Barbell Shrugged - Physiology Friday: [Optimal vs. Normal Health] Why Normal Reference Ranges Will Not Lead You to Optimal Health w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Travis Mash and Dan Garner

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

In this Episode: The spectrum of health from sick, to not sick, and to optimal. Optimal is a word thrown around with ease in the healthy space. What does optimal health look and feel like? Why are the current blood markers in a normal range and not optimal? Where are normal reference ranges created? If you want to know optimal ranges, where do you find them? Why are optimal ranges a better reference point than normal ranges? Hope can you be labeled “healthy” by normal ranges but still have underlying issues that go undetected? To learn more, please go to https://rapidhealthoptimization.com Connect with our guests: Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram Dan Garner on Instagram

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug Physiology Friday is back and today Dan Garner, my man, he's going to be walking through why your blood panels are lying to you. Really, this gets into the heart of what we do here at Rapid Health Optimization inside RTA is understanding what performance reference ranges look like. You may see a whole bunch of greens on your blood work that you're getting back from your doctor, but the reality is there's a higher level of reference range that you should be chasing so that you can actually feel and perform your best. And that is what we are going to be digging into today. As always, friends, make sure you get over to ArateLab, A-R-E-T-E-L-A-B.com. That is where you can learn about all of the lab testing,

analysis, program design, and coaching that we do inside RTA, the signature program inside Rapid Health Optimization. And you can access all of that over at rtalab.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Andrew Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Best. Day on Barbell Shrugged. We're going to be talking about testing because honestly, I'm going through like an insane amount of tests right now doug larson and i started working with andy galpin or and dan garner you probably can go back and listen to episode something uh it's called how to increase testosterone by 300 it's like a two hour long show that we ran um we talked about like tons of diagnostics and and how they are

able to get in and read a lot of just what's going on under the hood of the car that is your body. And we are in the middle of a 13, well, 12 tests sitting in front of me right now. And whatever, however many tests they were taking in the first time I went to the phlebotomist to get a bunch, to get like nine vials of blood taken out of me. And the reason we're doing this is really about the kind of like the highest level, most comprehensive testing that you can possibly get to diagnose everything that's going on in your body from hormones to health. But this show today, we're going to be talking about just the casual person is looking to be healthy, get an understanding of what's going on in their body. Um, and, and from just your yearly physical blood work to all the way up to this testing

protocol that we're going through, that takes 30 whole days and a ton of work to get through. I'm excited about this cause I'm literally in the middle of, it's like overwhelming my brain right now. How many things I didn't even know that you could possibly test for. I know we've done these at-home tests in the past, but I think the simplest place for a lot of people to start this journey is really just your yearly physical and understanding where your blood work's at.

What does that one-year check mark actually mean uh are you guys good at getting blood worked on every year yeah yeah i mean yeah i don't have like a yearly routine or like a like a actual systematic process that i follow but i tend to just enjoy that type of thing and so i do it fairly regularly you know all the basic stuff just getting like blood sugar and and lipids and you know getting blood sugar and lipids and white blood cells and whatever, which my white blood cells are always super low. We've talked to many people about that. I'm always at the

bottom of the range. Every time I get blood work done, it seems to be I'm in the very, very, very, very, very, very bottom of the range. I tend to think that there's got to be some negative downside to that but for me everyone i talk to says do you get sick all the time no you're fine

so i'm actually really excited to be working with andy and dan because like getting you know getting blood sugar and lipids and a handful of other things and you know occasionally hormones testosterone and sex hormone binding globulin and that whole group of of things is great to do but it's in my opinion not comprehensive enough like uh like gabrielle line told me a couple years ago that she thinks i might have a parasite and then i tried to see a i tried to see something about it and got a referral twice and they they couldn't take it i never actually went in and got that work done so i don't know if i maybe i have a parasite from traveling to africa or wherever i was causing problems for me but i haven't actually got that check so

working with andy and dan and getting like getting all the blood work getting stool saliva urine hair checking for yeah checking for like heavy metals and parasites and and allergens and like all the stuff that like a functional medicine person would, would want to look at. They're getting all the data points and bring them back so they can, they can look at like the whole system and all the things that are happening all at the same time and not just,

not just grabbing a couple of things and then leaving out, you know, the majority of the rest. And then if you do that, you really don't really know what's going on. If you only have a few things, blood work, but you don't have all the other stuff. So I'm, i'm actually stoked to be working with those guys so we can actually actually like a comprehensive view of

our entire physiology yeah i think a lot of people make mistake of like they enter like a fitness program and all they think about is is weight you know and they obsess over one marker and there's so many things now you know there's yeah like you know i know andy posted about you know, and they obsess over one marker and there's so many things now, you know, there's, yeah, like, you know, I know Andy posted about, you know, some new evidence about the gut, was it microbiome or whatever he posted today. So there's so many markers that we need to look at, you know, including like mobility was one, like, I know with our own athletes, we measure almost every single joint to number one instead of just saying hey we're gonna do mobility you know this random thing is that we pinpoint

what they need and what they don't need and so and we did find the good thing about when i did that is that we found some common markers so now we do a 10 minute warm-up as a team you know to address you know what i saw as patterns and so um but yeah as many as many objective markers that you can and it's it just makes working out for the general pop people it just makes it makes working out more fun if you know instead of just obsessing body weight body weight body i mean yeah you definitely need that but there's way more things to think about yeah i've taken uh i don't even know give call it like a handful of of these like at-home tests um and i feel like the problem with

blood work is you go in and it like doug's saying you don't really get like a comprehensive view of everything that's been going on in your life like Like if you go get blood work, you're going to get all this data, all these data points back. And one, I don't know how much, uh, I really care about many of those data points. It's, and, and the reason is just because it's like a snapshot of a single piece of what's going on in your body without like a history of the last three to six months. And that's what's super cool about getting a lot of these like higher level tests and more comprehensive tests is when you get your stool sample done, you're getting a really good look at your gut bacteria

and the entire microbiome in there of what's going in, what's dying at night when your body cools down, and what are you excreting the next day. You're getting a really good idea of what kind of parasites are in there. Anything that's going on in your digestive tract is going to show up in those samples. Now, as a bald person, I hope all of my hair that I'm taking and sending to them comes back applicable. I don't even know how it works. I haven't gotten that far in our testing protocol. However, your hair tells a very long story of what's been going on in your body.

And nobody at your yearly physical is going to be taking like a hair follicle samples and sending that stuff in. And in knowing that every time I go in for a physical, I go in with this like, oh, I have to take blood work and you're going to send me the results back. And it's just a day, a snapshot of a single day without the full story attached to it. And I end up like not really paying attention to the results. Like I, I look at them and I'm like, Oh, okay, cool. That was like a day knowing that there's, there's like months and years of, of data being accumulated. And then the people look at me and they're like, okay, well you look healthy. Your cholesterol might be a little high. And I'm like, well, can we talk about the cholesterol? And they're like,

eh, it's like not in a bad range. It's just like not where we want it to be they never actually diagnose or they never actually like tell you what to do it's just here's the number it's out of the range we checked the box we said you need to get better you go you're screwed yeah like okay well some cholesterol is good like if i'm at the low end of high, what does that mean? Like, can you just give me something? And they just go, no, you're fine. You look okay. And you go, what?

Why did I pay you for the blood work if I could have just looked in the mirror and been like, well, I can see some top abs. I should be okay. Like, it's really – I find that just doing the blood work on a yearly basis is like, sure, it's the buy-in and it's what everyone does, but you're really never getting an actual idea of what's going on inside your body and how healthy you actually are. I don't know if like healthy is like an objectively measurable thing. We're hoping to find out. But it's just a really challenging thing with just one data point over

365 days. And then once you actually get the results back, the doctor just looks at you and goes, you look healthy. Oh, okay. Thanks. I'll see you in 364 more days. I appreciate your work. Why does it feel like my heart is pumping sludge through my chest? Is that okay? Right? No, that's fine oh okay yeah it's just it's it's thicker oil that's all yeah it feels like thicker oil um what do you in in knowing that if like if blood work is the the very minimum buy-in at your yearly physical uh what i guess numbers do you actually take seriously? Like the cholesterol thing to me always comes back in a relatively similar, similar range. And it's the only thing that's ever been out of whack

just a little bit. And I always just assume it's because like, I have higher levels of stress. I don't sleep as much. Um, I, I have like, uh, at the time that I started seeing these things, it was in the middle of owning a gym. And it was like, well, there's some things in my life. Do you know what it's like running a gym and having to be up at 430 in the morning every day? It's probably not the healthiest scenario in your life. Dr. Andy Galpin here. As a listener of the show, you've probably heard us talking about the RTA program, which we're all incredibly proud of. It's a culmination of everything Dan Garner and I have learned over more than two decades of working with some of the world's most elite

performers, award-winning athletes, billionaires, musicians, executives, and frankly, anyone who just wanted to be at their absolute best. Arte is not a normal coaching program. It's not just macros and a workout plan. It's not physique transformation and pre and post pictures. Arte is something completely different. RTA is incredibly comprehensive and designed to uncover your unique molecular signature, find your performance anchors, and solve them permanently. You'll be working with not one person, but rather a full team of elite professionals, each with their own special expertise to maximize precision, accuracy, and effectiveness of your analysis and optimization plan.

Arate isn't about treating symptoms or quick fixes. It's about unlocking your-E-T-E lab.com. Now, back to the show. But do you guys take any of the metrics from your yearly blood work very seriously? My cholesterol is the only thing that's ever out of whack. And it's been like you said it's been out of whack for a long time it's it's been just like near the high side for a long time hasn't gone above it but but i definitely you know consider it and think about you know like um in my choices of food and and it's what's for it's really what's got me doing cardio is that very thing i don't know if that'll even help it but so definitely definitely has me considering yeah you know are your numbers like i don't know if that'll even help it. Definitely has me considering. Are your numbers

like, I don't even know what, I don't have any blood work in front of me, but are your numbers way past the range? If there's a yellow, red, and green, are you like yellow? Yeah, I'm just like yellow. I've been yellow for a long time. I should probably address it.

Especially with the amounts of stress I have here. You know, I thought I had the semester under control. It's worse. It's way worse. Honestly, this is like, it's almost too much. The stressful part for you is you've learned too much in the last 18 months. You know, and I love that part. But, like, dang, this thesis thing is like no joke like

i just wish i had a normal you know this would be if i could go back in time and go ahead and do the thesis without kids would be so much easier but it's not the case take up time uh dog i would imagine you you have a pretty good insight into like all the numbers and and like a yearly kind of like understanding of where you're at which ones do you take more serious than the others uh well depends what you mean by by more serious like in the cholesterol and whatnot is it's certainly important i don't i take it seriously but it's never really been a problem for me my my numbers are always on an absolute scale are are low enough or high enough uh i think cholesterol is kind of a funny thing it's like total cholesterol is a combination of something that people kind

of consider to be kind of bad. And then something that's kind of good. And it's something that's like a little more neutral. Um, so it's kind of funny to think that something that's like bad, good and neutral, if it's high is bad. It's like,

what does that, what does that mean? That's yeah. So it's, it's really all, it's really all about your ratios. Like my HDL to triglyceride ratio sometimes is like two. It's like my HDLs might be like 80 and my triglycerides be like 40.

Like that'd be, that's phenomenal in many ways. So I don't really worry about cholesterol too much. It hasn't really been an issue for me. You know, blood sugar is great. I mentioned why blood cells a second ago. Like it's always low, but it doesn't seem to be causing any problems. I've been told my prol that specifically um my testosterone is has basically always been low but every time i've ever checked from like the furthest back i can remember checking it's probably like 2013 or so and it was always like in the mid 400s so not not

particularly high if you if if you think total testosterone, like normal range, like 300 to 1300, something like that. And I'm like 400 something and I'm in my thirties and I've been basically healthy and fit my entire life. Uh, that, that, that seems weird to me that that would be so low. Um, but maybe I'm just, maybe that's just genetically where I fall. I'm just on the lower end of the range. That is surprising. Yeah. There's going to be, there's going to be a spectrum for numbers like that

where there's going to be like a bell curve and most people are going to be in the middle and some people are just naturally going to be on the high side and some people are naturally going to be on the low side. Is that me? I don't actually know. It's always like that and I'm always healthy. I always eat whole real foods.

I always work out, on and on and on. So again, I'm super excited to get more data points with Andy and Dan here in the very near future to see if any of that becomes a little bit easier to understand. The best thing is having Andy give you direction. So it's one thing getting all the information like we all do. You know, in the past, we've all had, you know, blood work. But obviously not as extensive as you guys are going to get. But, like, to have direction, too to like from Andy, someone like to understand the physiology,

you can say, okay, this is what sucks. Let's do this to handle it. That's what, man, that's the big, that's the big awesomeness about what you're doing. Yeah. I think kind of that next level too, that, uh, I've, I've, I want to say, like I said earlier, I've probably taken a handful of these at-home testing kits. And I've taken the stool sample for understanding your GI. I've taken some of the saliva ones. And then you ship them off to the company. And then you download the app, and it tells you all your food sensitivities and i hate to i hate to be like the the guy that is negative towards things like that but i always

it always comes with like a um some sort of thing in my brain of like what how did this happen like where did this data come from who did did these readings? Can someone tell me what happened in the background? Because I always end up getting these like average things like, well, you're kind of sensitive to gluten. You go, isn't everyone? It's like, you're kind of sensitive to corn. What does that mean? How isn't everyone like, oh, is everything like a sort of green light? Like that's, that's literally what all of the at-home tests I've ever taken come back as. And I'm like, and I don't know if it's because my expectations are like, I want some exact meal, like a scale one to 10, one, don't eat it. 10, eat it all day long. You you're gonna be super shredded and jacked you're gonna

be front squatting with travis mash one day if you if you eat all the sweet potatoes it's always this like kind of sort of these are like green and if you're going for perform for performance you should have fewer of these if you're just going for health you should have four of these and you're like i don't understand what any of this means, but to get someone to actually read the data to you and actually explain it to you, I've never had it. They just kick you the food list and say, here's your sensitivities. And it's all like a seven out of 10. And it doesn't,

none of those things like hit home with me where I truly trust the data that's coming back because it's always such a flexible thing. And it's, it's always so vague on what they're actually trying to, to, to tell me when I, when I download the results, it's, it, I feel like the at-home tests are, there's probably a lot of value in them. I just, uh, I, I always, it always comes with like a large dose of skepticism for what I'm actually trying to get out of them when I take them. You know,

they were making such a valid point. Like, you know, that we all are like most people that are in fitness at our age are all they're thinking about is like, let's lose weight. But if you did, if you really had the blood work done first and really started attacking,

you know, a lot of these where you're weak or where things are looking not so good, inevitably, you will start to live a healthier life and you will start to see your weight drop without focusing on the one thing. We obsess about something. We don't do anything about it. But if you start, just like I tell my weightlifters, if they obsess if they obsess about I need to, you know, like Ryan needs a total 320 to medal at the Olympics.

If that's all he thinks about, he won't even make it to the Olympics. He'll like drive himself crazy. But if you just, you know, if you just focus on what you can do that day, day to day, small little process goals, then it's something that you can sustain for the rest of your life. Same thing with general population. Focus on being healthy. Focus on these markers. Focus on, you know, having, you know, getting your blood sugar right, your cholesterol right, and then, and all the, even the deeper things that Andy and his buddy can tell you.

But like, you know, that's what you focus on, the process, not the end goal. What do you focus on as far as blood work with your high level guys i'm like well i mean we haven't gotten to the point yet you know there's so many other i think that ryan would be the first one that would be you know when i've tapped out on all the easier things that that's where i would go next it's like and i think that we're getting near that you know that he's um we have done all that we can do we're using you know you're using velocity we're getting tons of data on his uh rsi scores i mean so now it might be really considered after talking to you guys about andy is about

getting some blood work done with with him just to see what know, when you're talking about at 1% or even smaller, really, it's less than 1%. We'll divide first place from like fourth or fifth place. So now it'd be time, it'd be probably a half of a percent. You're talking about one kilo. Sometimes, you know, first through third is broken down by one kilo, you know? So now it's time to really consider doing these smaller things with him but right now most of my athletes just they i mean they just need to start sleeping or yeah they need to like it's like even though they're high level they're not doing things they need to be to be

high level they just have to have high genetics they're great genetics so i think that's another piece of like the skepticism is when you get those reports back and just being in our position and understanding fitness and health and wellness, and a lot of the result – the majority of these companies are set up so that they send you the test and they like break even on whatever testing protocol they're sending you. And then they run gigantic supplement companies and consulting companies for your health in the background. Like there's a massive amount of funding getting sent to send the tests so that they can collect the data, send you a result, sell you the supplement, upsell you on the consulting and coaching, and then they send you, and then that's wherever your information goes after that is a relatively scary one. But I don't ever actually feel like I get the, hey, you're only sleeping six hours a night. Maybe you should start there. You never get that. You never, ever get that. There's never like a whole wellness system

built into it where you go, can you send me your sleep scores from the last month? Is that possible? Can you send me like a nutrition log? Like how many macros of like, how many grams of protein have you eaten every day? How many sweet potatoes have you eaten every day? Like where's, where's the food tracking? Where's the sleep tracking? None of those, none of those at home tests ever dig into those pieces because it's not a part of the process. And that's like what I'm so stoked about, um, putting this program together with these guys. It's like actually dealing with people that understand that it might not be the supplement. It might not be the food. You might need to go to sleep and you might need to go walk more. You might need to get up and just get off your ass and go relieve some stress and start to focus on all of the like low hanging

fruit that is kind of challenging to be a part of because you got to get up and actually go walk. You got to actually go to bed earlier. You got to cut your phone off earlier. Like that, that part of what we're like working with these guys and putting together is really like the thing that I'm like so stoked about because I, you've, I've never gotten results back and, and taking the at-home test or taking the blood work and the doctor looks at me and is like, so your cholesterol is a little bit high. Can you tell me how many hours of sleep you're getting? Never happens. They just look at the number and check the box,

and you're just like another person that they had to see. And I always feel like that when I'm dealing with the at-home tests. It's like, well, here's the 17 supplements you need to take, but nobody ever asked me, like, how many steps am I getting in a day? Nobody ever asked me what my training program is. Nobody ever looks at lean muscle mass and, like, how that relates to your BMI. Like, nobody ever actually does this, like, actual comprehensive explanation or examination or testing. It's always just, here's the blood work.

Check the box, that person needs this supplement. You go, supplement is like the tip of the iceberg and importance. But I'm imagining that if you don't have the knowledge of health and wellness that we are lucky to be a part of and talk to the people that we get to talk to, like, it's very easy to get people to go, here, take this, and it's going to solve the problem. And I just really, really struggle with people that just send the at-home test, or you get the blood work, and the doctor looks at you, and they never ask, to me, what is the most important questions of, how much sleep are you getting at night?

What are the stress levels you're dealing with on a daily basis? Like, are you trying to run a business or are you trying to like sit on your ass and just collect a paycheck? Like, what are you doing all day long? That's really adding to the total number of stressors that you're dealing with in your life. That never comes across. That's never asked. It's very unprofitable to tell somebody to go walk 12,000 steps a day. It's super, it like knowing that stuff, it's like, it immediately, when I get on the phone with them or when I talk to them, it immediately puts this like red flag up where they just go, you need this. And you go, no, I don't. You didn't ask

how much I'm sleeping. You didn't do it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. And without doing that, I immediately discount almost everything you're saying from here on out. Part of that's the difference between having like a coach who's like going to be working with you ongoing on a weekly or monthly basis or whatever it is versus just seeing a doctor one time, one visit. You go in. You say, I want to get blood work. They say, okay, come back one more time. We'll talk through it. And then they just kind of release you out into the wild and you're,

you're on your own, you know? Uh, like when I, when we lived in San Diego, we had, we had many more options for things like this. Like there were, there were functional medicine practitioners who they're, they're kind of half doctors, half coaches. And that, that was readily available and in San Diego. And I, and I went to some of those people and did have like more comprehensive workups at times, uh, where if you go to a regular doctor and you're a regular person and you want to go in there and just like get your, get your blood drawn, talk to the doctor, tell him your problems, get your pills and then go home. Then, you know, if that's what you're

looking for, then that's fine. But if, if, if you're looking for that and then you know if that's what you're looking for then that's fine but if if you're looking for that and then you go to a regular doctor and they hand you like a stack of forms to fill out you're like here's here's 50 pages of stuff to fill out tell me tell me your whole your whole history all your nutrition your food logs you know track your sleep for you know for three months or whatever it is like just on and on and on most people are gonna be like whoa dude you need to back the fuck up i'm busy yeah i have shit to do uh so really it's just so it depends on what you're looking for so those things are out there and we are we are now you know i like that stuff and it's hard to find i realize it's hard to find which is part of the reason that we're trying we're working to offer it with andy and dan like

very something very comprehensive because it is hard to find, but it's out there in pockets, but it needs to be much more widespread and available. Yeah. I totally agree with you. We have our athletes, you know, they all, well, especially the ones

who are wanting to be like, you know, Olympian or Team USA, they do a questionnaire every single day of their lives. And then when they tell us like, you know, what was your body weight in the morning? You know, how many hours of sleep did you get last night? We look at, um, you know, number of calories they ate the day before. Um, then we look at, um, total number of meals. What I also do, this one is just for Matt Wanniger. I have a question for why, how many meals have you eaten before you walk into the store? Because literally the guy would come in at 4 o'clock having not eaten.

I'm like, what in the world? And then we look at sleep quality. And either with the sleep quality, if they have a whoop, then we go by those metrics. If they don't, then we're just best guessing it. Five being it's the greatest night of my life. Three being normal. And then we look at fatigue, excitement to train, muscular soreness before the session, joint pain. And then here's some cool ones you guys, you know, might want to track is we look at like stress and or anxiety outside of the weight room. So like so then we start to think about like for these guys, you're thinking about school, family, relationships.

We look at feelings of depression. And then, oh, we divide the relationship from the school and job-related stress and anxiety. But that gives us, you know, so, like, when I see, like, a metric-like velocity tip down, I can go to their questionnaire and i can be like oh okay and i can start and then you can even do some you know good statistics and you can draw correlations between their answers and between what's happening and when it happens so like you might notice a downtrend in a relationship for three or four days before you get this tip down in velocity and in performance so it's just it's a simple cheap way to start tracking your life and to get a good idea of what you really need to work on first before spending a ton of money on stuff

that you're probably not going to do anything about anyway. Yeah. I think it's really important to have some many objective measurements, but then also some subjective measurements. Like for all the guys that are in the Diesel Dad mentorship, like they do a lot of very basic things. They track their body weight every single day. They track their body fat percentage, you know, on at least like a biweekly basis. They track their sleep every night and their macros. Then on the more subjective side of it, like every time we meet,

which is weekly, we always get a subjective rating about how they feel about their body, what their general mindset is like. Like on a scale of 1 to 10, like how do you feel? How much energy do you have on a scale of 1 to 10? How hungry are you on average on a scale of 1 to 10 over the last week? Like most of those people are trying to lose body fat. And so, you know, getting a subjective rating of their energy and hunger, I think in quantifying it is really important because Cause if you show up on a, on a call with, with coach and they say, how are you feeling?

I, you gotta, how's your energy? You hungry? You go, Oh yeah, I feel pretty good. Pretty good. It's kind of like the, like the most generic answer. And you don't really know week to week. Is it, is it really improving or do they feel better or worse about it? But if you have that subjective rating where you can see that it, that it goes from, you

know, six to six and a half to seven to eight, and they're feeling better and better and better about their body, and they're feeling more and more and more confident and motivated, and or when we set goals with them, every week we come back and we get a subjective rating of how much effort they put into accomplishing those goals. So if it's something very simple like wake up and drink two glasses of water in the morning, I go, okay, well, not only are we going to ask you, did you do those things, but how much effort do you feel you put into doing those things? Are you actually trying your best? You know, and if, and if you're not trying your best, if it's a three every week and you go, oh yeah, like I, I just, I just didn't do it, whatever. Like I could, I probably could have done it, but I just, you know, I just, I don't know.

I just didn't do it. Okay. Well, that's I probably could have done it, but I just, you know, I just, I don't know. I just didn't do it. Okay. Well that's, that's a problem with their effort and motivation and compliance more so than a problem with the goal itself. If they're telling me tens every week and they still can't accomplish the goal, it's just the wrong goal to set in that moment. You need to make some type of tweak or alteration or whatever it is, but quantifying all these things, even if they're subjective, I think is phenomenally important for for guiding a client and for looking back on their history and getting an idea of what the what the flow has been like for the past weeks or months. Yeah, I think also, when you start to put those those graphs together, or you start to put seeing where their subjective ratings are, it actually gives people a really good idea of kind of the progress

and how easy it becomes. Like we see so many people when they get into the program just firehose to the face, overwhelmed by the total amount of things. They think that it's so hard and they think it's going to be like, and you just go, and then, yeah, it's week one. Like we're, we're changing a lot of the habits that you currently have that have gotten you to being 40 pounds overweight. Like it, you can't just keep going and living this easy life. We have to change this stuff. But over time, like the, the, the difficulty level, you start to see that it gets very easy for them to just have these basic things like

taking a picture on Mondays. How easy is it to eat healthy? It gets a lot easier when you have to do it every single day. It's a lot easier to understand what food's going in your mouth. It's a lot easier to set goals and have weekly metrics that you want to chase. I think the cool part is like after we start to get these like basic things down, you start to see people wanting to take on more and more healthy habits. And that's where the thing starts to really kick off. It's like now we've got this basic thing down where we're sleeping well, we're eating well, we're training well. That's just the norm now.

Now you start to get into like, well well maybe i could tweak just where i eat lunch so i'm getting outside more maybe i can tweak my morning routine so that i can get up and walk a little bit more there's a lot of like additional benefits as you just get the baseline down and then you start to add really healthy habits onto it so it's like you can see the scores of these subject subjective ratings for, for the baseline, just because that's the way you live your life. It just becomes so easy. And then you start looking to make things harder in your life. It's like a radical transformation of just the way that you view your own life. Like you're, you're trying to make it harder by adding more, uh,

healthy habits instead of looking for the easy route or like not searching for some, some simple solution. I think that those are like when you get five, six, eight weeks into the program and you start seeing people like trying to add harder, more challenging things to their life. That's, that's really where like the big mindset transformation comes in as you were saying that i'm thinking that we could potentially add something to the program about quantifying the amount of time you spend outside i've never actually asked somebody to quantify the amount of time they spend outside but i feel like that that could be one more

kind of downstream thing to measure i don't think it's the first thing you need to measure, but if you're trying to like form healthy habits, I'd be like just being outside in general, especially in the daytime, especially getting, you know, some, some sunlight on some portion of your body for at least, you know, 30 minutes or an hour a day, uh, is really important. But I've never actually asked our clients to quantify that. I feel like that could be something to play with in the future. Or even like quantify how much time you spend on the cell phone probably you know even better because you know now they've got these diagnoses for that you know they got now you've got the the social media um what is it social media anxiety is like a real thing and then they've got people where it's like fear of missing out is a diagnosis um stalkinging, which is not as bad as it sounds.

Social media stalking, I just read this huge study last night until 3 a.m., but like they just – yeah. Now you're like all your athletes sitting up at college wondering what the person sitting right next to them is up to. I know, seriously. So the social media stalking is actually – what that is is a person who just goes on there and trolls through social media and uses it as like a relief.

And so it's not as bad as like for people who are like have comparison. Yeah, social media comparison. If I go in there and compare myself to somebody, now there's depression. There's social media depression. So look at how much time. And it's all, here's the kicker. It's all directly correlated to how much time one spends on their cell phone. So, you know, by simply looking at how long and trying to like diminish that a little bit,

you'll get more healthy because you'll get healthier because more time is definitely less healthy. Yeah. We're filming this two days or recording this two days after Facebook and Instagram went down and how rad would it have been had Sunday night. We had like a, a countrywide mandate that everybody had to go get blood worked on Sunday night. And they wake up,

Facebook and Instagram are gone and no one can do anything on social media for a whole day. And then Monday night, you got to go get blood work done again with the stress level of gone way higher or way lower due to your inability to get online and post about your life. I've been so great just to see like one day, like what is the, what's the study about a heart attacks? The day that we lose an hour heart attacks have like some ridiculous ridiculously higher rate of uh happening that day because as a globe we lose an hour of sleep and then the day that we gain an hour now i'm gonna have to go back and find this i'm gonna

put this in the show notes for sure uh there was a sleep expert on rogan that was taught spent a bunch of time talking about this they did a study it's like uh a sleep expert on rogan that was taught spent a bunch of time talking about this they did a study it's like uh on it was on rogan it's got to be real right um they're probably nine joints deep on hour four he's like check this out i'm gonna lie to everybody um listen to this sleep study uh but the the day that we lose an hour heart attacks have like a massive rise and the day that we gain an hour heart attacks have a massive decrease because everybody just gets an extra hour of sleep one day it would have been so rad to find out what everyone's blood work looks like and just overall cortisol levels in their body with either –

with one day without social media. It would have been fantastic. I would have put a lot of credit into that. Do you guys know if there's been any studies relating blood work to phone use where they like take a group and they do their blood work and then they don't let them use their phones at all for a month and then they take more blood work? I don't know if there's any actual changes in blood work uh if you did something like that but i feel like somebody's got to be thinking

about actual research to see how your physiology and or of course like all the psychological or mental health things you can measure there as well which are probably even more relevant yeah i'm curious about blood work in relation to phone and social media. I will definitely look into that for you because that's right up the alley of what I'm studying right now. So yeah. Yeah, Mash, in all that research, how deep do they go? Because I feel like we're what?

We're like 20 years into the internet. I think I was, yeah, it's like my senior year of high school is when I got my first email account. So we're 20 years. And then that is like my senior year of college. So we're 15 years, 17 years into Facebook. Yeah. I really would love to know. That was one of the interesting things that came out when that that lady they were

talking about facebook just as a company imagine how many sleepless nights you would have if you grew a 1 trillion dollar company in 17 years 1 trillion dollars in 17 years that is i'd like to find out when you i'd like to find out. I'd like to give that a shot. I don't know if I want to know. I don't know. I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to know. It would be cool, but man,

how would you actually have a friend? How would you have time to train? What would you do? You couldn't front squat for 17 years at the speed that that company is growing like once you get to that level you just hire the best brains in the world and you don't have to like work on you got to trust those brains that's the hard part oh yeah they have access to everything in the world that was like why they said that's so stupid talking about

facebook yeah those people those people have all of the, that's so stupid talking about Facebook. Yeah. Those people, those people have all of the information. That's so stressful. You know more than the government knows. You have more, you have way more information. I couldn't handle that. I couldn't handle the stress. A trillion? Come on.

I have to tell you guys a story of the last time I went and actually, not the last time, the last time in San Diego that I went and got blood work done. And it was like, it was probably the moment where I just look, I, if there was a day in which I was going to go, I'm just not going to doctors anymore. Like I know I have too many smart friends to need your regular dude off the street doctor. I came in and I got my blood work done and I walked in and I was trying to be fun guy. And I'm like sitting down for my blood work consultation. And the guy tells me that I have like moderately high cholesterol. And I'm like, cool. Can you like explain what needs to be done he's like

yeah it's just nothing to worry about blah blah he's like you might tell me yeah he said something along the lines of like well you look like you're in good shape so there's nothing to really like be over concerned about he's like and then he said something about like he asked about my parents and how long my my parents and how long my grandparents had like lived i go well i don't have to worry about them because i'm funny guy and i like to make jokes i go i'm gonna live till i'm like 150 years old anyways i'm gonna be a super freak i've got i've got all the fitness i've got all the things going for me and he he looks at me he goes yeah there's probably just a pretty good chance you're gonna die when your grandparents do because you can't outrun your genetics and I was like please tell me you do not tell your patients this like like

people that actually care please don't say that like you're just confined to this body you were stuck in you can there's no way to make it better there's no way to make it worse you're just going to die when your grandparents do and I was like that the, the, I'm just going to call them out of shape. I don't need to get into all the details. You know what it looks like. Had like the legit professional opinion of like, you're just going to die whenever it, there's nothing you can do about it. You're, I'm looking at your blood work right now and literally don't even worry about it because you're screwed. You're only going to be able to live to this thing. And it was like, I couldn't believe, like one, I thought that I would at least get enough respect that the guy

would be like, yeah, like there's a chance you could like have a very long, healthy life. Not at all. Just came back with like the hammer of don't worry about anything. You're just going to die when it's time. And it was like, that's not true. I disagree. Never going back to you ever again. Like imagine if there was like a real problem and he just looked at you.

Well, this is just what you got. You should, you should never, don't worry about it. This is your time. Yeah. I disagree with him completely.

I just, there's way too much data to say he's wrong. I mean, I can look at my own family and see that every last one of my grandparents have been outlived by their kids. So if that train continues, it should be awesome. Or when you look at my grandparents on my dad's side, he lived to be 95, and some of his kids lived to be old. Some, you know, my dad didn't make it past 63, you know?

So it's like, it's like, there's just, there's too much data out there to say that, you know, you have to consider the way someone lives. Now, if you have certain genetic predispositions, you know, certainly like there's certain cancers there's, you know, they're pretty hereditary for sure but like other than that like the quality you know the way you live your life is definitely comes into play you can just look at it but look at people who you know that you know that live to be 80 and there's going to be certain characteristics in their lifestyle on par you know so yeah it's in my opinion it's a it's a genetic range we'll call it right take

take one of your lifters like if you have if you have a lifter who he comes in and the very first time he ever tries to squat he squats 400 pounds he weighs one he weighs 185 and he squats 400 pounds and he just he's never lifted weights before he just was very far down the spectrum of genetic potential. That person, if he maximizes his genetic potential, could go from the 90th percentile or whatever to the 99.99 and actually push the world championships or whatever he's trying to get to. But if you walk in, you're 185 pounds and you've never lifted weights before and you try and squat and you can't even squat your own body weight, you're you're genetically starting much lower and you could train your entire life and never get anywhere near the other guy

you know you could that guy could train his whole life and squat 500 pounds and that'd be really really good really good but then there's a lot of people out there that squat twice that much so like he just he's just starting in the 20th percentile as opposed to the 90th percentile and he can push it to the 75th percentile but he's never going to push it to the 99.9th percentile as opposed to the 90th percentile and he can push it to the 75th percentile but he's never going to push it to the 99.9th percentile and i feel like that's kind of how it is for there we go this conversation about about when you're going to die like you know barring a normal life like you're the median for you might be like 80 years old but if you live a really a really healthy life maybe you can push it to 90 95 100 and if you live a really unhealthy life you know

maybe you die 55 whatever it is like so your genetics put you somewhere but then there's a range above and below depending on lifestyle factors and other things that may or may not be in our control now we're talking yeah i think that's like a really important piece of it because like the the doctor that you choose should understand your life as well. That's why we were so stoked to go hang out with Dr. Gabrielle Lyon when we were up in New York because she gets it. She totally understands the life that we're living, the choices we make, the fact that we're not starting at zero

trying to get to just healthy. We're not trying to get off the couch and get moving and lose 50 pounds. Like that's a different starting point. And going to get what felt like three gallons of blood drawn out of our body that day, it's like an hour of blood draws. Like it likely isn't totally necessary for someone that's trying to just get to basic levels of health, like get to a decent body fat percentage, to get to a decent weight, to get to a decent level of fitness, to start building muscle mass.

Like if that's where you're at, you probably aren't overwhelmingly interested in taking some like many, many blood vials to find out how to optimize every aspect of your health. There's some basic things. And that's what frustrates me, like we were talking about with the at-home test. It's like, people want to know where their testosterone levels are. People want to know what their GI looks like. People want to know what you can test for at your house. And then you get the supplement pack. It's Like, well, why didn't any changes happen? It's like, cause you didn't have a coach talking to you about how to get actually healthy.

You, you just took this test and it spit you back a day of results. Like, I think that's, that's really like finding a doctor that understands where your starting point is and has been down that road before. It's not like they, they can't, everyone can't read the books, but when you go to Galpin, you go to Garner, when you go to Gabrielle Lyon, when you start to go to these people, they already know what the last 25 years of your life have looked like, chasing nutrition, chasing barbells, chasing fitness, chasing all of these basic components to becoming

a very healthy person. And then their job is to take you to the next level. Their, their job is to get in and look at micronutrients and look at your GI and look at gut bacteria, look at your digestion, look at hair follicles to find out what's been going on in your life for the last three, four or five months. Like those pieces, you got to find the right person that's going to get you there. And then there's an efficiency time piece to it of, well, if I'm, no matter where you're at, you don't want the slowest route possible. You want it to be the person that can look at you and go, okay, here we're pinpointing these three things that we need to start with today. Most likely it's sleep, it's nutrition, and it's training. Okay. Once we get

that done, what's the next three things that we need to work on? And then we can start to get build into the supplementation side. Once we have seven to nine hours of sleep, once we have a decent training program that progresses you, you're actually building muscle mass and optimizing metabolic function, blah, blah, blah. Like once you have those pieces in place, then you can go and upgrade your life to the, to the super, super cool testing and really put basically the afterburners on to optimize everything that's going on. When I talk to the guy that just tells me I'm confined to

dying at whatever my grandparents did, you just go, wait a second, isn't there a better conversation? And I think that people have to find a doctor, one that they, I don't want to say respect, but respect or like value the opinion because they've been down the road with you. Like they, they've, they don't have to know exactly where you're at today and everything, but they have a really good idea of what the last 25 years of your look like life looked like because you've looked a certain way. You have a certain level of health built in as your starting point for having a real conversation.

This is, you know, I totally agree. I do wish that this is where medicine would get to is that, you know, it wasn't just like, you know, you keep testing until someone is super sick. It'd be really cool if they did, you know, get on the same page as like, you know, people like us who are trying to help people get healthy ahead of time. So if we were all on the same page, I wonder what it would do to the population and the life expectancy. There's a lot of really smart people out there

that say that 120 years old is not unrealistic even in our lifetime. And so I feel like if simple things like this, if we all got on the same page, you know, we can help push that number along and like, uh, obviously the older I get, the more I'm hoping for that to happen. But, um, you know, but then again, I don't want to live to be 120 decrepit, but so, but then again, right, right, right. Totally.

You don't want to be 120 with no brain. That's okay. That would do i would lose anything but that like i want my wits you know like if i can't walk that's one thing but at least if i can communicate with my children that's what i want i don't want to be like where i can't you know like who are you and it's rock you know that would be upset yeah imagine like having kids and then like knowing them when they're like 95 like you can imagine rock is a 95 year old and like you still have a relationship with them like that'd be so sick 140 i'd be like i remember when i was your age and life is so much better at the world record

first sure the only human in the history of the world to ever squat 1,000 pounds and live to 140. Yeah. I'm not even – Greatest of all time. Greatest life of all time. I remember – you could go, I remember 110 years ago squatting 1,000 pounds. Holy shit. My spine can too.

Guess why I chose it. No kidding, boys. I've had 73 knee surgeries. A couple things. Before we go, I'd like to mention, if there's athletes out there or even like CrossFitters, there are some pretty cool things

that I would recommend you guys measure. But like, you know, getting a velocity profile would be one of them. Knowing what end of the spectrum you're at. As far as like, are you, you know, super strong and slow? Or are you slow and weak? Or in the middle, which is perfect? You know, so I would recommend that. And here's the coolest thing of late.

I started doing the RSI score, you know, this semester as part of my thesis, which is the reactive strength index. All that is you do a depth jump, which we've chosen 45 centimeters to compare all of our athletes against. And what we found is this. This is really cool is that here's a few things that you can get from one simple test. Now, of course, you have to have a jump mat, but they're not very expensive.

They're really not. So what you're looking course, you have to have a jump mat, but they're not very expensive. They're really not. So what you're looking at, you're looking at ground contact time and then the height of the jump. And what that tells you is elasticity or really it's deeper. It's the neuromuscular system. It's looking at the, you know,

because when you land and react and jump, that's an involuntary contraction. That's the muscle spindles. That's the gold detentor organ. That's the muscle spindles. That's the gold-detained organ. That's the, what is it, the titan. That's the protein filament that's deep in there that's more responsible for elasticity than, you know, maybe people once thought. But, like, it gives you this.

Not only does it give you who's probably going to be your best weightlifter, which is, you know, Ryan, it's also going to tell you who's at risk of injury and what kind of injury. Here's what I mean. And I'm going to, this data will be published by next, hopefully by next semester, unless it gets rejected. And so, but if it gets rejected, that means they're going to be rejecting Andy Galpin. And I weighed my counsel.

It's Andy and it's Brian Mann. So if I get through them and it gets rejected, I'm going to be like, you're talking to these guys. But it's going to tell you too, is if you've got a slow ground contact time, but a very high jump, then your main focus should be elasticity. And that means you're at risk of a tendon injury,

which is, that's real bad. Now, on the other hand, if you've got a mass, if you've got a very low ground contact time, but not a very high jump, that means your, you know, your muscles are weak and that puts you at risk of a muscular, muscular tear. So it gives you exactly where to focus on to prevent injuries and where, you know, obviously performance. If you're a weightlifter, you know, there's a lot of weightlifters who have very low ground contact times that aren't very strong. That means I need to focus on strength. On the other hand, if they have a low ground contact time, then I'm in high wind, meaning slow, then I'm going to focus on plyometric movements, which we are. We've added a lot of, because of the RSI score, a lot of the warmups we do every

single day is geared towards improving certain flaws that I've noticed that are, like I said earlier, that are becoming trends. And it's improved already. In one week already, things have improved, including joint soreness, at the knees especially. There's your tip for the day. There you go. Coach Travis Bash, where can the people find you?

Bashlead.com. Hopefully this thesis won't kill me, and I'm going to start writing a lot of articles about the things I'm finding. It's just really cool, this study I'm doing. I am Anders Varner at Anders Varner, and we are Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. And make sure you get over to ArateLab.com. That is the signature program inside rapid health optimization, where you can go and experience all the lab lifestyle performance testing analysis and coaching to help you optimize your health and performance. And you can access all of that over at aretelab.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.