Barbell Shrugged - [Muscle Intelligence] How to Build Muscle and Purpose for Men Over 40 w/ Ben Pakulski, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash #715

Episode Date: October 4, 2023

Ben Pakulski, “The Godfather of Intelligent Muscle Building”, is widely considered the world’s best muscle expert and top authority on physique optimization and lifestyle integration for high-achieving men over 40. Ben is the CEO of the Muscle Intelligence Brand, host of the Muscle Intelligence Podcast, and creator of Mi40, the best selling brand that has helped millions of students, coaches and trainers transform their bodies and lives. As an IFBB Professional Bodybuilder, Ben competed in 23 shows from 2008-2016. He finished top 10 in the prestigious Arnold Schwarzenegger Classics Ohio for 6 consecutive years, placing 2nd in 2013. Ben reached the pinnacle of the bodybuilding world in 2012 and 2016, competing in the Mr. Olympia Contest and was considered one of the top 10 bodybuilders in the world for many years. After a 20-year bodybuilding career, Ben found his new passion and redirected his focus towards helping executives, pro-athletes and entrepreneurs look, feel and perform at their best. Ben now teaches his six pillars of a Lean, Healthy, and Muscular Body to men around the world, shifting the paradigm in the fitness industry towards the pursuit of integration of body, mind, and soul and the creation of a beautiful life. When not teaching or training, Ben spends his time at home or traveling with his two angels, Benjamin Zane and Presley Skye.   Ben Pakulski Website Ben Pakulski on Facebook | Instagram | YouTube Ben Pakulski Muscle Intelligence Podcast Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, Ben Pekulski is back on the show. You guys may know him, if you're a meathead like me, you may know him from Generation Iron back in the day. What a great show. I've only watched it like, I don't know, this is, my daughter was telling you how many, she would call it, eleventy billion infinity times. That's how she speaks sometimes when she says big numbers. Yo, Generation Iron was a sick show. Ben was one of the main characters, and they followed all the way to Olympia, which is very cool.

And he's also got an awesome perspective on just kind of like all levels of performance, all the way from standing on stage to Olympia to being a father. We talk a ton about that and just kind of how to raise kids, how to be a productive father raising children as well as how training and and um being kind of like a man in your 40s um and bringing purpose behind a lot of the stuff and not just like focusing just purely on just like let's just build muscle to build muscle but like why are we going and doing this stuff and having a really insightful conversation around um intelligent muscle, but also the purpose behind all of it.

And I really enjoyed it. As always, friends, make sure you go to rapidhealthreport.com. That's where Dr. Andy Galpin and Dan Garner are doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis that everybody inside Rapid Health Optimization will receive. You can access that over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's go get in the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrug. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson. Hopefully, Coach Travis Match will be bouncing in here in a second. Ben Pekulski, dude, right before you jumped on here, it's been like five years since I hung out with you. Has it been that long? Time flies, man. That's terrible. It's pre-COVID.

That's four years ago. I remember walking to the Fitness Business Summit, and there was this jacked dude with the power shirt on. And I was like, I feel like I know that guy. But that was because I watched Generation Iron nine times. So much that we became friends in my living room before we had actually met in person. Dude, I have a, this is like one of my favorite questions and you, you might be like the best person to answer. You have stood on the stage of Mr. Olympia, started businesses in fitness, kind of played like so many different levels.

I'd love to know just what the, kind of like the framework in which you use strength and conditioning muscle building um as you have gone through this over the call at the last 20 20 plus years you can't be the same person today that you were when you were standing on stage at olympia what does that look like now so you want me to start with where it looks now or where it looked back then? Oh, it can be either. Stories are good. Yeah, it's different. So, oh gosh, I don't even know what angle to approach this with for you. But so I'll say muscle building for me when I started was a necessity. It was something that needed, it was something that just I couldn't not do. And what that means to me is there's a lot of levels to that. But what that means is I identified as being lazy and I hated it. And truthfully, you know, everyone has maybe not everyone, but that's an, that's an assumption, but many people have things they hate about

themselves. And for me, it was the fact that I grew up in this lazy family and I just didn't want to be like them. I just, I knew I was different. And so muscle building was this opportunity for me to just like go into that and go. And what I found when I went into that is I found myself going into the darkness and the darkness for me was all of those demons and all of the anger and all the aggression. And I quickly developed this story around that I was a bad person. And I thought that that anger and that those bad thoughts were, um, made me a bad person. And I didn't realize that, you know, I didn't have anyone to kind of mentor me at the time. I didn't realize that was, that was a good thing,

but I can talk about that, but it was just truly passion. And that's what drove me to continue and pursue bodybuilding was I just wanted to overcome the deep level of inadequacy, the deep level of laziness. And it wasn't about the muscle for me. It wasn't about the way I looked. Truthfully, the bodybuilding shows were a pageant. I loved the process of everything in between. And the bodybuilding show was a way for me to unveil what I had done, the work I'd done to myself. I didn't really care if everyone else was like, oh, I for me to unveil what I had done, the work I had done to myself. I didn't really care if everyone else was like, oh, you haven't. I'm like, I just want to see how far I progressed.

So the paradigm in muscle building at that point was, what do I need to do to get better between show to show? So I didn't compete every week or every month even. It was like once or maybe twice a year. And so the paradigm is, well, what do I need to do to get better? So it was this constant iteration of, instead of looking at myself and going, I'm great. It was looking at myself and going, what can I do to get better? So it was really like, I think my unconscious driver in life has always been growth. You know, I have a strange personality trait where I move toward things I'm not good at,

which is not good and not bad. It just is. And I find the things that I suck at and I have to become good at them because I just don't like it. Maybe it's like, I just don't like being bad at something. Like I want to be good at everything, which is not necessarily good or bad, but it just is. So that was originally my paradigm in muscle building. And so that allowed me to explore things from this kind of constant, perpetual beginner state of always asking the question what what can i do better what can i improve where are my opportunities so it's just this perpetual beginner state that really every conversation i entered was i just entered as a student and i would have conversations people much smarter me. And my mouth shut and ears open, I would try to learn.

And so muscle building for the first, call it 15 to 17 years, maybe a little more than that, was this self-exploration of all the directions of my personality. So exploring the anger, the frustration, the joy, the happiness, and learning to push in every direction. You know, I really believe that humans should, we don't have a container oftentimes in which we can safely explore the extent of our emotions, right? I want to explore my anger. I want to explore my frustration. I want to explore my happiness and my joy without fear of judgment. And so bodybuilding for me was that it was like allowing me to,

to explore and express all of those emotions. So I don't know if that's directly answering your question, but since, since leaving professional, so I'll say this, my kids were born in 2012 and 13. And that was, I was at the top of the world that I was top seven, top 10 in the world. And in that instant, I was like, this isn't for me. I'm done with this. I'm done with bodybuilding. And then at that moment, muscle building and training and strength and condition took on a completely new perspective for me. It was like, well, I want to feel great. I want to look great and we're performing great, but I don't need to be the best bodybuilder in the world. Prior to that, I was like, I just want to be the best version of myself. Maybe that means I can be the best.

I really had a belief that I would be the best one day. But then as soon as my kids come along, I was like, yeah, I'm done. Like zero need to continue. So you can guide that response or question in a more nuanced direction, if you like. Yeah. It's an interesting question. I feel like it's something that everybody on here has been lifting weights for roughly 30 to 40 years straight. And if I attack things the same way that I did when I was 23 years old, I would be broken into shambles. and really like so much of everything now is just focused on how healthy can I be? How much energy can I get in my life? And how efficient can I make this entire process? And that really has like, I would say in the new framework, maybe there's a new framework once my kids are 18 and they're out of the house and I get to go do things differently again.

But that really has like, I'm always interested in, because there's just wisdom in the fact that like, I think people, people look at sometimes what we do and it's like, oh, you lift weights and like, you talk to your friends on, on podcasts. Cool. And you're like, yeah, but if you wanted to do that every day, think about how hard that is. If you want to like go and do go and be good at something like lifting weights or business or whatever it is, like you have to go fight and do go and be good at something like lifting weights or business or whatever it is like you have to go fight for the time and you got to go fight for the energy and um you've been doing that a long time it's it's a really it's a really tricky problem to go to solve when um you got to go look at it for 30 to 40 years straight um which is why maybe maybe maybe it's just this

is really important to me right it's like you brush your teeth you know and i think this is one thing i try to encourage to my community of men is is in order for you to prioritize anything you must prioritize yourself right if you really want to show up at the highest and best for your family highest and best for your business highest and best for your tribe and your community whatever that is how can you not prioritize yourself right like by not by not taking advantage and priorit for your tribe and your community, whatever that is, how can you not prioritize yourself, right? Like by not, by not taking advantage and prioritizing your health and your performance, you're not showing up for your kids. You're not being a good role model, but you're also not being the best version of you, not emotionally, not physically. So anyone who wants to express the highest version of themselves, I believe there has to be a very high priority

placed on health on, on, and that's physical and mental yeah um with you coaching real quick let's bring travis mass into this conversation man man popped in just a minute ago just want to say what's up and get him in in the mix here oh thanks sorry i joined a normal link and then i saw that you guys said to do this one but my bad i'm super excited he had the most unique unique take on why he started bodybuilding that i've ever heard he sure got me involved quickly like the fact that he wanted to overcome laziness of his family i remember not what i was expecting you know from a bodybuilder so you got my attention already i was probably the least likely candidate to be a bodybuilder

i mean when i told people i was going to be a bodybuilder. When I told people I was going to be a bodybuilder, everyone laughed at me. Literally everyone. They said every reason why I wouldn't. If you see my family, no one in my family goes to the gym. Nobody's even finished high school. Same. Where are you from? You sound like you're from my

neck of the woods. Born and raised in Toronto. Born and raised in the Blue Ridge Mountains Mountains where you don't want to be. Shark family, I want to take a quick break. If you are enjoying today's conversation, I want to invite you to come over to rapidhealthreport.com. When you get to rapidhealthreport.com, you will see an area for you to opt in, in which you can see Dan Garner read through my lab work. Now, you know that we've been working at Rapid Health Optimization on programs for optimizing health. Now, what does that actually mean?

It means in three parts, we're going to be doing a ton of deep dive into your labs. That means the inside-out approach. So we're not going to be guessing your macros. We're not going to be guessing the total calories that you need. We're actually going to be doing all the work to uncover everything that you have going on inside you. Nutrition, supplementation, sleep. And then we're going to go through and analyze your lifestyle. Dr. Andy Galpin is going to build out a lifestyle protocol based on the severity of your concerns. And then we're going to also build out all the programs that go into that based on the severity of your concerns. And then we're going to also build out all the programs that go into that based on the most severe things first. This truly is a world

class program. And we invite you to see step one of this process by going over to rapidhealthreport.com. You can see Dan reading my labs, the nutrition and supplementation that he has recommended that has radically shifted the way that I sleep, the energy that I have during the day, my total testosterone level, and my ability to trust and have confidence in my health going forward. I really, really hope that you're able to go over to rapidealthreport.com,

watch the video of my labs, and see what is possible. And if it is something that you are interested in, please schedule a call with me on that page. Once again, it's rapidealthreport.com. And let's get back to the show. I got a question for you.

I've thought this many times in conversation with you. I respect the level at which you can self-reflect. That seems to be a skill that you possess. How much is nature and nurture and how much you've worked on that over the years versus what was natural is is probably up for debate but i my i i would guess that you have you have um refined and perfected that skill actively to be as good as you are at it like how how are you able to self-reflect that's in um i don't know if it's such an accurate way is the best way to say it but in at the level you are such detail for sure thank you yeah you seem like a very critical thinker like i can see the wheels turning and um and it's happening in a way that i don't often see from other people agree that's

what i'm talking about too yes thanks man um yeah is it nature is it nurture that's a good question um i it's hard to say because, you know, if you had asked me that 10 years ago, I would have told you it's probably not nature. But because when I was a child, I grew up with an incredibly poor diet. I always slept with the lights and the television on and probably barely slept at all. And so for the first 15 years of my life, you could pretty accurately assume my metabolism was broken. I lived on sugar and junk food and with, you know, sleeping with lights on now, we know that's probably the worst thing you can possibly do. So I would have attached to saying, I was told many times that I had a learning disability,

had a speech impediment. My house was chaos, stress, like everyone was fighting. It was just chaos. So the speech impediment was fear, like shaking with fear. And so I don't know if I self-reflected back then. I just know that I attached to being dumb and didn't think a lot. So by the time I actually started to realize that health was a big part of my life there was always this like how can I get better how can I be better and and I think because I started with such a degree of I felt different than my family my family was again they're wonderful people I'm not faulting anyone for who they are and what they do but I just felt different and so I think self-reflection almost had to become part of my reality in order to separate myself from what seemed like the unconscious inevitable end result. If I was unconscious, the inevitable end result is I'm probably a drug addict, probably an alcoholic, probably obese, not doing very much productive with my life.

A lot of alcoholism, a lot of drug drug use substance abuse my family um i was just like no like maybe it was the pain that it brought me maybe i don't know what caused it but self reflection would almost feel it felt like it was um built into the process for me just because i was like i can't be like this man i'm just curious when you say fear what I'm just curious, when you say fear, what happened? Can you talk about it? Yeah, man. Never any sexual assault, but pretty much everything else. I was, I just, there was always, you can't imagine a family of very passionate alcoholics. What does that look like?

Every, and both sides of the family. I'm familiar. Yeah, my mom's side and my dad's side, both families. And it was just, alcohol was a big part of everyone's life. And man, I'm looking back at it. I don't fault anybody because what I realized it was cultural back then, right. Their European descent, it was just part of it. And I was like, okay. And I just happened to be this little, really emotional kid. I have my son's the same way. And that's how I see it now. Like really big emotions. Right. So when I, when I, when I walk into a room, I can feel things and I feel the stress and I feel the chaos

and it's just like overwhelming. And I just like, so I would sit there and I would shake. Yeah, and so the fear was, my dad had the most explosive temper of anyone I've ever met. My grandfather was a large man, built mostly like a grizzly bear. And so when you're surrounded by these people and they're drunk and they're angry, it can be very, very scary.

So, yeah, that's where the fear came from. Yeah. The group of people that you're coaching now, men over 40, I feel like I live in a bubble. Like I get to hang out with you four guys right now. Everyone's in good shape. Everyone lives consistently. We make very conscious choices about the food we're eating. That's not normal. You can like go to an airport and realize you're not normal very quickly. I would love to hear just in working with that population like what is like the the current state of man and the

mindset that just kind of like your average 45 year old guy has now um because if i were to give my opinion it would not be pretty well i'll tell you what the thing that i can say is every problem that everyone's going through is not unique we all have the same challenges everyone out there has the same challenges small same subset of challenges and i've probably been through every one at different points in my life so i can relate and that's why i feel like coaching to me is i don't judge people man because i was like listen yeah i'm just as fucked up as everyone else i've been through problems i've been through everything right and so i'm not going to judge you because you want to have a drink or because you want to eat a

donut or be like, I don't care if you miss a workout. Listen, okay, well, how can we create the habit or support you to work through it? So I guess the state of the average man out there, in my opinion, the thing that's the gap, the thing that's in my, my, my opinion, this is obviously not fact, but my opinion that separates people from the people who do what they want to do from the people who ultimately continue to live the mindless reality is just presence, right? It's the idea of like, be conscious, become aware. And I use all three of those words interchangeably, presence, consciousness, awareness,

some version of that. And if you just become aware of how you feel, become aware of what you're doing. I have to believe that most men, uh, will choose again, this could be wrong. We'll choose progress. And again, this is my, my bias, but most people just live so unconsciously. And so, uh so perpetually in pursuit of the hedonistic escapism, right? It's like food, pornography, social media, right? It's the big three. And so if you're constantly just living in constant pursuit of the instant gratification, you're never going to pursue something that's bigger. And so the first thing we ask our guys to do is remove those, right? So we're going to remove the unconscious food.

We're going to remove pornography. We're going to remove social media. And as soon as we do that, everyone's like, you know, man, my willpower got better. You know, man, like I feel like my communication with my wife is better because now instead of gratifying myself, I'm actually going to have a better conversation with my wife because I kind of want to get some. And I feel like my dopamine systems work a little more effectively. They're like, yeah, because we're just not succumbing to the world's hedonistic manipulation, right? And so I think if guys just started to allow themselves

for 30 days to remove these forms of these, these forms of instant gratification that's includes alcohol that, you know, includes drugs 30 days, man, commit to it. And then see what your actual feeling is in your body. Like get to know yourself, get to know your, like, we're all just muting the pain, right? We're muting the emotions. We're meeting the fear, the anxiety. I was hanging with some guys this weekend. He, the guy said, it's like, man, Ben, I've lived in, so he's coming to one of my camps he says ben i've lived in 24 hours of anxiety for the last 10 years he's like for the first time in the last 10 years i've had after 15 minutes of training with you i've had a relief from anxiety without the need for alcohol or substances and i was like

cool let's keep going right like it's not rocket science man but you got to give yourself the space and i know there's a lot of fear behind that you're like i don't want to i don't want to sit with my emotions in my reality but i think we that's the path and and the only way is to like be willing to be to sit with it and realize man you're not going to die like a little anxiety you're okay little fear good and i think i i try to give people the space in and the absence of judgment to just go who fucking cares what you feel like shut up and sit there and and deal with it like imagine a drug addict uh stopping drugs for the first time you have to endure some period of discomfort that it's

inevitable and the same with food and porn and social media and alcohol and all it's all of it there's going to be withdrawal deal with it it's fucking short it's going to be hard man up and that sounds a little harsh but like that's just the reality there's no way around it yeah um and obviously there's a a massive side of this entire process uh that actually is in the gym um do you feel like the gym is like just a great place to go get all that stuff out. Like, I feel like it's one of the only places we get to go be like men and like being strong is like rewarded, whether it's internally, whether it's some, some external validation, like there aren't many places where you're allowed to go just be alpha. Yeah.

If the path out of discomfort is ultimately at its foundational level, changing your arousal state, right? So anxiety, fear, it's just, it's foundational level, changing your arousal state, right? So anxiety, fear, it's just your emotional state of arousal dictated by your nervous system. So if our goal is, well, I got to change the way I feel, the way to change the way you feel is with movement, right? And movement can be anything you enjoy. Like I want to swim, go. If I want to walk, go. If I want to lift, great. Lifting has additional benefits, obviously, for men and women because we're getting out that primal nature as i said most guys have never explored the perimeters of who they are they perimeters how many guys have like gone and done something really aggressive where

they can growl like a bear like fucking growl man let it out dude andy galpin last week was on a horse with a rifle in the mountains trying to shoot an animal right how manly is that yeah and i think we need to we need to determine where we end right what the perimeters of our of our emotional being is and that's how we start to learn ourself and it goes in every direction i think in our culture it's it's from the time we're born i don't know if you guys do this to your children but like it's oh be quiet behave yourself be a good boy no, don't be a fucking good boy, express what you want, but teach your kids discernment. It's got to be contextually appropriate. Don't be an asshole at school, but if you want to be crazy in the nature, then go for it. Right. I think like, yeah, I teach my kids context. I've been

teaching them since they were three and they're not perfect, but in general, I'm not going to try to mute their emotions and their responses. I'm just going to try to teach say, hey, I love that you're doing that. This isn't the time. If you can wait a little bit of time, we could do it then. Like, OK, like we're sort of teaching them some context. Yeah. Wait, let's actually go down the road a little further. Like, how do you have a five, six and eight year old? an eight-year-old. Anders has little kids. Travis has kids. We're all in this situation where one of many difficult parts of parenting is telling your kids to not listen to anybody, but definitely listen to me. How do you solve that paradox? So three words, Doug. I would say safe, seen, and loved. Kids want to feel safe. They want to feel seen. They want to feel loved. So I communicate with so i communicate with them i pick them up and say sweetheart i understand how you're feeling right now and um this may not

be the best time to talk this way i love you can we can we can we hold this and talk about this in a few minutes and so that's that's my typical context i got it from dr tina bryson she won't they want to feel safe seen and loved and And so if they feel safe and seen, you're not shutting them now. You're not telling them to shut up, saying, hey, I understand your emotions right now. I can see you're emotional. You're elevated about that, or you're charged, whatever the word you want to use. And maybe we can talk about this in just a little while. Do you think we could put a pause on this? And the first time it's going to take a little longer. The first time they'll be like,

hard to slow down. But after time, when you do it in a calm way, in a patient way, they're like, okay, sure, daddy. And guess what happens later? It's a calm conversation rather than a belittling, you know, emotional, emotion-killing circumstance? I think the biggest thing I ever learned, you know, Gabriel's been on our show once or twice, Gabriel Villarreal, but I was having, he's a counselor, and I was having trouble with Bear, who's my, he's my six-year-old, and he's just like me, and maybe way more past me, and like, so I was worried that he was going to make the exact same or worse mistakes that I made. So I felt myself on him all the time. And I felt this gap growing between us. And Gabriel just said to really consciously double up on the affirmations.

And all of a sudden it changed everything. I mean, it went from like, he and I barely talking to being the closest, just because I focused more on affirming what's awesome. And then also in the way that I was disciplined in, I was just so afraid of him being me. And so it's not always funny, right? It's I think it was Mark Twain that said children are cursed with the unfulfilled dreams of their parents. And sometimes it's like, yeah. And so it's like, oh, I did this or I was this way. I don't want you to be that way or i didn't do this so i want you to be that way and i think at the end of the day man all it's like safe safe scene and uh and loved man that's

it that's beautiful yeah i think at the end of the day i just want my kids to know that they're fucking awesome that i think they're the best humans ever met and i love them and that's it i agree and i don't care man i think about all the time like i just want them to be happy you know i've been to the top of of professional bodybuilding i've done well in other in business and i'm like none of that changes anything right agree i think and i think the reason i'm able to have that context is because i've been successful in these areas like it doesn't fucking make me a happy person to have a million dollars in the bank or be at the top it doesn't change anything find whatever makes you to have a million dollars in the bank or be at the top. It doesn't change anything. Find whatever makes you happy. That's at the foundation of it. And

not every parent gets to live that. So therefore they try to impart these realities on their children. Like, oh, you got to be successful. I'm like, no, you fucking don't, man. You just have to be happy. Right. I totally agree. I think it helps that maybe when you've done really well at something and you don't, you know, you don't try to live through your kids. Like I see all the time with what I do, but I think that helps. I could care less than my kids do sports. If they want to be great. Bear wants to do MMA. I'm all for it. I love that, but I don't care either way. I just love them. Just be happy.

They'll be so much better. Nobody could have made me do what I do in bodybuilding except for myself. It would be so much better if they just love them just be happy like they'll be so much better if nobody could have made me do do what i do in bodybuilding except for myself so much better if they just love it right 10 floor they're not going to do it because you want them to do it matter of fact that's probably the opposite yeah and one thing i'll just share quickly is you know the the blessing of who my parents were i had no rules so i could do what the fuck i. And so when you're a kid, you want rules, right? You crave structure and order. I had no rules. I could do whatever the fuck I want.

And that as a seven-year-old child in downtown Toronto, the big city, is fucking horrendous. I'm just full of fear. But looking back at it, I was like, yeah. But that allowed me to explore all of the range of those emotions at the time. It sucked, but that's also what made me a strong man to be able to walk into any circumstance and be confident knowing that I've gone through the fire more than most people will ever understand. And so it's been my gift, right? So at the time, it was my curse, but eventually it evolved into my gift to include all of the other challenges I mentioned I had.

Yeah. I want to dig into, uh, these camps that you have going on. And, and I, uh, Doug mentioned earlier, just kind of like the, the insight that you bring into the way that you live your life, but also, uh, the first time we had, uh, had you on the show like five years ago, uh, I'd love listening to you kind of like breakdown movement and actually like how to go build muscle. And I love to kind of understand how you've laid out your seminar, just kind of going through it, just even in the exercise selection side of things. What are some of like the big topics that you are are rolling through because i would i would i would love to one attend one but i need to imagine they're all uh loaded with information as well yeah um so is the question i'm answering how do i how do i narrow down exercise selection uh we're going to get into that but i really want to know like what the at the level, like what is the kind of like the, the outline and the most important pieces that you feel like you can, you can bring in a weekend that,

that make lasting change with people. Yeah. So this may be too high level for people to get, but I'll start, this is all of my courses start with an introduction of my belief. There's really four areas of what I call resiliency that we want to pay attention to. And resiliency and capability, I use those words interchangeably. So we have physical capability, we have metabolic capability, we have physiological capability, and psychological capability. So I look at humans through the lens of those four resiliencies or capabilities. So it's physical, it's metabolic, it's physiological, and it's psychological. And those loosely correlate with training, nutrition, lifestyle, and mindset. And so when we coach people, we're looking at those primary areas. And so most things

break it down to that. So I look at it through those four, call it avenues. So if someone comes to my camp, the first camp, the first thing we're going to jump into is we're going to look at what is your current level of physical capability? So a man over 40, you guys know Galpin, so you know there's really nine areas of physical capability that we want to look at. And so we're saying, well, what are you good at? And where are you really capable, right? And that's great. And we want to identify those and we want to work hard in those areas that you're highly capable. We also want to identify things you're not so good at. And we want to identify those and we want to work hard in those areas that you're highly capable. We also want to identify things you're not so good at. And we want to say, okay, well, where are you not good at? How do we make you better at that? Because I always take the approach of as a man over 40, physical capability is a measure of like, I call it freedom, man. If I

wake up in the morning and I want to go surf, freedom, right? I need to go surf. If I want to go for a run, I don't go for a run. If I want to play tag with my kids or jump on a trampoline, physical freedom might be the single most important form of freedom that nobody's talking about where everyone's talking about political freedom and financial freedom what about your physical body man you want to be a hundred millionaire but be fucking incapacitated i'm like no pay attention to your physical capabilities so we measure these nine areas and we say what are you capable of doing in in these areas? And what can we then move you in the direction of doing more effectively? And so quality of movement starts, you know, I think at the root of it all. So we look at structural balance and we say, where is this person looking to, what are

their tendencies? What are their strengths? What are their weaknesses? Sometimes that's an expression of your history, what you've done in the past. Sometimes it's just an expression, usually it's an expression of your history. Sometimes a combination of your genetics as well. So some people are super tall, some are short, some are wide, some are narrow. So looking at like, hey, here's what you tend to lean toward and be good at.

And here's the things that will be opportunities for you to progress. So we're really looking deeply at that. And then we'll choose exercises and ways of executing exercise that ultimately allow you to balance your body. So we'll start there because my belief is you're only as good as your weakest link. So if I want you to get stronger to squat, but your lower back is weak, or I want you to get stronger to squat, but you're going to put your position of anterior pelvic tilt, we have to fix those, or at least move in the direction of fixing those. I don't think we're going to fix them overnight, but we

have to choose the right things in proportion so we can make those more effective for you. So in the simple way that I frame exercise, I categorize exercise into two categories. You either have output or you have skill acquisition. So if you're really good at something, which means you have unconscious competence, you don't think about it, you're just good. Then we move as into output and like, Hey man, we're going to use these to work really hard to create all the metabolic stress, to create the muscle building, create the strength. And then we have skill acquisition.

So everything else goes into skill acquisition. And if you're not really good, then we want to do those more often because I want you to get better. And the really simple subjective way that we rate this is a scale of one to five. If you're a four or five out of five, then it goes in the output column. You're really good. If it's three or less, you're going into skill acquisition. And that's kind of how we base the camps. And then, so we start teaching people the really small number of what I call high impact exercises that are going to get them the greatest amount of result for their time and effort injected into their work. squat because everybody does it. If that is the goal, how do we teach the skill acquisition side of that? Because I really feel like most people don't think about exercise as like a skill. It's like, get up, go run. I can do that. Well, it doesn't matter what it looks like. My heart rate's

high. Man, every, that's a great, it's interesting. So I always really, it's like playing an instrument, your body's an instrument. And so the guitar is different than the piano and every exercise is a skill and so you know we base it off a foundational eight big exercises that we call the big eight and so we want everyone to be capable and competent at these big eight and so if we talk about a squat in general well the simplest first place i'm going to start is can you stand on one leg? And people are like, what does one leg, standing on one leg have to do with squatting? Well, if you can't stand a little human, if,

if you can't stand up, it's like, here's 20 bucks, get out of here. If you can't stand with balance on one leg, that's going to say there's probably some deficiency at your foot or your hip. And so we're not going to squat on two legs if you can't stand on one. And so the first thing is like, well, what does it look like to improve hip mobility, foot stability, ankle stability, just without moving, right? Like no moving, stand on one leg. You can't do that on both legs. I wouldn't suggest squatting. The first level of progression from standing on one leg is, can you slowly descend into what looks like a single leg deadlift or eventually a single leg lunge?

And so I want someone to be able to stabilize both of those and then we're looking at joint by joint. So most people look at exercise, they look at the big picture, right? They're looking at the whole lunge or the whole squat. I'm like, I'm not. I'm looking at the minutia. I'm looking at the ankle joint and the foot. I'm looking at the hip joint. I'm looking at the knee joint.

I'm looking at the ankle joint and the foot i'm looking at the hip joint i'm looking at the knee joint i'm looking at the spine so that's the difference of someone who's a little more experienced in exercise is not looking at the big picture you're looking at the little just like when you go into a business right i was like how's your business doing well i'm like what what part of your business is not doing well not just yeah so yeah and so that's how we break it down man it's like start stand on one foot, literally as slowly as you possibly can, progress into a single leg lunge, make sure the hips are balanced, not like leaning one way or the other.

And if you can do it that well, and you can eventually descend down into a single leg lunge, standing stationary and control all the way up, control all the way down, you're ready to squat. And I think this is what I call the foundation of exercise, man.

And if everyone learned this shit in high school, instead of having to just go do the basic dumb shit that every high school gym teacher does, like, hey, let's just push heavy and squat. I'm like, yeah, but if you just take like a month to teach someone some foundations of movement, everyone will be so much more effective for their whole life. Why isn't it curriculum in high school to teach people body awareness and like basic foundational movements so we we can feel empowered to actually know what the hell our body's meant to do. And I think, I think it would change. I think it would change the scope of, of the direction of children. I think, imagine being empowered at 16 years old to go, yeah, man, I know I can build my legs. Yeah, man, I know I can build my pecs. I know I can get in shape because I know I understand my body. Like how much difference is that? Does that look from a confidence perspective from a kid? I'm like, I want to make that curriculum in high schools, man.

I talked to Arnold about it probably 10 years ago. I was like, hey, dude, why don't we make this curriculum in high schools? He's like, okay. And obviously we never continued the conversation. Busy. I totally agree with you. I even had something before we move on. It's just that where I'm the sports science director at this place called rise

sports performance anyway we're doing we're starting the next year we're starting a sports academy and the biggest you know the biggest um one of the biggest goals is to make movement i mean in perfect movement a big key like before they go to school they do something that involves perfect movement lunch they do something that involves something with perfect movement. And then they move on. I think perfect movement is obviously so, so hard to do and so subjective, but like at least giving them some general idea of like body awareness. Cause if I can be like, Hey man, you know, when you stand on that one leg,

you got some imbalances. Let's just drop this hip down. Let's focus on contracting here and relaxing here. Like, oh, so I can't. So it's a deal of like empowerment, right? So most people feel like they're a victim to their body. Like, I don't know what the hell to do with this thing. I'm so disconnected from my body rather than going, oh, you mean if I actually do something, I can change my body or I can change the way I feel? Yeah.

And I think that's it. Just like give people, like open the door to like, Hey man, if you just train, you move, if you, if you stretch, if you walk effectively, you actually have the ability to change your body. Why don't we know that? Yeah. I would imagine you run into a lot of men too, that just have never had the education in it and they're starting at zero and they want to be able to go play with their kids, but their body doesn't allow them to just giddy up and go. Do you know who tends to be the worst? Academics, like doctors, doctors, they tend to be so disconnected from their body because they're so in their head all the time. That's not judgmental,

but like they just spend so much time in their head and which is wonderful. They're gifts to humanity, but like they often tend to be the worst, man, because they just don't know what the hell their body's doing. They're just so used to being academic. Yeah. I'd love to dig into I was watching a it was a piece of a lecture on your Instagram recently talking about conditioning. And I feel like all of the all the meatheads are moving in the direction of breathing better. And the science no longer says you're going to lose all the muscle. Um, where, where is your kind of, uh, not like stance, but incorporating this into,

um, changing, changing bodies, getting people moving like the cardiovascular side of things is, um, maybe it's just because I'm paying more attention to it myself. It seems like it's, it's kind of picking up a little bit and there's more attention being paid to how important it is. Well, so you guys will know this because you're connected with Brian McKenzie, but Patrick McKeown talks about the three pillars of breathing and he talks about biomechanics, biochemistry, and cadence. And so if we talk first about biomechanics, the biomechanics of breathing, which is how i breathe the the motion of breath when my diaphragm expands my ribs expand and contract um i think of

the you know if we think of human movement as having two foundational really two functional movements the breathing and walking of the two most the only two real functional movements we have are certainly the two most functional if those are dysfunctional i've been that stacks on top of that is will by definition be dysfunctional. So you have to first pay attention to how we breathe. And that that's super important mechanically. And I would say of the, of the last thousand people I've worked with, 993 probably were breed dysfunctionally, maybe 950,

like 95%. And then we talk about biochemistry in case we won't get into that too much, but they're breathing is just such an impact on your state of how you like 95 and then we talk about biochemistry in case we won't get into that too much but breathing has just such an impact on uh your state of how you move your state of biochemistry and your state of psychology and so what i often just go straight to is like i want people to know how they breathe because breathing mechanics can massively just change back pain you know i think there's three i don't know if steve mcgill would agree with this, I think there's three, I don't know if Stu McGill would agree with this, but I think there's three pillars that will change back, change back pain. The first one's breathing, which is improving your diaphragm function and your pelvic floor function.

And the other one, the first two is diaphragm function and pelvic floor function. And the third one is hip mobility. If we just improve those three things, everyone moves better. So how is breathing incorporated to that? Well, breathing controls your diaphragm and your pelvic floor. But from a cardio perspective, Andrew, to kind of come back to your question, well, first, if you want to be effective at performance, mechanics is the foundation of it all. Because if you're breathing mechanically and effectively, you're going to have inefficient breathing. You're going to have inefficient mechanics. And every exercise you do, including walking, will be more difficult. Even sitting will be more difficult. Sleeping will certainly be more difficult because of the compression happening around

your thorax. Your diaphragm gets compressed. You don't breathe as efficiently, right? Inefficient breathing into the chest versus efficient breathing into the stomach and diaphragm or like thorax and diaphragm. So we talk about why people should consider breathing. It's efficiency of movement. It's efficiency of cardiovascular

health. It's allowing your brain to not constantly feel like you're in a sense of overwhelm. So if you think of, if you guys have studied CO2 tolerance, you used to have Dr. Justin Feinstein on the show. He's awesome. Talking about the relevance of CO2 tolerance, carbon dioxide tolerance in the role it plays in anxiety and anxiety regulation. So he's the world researcher. He's based in Hawaii now. Have you guys had him on? We have not.

Yeah, he's awesome. We'll be hitting you up for that connection after this. He's on my show. Listen to it. He's great. So we talk about CO2 tolerance. So anyone who has anxiety, it's been shown that almost 100% of the time it's due to accumulation of CO2 in the system and more accurately, maybe an intolerance to to accumulation of CO2 in the system and more accurately, maybe an intolerance to the accumulation of CO2 in the system. So if you don't have the

ability to tolerate an elevation in CO2, it tends to feel like you're getting that feeling of anxiety. Your body wants to breathe heavier. So when you're in anxiety, you start breathing fast, your heart rate goes up, and then the brain starts spiraling. So what he's proven is improving CO2 tolerance allows you to improve your resistance to anxiety. I call it like pushing it out in the future. So if I have an improved carbon dioxide tolerance, which basically, I'll give you the 30 second version for the listener. As soon as you start moving, the byproduct of life is carbon dioxide production. The production of energy to cellular level, the byproduct of that is carbon dioxide production. We breathe to get carbon dioxide out and everyone has a variable tolerance, which is shown to

be correlated with, with VO2 max. And so if we have a low tolerance carbon dioxide, it means the body gets a little bit of CO2 elevation. The heart rate goes up, the breathing rate goes up right away. And so if you have a high tolerance, you can accumulate a bunch of CO2 and the body doesn't really change. So now your perceived exertionion distress if i start walking up the stairs and start running my body goes i'm good you know like i'm accumulating carbon dioxide but i'm good whereas someone has low co2 tolerance they start walking up the stairs or walking you know or even

doing a couple squats all of a sudden they're like panicking because they're in so much overwhelming work and so from from a cardiovascular perspective um breathing and improving your co2 tolerance uh just is just such an opportunity so that's kind of a lot of stuff that i just jammed into three minutes precisely what i was looking for sorry what are ways to improve co2 intolerance like other than just working out you know like holding on no breath work holding your breath with you know after you breathe out like yeah, you know, I know breath work, holding your breath with, you know, after you breathe out, like. Yeah, that's it. So the only, so what we're trying to do is ultimately just allow your body to be more effective at buffering acid, right? So when we hold our breath, we accumulate CO2, the body is actually increasing its acidity,

and then the body will produce bicarb and and um buffer the acid so we're trying to improve the body's ability to buffer acid some will say there's a certainly nutritional component to that uh it's obviously health cellular health function to that but really just like the practice of exercise as we accumulate lactate ions and ultimately hydrogen ions makes us more acidic and the body's learning to um buffer that just as as a you know i don't know mechanistically what's happening how it does learn how it learns to buffer it but just breath holds so what my practice is every workout i do i'll start with five minutes of really light cycling right i'll jump on the the airdyne the wind bike and i'll just i'll cycle slowly and i'll do some

five strong breath holds and the better i get at it the faster i can some five strong breath holds. And the better I get at it, the faster I can go during those breath holds, right? So you wouldn't want someone to, I don't know, don't do it in a pool or anything like that, but like breath holds, you're intentionally trying to make it hard to breathe. And you want to train your ability to not breathe. And you want to increase the intensity with which you're exercising, because obviously the harder you exercise, the more CO2 you're producing because of the energy production. So that's my practice. I do five to 10 strong breath holds before I train. I also noticed that actually increases my aerobic function or my, I guess my, my ability to deliver oxygen to the cell when I'm training. So

do you hold your breath in or out when it's, when you're, do you breathe in and hold it or do you breathe out? I breathe out. Yep. So I'll do just five normal breaths full exhale hold uh and like in the beginning don't hold too much you want you want to just feel a comfortable hunger for air but after a while you can go pretty aggressive some people get pretty pretty competitive with this stuff but if you're beginning right don't don't go too crazy this is great i'm about to use this oh you'll love it you'll notice it improves your aerobic function almost instantly if you do it on like a leg day or something so uh you know a little hack for you travis i actually do it like if i'm doing a leg extension or something so you'll know that um the two ways so obviously we carry 90 of our oxygen in hemoglobin in the

blood and the way that the body releases oxygen from hemoglobin into the cell, the trigger for that is carbon dioxide accumulation and heat. There's two triggers. So if we can increase carbon dioxide accumulation, the body will more likely and more readily release the oxygen bond from hemoglobin in the blood. So we're getting more oxygen to the cell to produce more energy. And this is advanced. So listeners don't do this, but Travis, you can do this. Like on a leg extension, a leg curl, before I do it, I'll actually intentionally do a breath hold. So I'll do some just relaxed breathing, hold out, breathe out all the way, hold strongly. And then right as I'm about to go, so I'm intentionally accumulating CO2, allowing the body to off-gas

some of that oxygen from the hemoglobin. So I'm getting more oxygen into the cell where it needs to be produced, needs to be used to produce energy. And then I'll start the set. So I'm getting more oxygen to the cell where it needs to be produced, needs to be used to produce energy. And then I'll, I'll start the set. So I'm getting a bit of a synthetic arousal coming from the breath hole, but actually see a pre like, you know, subjective, I'd love to know your, your experience, but I see probably a 20 to 25% increase in the number of reps I can do. Wow. Yeah. Mash, hop on a, hop on an Airdyne and breathe through your nose.

See how long you see how far you can go for 20 minutes. I will try that too. are all great yeah so first time i've been so into endurance heart rate monitor on see how close you can get to uh max heart rate hang out there somewhere around like 165 170 just see what happens just try to avoid the failure part of it yeah of the heart you just fall off the bike i i've got a serious big question like for you like coming from a sport similar to mine powerlifting where you know traditionally things aren't very healthy you know when you're in the in the peak of your career like um you know when at what point did you transition from i just want to win i want to to destroy it, and then switch to health and fitness?

Or was it a part of things all along? And like, question two is, how were you able to maintain your health, unlike a lot of your comrades, to be able to have children, to be healthy, a lot of bodybuilders and power just die early. So two big ones. It's always been a consideration for me. I had some very, very close mentors die very young. Actually, the three men who were the biggest influence on me in bodybuilding died early.

And so I actually remember asking, like I was a kid, and I would ask some of the professional bodybuilders, like, hey, man, are you worried about your health? I remember a couple of guys getting mad at me. They were like, what the fuck are you talking about? And I was like, man, like, just a question. Don't be a bitch. Yeah. Yeah.

So it's always been a consideration for me. So, you know, I won't say that I was always an angel when it came to drug use. I certainly had my moments. But in general, I always made sure I came off. I always made sure I tried to be as conservative as I could be. You know, the pressure of performance, man. Like, I'm going on stage at the Arnold and Olympia, and I'm one of the favorites to win. And I'm like, well, fuck, I got to do what I got to do, man. Like I'm going on stage at the Arnold Olympia and I'm, you know, one of the favorites to win. And I'm like, well, fuck,

I got to do what I got to do, man. And it's, it's the performance. It's the pressure to perform, you know, that sometimes I get it as the athlete. You're like, well, I'm going to do what the fuck it takes to win because I know I deserve it. And, and then it's like, well, and then anyways, so I was always aware of my health. I just sometimes turn my brain off intentionally to go. I realized for this amount of time that I'm going to be doing some damage. I just hope that I'm smart enough later to figure out how to reverse it.

And so I was always aware of my blood pressure. I was always aware of my blood glucose for the most part, my body weight. So I had a mental block. So I got over, I fucking lived at 300 pounds since I was 18 years old. I was always at like two, that was two 92, you know, seven days before a contest. So I could have been, I could have been much, much bigger, but I wouldn't allow myself to get over 300 pounds regularly.

I was the biggest ever got was three 24. I could easily, I could have easily, easily got to three 50 easily. But I was like, no, there's no fucking way like i'm gonna die so i was like i let myself sit around 298 300 pounds consistently but intentionally i would back off training which sounds ridiculous but i was like i just fucking i mentally had a blocker i'm like i know i shouldn't be this big and i just so i spent the rest of my time just like i'm just trying to reduce my weight to reduce my body fat and get this, get this weight off. That's not, that shouldn't be here. And so I tried to get as good as I could instead of being as big as I

could. And the thing that really solidified, the thing that really solidified that for me is 2000. I think it was 11, 11, 11. I stood beside Dennis Wolf who, when I watched Dennis Wolf and include 2009 against Dennis James,

I stood beside these guys and these guys I looked up to as a kid I was like these guys are fucking giants and I just dwarfed them so I was like okay like I made I made I was 30 pounds heavier than Dennis Wolfe on stage and even though he was you know an amazing bodybuilder I what I realized it was no longer a size competition it was like who's better and so I was like okay I need to stop playing the size game I'm not trying to be the biggest guy on stage I not trying to be the biggest guy on stage. I'm trying to be the best guy on stage. So that allowed me to mentally get away from the pursuit of big and pursuing instead, you know, best.

That's awesome. My only hope was that I always wanted to have children. So I wasn't willing, you know, I won three times, but I still wasn't allowing myself to go where my fellow competitors were because I wanted to have kids. And I wasn't that was the only thing I feared is not being able to help children one day. Like dying didn't scare me, but that scared me. But now I'm totally afraid of dying. But so I'm glad that that was the case.

And I hope many young people that are doing either this crazy sports i hope they listen and like you can't obviously if you can be as big as you were like it can be done and still live afterwards yeah i'll say i kids would never even have thought for me when i was competing man i was i was so myopically focused on i'm just going to be the fucking best and i i the only i'm very obsessive and i say the only thing that would have stopped me there's nothing in the world that would stop me i was like the only thing would stop me is dying or having children and i didn't know i just got you know it was dating a girl she got pregnant i was like all right i

guess i'm moving i guess i gotta change and i really believe that those children are my angels man they were sent to save my life i'm here for bigger things and i don't know if you guys are spiritual in any way but those two humans are they saved my life man and and i i treat them every day like they're my angels and i'm forever indebted to them and yeah no like without them i would i would i'd probably still be a professional bodybuilder now that's yeah doug you had one we're gonna wrap it up uh i don't wrap it up we gotta go oh i thought you had one we're gonna wrap it up I don't wrap it up we gotta go I thought you had a big question there

Ben when are we gonna hang out in person again man are you traveling anytime you gonna be at an Olympia this year no no longer for me I'm gonna be that's the next time we're on the road I was hoping me too I'm in the UK I'm in Dubai I'm in

Belize I'm in Costa Rica I'm all over the place man but I'm not in the uk i'm in dubai i'm in uh belize i'm in costa rica all over the place man but i'm not yeah when um where can people learn about muscle camps yeah like me man you got an open invite as my guest anytime you like all you guys do please yeah and you don't even have to obviously no cost and just let me know you're coming as soon as you want you guys are always welcome um best place to find information about that so there's really three places i'll say if you listen to podcasts muscle intelligence podcast is always a good place to start um my instagram tends to be a place where a lot of people find us and we've got a private facebook community that's free to join and we communicate in there a lot about things that are going on

get a lot of free stuff um help people solve their challenges love my man coach travis mash uh mashley.com um check me out instagram actually performance that was amazing man like maybe my favorite i'm not gonna think about it because i'm all excited but that was i got so many notes from the show i really appreciate your go doug larson 100 uh ben dude, good catching up after all these years. Similar to what I said earlier, man, very impressive the degree to which you live an examined life. I got a lot of respect for you and the way that you approach life in general. You're a critical thinker, and you appreciate nuance in many aspects of health. And I think it's very,

very cool. So good to talk to you. Appreciate being on the show, man. Good to see you. Thanks. Anytime we sit here and talk about being dads. Yeah. Highest value. I mean, I appreciate being a dad more than anything else in my life. I'd rather have a dad podcast and fitness podcast. Totally. I would love lessons to be learned to the, uh, the ever evolving lessons. So I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We are barbell shrug to barbell underscore shrug.

Make sure you get over to rapid health report.com. That's where Dan Garner and Dr. Andy Galpin are doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis that everybody inside rapid health optimization receives. You can find that over at rapid health report.. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.