Barbell Shrugged - Physiology Friday: [Physique Transformation] How Hormones Help Build Muscle and Burn Fat w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash and Dan Garner Barbell Shrugged

Episode Date: September 27, 2024

In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged: The relationship between testosterone and cortisol The relationship between calories, macronutrients, and micronutrients Why micronutrients matter for achieving a lean physique Optimal hormone ratios for physique transformation  How does menstrual cycle affect performance Understanding gut health and it’s affects on physique Stabilizing hormones as a sign of health Connect with our guests: Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram Dan Garner on Instagram

Shrugged Family, this week on Barbell Shrugged, Physiology Friday is back. Today on Barbell Shrugged, we're going to be talking about physique transformation and the things that you need to be looking at in order to lose the weight, get the abs, feel your best. And it also is one of the best frameworks for understanding why optimal health matters and all of this. And the framework that Dan's going to be laying out today and understanding that your body is only going to achieve

its ultimate, the optimal state, is by focusing on optimizing the health of your body and then allowing your body to find the most natural physique in its best form. Everybody wants to know how to lose weight, but nobody wants to hear the answer to get as healthy as possible. And that is what we're going to be laying out on the show today. And it's also one of the best frameworks I have. One I've ever heard, it's one of the things that Dan started talking to me about many years ago now that has just

really resonated with me of like, instead of worrying about losing the weight, just try to get it really healthy. And all of a sudden, when you get really healthy, you lose the weight and it's easier because your body can withstand the additional stressors and the changes, becoming more resilient, more adaptable, et cetera, along the way. And that is why we do at Rapid Health Optimization, what we do, which is focusing on the health and then allowing our body to perform its best. As always, friends, make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That is where our friend Timothy Jones, TJ from Precision Nutrition, has a case study up from when he was working with us

in his lifelong battle with cholesterol and the exact steps he took to cut his cholesterol in half and get completely shredded, which is also kind of like the backbone of today's show of getting your body healthy so that you can achieve the physique that you are looking for. And you can access that free case study over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrug. I'm Andrew Smoltz, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash. Nobody else today. No one else is invited. Just a bunch of homies hanging out

talking about the fitness. Number one on the docket today, Coach Travis Mash. How long have we known you now? I've known, let's see. When was the first time you were on Barbell Shrugged? I just had a time hop from one of our first episodes that was 10 years. 10 years. So presumably

11 or 12 years. You probably helped on the show within a year or two of knowing us, for sure. Yeah. Were you coaching Bledsoe before you were on the show? Right around the same time. Pretty much. I see. I met him 2013. It was the American open when it started snowing in Dallas,

wild places. It was like an ice, a Gideon, you know, it was crazy. Yeah. So I met him. It took us,

it took us 12 years to officially work together yeah it seems like a long time right i know i was so pumped you know when uh who was it was it you and his asked me or doug no doug asked one of y'all asked me i was so pumped yeah we did we did a little bit together um when we were doing the one ton challenge oh yeah yeah we did right before covid remember we tried to start an event company like right before covid two months before covid that was like the worst decision of all time you did write the programming for the one-ton challenge which still is phenomenal programming everybody wants to get just insanely strong on the the six big lifts between powerlifting and

weightlifting that was fun yeah do y'all still sell that i mean i don't know we have it we haven't promoted in a long time, but it's still available in the ether of the internet. You can find it. I see it come through on our receipts on a somewhat random basis. I'm like, damn, there's some people out there still getting jacked. You guys got – the rapid is crazy, man. The team.

How do y'all do that? You have such an amazing team you've assembled. I hope you're not asking me. You've been here for three weeks now. You should know not to ask me that. Doug's the one that does it all. Doug's the one that knows all the people. Doug is really good about the whole process shit.

Sure. I've been in business long enough to know that it's not that easy. It's not like I could just do this with anything. Barbara Strug worked out really well, and we crushed for many, many years, and are still doing our thing. Now Rapid's been crushing for a couple years, and it's grown very well.

I've tried many, many things over the years. Most of them did not work. Every once in a while, you get something that does work, and you make hay while the sun shines. Rapid's been doing phenomenal. We've got a great team. Anders, me, Dan, you make hay while the sun shines. So rapid rapid has been doing phenomenal. You know, I got a great team, Anders, me, Dan, Andy, uh, you know, came together and we all have our, our own unique roles and we, uh, we don't cross over very much at all. Like we have our own unique thing that we do within the company while staying in our lane. And then, you know, luckily

we have a gangster service that has been absolutely smashing for our clients and, you know, the more we sell the better we can grow the team i remember y'all asking me about you're telling me about andy uh he's doing this crazy testing for athletes he's right around i was taking this class i'll be monitoring i remember totally and then like three and a half years ago yeah like we're November like November 3rd or something like that so we're coming up right on three years of it, of the first client joining. But Doug and I went and did it like four or five months before that. And we were like, oh, this is like a real thing.

We were down at Bledsoe's event, the Strong Coach Summit, or I think that's what it was called, in Austin. Doug and I were like, damn, I feel amazing right now. We need to go do this thing. Yeah. And there we go, three years later. Correct. That really was only a fraction of what it is now. That was like the 1.0 version.

We're now on, I don't know, 3 or 4.0, whatever it is. And it's scaled up and gotten much more comprehensive since then. Back then, it was just Dan and Annie running labs on people. They didn't have any, like, the coaching side of it. There were no subject matter experts. There were no nutritionists or physical therapists or behavioral health coaches or sleep specialists. Like, now we have a whole team of people that work with our clients as opposed to just running labs and giving people advice and suggestions based on labs, which of course is very important. Yeah.

It's so much more than that now. Yeah. I don't feel, you know, it's cool. I don't feel forced to do things. I don't necessarily feel like the expert, you know,

like in the past where I'd be coaching someone and I will try to, you know, help people with nutrition. I mean, obviously I know nutrition, but I don't know it like a nutritionist who their whole focus is nutrition it's like feels so good it's like when someone asks me a question i'm like oh we have this other person that's way better than me at this yeah yeah this is the this is the first

business i feel like um we've we've only like looked for the world-class solution. Yeah. It's crazy. Like not just a nutritionist, but who's like really worked with like really high level people and can, I mean, every single person that comes through, there's like, and this is just the nutrition side of things. There's like an hour presentation of like,

we could do a podcast on nutrition, but like for every single client that comes through having a 60 minute video presentation of what their current nutrition is, where it's lacking, how to improve it. And here are the exact meal plans to get all the way calorically macronutrients, micronutrients to an optimal level so that you can go slay is wild. And then to be able to do that for behavioral health and sleep and stress management, um, the physical therapy side of things, like it's wild. It's crazy. Yeah. Every business that I've ever been a part of where we had any level of success, I've also been like the target customer. Like when I was running a CrossFit gym, like I wanted to be like the best athlete I could be.

I was competing in MMA at the time. I wanted to be strong, fit, mobile, and in every, every sense of the world. So I could be a very well-rounded athlete. And so running a CrossFit gym, teaching people gymnastics and weightlifting and powerlifting and just, you know, training in general, it was what I wanted to do all day, every day. And so because I was interested in it, I was more interested in teaching it because I was more interested in learning about it at the time. The more you can be your own customer in a business, the more you're just going to be all in on that business. And it's going to be like an extension of your life. It's going to be an extension of your personality and your temperament and your goals and just the life that you're surrounding yourself with. If you have a business around that, it's easy to be in business and to work all day because

you don't feel like you're working all day. You're just living your life. And that has then scaled from owning a gym to running Shrug, which was very similar. Like my life, I wanted to be someone who was just traveling around with my friends, lifting weights and talking about training with cool people that knew a lot about training. And that was the easy business to run. It still is an easy business to run, not because it's easy to do, but my interest is so high and it's so enjoyable for me with who I am that it just doesn't feel like work. Same thing. When we moved on to the diesel dad, like I had

kids, I was in a new stage of life. Now I still want it to be strong and fit and whatever else, but I had like these new constraints of having these, you know, three little monsters run around where, where I, I wanted to be fit, but I had, I had a limited amount of time to get it done. And so, you know, we created EMOM aesthetics and, and all the other training programs that were involved with the diesel dad, because I, again, was the target customer. And then now fast forward to rapid part of the reason that we decided to get together with Dan and Andy and create this

like super program was because as I'm getting older, like my goals again have shifted. I just want to have like high energy, high libido, again, strength, speed, power, et cetera, but be as lean as possible. I want to age well is the reality of it. And the medical side of it running running labs and working with specialists and whatnot like all that stuff is available but it was all siloed into like you had to have all these like separate individual specialists there was nowhere you could go or nowhere i could go nowhere i could find where i could have this like one-stop shop where i could

work with all the different people i wanted to work with where they're all talking to each other and they all knew each other and i was getting one comprehensive plan without having i don't need a strength coach specifically of course everyone can have a coach and that would be helpful but you know if i had a strength coach and i had a nutritionist and i had a physical therapist and i had a functional medicine practitioner and i had a behavioral health coach like if i had all these different separate specialists even if i had them all they're not talking to each other they're all giving me different advice that's potentially conflicting and it's just a headache and so once once we were able to meet with dan and andy and and realize that they they have this like unique part of it with the the labs side of it with the functional

medicine practitioner and a muscle scientist looking at labs giving hyper specific recommendations we had the coaching side of it and then we come in and layer in all the other specialists to make this like comprehensive super program. And I was the client. I knew exactly what I was looking for. And we basically just built it for ourselves, knowing other people in our same similar situation would definitely want it. It was, it was a no brainer. 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 Gal 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 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 just my ability to trust and have confidence in my health going forward. I really, really hope that you're able to go over to rapidhealthreport.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 rapidhealthreport.com

and let's get back to the show. You actually hire all the people, Doug. You actually have all of our team members on your team writing your programs for you, Doug, like you're, you're working with our physical therapists in the program, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's probably my, my main person right now is our, our physical therapist. She, she writes all my, my PT, um, you know, basically like what I do before my training, she handles that side of things. Um, just clearing up aches and pains like i did jujitsu rib injuries are super common in jujitsu and as an example with me like i've had i've had three or four like back to back to back my spinal rotation is very poor like i've been very flexible my entire life i did gymnastics growing up i could do the splits until i was like 30

um but doing you know weight lifting and power lifting my entire basically my entire life um and almost no rotational sports like my spinal or thoracic rotation is super locked up so in jiu-jitsu when i get cranked to the side instead of my spine just rotating it doesn't and then my ribs fucking pop and that's it's already a common thing in jiu-jitsu and it's happened to me many times and it's painful for all the obvious reasons. Not just when it happens, but doing breathing and coughing and sneezing and getting out of bed. Like, it makes everything hurt, especially wrestling. That's a big mistake a lot of adults make is not doing any rotational movement.

You know, no one does anything in a transverse plane. And then they're like, let's go do golf. And then guaranteed 90% of the the people i hurt my back because they play golf out of the blue it's like we need to do rotation all of us need to yeah a lot of my rotation is very stability based so it wasn't really mobility based um and i think that's contributed to these rib injuries so anyway to cycle back to andrew's original comment yeah i've been working with our physical therapist to specifically to clear that up plus a handful of other things I got going on because I'm always dinged up from just doing jiu-jitsu now in my 40s for the last 20 years um but yeah she's my main person uh Anders

I know you're working with uh with our buddy Mike T. Nelson on on cardio related things there for a while I got my VO2 max tested this week or last Friday. What is your VO2 max? Oh yeah. What is it? 53.1. Wow. That's really good. When I was like fighting MMA, mine was only like 56 and I was like much better shape than I am right now. I'm afraid to do it now. Now I'm definitely afraid to do it.

I'm going to be embarrassed. One year ago, before I started working with Mike, it was 51. So a whole year working hard to get two points to go from super superior to extremely superior. I mean, it's incredible.

Anything that they say is superior on the sheet is like the coolest marketing thing ever. It's like, who came up with that? It's like bad, not bad, good, better elite,

superior. You're like, how did they come up with that one? It's superiorly shitty is what mine is yeah uh dude you should take the bike test one this one was like way harder i remember last the last time a year ago when i did it and coming off the coming off the treadmill and going feel like i had a lot more to give here not realizing like i was at a max heart rate but this time the dude cranked me up to like a level 10 on the incline and my legs were just gassed so i felt like i um you probably need to do it with like the same tester person to like you would it's like your max heart rate and everything's kind of hurting for a little bit anyways but to be at one of the one of the um doctors or uh some guy at a running raleigh runner something it's like a pt slash running gym they've got all the all the things in there but it's basically

like where uh a bunch of runners go to get tested and buying shoes and stuff like that. But you can do them on a bike. I feel like a bike though. I've never done it on a bike. Bike just doesn't seem as challenging. I don't know how it's got to be hard to get your heart rate to a max heart rate. Justaling your legs like not on an aerodyne bike i think you do it on the aerodyne better than a bike you know like right but yeah like how do you increase the difficulty on on an air on a regular bike like how did you slow down like like that's how they do it on the on the treadmill on there forever is the incline but i don't i don't know how they do it on the on the treadmill forever is the incline but i don't i don't know how they do it on a bike i've never had that one i've never done on the bike either but yeah i mean

they could increase the resistance on the bike you know every couple of minutes it just gets more and more resistance as opposed to like having to pedal faster yeah but yeah i've never done it on a bike i've only done 2 max testing on a treadmill. I'm done with the mile run though. I can't do it anymore. I could do it. I enjoy it. I still run. I think we talked about this a little bit a couple weeks ago. I feel

like if I put in a month at a track so the last 2 miles that I've run 618 and 619, like back to back testing. Essentially, that at a track. So the last two miles that I've run six, 18 and six 19, like back to back testing. Yeah. Essentially that's a plateau. Um, I can get better at the sports specificity of going to a track four days a

week, running four hundreds, pacing it out to exactly like one 25, one 27, one 27, hold on for dear life on lap four like i i could i could go do that but it just doesn't align with life i don't i don't have a track that i can consistently get to schools back in session so like all the soccer kids are at the at the tracks now or like the

soccer field in the middle of the tracks um so it's the in order to get where i want to go it is going to take more of my life away than i'm willing to give that's because you're too good that um you're just naturally so good at it man it's like so yeah you would for you to get better you're gonna going to have to train like a pro or something. Yeah, like all the training I've done right now is roughly like go run a quarter mile hill, which is like outside my house. I'm looking at the start line right now. And then run around my neighborhood that has an uphill and a downhill. So I can bomb the downhills.

I've run the 0.93 mile loop and five 54, but I'm also just really good at running that loop now, which is kind of like what I need to do to get to six minutes or I feel like right now I'm in good enough shape to run like a six Oh nine, but it would take, um, if I, if I ran it very intelligently, but to get the last 10 seconds off like in in the year i essentially shaved 12 seconds man that's what happens when you say another 10 seconds off that is just sports specific getting to a track and it's like when you listen to uh usain bolt talk

about the 100 meter it sounds like he's racing like a mile, but it's because he knows the exact number of steps, exactly how he's supposed to feel at those steps. Like every single meter along the way, he knows exactly what's going on. You just got to get to that point to be able to, for my current fitness, it becomes like a very exact process of just getting

reps and i can't i can't do that it's easy for me my because my vo2 max is so poor i could just if i move it's a good thing dude you're still so jacked though man you're still clean 300 pounds can't you i'm i'm getting, especially like my power is up. So everything is trending good. All my health is like, which is, you know, I heard Andy say, this would be good for our listeners. It's like Andy was talking about how closely like longevity and health for people like us is the same as it is for peak performance is like you know we need to focus on maximizing all the areas of our life to live a long time and to feel good whereas like the athletes that we work with the high-end athletes to maximize their athletic ability it's the same exact thing it's like maximize these

areas you know anaerobic aerobic so vo2 max i feel like when you're young and you're an athlete if you want to have any amount of success in a sport you should be taking your strengths and really capitalizing on them and making them as good as possible if you're already naturally strong if you want to win at something pick a strength sport

and get really really really strong and then you'll be a winner right but as far as like health and longevity goes it's kind of the opposite where as you get older you really should pick the thing that you're the worst at and shore that up, bring that up. And then that's the thing that's actually going to help you like live a longer, more balanced life.

I've heard a similar analogy in business. Like if you want to make a lot of money in business, you should you should take something that you're really good at. In our case, like health and fitness things and then make a business out of that. You're already really good at it. Go be the best at it and then you'll be successful but like in your relationships like your relationship with your wife or best friends or whatever then it's like whatever your deficiencies are then showing up your deficiencies will will minimize the amount of conflict in your relationship so relationship wise you should show up your deficiencies but like money and wealth

wise you should capitalize on your strengths. I feel like it's like that for young athletes versus older non-athletes that are just looking to be healthy and have good energy, longevity, and just feel good. Right. I mean, even like you talk about the athlete, it just depends on the person. Like, you know, like if you're a decathlete, well, then that would probably be the exact perfect program for longevity because they got to be strong fast gotta have anaerobic aerobic and so it just depends on the athlete but even if it's like a um if you think about a mile one mile sprinter i guess runner i'm calling a sprinter but the way you improve that person is the same way you improve like an adult it's

like looking at their vo2 max and seeing anaerobic aerobic you know lactate threshold and all those things and so yeah it was it was he was one of his newer podcasts was talking about longevity and performance oh yeah it was the reason why he named his his podcast perform it's like these things that work for the yeah the best athletes in the world work for old men like me and you you know well you guys aren't old but old men like me yeah we actually did a show on longevity maybe like a year ago or somewhere somewhere around there and we were talking a lot about this and it was when at the seminar down in dallas like the very first slide that galpin had was essentially comparing the goals of performance versus longevity and he was like basically the only things in there's like a very few

number of things in here that are different and one of them is like joint pain yeah the goals of longevity joint pain like he was comparing it to kind of like the Olympic athletes. Cause the Olympics were going on. He was like, if your goal is to live forever, joint pain is probably very important. Cause you don't want to just live in pain. And he's like,

if you're an athlete and you're competing for a gold medal, pain is that's par for the course. Just get used to it. Like you're pushing the limits that hard. But when you start to look at all of the performance metrics, you're pushing the limits that hard um but when you start to look at all of the performance metrics they're also the exact thing same things that are going to allow you to live a long time and perform at a high level for as long as you possibly can totally so um yeah i remember talking with julian pano many years ago oh yeah, yeah. Julian Pannot. Yeah, I do.

Where is that guy now? But, yeah, totally. I don't know. I haven't talked to him in a long time. He's a great dude. Yeah. We're out at his gym. Dude, where is Julian?

16, 17. He was, like, wildly ahead of the game. Oh, yeah. He really was, yeah. He was, like, so far ahead. And I haven't thought about him in five years. Yeah, he was on the show before, totally. That was a massive show.

That was right before I came on. That was a massive show. Was it Chris and – I can't remember. There was something – you guys had the full crew out there. People were throwing up, pushing sleds. Yeah, we did throw up out there. That was like Julian Pinault's breakout thing. Everybody was talking about that show. DJ Martin.

Didn't he start working with DJ Martin? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I think he did. That's right. Yeah, we did. Yeah, he introduced us to bear crawl sled pulls. I'd never really done heavy bear crawl sled pulls.

Where what he would do is he would put a bunch of 45s on the sled and you would you would bear crawl as hard as you could but you'd only be able to pull it like 10 feet and then he then you're basically stuck and he would remove a 45 and you'd be able to like barely pulled another 10 feet and then he would remove a 45 it was like it was like these drop sets of bear crawl sled pulls where it was heavy enough where you could barely pull it at all and then then he would slowly make it lighter and lighter and lighter and yeah i told i totally threw up in that parking lot that day i was not prepared for that you know and i and again i i was in great shape back then and still that got me good i really enjoyed it well actually one of his main points yeah one of his main points was like crossfit kind of originally started as like

this uh this idea that you would go 100 all out on one workout and then you'd call it a day and then it slowly kind of got away from that over time where where people weren't really reaching true anaerobic threshold every single day they were now they were just training for a sport which of course there's advantages to that too but he was like every once in a while you need to make yourself as tired as you possibly can like in in a short bout so there's like airdyne sprints or salt bike sprints or whatever you want to call them these days um and sled pulls is definitely one of those things where if you want to go 100 all-out effort for you know 30 seconds and end up throwing up in a parking lot then heavy sled pulls can get it done. Absolutely. It was a great time.

I actually miss doing stuff like that. I haven't done a lot of sled work in a long time. I feel like Andy talks a lot about that now, about he's not so much into the whole Zone 2 cardio. He's more into the anaerobic, the sweep your butt, or a combination of the two. I agree. I like that.

I would rather kill me for 10 minutes than let me miserable for 30 minutes. Yeah, I found more of a balance of that over time where I used to be, I used to be heavy on the high intensity side of things. I used to only do like high intensity interval training and then just kind of general weight training type things and didn't do almost any slow long duration zone to cardio type work. And now it's a little more balanced where my, my ideal setup is if I'm not counting jujitsu as cardio, which it totally is at some level, of course.

But if I'm just doing quote unquote cardio work, I love doing assault bike sprints. That's probably like my, my low impact easy thing that I can do. It doesn't take a lot of time. We get a lot of bang for your buck. And if I'm trying to like hit max heart rate, say once a week, like that's the easy way to do it where there's almost no possibility of me

injuring myself or exacerbating any pain that i already have from jujitsu or wherever else and then as far as like zone two cardio you know just doing something very light for an hour or more uh i've become more friendly to that over time purely because i just want to be outside agreed yeah i just want to go for an easy bike ride or for like a rock or, or, you know, of course, like just going for a jog. Cause I just spend too much time in my cave. I'm podcasting right now with all the lights off in this room with a light in my face with all my windows closed.

Cause that's what makes for the best lighting on zoom. You know, it's like, you've got to get out. I know I need, I need to, I need to get outside. I need a garage like yours.

This is why I sit out here just so i could stare outside and look at sunlight all day i mean i that's the only zone two i'm gonna do is like go for a rut go for a walk you know and the thing about the airdyne too is like my running because of you know hips and other issues if i go hard on a run odds are it's gonna give me you know i'm gonna hurt because my gait's not are it's going to give me you know i'm going to hurt because my gait's not perfect that's another thing people listening you know if you're if you're running you know if you're not really efficient as a runner you know if you're going to go and turn it up a little bit it's probably not the it's not the um i would movement i would choose

air dive would be better or even like a um what's the the climber you know climbers would be good yeah versus climber but yeah really done like a hard set of of intervals on a burst of climber i've like played with them before but i've never seriously trained on one before oh for sure i did because rocky remember in the russian rocky ford yeah So when I did my one fight of my life, I did that thing like, like I was the Russian guy. I was nowhere near the Russian guy, but it looked cool. I'd rather go run hill sprints. Hill sprints and stairs are the shit.

Yeah. Yes. Again, too, your injury risk is low when you're doing things like that. Cause you know, it's when you get that max V and you're upright and you're, you know, your risk of hurting a hamstring or even a glute goes up so high, especially for me, you know, air dive. I feel like the, the, uh, the zone two training, I, I really struggle when I hear people are like, and then I sit on the rower for 45 minutes. I'm like, man, this zone two is like

the living part. You're like just doing stuff. You're in zone two doing the dishes, holding clothes. You're focused on something and just move. You're doing anything except sitting on the couch.

No doubt. Sitting on your phone. It's just getting up and doing stuff. Get out of your house. Walk. Play with your kids. Play basketball. I feel like that specific thing is the most overthought.

How do I do it? You literally just live. That's it's slowly just transporting blood at a slightly higher level than laying in bed. Like it's, it's a very simple process that involves like playing with your kids or having a sport outside that you want to go do playing catch like yes there i feel like sitting on a rower for 45 minutes or like a bike trainer at a slow pace is it's it's only the word it's it's healthy but it's the worst way because there's zero experiential piece to any of it when that is like you could go for a hike or just no chance like it literally is like the simplest of actions of just going out and playing and then because you can train it in a specific way when i hear people talking about like sitting on a rower for 45 minutes monitoring their heart rate not to go

over 130 and not to dip below 115 and i'm like. It's just way, way better ways to go about living your life and, and incorporating fitness into it. Go for a walk and call your friends and talk, you know, like there's so many things you could do other than sit on a damn bike, 45 minutes, no chance. Like I'd rather beat myself up at 12.

I've done that a small handful of times where i've gotten on the airdyne or i the assault bike in my garage and just slow and steady for an hour i've done that like three times probably in my life you know and and yeah and i got done i'm like okay i'm glad i did that and i only did it because i just i only had that like exact amount of time where i could train and maybe i hadn't trained in a couple days i just needed to do something and so i just so i did i just did something to check the box but it is it is not my preference at all yeah i just go do circuits outside my kids like i play football with there you know i play basketball with rock uh with magnolia we'll just do whatever she did and i just in a circuit with them like and it it's so

much fun before you know it you gotta crush your steps had a good time you're outside anything outside for me is what i need man i'm not going outside as much as i should here in the last couple weeks i gotta get out there the limit the outside is i like try and set my whole life socal ruins you man once you get the SoCal sun You're a full addict That is the chronic of life right there Do you miss California? I miss

Saying I miss California is like In my opinion after five years Of living in the middle of North Carolina Or South Missing San Diego Is like It's like saying I miss frat parties of living in the middle of North Carolina or missing San Diego is like it's like saying I miss frat parties.

Oh yeah. I kind of miss that time of life but I have way more valuable things going on right now. But to think that owning a gym three blocks from the water That was perfect for you at the time. WWE might roll in and want to bang some weights around in like your beautiful facility.

And it's 73 degrees outside. You haven't had a shirt on for two weeks. And you might go surfing at noon in a golf cart. You know, who knows? Anything's possible, right? That's sick, man. Yeah, those things probably won't happen again in my life but i also don't go to frat parties anymore either so i'm pretty curious though with rapid how did you guys find you know like uh you got mike lane and you got uh chris

perry like you got how do you find these dudes i feel like like, you know, there's Andy was first. You just like to find the super PhDs or something like the next. Chris Perry is a rock star. Savage. At Ford's, at my clinic he did. I was like, man, did you take acting lessons? I mean, that's how good of a presenter he is. And Mike Lane, I'm going to have him next year. Like, where are you finding these

dudes like I've been to plenty of universities and I haven't seen researchers quite like these guys yeah we're very fortunate at Rapid like we we got a lot of success success very quickly obviously Andy like has the the academic background and just all the cool stuff he does with pro athletes and now with his multiple businesses you know Rapid being kind of the primary one uh as we've had more and more success all the coaches we've been able to hire they all have graduate degrees and a handful of them are like also college professors and they coach at rapid or they have they have professional teaching experience at a university level and we actually you know one of the core values of rapids is is learning and teaching so like we very specifically and intentionally hire people that have

professional teaching experience separate from professional coaching experience. So if we find people again, very similar to, to Andy, I have like high academic experience and then high professional athlete or, or coaching experience. Like those are the people that we look for and those people know other people that are like that like they all hang out in the same circles and so a lot of the people that we've recruited over time um have been recommendations from the you know from the people that already work with us so perry was a great

example he he invited mike lane to to the mix because he just knew that uh that mike's a gangster and that we're looking for high quality people and um you know mike lane's a great fit in the company oh dude we work so well together it's so much fun and he is like it's a culture of really smart guys who can understand the practicality of things yeah i feel like forever you know like you know two decades ago you had the research side and then you had the coaches and you had the athletes and they weren't communicating really well, but you guys have brought it all together in one spot. You have people who've been great athletes, coach, great athletes, and are super smart and understand academia,

which that makes for an incredible culture. It's which is why it's fun. Like you don't even make me go to the, to the meetings and I just want to, cause it's cool. It's fun to hang out with those people. Yeah. We dig having you there. Yo, for, for people that don't know this, we announced this at the beginning of the show that you were working with us now, but so you're,

you are specifically working with some of our professional athletes that need to get stronger. You are former strongest man in the world over here and one of the best weightlifting coaches in the country. Like who better to help professional athletes get strong than Travis Mash? So we have we have all of our various specialists and our kind of our our our main coaches. But then we're bringing you in specifically as a strength specialist just for those few people that need someone like with your your very specific area of expertise here. Yeah, it's been a lot of fun. Mike is like, it's super fun to work with.

We mix really well. And the things I don't feel as confident, he's got it. It's been fun so far, for sure. Yeah. After coming out of your master's degree program, do you find a lot of value? And I'm assuming the answer is yes, but do you still get to feel like you're learning from them seeing as they're

kind of like who would have been your professors when you were? Yeah, that's what's fun about it. Yes. And I missed that a little bit about, you know, little Ryan because I was always around like, you know, if some research article came out my professor is going to be like oh did you hear about this new thing and so we're on the we're the like the front lines of learning all the new things that were coming out and so i miss that i still continue andy's a big part of my continuing and i listen to him all the time

as i as i travel but it's cool to be there with those guys like mike lane and chris perry especially they're my favorites those two guys are just getting what they're working on what's as i travel but it's cool to be there with those guys like mike lane and chris perry especially they're my favorites those two guys are just getting what they're working on what's new like and they communicate it so well that's the weird thing about those two guys it's like they're the clearest of like communicating like what most people consider complex they can make it seem very you know i guess easy or easy to understand so yeah i think it's also cool about the clients that they are um asking questions or like nobody's like really coming to us right off the bat we're not like the first option they've been in like yeah performance or

longevity space for a while. And either not gotten the answers or looking to take things to the next level, looking for a more comprehensive solution. But the questions that they end up coming up with, I feel like are much more complex and coaches that are able to meet them at that level versus like a basic macro conversation, like a basic calorie conversation. Today was a great example of like, you know, I'm not naming names, but like we were talking to one of the athletes

and they were just, you know, they're so complex in there. And they're, can I say what, can I say a sport? Is that okay? Yeah. Yeah. So they're fighters. And so they're so complex in there and they're can i say what can i say a sport is that okay yeah yeah so they're fighters and so they're specifically boxers so they have think about how complex their training regime is you know they have to spar you know then they have to you know then they have their you know mitts and they have their bag work you know then they have their running their cardio then they have the strength training and they have all these complex pieces and so and then as a boxer you got to have an incredible obviously vo2 max is super important but then you have to have a really strong anaerobic system and so like because you know when it's time to go they got to be able to turn it on and knowing

when to do what and so when we test them and we can take out the guessing like today was i felt i saw a guy's face relax for the first time when he's like you know i gotta do this i gotta do this and we explained to them this is the part you're incredibly good at don't sweat that that's already here this is the part to target and you could just see him feel so calm and like oh like they got me i don't have to guess this complex puzzle is solved. It was, it was a cool feeling. It just happened right before the show. Yeah. You got your boxers, but we also have like a ton of golfers, professional baseball players, MMA fighters, and on and on, on the professional athlete side of things. But really the vast

majority of people that are rapid clients are more on like the business side, like, like, like wealthy entrepreneurs, executives, investors, etc. handful of celebrities, but kind of mostly on the business side. And people that have $100 million company or more, we have very wealthy clients have very high expectations. And so to your point about better coaches, like, like, they expect our coaches to have a graduate degree or, you know, at a minimum a master's, but like probably a PhD as well. Or they don't want to work with someone who's just like a random personal trainer at a random gym. Like they want to work with a, with a,

with a PhD who has like professional athlete experience that's taking all of that knowledge and education and pouring it into them. That way they can have the highest quality service available. Sure. They don't want anybody guessing either, but unfortunately you find so often like you go to California, and sometimes the ones who are training the stars aren't the people that we have at RAB. But they're sadly just somebody who met somebody who met somebody, and now they're coaching these people, and they have no idea what they're doing.

But the poor clients have no idea who they're with. But the poor, you know, the clients have no idea who they're with is just really not very smart. But yet they come to us, it's a whole different ballgame. You know, we're going to make sure we test them in all the areas. And you get the physical therapy. That's crazy. So you test, make sure they have any shoulder issues, hip issues, ankle issues.

Like it just literally, and we all communicate in the same place. I love how you've done that doug yeah the systems guy where everybody can look and see okay this guy has to work on this thing he's really good at this thing so makes it so easy and we're all talking and we're not we're not guessing or doing something we're not supposed to or stepping over the line trying to pretend i'm a physical therapist when i'm not which happens way too much in my industry people pretending i don't understand that why strength conditioning coach wants to pretend to be a pt like go to pt school i don't want to do that

you know i don't want to mess with rubber bands and stretching people you know i want to get them jacked but yeah sure yeah i again, we have very wealthy clients have very high expectations. And so like they want data driven decisions. So like we spend a ton of time doing data collection and assessments and whatnot. They're usually older as well. You know, you rarely run a hundred million dollar company if you're a kid. Like it does happen to some people. But but most of our people are there in their 40s and 50s, we'll say.

And once you're in your 40s and 50s, as we all know, like that's when shit starts getting achy and you got a shoulder thing that's been there for 20 years and you don't want to get a hip replacement because you can kind of feel it coming. And so having a physical therapist on staff to ensure that, A, we're accounting for any past surgeries and injuries and what have you. We're not exacerbating any current pain you have and making it worse. And ideally we're, we're fixing current problems and making that pain go away. And then they're coordinating with our strength coaches to make sure that whatever the training program is, is in line with the physical therapy plan.

Like everyone has to work together in order to have a great result. Yeah. It's really cool. Even with Mike and I, like he uh the workout i just sent to one of our athletes he looks it over then he fits his you know he's doing more of the uh overall picture he's doing more of the the aerobic anaerobic work and just you know plus i put in warm-ups but then he'll look and make sure that they kind of go with what everybody else is saying with pts especially so it's it's crazy it's like a system it's so well oiled too like everybody knowing where they go and like when we meet every week we meet with our clients every single week and we got this checklist of stuff and mike

is good about holding them accountable too so like he's like man you gotta fill this out before you know before we get on here so we don't have to ask these questions and we could do more things it's really and then they're like even though you know they're paying us they're like oh you're right gotta get on top of it but i've learned a lot i've learned a lot how to really handle people online as if they're almost as better than if they're in front of us yeah do one other interesting kind of distinguishing factor with what we do is like a lot of people if they're seeking out a personal trainer or a nutritionist, they're like, I'm 30 pounds overweight. I want to lose 30 pounds.

I'm going to go get a specialist to help me lose 30 pounds. It's like they kind of already know what they need to do. But a lot of our clients, they're already in good shape. We're a health optimization company. People come to us when they're already doing pretty well, and they actually really don't know what they should be doing. They are, they probably already trained to eat well and sleep well and they already do many things, but they're coming to us to say, Hey, what should I be working on right now? I kind of already work on a lot of things and I already feel pretty good, but what, what really should I be working on all things considered? Cause I don't actually know what

is going to move the needle with my long-term health. And they're only going to figure that out by collecting a bunch of data and doing like a comprehensive analysis and then right you know rank ordering all of your physiological needs in a hierarchical way and then we will tell them this is what you need to work on in order to you know increase your we call it your tpp your true physiological potential yeah that was that was the conversation we had today is like this guy who i'm talking about has like he has like his vo2 max over 50 so it's it's really good and it's over 50 now and he's kind of like in an off season where he hasn't been training well so he's just like naturally really good at it's like he's like anders he's naturally really his vo2 max is beyond most people

but then but his his anaerobic capacity is not. His ability to be in the eighth round and be able to turn it up, turn the heat up isn't. So we can tell him, bro, let's focus on this aspect of the energy system.

Answering his questions he's had so many years. It was really fun today. It's awesome. Coach Trapp, smash. Meshly.com. What? Where can the people find you? Rabbit Health Optimization, right? Yes. If you want me to coach

you, go to Rabbit Health. If you want to get to read my free articles, go to Meshly.com or go to JimMoran.com, of course, for my latest articles. If you want to work with me, go to these guys. They'll go to jimway.com of course for my latest articles so but you want to work with me go to these guys i'll get you jacked out of your mind you bet travis dude uh friends many years of course long time shrugged host at this point uh just stoked to have you officially on the rapid team, man. This is a fantastic news. Super pumped.

Hell yeah, man. Find me on Instagram. Douglas E. Larson. I am Anders Varner at Anders Varner, and we are barbell shrugged, the barbell underscore shrugged to make sure you get over to rapid health

report.com. That is where our friend Timothy Jones client at rapid health optimization. There's a case study up that you can see how he cut his cholesterol in half, got totally ripped in the process. And you can access that free case study over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.