? The Cremage. The Cremage. That's Cremaster in French. That's right. Yeah, like that's another one, too, that we can think about if we're interested in movement and health.

But, yeah, you know, a little free ball. Cross training. You need to cross train your balls is essentially what I'm saying. So I should be mixing it up with the type of drawers I'm wearing. And temperature, too, right? Like, your Crem master is temperature sensitive. Wait, how are you saying that? Your balls have a cream master muscle?

Cream master. Cream master 3000. This all makes sense now. It's a mystery up until this moment. Okay, so actually dig into that a little bit. How does that work? What's happening there if you're wearing box of wreaths versus not wearing box of wreaths?

Well, the cream master is releasing and tensing to move your balls in various environments. I don't think I've said move your balls in a podcast before. And so, you know, move your DNA, which is that book that's in there, is all about how your environment is moving you. So what happens when you basically, you know, if I did this to your arm, if you put your arm in a sling, you would know that there's going to be some physical effects to your biceps. So if you put your balls in a sling, not a vice, but a sling, you are disabling that muscle from responding.

You've changed the forces of your balls. Yeah. And then that muscle. You wouldn't want to just go straight. I mean, just like you wouldn't want to take shoes off and go run a 5K barefoot. That's why I say don't go straight to free balling all the time. Right. And that's why when people say, should I be free balling?

It's like, I recommend the transition approach to everything, whether we're talking about bras or balls or minimal shoes or feet or anything, you know, to go from being mostly sedentary to, like, full-on go for it. There's always that potential for injury, and there's lack of adaptation. You need lots of time. So I would say, yeah, transition. So if you're wearing briefs, you have sedentary balls this is like you want to tell somebody you want tell somebody who was on the couch just go squat 400

pounds the first day or go for like a three mile run even you know it's the same thing yeah yeah I thought about boxer brief what's your what's your talk about this weekend this week main talk is move your is Move Your DNA, Movement Ecology, and the Difference Between Movement and Exercise. So it's kind of setting up this, you know, we all use in the movement world these like real definitions of exercise and physical activity. They're in the research and everything. But I don't know if many people know where they come from

or what they actually mean. So then when I talk about movement, I'm not talking about either one of those things exclusively. So it's like creating the new definitions that I think at this point, as we recognize how much movement is really crucial outside of that hour or two for exercise, that we bring the language with us. So it's really just resetting language a little bit. Yeah, over the past couple of years, I've spent a little less time in the gym,

but I've adopted more physical activity overall. And I found that to be really helpful for a lot of things. Just overall joints feel better, more energy, things like that. And I used to just train for an hour or two or maybe three in the gym, and then I would sit around the rest of the time thinking, okay, I've got to conserve all my energy for this training session if I want to get the most out of this training session. And then I started, you know, I was like, Oh, I'm going to take a break from training. I realized, Oh, there's all this physical activity

that's happening. And when I started layering my training back in, so I had like this, there's this huge base of physical activity and then the training felt better. It was amazing. Well, I don't think most people realize their training and then their training is being bolstered or surrounded by sedentarism Yeah, and so like if an athlete did that you would notice kind of like you you wouldn't be at your peak Necessarily because you're not using a recovery time. Well, so like we have like active recovery, right? Like oh, this is helpful But what does it actually mean if we don't even know what? Non exercise movement looks like if we don't have a lifestyle that allows for physical activity, it makes it challenging.

So I think actually people can train better by increasing their movement. Yeah, that's actually one thing I was going to ask you about because, you know, I listened to your book. And, you know, for me, you know, I still I'm like a competitive weightlifter. And big thing about, you know, when you rest, all the coaches, old school coaches, they'll say, like, you're not supposed coaches old school coaches they'll say like you're not supposed to do anything like kind of like you just said yeah they're telling you to be said yeah they're telling yeah and that's how that's literally how i am like i will be at home be all working you know i'll sit on my couch or you know stand up and work for a little bit but most of the time i'm not going out walking and doing all the stuff and then i'm going to the gym and then

training for two hours and that's all the movement basically i'm doing all day and one of the things that you're about your book was is that that's really not how you should be doing it you know because that's the exercise shouldn't be the bulk of your movement per day you should just be moving around well and i think it depends some people are training to be good at a sport right and what a sport requires is different than perhaps what health requires so then some people will just well some people say like i like this sport but i'm actually doing it for my health it's like well then you might want to look at the way that you're doing that's a good point but how do you how do you what's like the happy medium like balancing like because

you know for me i want to i want to also you know train long term i want to you know i'm not just trying to just trying to do this for a little bit i'm trying to do it for a long time so what's kind of like a healthy balance between i would definitely want to, you know, I'm not just trying to just try to do this for a little bit. I'm trying to do it for a long time. So what's kind of like a healthy balance between I would definitely want to be competitive. I definitely want to utilize my recovery, but I also want to move better and live better. Well, one, I think, would be to test on your own body kind of the hypothesis that if you were to, you know, walk to the store a day, that it would actually be detracting from your training. Because that could be like an old coach's tale. Yeah. a day that it would actually be detracting from your training because that could be like an old coach's tale yeah right like i mean i've literally heard weightlifters and weightlifting coaches say like do not do anything well we've heard all kinds of things you know that's true that's true

so you can kind of play with it yeah yeah all right so you can go out and see if that's actually you know coaching has had some evolution and understanding and i would say that most people are better for the transition and the understanding of like technique and movement science is very young so sometimes when you're following like the brand new the the oldest tenets of it you're not kind of updating you might want to expand a little bit so well the whole the whole uh industry of coaching right of physical movement is like maybe 30 40 years maybe 50 right like yeah I mean you're talking about sport yeah you know there's some sports they've had a long time but but exercise science coaching like you are like we're infants in this whole understanding um and the other thing is to um look at the sustainability

of you know you're already sore and you're a young guy you know if you're already sore from the thing that you're doing if you're injured then that would be a pretty good indication, you're already sore and you're a young guy. You know, if you're already sore from the thing that you're doing, if you're injured, then that would be a pretty good indication that you're not going to be able to do the sport longer term. So, you know, to just kind of go how, you know, like you would if someone came in and needed help training, you would go like, oh, you're doing too much of this. Like you understand that someone needs to cross train or might be doing something too much or not enough or the form isn't great or whatever that you could consider a form to your day yeah that there's a form to the way you're moving throughout the day and it's not doesn't i'm not necessarily always saying ramp up your movement so that you are moving 600 minutes a day it's more like you're not moving enough of you so it's not only move more it's move more of you and a lot of times you could be almost sedentary in nature. Like you could be just at your computer, like, cause you're working,

you're doing something else, but you could be sitting in a different position. You could be loading your body differently. You're changing positions and those aren't going to fatigue you. Cause you are essentially moving 100% of the time. It's just that your cells are kind of responding and adapting to the shape of your sedentarism more so than they're adapting to the shape of your sport. So consider the bulk of your sedentarism more so than they're adapting to the shape of your sport. Yeah. So consider the bulk of your mechanical input. And a lot of times, like, that's like sitting.

Yeah. Like we're the ninjas of sitters. Like we are excellent sitters more so than anything else that we do. So if someone is going to be stuck on a laptop for eight hours a day, and that's just one of the realities of their life, what would they do in that case? Are they standing for some of it, sitting for some of it, squatting for some of it, kneeling for some of it, half, like, laying on the side for some of it, kneeling for some of it, half laying on the side for some of it? Are they just supposed to just find different positions,

just constantly rotate? Yeah, dynamic workstation. There was standing workstation. And I would counter and say it's really a dynamic workstation that we're after. Certainly, stand up. You're transitioning, your balls and everything else. And so you have to be thinking of,

I'm not used to standing for six or eight hours a day. And people went to standing desks just like they went to minimal shoes. Hard and fast, no training in between. That's not good for them either. My back is killing me. My knees are killing me. It's like, right. Because you don't see that as an athletic performance.

But it's just cellular squishing for eight hours. And you wouldn't lift for eight hours because you know you'd be wrecked. Standing for eight hours is the same. So creating lots of variance in position, variance in loads, and then larger movement breaks, kind of figuring out how to structure your workday so that it's feasible. So I can work up to.

Exactly. To expand on that. So there's the whole back and forth, like you're not supposed to be sitting, sitting's in the smoking, you should stand all the time, et cetera, et cetera. And that's oversimplified in a lot of ways. It's not necessarily that the sitting's bad for you.

It's not necessarily that standing is good for you. It's that maintaining a static position for a long period of time is the thing that's the bad thing. Right. It's the frequency. You know, adaptation is to input. You know, so you are consuming. I talk about movement diet because I think we understand diet really well enough to know what a macronutrient is and what a micronutrient is. And it works the same way on a cellular level as nutritional dietary nutrients mechanical nutrients so i just like well sitting is just like any other

food but when you consume eight hours of it you have shifted your body to that particular shape you shifted all your muscles that particular way so to think about it is you need variance you can still obviously you know train the way you want to, but you're looking at kind of like making the rest of your time around your training more nutritious, mechanically speaking. Yeah, yeah. I loved how you in the book, you related it to nutrition because it makes sense because, you know, I'm big into nutrition. And in the book you were saying like if a kid is learning to walk and he has a diaper on, and now he's learning to walk with in this kind of like cowboy

like bow-legged stance and that's going to affect like his hips and his pelvis and and his bone structure as he gets older and so i'm very conscious to let my two-year-old run around without a diaper on where he can he can run and and feel what it's like to run and walk normally or what considerably normal where hopefully that influences his development where he develops a little more like he is supposed to is that why i'm bowlegged maybe how long do you wear diapers are you still wearing diapers yeah i never took them off um so do you have any more cool examples like that of like like little little changes that people can make to where everyone take off their diapers uh well that that whole section is about this idea that again you know i know, I started in fitness.

Like, I come from a kinesiology department and these, like, really specific ideas about what constitutes exercise, meaning the things that you adapt to. And if you've been in fitness for a while, you've seen the evolution of, like, I mean, people added, like, core strength. We didn't have core strength in the 90s. Like, that wasn't something that was really part of fitness. Am I older than everybody here? Is that what's happening right now? They're like, I don't have no idea what you're talking about. Everybody's like, I'm not saying anything.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nobody said anything. We'll talk about it after. Yeah, okay, I got it. So there was the addition of core strength, and there was functional movement, and there's corrective exercise form. We had basic, if you want this muscle to grow grip this way,

you know, if you want it to go, you know, you have those, but it's become more and more refined. And so you can take that understanding and then go, well, what's the, you know, if this tiny degree of angle in my forearm, when I hold the bar is gonna change, which muscle is going to respond,

then consider all of the things that change all over your geometry all of the time, cause you're adapting your muscle and responding and training 100% of the time. So diapers is one, shoes is another, flat and level ground. The fact that most of what you walk on is flat and level ground is a huge cast. I call them casts. Diapers are casts, shoes are casts, the walls of the house that are preventing you from looking beyond 20 feet, casts and the muscles in your eyes. The fact that you don't chew hardly any of your food, that it's been mills or Vitamix for you, and now you lose.

I actually do mostly enemas these days. Well, there you go. Just drink it. No, no. He does the bulletproof enema. Oh, yeah, right. See, like you're not even like opening your mouth anymore. No, why would I use this?

Why don't you just go straight there? Right, except that then now you have a whole industry of like it turns out that the muscles in your face like support your teeth and swallowing and the palate formation and um it's so funny when you say these things it's like of course right nobody nobody don't think about it that way no chewing is part of what drives circulation to your brain and so they're looking at people who have like alzheimer's and dementia that are more prone to that and that there's also a decrease in their chew capability. So which came first, you know, so like I think about movement outside of exercise.

I have tons of examples of this. It's essentially everything. Everything that we partake is normal. What you said is not optional. Yeah. Just use your hands. Just like just take the steak. Yeah.

Don't even cook it. First, you chase it down. Right. Like, just take the steak. Yeah. Don't even cook it. First you chase it down. Right? So that's where you bring in that paleo mindset is like everything that you used to do for that plate of food that you eat used to be all physical labor, very diverse in movements. Variability would be huge. The frequency would be essentially all day long. But now you go, you know, we train very linearly and then we just like sit down and eat the pureed cooked food.

So. That's why when I do a strange movement, I get hurt. Right, right. You're not conditioned to it. Correct. You're not conditioned to standing in front of a work desk. I mean, very strong, very fit, but we kind of – fitness is like teaching to the test, right? We're teaching to very specific variables.

We don't really know – there's no competency in movement outside of those few things that we do. Well, one of the things you said in your book is that even though we're exercising, it's still just variations few things that we do well one of the things you said in your book is that even though we're exercising it's still just variations of things that few few if you think of yourself like a constellation so you have you have a lot of joints and there's like a section in the book i don't know if you're to it yet the math section where you're an engineer you're talking about permutations and combinations exactly and so you're looking at like and i was working with a mathematician. The only time that has ever been said on a podcast ever.

Exactly. Right. So it's this idea, like your capacity for movement is very large. Like the number of shapes and loads that you can experience is, I was working with a mathematician. He's like more than the, the, the matter that they perceive is in the universe right now. He's like the number of movement that we've calculated in this model is blowing my mind because it's more than like what makes up the universe, very robust. But if you look at, you know, if you picked even like 20 training exercises, you're going to see they're almost all exactly the same.

They seem big because we don't culturally, we have kind of blinders to all of the other movements that we can do. They seem very diverse, but they're very little. You you know if you went out and just even trained on uneven ground you would be like oh crap my hips one hip's higher than the other that's not good form and it's like well who says yeah if you're hiking up there if you needed to function outside of the gym you actually need the ability to lift heavy things with all different knee and hip joints talk about the uh can you go into like the concept of the load profile like how your body experiences loads uniquely like every load is unique that's

part of what i'm going to be talking about tomorrow because i think it's it requires that definition of movement where we we assign active like you're active that's a whole body state that i'm projecting on you're active you're an exerciser you're non-sedentary. That's a whole body state that I'm projecting on you. You're active, you're an exerciser, you're non-sedentary, right? That's a whole body. But let's say that you've worn shoes your entire life, right? And it's only like in the last five years that people have said, oh crap, I have muscles in my feet. I would say that your feet have been sedentary your entire life, that you are incredibly active at some places and that you actually have sedentary cells within your body and that it's not only your feet, it's all these other casts that we're talking about, that you have sedentary cells that have never been used in the otherwise active body.

So we really can't, we can't evaluate your moving status as a whole body. It is on a cell by cell basis because it's your cells that, I mean, if you're like muscles are growing, whatever, like it's the cells that make up those muscles you've just moved you've moved those select cells in a particular way and so load profile would mean like if i give you 50 pounds to hold we would say that the load is 50 pounds right like that's the engineer's perspective but i would say but your feet aren't experiencing 50 pounds. Like every single cell of you is experiencing that moment differently. And so you have a load profile. You could create a load profile for every single move. And then you could create like a load profile over time. So it's really, I use nutritious movement,

not as analogy, but literally meaning you are inputting certain cells. You're inputting your cells 100% of the time, but not all cells are being inputted to equally. There are certainly some systemic effects of exercise. Like you think of, you know, if I run, then there's going to be, we could tell that you're a runner compared to you non-running. There are whole body adaptations to that bout, but there are also local adaptations and the local adaptations that we're training for are very small yeah and so that's really kind of the issue and then you know the the detriment of not moving your body equally is that you have some points that are just stiffer than others weaker than others and then just like if you if you have

a muscle that's super super strong next if you have a muscle that's super super strong next to it and that muscle that's super super weak you open yourself up to injury just like if you have muscle tissues or cells that are super stiff or haven't been used or loaded then you open yourself up to other problems well and i think that's like you're strong like clearly you're real strong but is that again is that a whole body is that a whole body right and you're talking about like i'm fine unless i do something slightly different and then you're going down and so there's a trend you know there are definite physical benefits to to exercises versus non-exercisers but not at the level that you would expect right because we're like i do all of this

that person does nothing it's like guess what you're both getting a hip replacement you both have coronary heart disease why you thought that the exercise bout would be that much more protective so the first level as well it wasn't as frequent as you thought the difference between you and a couch potato is like four percent in terms of total movement and so we're not we're not moving well for health yeah we're definitely moving well for fitness because we're teaching to the test but we've set up which variables we think will a lot will correlate with better health but they're not but they're not correlating right and so that's that's what that's my job we're typically talking about loads and forces that in fitness as in respect to joints

and muscles etc but you said a second ago when you're talking about chewing and how that that produces blood flow to the brain etc um how how, does like blood pressure or, um, you know, the forces on your organs affect your, your current state of health? Who knows, I guess is the easiest answer. I mean, you're all cells, like your organs are made out of cells, your blood's got the cells, like your bones are cells. And so you're all those tissues are adapting to exercise. And that's part, again, part of the definition that I'm talking about tomorrow is the definition of physical activity is literally that it is something that burns calories. So we like the whole way we use that word only relates to metabolic caloric expenditure. And that was, you know, from, I don't know, probably 40 or 50 years ago before anyone was really concerned with any other benefit to

exercise. Like we didn't know it was going to make your bones healthier or it would affect your endocrine system. Like we're, it's such a small point of view. And so movement, if you eat, if you eat or take vitamin D, there are tissues associated to the deficiency of vitamin D, but they're not necessarily related back to, like, it's not like you're keeping your stomach healthy by eating a nutrient, right? Nutrients aren't about the location in which they get put in, right? You're not keeping your mouth and your intestines healthy by eating nutrients. They are compounds identified for the diseases that arise in a lack of them.

So we only define them by what happens when you don't have them. My argument is that that's how we should be approaching movement because this idea that I should be moving like from musculoskeletal health, like we perceive movement because it's our arms and legs that are easy to see that therefore the benefits are limited to those tissues that we see moving. But your nerve your nerves and everything that's in your body organs or otherwise they're fed blood like that's how they get their food like that's the whole point of a cardiovascular system it's not so that you can

run it's so that your distribution of oxygen can get from the larger tubes are you on chapter four yet i'm on i'm through yeah i know what you're going yeah right so you've got like highways and then you've got like main roads towns and you got driveways and like the end point the end goal for every oxygen cells to get into a driveway and so when you've got like high blood pressure and all these other their movements to me i consider them. You're reducing the net effect of your cardiovascular system, which is to deliver oxygen to all these places. But we've set up your cardiovascular system as to do fitness.

Yeah. Right. That that's the end goal of it. So I'm like, let's keep in, let's keep in mind what its function actually is. Just burning fat. Right. Exactly. That's all I care about.

Burning fat. Well, and it's just, you end up getting people who are extremely fit and not well, and they're totally confused, right? They're like, I've invested time. I've done all these things. I want to do the right thing. But they're operating on a set of definitions, and maybe they don't understand the assumptions that are coming from those.

And that's where you get into, like, the fact that movement is just not optional. No, it's like food. Yeah, exactly. The movement is what, like, the cardiovascular system allows for oxygen to get to places where it needs to get otherwise your heart is doing like you said that in the book your heart's doing most of the work if you're not moving and then you're now you're asking it you know to go to work even harder in the gym and you haven't and you haven't given it a break no and our cardiovascular system is what it's like the big tubes like we we are perceived as like you've got these big tubes and it's like if you got rid of all the big tubes. Like we, we are perceived as like, you've got these big tubes and it's like, if you got rid of all the big tubes in your body and we're left with only

capillaries, you're mostly capillaries. Yeah, exactly. You are mostly capillaries, but the blood cannot just get into the capillaries. You have to open the muscles. The muscles are what's pulling.

The muscles are, they're dilating. And so like they're creating basically a vacuum or a draw to come in because this is a total nerd out right now, but capillary is the only non-contractile part of your cardiovascular system. So it has to have a pressure gradient in order to move in. Sorry, nerds.

And you're awesome. Just to clarify, your heart is not creating that pressure. Your heart is not. It is right now for a lot of people, right? The heart is having to basically work against the resistance of all of your sedentary parts. Right. Right.

So if you're moving around, you're helping your heart pump the blood. Pump the blood. You shouldn't ideally be relying solely on your heart to pump all of your blood. Your movement causes some of the circulation as well. Yes, but not in as systemic of a state as that. It's that if I want to get blood into my feet,

I have to move my feet. You have to move your feet. If I want blood to get into my rotator cuff, I have to work my rotator cuffs so i can't just move generally i will just by moving generally increase overall um movement of the butt kind of like uh if you you increase a little bit of pressure in the flow but it's not getting to all the parts evenly it's going to go to the parts that are primarily moving what's like if you work out hard what do you do you You actually shunt blood away from certain places

because it's like, well, I need to take care of this emergency, which is how your body is perceiving your exercise bout, to the detriment of flow to your organs. When you think about somebody who's bedridden, who can't get out of bed, I mean... Well, your tissue dies quickly. Yeah, exactly. Your tissue dies very quickly.

Or they have to help move. They are moving, but they are being moved. So movement is not optional. You will die without movement very soon. So people who are unable to move, they're still moving, but their movement is usually coming externally. So movement is not optional. You're not getting all the benefits still, though.

Yeah, you can still. I mean, you're being moved right now, so being moved can still be movement. One of the arguments for eSTEM is we can put, yeah, you can still, I mean, you're being moved right now. So it's, being moved can still, you know, be movement. One of the arguments for E-STEM is we can put this electrode on you, we can contract the muscle, and that's going to help move blood through the area. What do you think about E-STEM overall? You know, I don't know that much about it. In fact, I was like, E-STEM? But E-STEM, E-stimulation.

Well, I think that there's a lot of therapies that are movement, right? But they're extrinsic. So I don't know how an extrinsic movement compares to one that's coming from you. So like the physics of it all is, you know, it's the force production. The force production comes from the movement of the muscle itself. What happens, like I can take my hand, I can have passive movement, and I will receive benefit, but it's not equal to the cellular movement of when I'm doing it actively so the definition of physical activity is that you did the work yeah that you burn the calories to do it I can have someone else move me

I don't know enough about e-stim to know if there is a you know if I were hooking up to an EMG would I see a contraction from it or not was Was it just movement without force production of the muscle? I don't know. Sorry. Earlier, you mentioned the concept of casting yourself. So like shoes are a cast, which I'm not sure if you said this. You can point out if you're the one that did say it. But like having a shoe-like thing on your hand,

like if you just like. That was me. I taped up my hands. Yeah. Like if you wrapped up your hands, where your hand couldn't move all day long. I mean, you could kind of move around like this and kind of like that. You could kind of wiggle it a little bit, kind of like you can wiggle your toes. Do a your hands where your hand couldn't move all day long. I mean, you could kind of move around like this and kind of like that.

You could kind of wiggle it a little bit, kind of like you can wiggle your toes. Do a tight. But they're all smashed together all day long. Like, how good would that be for your hands? And your wrist. And your wrist becomes hyperactive, kind of like if you wear a shoe, these

are your toes and your calves. Everyone's like, oh, my calves. And he's like, yeah, because the deformation, the spread of work over all of these tissues was given to just one. So you've got sedentary and hyperactive, hypermobile at the same time. So it's not even like, well, this guy gets really strong. There's kind of like with nutrients, there's a baseline.

It doesn't matter. Like vitamin D, is vitamin D good or bad? It depends. It can make you sick. It can be too high, too low. So there's no dualistic kind of thinking and this kind of stuff it's all about dosage so your ankles are heavily dosaged by your lack of immobile feet right you got more you've got 25 of the number of muscles and joints in your body

from the ankle down and only one of them is basically doing the work let's take a break real quick when we come back i want to talk about uh I want to find out what type of insoles I should be buying. Hey, everybody. Marcus Gersey, co-host of the Barbell Business Podcast. If you're a gym owner who's looking to fix, build, or just take your gym from good to great, tune in every Tuesday to the Barbell Business Podcast. You can find us on iTunes and anywhere else you can download a podcast, or you can watch

the video version on YouTube on the Barbell Shrugged channel. Tune in to find Doug, myself, and Mike Bledsoe talking about the latest tips and tricks to take your business to the next level. We'll see you Tuesday. All right, we're back with Katie Bowman. I opened up a CrossFit gym in 2007 and have that background of people come in for one hour at a time and then train doug joined me in 2009 and you know that's kind of the world we came from and one of the things that i actually recognized was when crossfit came along i was like holy shit look at this variety of

movement yeah and a decade later i'm going holy shit we're doing the same thing all the time it's like it's like there's actually not that much variety. It's like what's happening on the periphery appears different, but what's happening at the core is the same repetitive thing. And so it was really cool to hear you talking about just movement in general, and this is the realizations I've had over the last few years of, like, this is a lot of repetition and and only one hour a day right so it's it's like there's like transition right like fitness was like very linear there's few

things and it's like no you have to have like a smorgasbord of exercises so we understand diversity but the limitation is the idea of exercise is what you need for your health versus movement right so we are spending billions of dollars trying to perfect the one hour a day that we move rather than see what you actually have here by expanding your understanding and your practice of movement outside of the exercise and even the physical activity bubble is access to 24 hours a day of movement. If you can think outside of the exercise hour box, you will realize that when you're moving all the time, my biggest thing right now is that you could be cross-training in your sleep. You could be getting the movement that you need while you are sleeping, that right now you are where you take rest. The way that you take rest is in a cushioned, puffed,

no-pressure environment, repetitive. You have a repetitive sleeping environment, and then you pay someone. No. What do you sleep for? All over the place. Nice. You can upset some people. You can take that either way you want.

Well, I'm going to go within the eight hours outside of the seven hours and 45 minutes that you have other ways to mix up how you take sleep yeah so like you're you're getting pressure right we are devoid of pressure so exercise is physical activity done specifically to reap the fitness physical fitness benefits it has an intention it has a structure it's repetitious physical activity includes exercise but physical activity is anything that uses your musculoskeletal system to develop to burn calories and that can be chores like you going oh i'm going to walk to work or whatever that's increasing your non-exercise physical activity but both of those bubbles sit inside a movement bubble so the non-exercise non-physical activity bubble are all those places

where you are perceived as being sedentary so So like sleeping is one of those, right, that you would say you're inactive, but yet you're still moving. You're still moving. Moving is simply the displacement of something. So if you push on your arm, right, you're going to see that it changes shape. So the way we take rest is in this, like I said, it's decreased pressure. Meanwhile, you'll actually go and then in your exercise class, try to lay on balls and foam rollers to train and add in what I call vitamin pressure, right? Back to the nutrients.

Like there's vitamin texture. There's vitamin pressure there. You are – because we think we're – But isn't intensity the most important thing? No. You're going to have to change your blog. We're myth busting. No, I'm not writing that blog. So what's the difference in your mind between sleeping on the

ground versus like a soft mattress versus other ways people sleep? Does it matter like the firmness of the thing you happen to be sleeping on? Well, I've transitioned to sleeping on the floor, right? So it's two things. It's next level shit. Well, it is next level.

I know pillow, right, took me 18 months because you level shit well it is next level i know pillow right took me 18 months because like you're you're used to that's another cast right you and you give them to your kids you're like here's your pillow and your kids like great i will practice this for eight hours like why apropos of like it's nothing it's just the culture you need a pillow so you start about that i'm like i'm trying to fix my posture and then you're doing like neck physical therapy and all your hours like why don't you just stop yeah yeah i'm trying to fix my posture. And then you're doing, like, neck physical therapy in all your hours. Like, why don't you just stop putting it orthotic under your head? Yeah, I'm trying to fix my posture, and then I'm, like, I'm laying in bed. I notice that my head is jutted forward even though I'm trying to get. You practice that way more than any of your other exercises.

So what? You're practicing head forward. Oh, yeah. More. I mean, like, when you're sleeping, you're training for it. You're training. If I use the word train instead of practice, you're training to have your head in front of you.

The pillow seems like the thing that'd be the lowest fruit. It is. It's the easiest place to start playing with a little bit. But again, don't get rid of it. You don't get rid of it right away. That's what I was going to ask. No. The cheapest way.

Because if I pull my pillow, I'm just going to be staring at it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and then your head just goes back like this. And that's not good either. It takes a long time. So it's a small motion done for eight hours a day, so you want to do it to, like, a very low degree. So what I recommended for people who can, like, you take your pill,

you just remove some stuffing from it, and then it just becomes this very adjustable bolster. It's like, okay, over the next six months, I'm just going to remove a little bit, and it becomes lighter and lighter. You wake up too sore, you need to add a little bit back and spend a little bit more time there, just like any exercise. It's the same thing. All your exercise training pertains to non-exercise movement. It's just that we don't do anything else in our culture except exercise for movement. So we don't have these conversations. I was telling Doug yesterday,

I've been working on two years getting my toes display. And living in Southern California helps a lot because I can be barefoot more frequently. And I can even go to a restaurant and people accept me. But it's been two years. When I started two years ago, I could not get all five toes to separate. Right. I could get two or three. And I finally got to where I can actually splay all of them. And I'm super stoked.

I can wake up and I just like move it around. Yeah. And it's made a huge difference. And I can feel a difference in just my balance and everything. So like your feet have been casted, there are a hundred other casts that you haven't even identified yet that as you move them, when you wake up every day, you're like, I didn't even know I was immobile. Kind of like if you put regular shoes on now or things that don't allow you to move, you can perceive their limitation.

You can't really perceive totally their limitation you can't really perceive a limitation until you've removed the thing that was limiting you and experience the movement and then you can start feeling the edges what's your favorite shoe for like these are on shoes i like um uh earth runners earth runners yeah these are you know these are you said unshoes these are unshoes unshoes yeah i've been wanting to get something like this, like the Xero company. Xero company, they're here too. Yeah, I'm wearing Vivos, which I really like. I like Vivos too.

It just depends on what you're doing, but it's warm, it's hot. I'm the crazy person with the boots on. Right. You're sticking out. But you have trained yourself to be able to wear those types of shoes. Right, and then you can wear them around on cement, and that's fine because you're not actually, you know, or, like, flexible sole, but a flexible sole only matters

if you step on something that flexes it. So then you actually have to not only wear them in town and on the street, you have to wear them in terrain or else it doesn't matter if you've got a flexible sole. Those 33 joints aren't going to bend. The floor is the cast in that point. Right, so you remove the shoe, but you haven't removed this. I mean, this is not only unnatural, it's highly frequent.

So there's no contour. There's no texture. And so those bones can't actually move. But, you know, you step on balls. You do all of your fascial work on your feet as kind of that training preparation. But then you just go step on some rocks. And then you carry your kids while you do it. And you just added 40 pounds of load.

And then you do it for five miles with your kids on your back or backpacking and so it's a it's a couple years so you would say would you say that maybe intensity is not the thing but variance frequency frequency frequency very very frequently varied constantly very cultivate randomness cultivate randomness you just mentioned carrying your kids so as far as the loads that are placed on the kid themselves while you're holding them, that's radically different than them being in a car seat. That's moving ecology. So we didn't have strollers. Two kids, no strollers, two adults.

Co-parenting full-time, though, so for people who are, like, by themselves, it's not as possible. But, you know, I started just your classic exercise science. You get the baby kid gets the baby goat on day one. You know, I get a seven-pound kid, and I carry it every day, and this kid's, like, slowly getting stronger and stronger, but it's on my body. Like Milo. Who's Milo? Never mind.

Milo carried the cow, which turned into a bull. Right, right. Well, that's, like, the proverb, right? So, like, you're just doing it, but it's not just me carrying, like, a flour sack. Because the kid is not outsourcing their physical work to whatever they're in they're like oh you're holding me now they can like you can't strengthen something if you don't have resistance to it so immobilizing babies you've removed their opportunity to train and they are at their

highest capacity of training they are training second by second by second by second so i carried and then that kid that kid my kid know, could hold on and support their own weight, hold their head up, you know, by the end of day two could walk and hold its head. Cause it could feel the weight of its head as opposed to not for a long time. And now because they're growing so fast, the mass of their head outweighs the leverage potential of their muscles. So you have to be training. You have to be training leverage and mass together as they develop. You don't want to give a baby who's never moved for like the first month and all of a sudden like lay on your stomach and lift your head.

It's a very big load versus a vertical hold or whatnot. I feel like you're probably giving every parent out there guilt right now. I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Doing it all wrong. Yeah, I know. So it's not guilty. It's not guilty. Thanks a lot, Mom, for fucking me up. Yeah, thank you for saying that because it's hard to talk about. No, I'm just kidding.

I get emails all the time. They're like, oh. I'm doing the best I can, okay? We all are doing the best we can. And so, again, there's a bunch of love there. But there's just the physics of the thing. And so if we're to try to figure out when to do it, how to do it, the time is now. And then then you know

you follow my instagram my whole thing is strategies for people with kids to me as someone who went from like an athlete and a full-time mover to a to a parent a full-time parent it was like there goes my whole definition of self as being a mover because it's like i i couldn't step away for two hours or three hours of intense training like I like to do yeah and I didn't have any other context for anything else so then when I got this seven pound weight I was like big deal I could lift heavy I can run a marathon whatever but I couldn't carry my seven pound without taking a break after 60 minutes and I was like well there's a definition of strength like I'm not even functional enough to carry this kid and so then I became it's like the training program that doesn't end like I can't when the song's over I can't put the weight down

I can't be like you know what I'm blowing off training today so like using my kids kind of as the best training environment I got to the point where you know I can carry 30 or 40 I mean I could carry two of them for a mile and a half if I need to because they weren't only holding up their head. They learned how to hold on. They could hold on and support their weight, you know, by the time they were one. And now at six and four and a half, I can hike for five miles with their,

you know, 50 pounds on my back, but it's not dead weight. It's not like putting a sandbag on my shoulders. Their adductors are working. They're squeezing their legs, and they're holding on like like a horse i don't have to hold on to them so i can do other things and so they're physically robust i'm physically robust and none of us are exercising they're like they're like piggybacking on you they're piggybacking or sometimes i can put my hands here my son will just stand on my hands yeah so i like that's what i try to do it's just for these parents to say it doesn't matter when you start you never it's never you're

more malleable than you understand. Like all is not lost because you missed the first even 70 years of your life. You can start now. Damn it, Mom. Exactly, exactly. So don't throw out the stroller. This is something you should work up to just like the pillow. Exactly, exactly.

I wanted to ask you about what is your – do you have any opinions on – No. Is there junk movement? These are all facts. No opinions. you have any opinions on is there junk movement these are all facts i have no opinions on anything yeah i mean is you know like junk food yeah is there junk movement well what's junk food like that's a good question yeah exactly like junk food like it serves ultimate purpose of like nutrients right that is the that's the 500 years ago don't starve exactly thanks so that's junk food but what we say what know, what junk food really is, is like if you eat a lot of it, there's some part of your physiology that's not going to get what it needs.

And you're going to have, again, a nutritional deficiency. Like it's only what you don't get in junk food, I think, more so than what you get. I think it's what you said in the book, too. It's about the ratio, the balance. Yeah. Yeah. Like you just can't say like, well, you need to eat protein, carbs and fat. But like what? what balance and i talk about junk food movement but it's mostly to get

in your mind this idea that one type of exercise one mode or even like one group of different types of exercise is likely not it's not it's not likely going to represent all that you need and so therefore if this is your diet you're going to movement diet you're still going to represent all that you need. And so therefore, if this is your diet, you're going to, movement diet, you're still going to have some holes. Now there are definitely movements or modes of exercise, I should say, that are less nutrient dense. So they could be classified as junk food movement. But really all I mean is not that they don't have anything valuable.

It's just that they come with things that are known to in their accumulation bring it down and maybe and maybe if you like if they're junk food movements but maybe it's just you need to change the way you move and then you move a little bit better and become better movements yeah and not only change the way you do that thing but surround that thing you do with other nutritious movements yeah yeah is it true that you don't have furniture in your house is that is that overstated uh well i don't have anything to sit on like i don't have seats is probably like i don't have like it's not like a modern house just like white walls and this floor no no no chairs no couches no no dining room i have like a low dining room table so yeah there are no no chairs or seats in my house for the same reason that someone you know would clean up their diet like you're trying to

eat a particular way you're not going to have all the foods that you know are going to counter your training benefits readily available because you're constantly responding to your environment right so you like willpower is a very modern thing it's not a human thing it's only in our abundance of things that we have to go i want that it's right there but oh i'm going to train myself not to have it and so you get rid of your furniture and then where are you going to sit you're going to sit on the floor and do all the same stretches you would do in physical therapy or like you know listening to this my house perfect i already do i do have one couch. Yeah, that's okay. There's nothing wrong with couches.

I'm getting there. I'm getting there. I'll get rid of it eventually. Yeah. Well, it's, you know, now what they're really understanding about movement science is that we are responding to our environment just like all animals. The future of training is going to be not just teaching someone a workout, but teaching someone how to modify the rest of their life to facilitate where you're responding with movement.

I want to sit down. I'm going to respond with a squat to sit down. I don't have to sit on my couch and be like, shit, I'm supposed to squat, and then go do those. So I respond to the lack of couch by squatting. Yeah. I float once a week. If you remember that.

Yeah. Okay. I float once a week for 90 minutes remember that. Okay. I float once a week for 90 minutes. I feel great when I get out. Are there any detriments to that? Because I'm getting in there and I'm basically, I'm removing a lot of load. Decompressing. Yeah, you're like in space.

For like 90 minutes. Yeah. So I do that. I'm consistent about once a week. And so there's the psychological benefits of just shutting everything down. And then there's also the physical benefits i do feel like my body decompresses and i even noticed like i floated the other night i noticed i could i could feel tension from my hip to the ball of my foot and i go that's interesting so

it is i can study and notice things that i would not normally notice in that environment but I also get out and it's I feel like I unwind physically in there well sure you do I mean so it's like floating in water taking a bath right you're you're removing forces that are otherwise constant it's certainly not unnatural to float in water nor is it unnatural to remove I mean this is hyper stimulus right like to be like it's so quiet is that like. I was like, yeah, that's probably how people were all the time before there was all this stuff. It's good to get back to. Yeah. So you like the floating? I like the floating. Okay. I can keep doing it. No more diapers. Oh, fuck. No more. Yeah. No more boxers. So I have to get out of the tank to go to the bathroom. Yeah,

your cream master's like. That's the one thing I wear in the float tank. Well, then you're doing it wrong. Then you're doing it wrong. You can't wear your MeUndies anymore. Yeah. They make boxers. Oh, man. So I know we need some sort of, what is the Nike Air equivalent

to go from briefs to boxers, something where you just let down a little support at a time, like a little valve? Maybe like Speedo? No, Speedo would not be it. No, that's going up. You need something to slowly come down. I support at a time, you know, like a little valve. Maybe like Speedo? No, Speedo would not be it. No, that's going up. You need something to like slowly come down, right? I've got a solution. Maybe just don't buy any new underwear.

And over time, they will wear out. That's true. Wear cotton underwear. We call those underwears quitters. Cotton underwear, they'll just stretch out. They'll creep over time. That's right. So what does the day look like for your six-year-old as far as like,

as far as how much movement they're getting versus how much they're like sitting in like on an iPad or what have you like what what for the parents out there that deal with that struggle on a daily basis like how do you get your kids to move more my answer is not going to be the same I mean like I live a very I we facilitate a very unique experience so we don't have any electronics I have my laptop we have our phones but we don't have an eye none of us have an iPad the kids don't have any electronics. I have my laptop. We have our phones. But none of us have an iPad. The kids don't have any electronics. They both go to nature school, right?

So they're outside all weather year-round. They live in Washington. So they don't really have exercise experience. Maybe they play soccer, you know, although we've cut the heels off their cleats, right? So we're facilitating a little. Well, that's something we were talking about just the other day is I grew up, most of my running was in cleats. Right, right.

And toes all pushed together. And my toes are all smashed together. And you produce force there. So it's not even only frequency of position, it's the force that you create when you're in those positions. Those are adaptation makers. So when you have repetitive position and repetitive force, my husband's a soccer player, right?

So your feet just get really stiff and really tight over time. So they play soccer, and that's fine. That's for the sport that they're doing. But we make sure that the sport that they're doing is happening in a very abundant non-exercise time, non-physical activity time context. So their movement time is like they sleep on the floor with us. So they're getting all of that. They wear shoes and our regular shoes we walk a few miles a day like walking is the is the physical movement that i kind of feel like correlates to

fat as a category of macronutrients and that you need you need a lot of it like walking itself i would consider to be a macronutrient how many steps do you think people should be getting five miles yeah i would say if you could go three to five miles a day three to five miles and if you again transition if you're like i don't walk more than a mile then great then start with a mile and then go to a mile and a quarter you know you're just trying to add it in doesn't have to all be at once it doesn't even have to be um even the same time yeah no it's actually better because right now what they're really fine with mechanotransduction right which is that process of cellular adaptation to loads is that it's that Yeah. No, it's actually better because right now what they're really finding with mechanotransduction, right, which is that process

of cellular adaptation to loads is that it's that you're breaking up. It's not so much the minutes or the steps. It's the distribution. Distribution is another variable of load,

frequency and distribution. Yeah, we didn't even really get into the whole mechanotransduction concept. No, we don't. I mean, people haven't adopted it right now. Yeah, because that, to me,

was the most interesting part of your book. Well, it's because you're an engineer. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's like, you know, the movement affects gene expression. You know, we're sitting there,

we think like we're prisoners of our genetics. Right. You know, like, oh, it's my bad genetics, but your genes are expressed because a lot of things, external environment. Yeah, movement's one of those factors. Yeah.

Kind of cool. Yeah, it is pretty cool. It is. Well, the reason I think it's cool is because, again, we are unprecedentedly sedentary. Like, we're all still eating. We're all kind of eating around the same number of calories. Certainly the nutrient profile has changed.

But as far as movement goes, no one on the planet has ever moved in all of the time as little as this one group of people is right now. We've done it. That's true. We're winning. Right. And it's funny. We think we're making our lives better by not moving around because things get more convenient for us, but we're probably making it worse.

So Movement Matters, which was my book after Move Your DNA, was really just this idea of convenience, which is convenience, we perceive it or define it as saves time. It actually saves movement. Convenience, convenience are saving us motions that we then have to go, well, where am I supposed to fit five more hours of motion? So it didn't really actually save you time at all. Which is a natural thing, I think, for humans, because we still are in that caveman stage where we like got to conserve energy, don't know where our next meal is going to come,

but food is abundant. We don't have that problem generally. That puts us back to it's the environment that needs alteration as much as our behavior within it. We're trying to get everyone to behave different in the environment. Just change your environment. It's easy. We seek comfort.

Totally. The way I look at it is we've, over the last couple of, what are those called? Beyonds. Millennia. is we've over the last couple of, what are those called? The odds. Millennia. Millennia. Millennia. We've used the mind to seek comfort. So anytime we go, oh, we can make this process easier

so I can think my way to a point where I make my life have less movement and less difficult. And I think there's a lot of value in that. And it sounds like we may have crossed the line. You know, we may have gone too far. Too far. Yeah, and it's interesting, you know, because I would say it conserves energy as the goal. I don't know if we are saving, if we actually are more comfortable

because I find that the angst within us is very high without any outlet, right? You have angst to fuel need or desire so that you don't have any more movement. So now the angst just comes out like on Facebook, you know what I mean? It has to be internal. If you're not getting the external. Or you're like, my life sucks. Like we have constant ruminations about all these things that we have discontent about. So I would argue like, are you actually any more comfortable? I know you're more lethargic and sedentary and working less, but do you actually feel comfortable doing that?

Because I would say that there's a constant mind space of going, I should be doing something different than what I'm doing right now. Yeah. Well, I think having that mindset and at least having that mindfulness that you should be doing something different is a big thing because that's what I got from really reading your book and listening to your book is that now I'm more mindful like, oh, I should just walk here or I should just take the stairs and should can instead of should it's like an

opportunity you can be doing something different than what you're doing right now should is arguable have you listened to Tony Robbins all over yourself yeah well no I am actually like I'm I'm being more uh intentional about intentional is the word you're like I didn't even realize I was choosing to not move until you realize that's what you're choosing to do. You made me feel so bad because I listened to that book and she was like you should be walking while you're listening to this book. I'm like I'm sitting on my couch or I'm sitting in this plane. Did you not do

the vocabulary? I did do the vocabulary. You just rejected all of it. You didn't make me feel anything. My bad. I believe I said you can walk so earlier you were saying that that movement as a whole the the the industry behind that so speaking that the thought process the philosophy is behind it are are maybe 500 years older than in the way that we think about them they're way behind the way that we think about nutrition and

some other industries where do you think we're going with it now? Like what's the next phase that like the general population needs to adopt? And then what, for people that are kind of leading the industry, like what, what are the things that you see that kind of like on the horizon that are coming next? Well, you know, that's what the sitting is a new smoking thing really was is, you know, there was this big idea that you needed to get, like, there's, there's government minimums for movement. And then there's certainly personal trainers, like you need to get like there's there's government minimums for movement and then there's certainly personal trainers like you need to be doing these categories right you need to get stretching and flexibility and cardio like which is again just like macronutrients right oversimplifying yeah yeah well i mean it's just the way that it is so we had this phase of like we need to actually

you need to get your exercise because people are not exercising we are we're in a particular culture you are talking to people who already like naturally come to exercise, but the vast majority, certainly of North Americans are not exercising. So then we had the sitting as the new smoking thing, which was like, Hey, it turns out even if you exercise, if you sit the rest of the time, that's not getting you as far out of the health category as you, as we thought. right? So now they moved to physical activity, which was like 10,000 steps, right? That's not within a workout confine, you know? So I see that the next step will be understanding all of the not what I call non-exercise movement,

the capacity for that. And to figure out, I was trying to re go back and do guidelines with, they look at the HOSDA, we were talking earlier about like new studies that show different things, and they're trying to figure out like what exactly are the minimums for movement, and they found that maybe it's 15,000 steps or seven upright hours, meaning like they're trying to take it out of, did you do these exercises, to look at how you move throughout the course of the day. So I don't know if like getting rid of your furniture and wearing boxers is ever going to be mainstream recommendations. But with mechanotransduction, which is this idea that you are responding to your mechanical environment all the time, I'm starting to see little inklings coming from evolutionary biology, which is like we need to consider the environment that someone is operating in. So maybe

it's going to be more like non-exercise guidelines. Like, do we have that many non-exercise guidelines for what people need for their health? Not really. 10,000 steps. I mean, that was basically a marketing campaign for a pedometer. There's not like a backing to that. That was bastards. Yeah. My whole life revolves around that. Yeah. My fitness pal tracks my steps it's like 10 000 steps well and i think it's so funny that like we've chosen 10 000 like it's a huge number it's like yeah or it's like i walk and that's a lot of 10 000 steps a lot of miles i want to do i want to do a pedometer that shows you how much you didn't walk like the reverse pedometer it's like guess what you didn't take 250 000 steps you took 10 right so like i feel like there's a, you know, obviously not that

motivating of a person, but you know, like, but I feel like, cause we keep talking about like, I do something for two hours a day. I do 10,000 of something. That's great. But there's 24 hours in a day when you do it relatively speaking, then you can understand why we're having the outcomes that we're having. I think having those standards and classifying it in a different way takes all the people that don't consider themselves to be an athlete. Exactly. And they're never going to look like the person on the cover of the magazine. And so they're too intimidated to go into a gym. And it opens up this whole new world to them where they have some some some options for what to do walking is a part of it sure um like a good example like our buddy max

shank um he has this concept called five minute flow where like you take five minutes you just move all your joints through a full range of motion and you can do that multiple times a day like that's a great break every every morning like when i go to take my my two-year-old out of the crib like wake him up and then me and my wife we do five minute flow we just like the wrist circles i move my my thumb i had surgery on you know neck squat like just every every position we can get ourselves into just to make sure we go through a full range of motion at least once a day if not multiple times a day yeah and i think uh you know with the fitness industry as a whole it's not i mean it is relatively young but we're talking about 30 or 40 years of again

billions of dollars of research and people aren't moving more they're not motivated by this will make you healthier you'll feel better like they're not motivated by that and it took me a while you know someone coming from fitness and loving it you know and loving to move always like i i would feel ill i don't i think if i like a two days go without me moving i'm like i don't feel right i'm cranky so i i understand that i feel better moving i don't think everyone is that way so they don't know they're cranky. Well, maybe that could be why they're cranky. Yeah, that could be, maybe they haven't experienced it, but I come from a family who all were predominantly movers. Like my dad all the way, you know, up until almost his 90th year was like exercising

every day, two hours a day. Like he prioritized it. It was how he lived so long. But fitness, I always like, fitness is not really inclusive. It requires that you usually have a place to go or a membership, special clothes, daycare. Like you're already, like you're adding a lot of requirements for people to be able to get to do the thing that we all supposedly need. And I'm saying, well, we don't actually all need exercise. None of us need exercise. We need exercise in the

same way we need supplements at a, at a vitamin mineral shops because their diets suck. You need exercise because your movement diet sucks. It's not something that is in, that's a soundbite right there. Yeah. And so so and so we're using them but we we've become kind of confused and that we keep saying no you need to exercise like you really don't and so if you knew moms people who don't have enough income to join a gym or who are struggling in so many other ways that it would never occur to them to prioritize their health over the fact that they've got major issues going on that i think that there's language we can start using yeah the language and program to be like, oh,

I didn't know that I could actually just hold my baby and go for a walk and that would count. And now I didn't need daycare. Our relationship is stronger. They're stronger. I'm stronger. It's much more, it's much, it's an ecosystem. It's a movement ecology. Yeah. I mean, I think that's one of the key things that's probably needs to happen because when you say move more, people are automatically going to equate that to exercise.

And I already can't do it. Yeah, two different things. Yeah, two different things. Yeah. I have this theory that with technology coming. Yeah. Well, it's already here. We're going to have augmented reality soon for a lot of people.

I mean, technically, we already have it. I was going to say, I just watched like 100 people not even engage in anything outside of this. Pokemon Go, man. I got a lot of people to watch. It might be glasses or contacts at some point. And then we also have, you know, we were introduced to this site. There's this suit, Athos, which is tracking EMG throughout your whole body.

That's the attempt at this point. And it's got accelerometers. And then you have this machine, this AI machine, that will be able to go, oh, okay, you've been in this position this long. You've been moving like this. It's tracking all your movement all the time. And then you have this augmented reality where it can make a suggestion. It's like, oh, you know what?

You've been in this position for a long time. Why don't you crawl around on the floor for five minutes? And I think it'll make suggestions for movement. And if you're moving five minutes every 30 minutes or something like that, in 12 hours of a day, you get two hours of total movement in. And I think that that could potentially, if we can get to that point where people are adopting that type of a practice through technology, a lot of times people who are going to the gym or can't find time to go to the gym,

it wouldn't even be a thing anymore because if I do that, I can look good naked and I'll feel good. And that's what most people go to the gym for. Right. I do think that there's people already, the exercisers, they'll just keep using technology to perfect that. I'm just mostly concerned about people who are not already exercising. Exactly. Yeah, who are just like concerned about people who are not already exercising. Who are ill. Exactly. Yeah, who are just like – they don't even get the concept. Like they don't even really – when we're talking about the benefit,

you can't – it's hard to perceive an experience that you can't really relate to. You know what I mean? Like you hear the words, but you don't really believe it. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Thanks for joining us today. Good times.

I think we're going to have to have a round two. Yeah. Absolutely. All this time in San Diego. Talk about more like the DNA stuff. i hear that you have an awesome place up in washington i do you're welcome you're all welcome to come up there and take your fishing take salmon fishing all right well i do i want i was talking my dad's actually a huge salmon fish in the northwest well that's right i was here from there was there something else you want to ask do we want to keep pushing this uh well i think i feel like that would probably be another hour.

Save it for next time. I do have one last question. Isaiah, you're sleeping on the floor. What's the bed look like, though? Is it just like a cushion? Different times. So, like, I've been playing with my variability again because I get too acclimated. And we camp a lot.

So, when you go outside, right, that's going to be when you're starting to play with that texture about in your shoes for your whole body right texture for your whole body um it's been a three inch foam like just a what they would call a mattress topper but just that on the floor uh sheepskin just underneath you know what you sleep right on top of so like just minimal again a lot of years to train away from from the bed though to be able to withstand pressure i mean mean, you're mobilizing multiple joints. It's like, you know, you guys have worked with Jill before. Does she have you roll out any particular parts? Oh, yeah. Yeah, so it's like having every single joint that articulates

in this really high-pressure way. It's like having 30 or 40 balls on you all at the same time that you're on, like, unmoving for two or three hours. But it's not only that. It's the fact that when you're uncomfortable, you move. That you're actually, you've actually kind of dimmed your body's natural move signals, which are discomfort, right? You're uncomfortable, so you just change position. You don't have to put, you know, it's not princess and the pea. You don't need 12 inches of foam to be comfortable. You just, you change your position. So we've gotten rid of the movement. That would be our

natural response to our environment. Also, so devil's advocate advocate to that if you're constantly kind of uncomfortable moving around yeah are you kind of constantly awake not all the way falling into a deep sleep does that affect your sleep quality or recovery i don't think so i mean i think again the movements are subtle so it's not the movement and you're like oh my arm has to come all the way over here i also think again our understanding of sleep is kind of in the same way we understand exercise, right? Like people need eight hours all at once. And I think, you know, like the researchers really kind of go, well, if you go to bed earlier when the sun goes down, you sleep for a while, you wake up for a while and you're up and then you go back to sleep for a little bit.

And then maybe you take a nap more. It's distribution. It's different distribution and frequency is probably different than the way you're like it's supposed to be eight hours all at once or like six hours for most people you know and plus too like you know like you said earlier in the show you've progressed totally to this like you can't just like jump from again squatting zero pounds to 400 pounds the next day yeah and i think that kind of like holy shit like i'm sore i have to change positions yeah if you train really hard, you know how you wake up when you've trained and you know that something's really sore and then you have to like, you actually wake up, consciously

shift and then like put yourself to bed. It's not that. It's more like really gentle. You're just removing pressure. So to get pressure off one spot, I might just have to turn my pelvis three degrees and I'm going to decrease the pressure. So once more parts of you move, it takes less gross movement to change the pressures and loads within your body.

When you're stiff, everything has to go kind of as once. So it's going to be so excited. I'm going to come home and throw out the bed. Shit. One thing I was going to ask you just kind of like a takeaway for people like to get started, like where,

like what's like maybe some simple things that they maybe can do to just get started, trying to move a little bit more and better and like like you like you suggested transition to minimal shoes okay transition don't just go buy some new ones transition do all the correctives for mobilizing the feet in a gentle way over time um that might be going and getting jill's you cover you cover that a lot i I wrote a whole book, Whole Body Barefoot, but I used Jill's balls or a tennis ball. Jill Miller, right? Jill Miller, yeah, yoga, tune up and all her balls.

So that's key because now it's not only your feet that are moving more. The structure of your whole entire body is one thing because it's passing through your foot. So as your foot's on a particular angle, you changing your foot effectively changes everything. So it's like least input foot. So as your foot's on a particular angle, you changing your foot effectively changes everything. So it's like least input, maximal whole body change. So that's a good thing to do. Look at how much you're walking.

I would say that adding walking, consider yourself, if you're not a walker, like you have zero fat in your diet, right? If you saw an athlete come to you or a lifter who was on a low fat diet, you would instantly fix that, right? I hope. So it's that same thing that walking is this very low key thing pick total miles distribute it well

through the day if you're doing zero it can just be adding a mile just but do 15 3 3 or 4 15 minute walks distributed through the day to different speeds different terrains everything right well you can add that like you can start if you're just like i can't get out of my neighborhood, fine. Then just do them all in your neighborhood. But then if you're like, I've been doing in my neighborhood for a year, great, but we're going to need to add some variability. So is there a driveway with a hill? Can you not, can you walk on the six inches of grass and the roots that are just left? You know, they're just adjacent to the flat thing. Watch when you walk, You are constantly choosing the flattest, easiest thing to walk on. You don't even know. You won't cut across. And a lot of it's cultural. Like you're

odd. You stand out. You're potentially a criminal. Like we, my husband has been pulled over by the authorities, you know, for climbing on kid equipment. Like we're all there with our kids and he's like on the top of the swing set, like, hanging from his leg. And it's like, you're making the other mothers uncomfortable. Can we ask you to stop? And it's like, wow, I'm a dad here moving with my kids. It's like, you're not a – movement is counterculture. So you stand out.

There was someone who took my advice. They didn't take actually my advice, but advice that I give, which is if you have to drive every day to work, and you feel like, hey, I live in San Diego, I can't walk, you know, there's freeway, then just park a couple blocks from – Yeah. Just walk that last bit. He did, and someone saw him walk with his duffel bag into his office and not drive up and park and walk. So they called the cops, and they did, like, a bomb threat. Oh, my goodness.

This is like – it's really interesting how – and how you – when you have kids, too to how often you tell them to be still how often like There's like we have so much language and oh shit. Oh shit How do you feel about putting a kid in a desk for eight hours? Well, my kids go to outdoor school Well, I know yours but that is awesome Poor kerosene on, jump a match, walk away. I mean, you don't have a choice. You have to, I mean, you don't have a choice.

I mean, you kind of do. I feel, you kind of do. Who doesn't have a choice? Well, I mean, if you get sick. One, you have a choice. One, you have a choice, but two, there's a reality that most of us are in where we are not malleable in that way,

whether it's work or school, that's fine. We tend to focus on the least malleable part instead of the most malleable part. It's like, great, what are you doing for the two hours before and after? Did you just, is all of your fun activities sedentary? Like is everything you do as a family? So we do for our kids, my six-year-old, my four-and-a-half-year-old,

hiking birthday parties. My husband and I do hiking dates. We don't want to go sit down and watch a movie or go out to dinner. We want to go outside. So it's about taking those events and going how can i make them movement based and we've done that to everything and then it doesn't matter if you're going to work or sitting for eight hours because the eight other hours yeah can be movement rich yeah so if you're sending your if you gotta send your kids to public school and a lot of people do a lot of people just

come home and let them move right come home and not just let them move move with them move with them you know right if they're just if're like, go outside and play, right? The ultimate pair. How come my kids aren't off their video machines? Because you're not. You're inside on your video machine. They're not going to go outside. They're learning how to be a person from you.

So put your video game down or whatever work you're doing, however you perceive it as necessary to your existence, which Twitter is not. You can just go out. Unless you're tweeting me. Unless, and then it's like for work. But yeah, like walk to school again with the two blocks. If you can't do the whole thing.

And then it's like, it's not only movement done for movement's sake, which is what exercise is. It's non-exercise movement, which was like, I just wanted to be with you for a little bit. Move yourself, yes. Move them, yes. But something else happened besides you just moving your body. That's a privilege to only have to think about the benefits of exercise of yourself

as not functioning in the whole rest of the world, because your movement is affecting the whole world. What about dance for movement? All the time, 100%. Go to dance school. If you can get your kids into dance school, then it's perfect. I like that.

Yeah, dance is good, right? Dance is, do a dance date or do a dance party with your kids or something. Yeah, for sure. Sounds fun. Katie. Were you asking me to dance? Are you here all weekend? Yeah, I'm here all weekend.

We'll do it. Yeah, we're going to dance. Have you seen Bledsoe dance? No, I have not. It was so good. Well, I got some moves. It's interesting. All I was going to say is that this has been excellent.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah. Where can people find more about you? Um, nutritious movement, nutritious movement is the portal to like everything, whether it's social, if you'd like to follow social media,

if you like visual Instagram is, I don't post anything. That's not really a solution. It's like, here's how I'm executing this idea that I talk about over here. This it's like the practical and then, then uh all the books you can see what books or videos or podcasts are all there definitely read uh or listen to move your dna that's definitely a it's a crowd favorite yeah it's a great one yeah it's a great you said you had you had multiple

books yet i have eight books eight books what are they real quick? Sure. Simple Steps to Foot Pain Relief, Whole Body Barefoot, Dynamic Aging, which is this, but for people like over 60. It's like, I feel like I can't, like movement's done. It's like, no, here you go, 60. And it's written by people. It's probably one of the most important. It is. And it's written with women who all started with me in their late 60s

and early 70s who 10 years later are barefoot hiking national parks and climbing trees. And they're like i came and i needed a knee replacement and organ prolapse surgery and we did none of it we did this and here we are so i try to tailor like to different groups uh diastasis recti which is a split of the abdomen so it's written for kind of people pre or postnatal or if men are having hernias or whatever that content is there uh move your dna uh don't just sit there for the office worker who's like how do i apply move your dna to the office don't just sit there

whole book on that and movement matters which is again how it ties into the rest of the world like how does your movement work in a family in a community when you outsource movement who is actually moving on your behalf other people on this planet or doing physical labor. Like the moves that we would consider highly varied and as ancestral, like crawling and digging. It's like there's people on the planet right now doing it kind of against their will for the things that we use all the time. So that's what Movement Matters is about. So it's like start small. I can dig.

Yeah.