Barbell Shrugged - Real Chalk  — Unsustainable Fast-track Model w/ James Fitzgerald  — 32

Episode Date: July 17, 2018

James Fitzgerald is founder and CEO of OPEX Fitness. His 20+ years of experience and service as a strength coach/technician, tireless practice on refining energy system work, nourishment and lifestyle balancing techniques, and training of other coaches, has made OPEX a sought after method of bringing fitness to a Higher Order.   James has found a desire and passion to understanding fitness through assessment, testing, research, programming and more. He has had many years of experience as an athlete from early childhood into adulthood, from playing top-level soccer, to short and long distance running, to CrossFit where he was crowned “The Fittest on Earth,” winner of the 2007 CrossFit Games.   In this episode, James shares how he found himself again after injury as a young athlete, how he always knew he wanted to deliver the gift of fitness to other people, how the current system of fitness is flawed and how to change it, why marketing is stronger than education – why people follow the next best thing every single time, why he hates the word biohacking, his take on drugs, psychedelics, weed, steroids, and more.   Enjoy!   – Ryan and Yaya ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Show notes: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/rc_fitzgerald ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/ barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

all right all right all right you guys know who it is it's yaya coming at you with the brand new episode of the real chalk podcast you guys are tuned in to the shrug collective and opex month this month continues on the real chalk podcast ryan and i flew up to phoenix arizona went to opex headquarters you guys already got marcus philly two weeks ago, and then we had Mike Lee, director of coaching over at OPEX last week. And this week, we're going to come out with a bang. James Fitzgerald, the man, the myth, the legend. I am guessing most of you guys, especially if you're listening to this podcast, already know who James Fitz is, even though hopefully you'll know him a little bit more after this podcast episode is over as always

Ryan and I try to ask just a couple different questions a little different approach than most podcasts out there to maybe get some stuff out of James that you guys have never heard before whole podcast is awesome the entire time we just kind of get the feeling that James just knows something about the world and the universe and how everything works that you don't and you might most probably never will. We go all the way from how he found himself after an injury as a young man and then went into learning more about fitness and then trying to give the gift of fitness to other people all the way to how he believes that nowadays the current system of fitness is just flawed he calls it the unsustainable fast track model it's the

reason why people always jumping into the next best thing and always looking for the magic pill and this 30-day challenge and this will make you skinny in 60 days and all that fucking nonsense and james actually has a great take on this and how to change this going forward. We also dive into more stuff like his take on drugs, psychedelics, weeds, steroids, why he hates the word biohacking. He actually got really mad at me for that one, for using that. And I got terrified. So all that in this episode coming up also guys if you guys are following fish and i on our instagrams or just a crossfit shock instagram you've probably seen us wear those

super dope new weight vests from unbroken design uh we have a camo one and we have the american flag one these are honestly so comfortable to wear as they're not just one big play but they have the little bean bags or sandbags that you put in so that way it's way closer to your body and you just feel more aerodynamic as you're working out which lets you fitness faster they don't just make weight vests though unbroken designs makes everything the brand started out geared towards women but now there's plenty in there for men as well. The weighted vest, as I said, and then they got knee sleeve, belt, wrist wraps, singlets, shorts, this, that, everything that your CrossFit or just fitness heart could possibly desire. Their products were developed by athletes and tested by world-class athletes, including Fish and I.

I'm going to put myself in that category. Got CrossFit Games finals competitor, Olympic weightlifters, powerlifting record holders, bodybuilders, bikini competitors, fitness competitors. As you can see, people like this stuff. So there's a pretty good chance that you might also like it. This is top-of-the-line stuff. Go ahead and head over to their website at unbroken designs you guys are going to get 10 off everything on the site everything that your heart desires just use the code shrugged 10 as you're checking out once again that code is shrugged

10 they will ship all over the world and they also actually have physical brick-and-mortar stores in Canada, France, Germany, UK, Italy, and Spain. So not only shipping, but also you guys can actually walk into these stores and check it out. Head over to unbrokendesigns.com, hammer in that code SHRUGged10, and enjoy your new gear. Yeah, we hit him up a little bit, yeah. Okay. Yeah, he has some great answers for you. Alright, cool. Yeah, we good to go? Yeah, let's do it. Alrighty, guys.

Yaya here, coming at you. We're sitting down with Fish. We're in Phoenix at OPEX headquarters, sitting down with the man, the myth, the legend himself. OPT, J-Fitz, James Fitzgerald, whichever one you guys might know him as. I'm super excited for this just to geek out

on a couple of things. I know you've probably done a bunch of podcasts. Hopefully, we always try to make this one just a little bit different. So we'll start as broad as possible and then hopefully we'll ask you some questions that you've maybe never been asked before. Yeah, I look forward to that.

Maybe not on air. Yeah, true. So we'll see. But I'll give you a chance to introduce yourself for those listeners that maybe don't know who you are. And then we'll just take it from there. Yeah. Well, I'm the founder of OPEX. I was a young athlete, had an injury, and then realized that I didn't have an athlete identity anymore and kind of lost myself and figured out who I was really through finding fitness again or realizing that fitness was a real big base support for all the athletic endeavors that I was partaking in. And from that, I just wanted to learn so much about it. You know, I just recognize that fitness is such a big part, um, that, uh, the first access was like, well, you got to go to school to, to dig into a little bit more. So, um, yeah, I learned about it,

about, uh, fitness with a broad concept in school and, uh, then came out and wanted to deliver it to other people. Um, and the only thing that you did at the time was to be a coach or personal trainer. You know, and you had a, there was a place, you know, it was accessible and everyone was doing it and the coach meant something then. Yeah, totally. You know. And I just built that. I just fucking did it non-stop i loved it so much loved it you know giving out to people same time i liked experiencing all different

kinds of things too right so i was a fitness junkie um i still am um experimenting with all different kinds of things you know different kinds of weights and different kinds of programming and body composition changes nutritional stuff like back in the day in the 90s was very experimental because this whole new version of delivery of fitness was just the cusp you know yeah um it's all old russian transcripts and stuff everybody's trying to read the zetorsky and all that stuff is like all the biggest stuff at the time i remember because i wanted to exercise physiology at university utah transcripts and stuff everybody's trying to read the detorsky and all that stuff is like all the biggest stuff at the time i remember because i went to exercise physiology at university utah and that was like what all my coaches geeked out on because i was on the olympic weightlifting team

and he would always talk about all these russian all these russian things and all these bulgarian concepts and all these things and i'm reading them and i'm like oh my god like how could anyone handle these like loads of volume yeah granted they all failed their drug tests, but going on from there. There's your answer. Yeah, there was people that read into that really well and could extract the principles inside of it that were really helpful. It was interesting, though, because I was in Utah, and I was working at this gym, and I remember seeing this guy.

And for five years, I trained on the Olympic bobsled team that's what I did that's why I lived in Utah and I went to school there I was on Olympic scholarship in this gym that I worked in for a college job because the Olympics didn't really give us anything yeah for US this guy was always doing these weird pull-ups and he was always asking me to do this workout 21 15 9 thrusters and pull-ups and he was always asking me to do this workout 21 15 9 thrusters and pull-ups and he was like super passionate about it and everything he did just looked so strange to me and this is chris spieler and it's it's 2007 this is like when you won and um he shows me a video like i went to this thing over the weekend it's called the crossfit games you got to check it out and i see

it and i'm like you guys are working out in the dirt. Like, I really don't know what you're doing, you know? And then I remember, and I was like, well, this guy seems pretty badass, but this guy won. And for those of you who can't see me, I'm pointing to James here. And I remember looking online, and I was like, oh, this guy, now he's opened his own gym, and he's doing, like, testing and stuff, and he's, like, geeking out on it, and it's really, really interesting. And I think you were the only person at that time to do that. And I think it drew a lot of eyes at you. A lot of people were like, Oh wow,

he's looking at it in like a different light. He's trying to create his own thing. And I feel like whenever I think of functional fitness, you're absolutely the first person that comes to mind for me. Um, whether it's, you know, people who do Olympic lifting, maybe some of those older Bulgarian and Russian magazines come to light in their mind. But for me, when it comes to functional fitness, I think of James Fitzgerald every single time. Yeah, that's cool because I think it was that crossroads of finishing academia

and then having some experience, and then you get the thruster pull-up experience. Which was awful. Yeah. That was my first workout yeah because I uh I was pretty much indirectly vilified and persecuted in the strength conditioning industry um because of my choices of experimenting with this new version of fitness um and I didn't really care because I had successful business anyways and I was applying it to my clients yeah but when I first sought and did it I knew there was something inside of it that

could be extracted like the manuals, right? That I think was powerful. Yeah, I mean, seriously. It's really what you're doing now is a version of that. Yeah. I mean, just extracting the pieces from it that are very effective for improvements in fitness, right? And so I think that that intersection of discovering it was obviously, you know, a very important one. And I'm glad I stuck my head in it. I have no regrets on that. I was presenting nationally and internationally on core conditioning.

And at the time, spinal stability was a real big thing, you know, because they saw I was advancing this new version of, like, investigating fitness and mixed modal training. And they thought it was crap. They thought it was crap, which is kind of sad. But you can understand why, right? Which is kind of sad. It hurts. If we had all taken on. Yeah, I mean, it's hard work.

But also, too, remember that side of fitness was berating the other old version of fitness. Right. So I can understand it. Um, but like anything, you know, if it's probably uncomfortable, it's probably worthwhile digging your, digging your teeth into. And I found a, I found a love with it all. Like we all did, right. That whatever's on.com, you wake up and you hit it and you learn so much shit, but I was applying it to clients since 2004 at the same time as I was like practicing it and I think that's what you know draw I guess the coach's eye like what you saw right it's like okay there is a possibly different way to like circumvent how it's being presented you know and I just enjoyed that and I think it's a struggle so I'll finish my story so you know, grew that up to some great

businesses in Calgary. I started doing online coaching because of my experience and success in CrossFit. And then I started to create an educational system because so many coaches were trying to ask the questions like, well, how do you keep this thing rolling and why are you successful? And so I just developed what I thought were five big pillars of what would make a coach really professional, and that's called our CCP education today. Everybody I know who's taken that is, like, a different person completely. Yeah, that's great. Thank you.

Well, that means a lot because that's basically what I created it for. Like, when I first started training, like, competitively to want to go to the games, like, my coach was Brian Borsteinstein who did a lot of your stuff. Yeah. So, again, like that means that he was able to now extract some of those principles, right? Because the CCP is not the way, but it is principle-based. So a coach can come in there and just pull things out and then help another

person, and that's really effective. Yeah. So that's what brings us to today. You know, we're a big education company for fitness, and we coach people in gyms. We have gyms that coach that. So that's what to bring the story up to who I am. Perfect. And for you, what you do mostly is the coaching is in an online portal where a group of people get in there. And I'm their coach as they go through our education. So they get to watch online education. But throughout the time, they may see me in person or they get to see me live in an online version that I get to help them level up their education in those specific components of the course.

And then we have athletes on site that I get to keep my hands fresh with as well. Cool. Yeah, we just saw that. Yeah. And then obviously you're not asking to give everything away like the five pillars and like everything you do in the classroom. But like if I came in as a coach, what are those fundamentals that you kind of walk me through? Yeah. Like if I came in as a coach, what are those fundamentals that you kind of walked me through? Yeah, well, I'll back up and say that it took, you know, some experience in what I considered to be successful for a fitness coach with the premise being that I think a fitness coach needs viability as a professional long term. So, you know, when people ask the question, well, what do you think of the big things?

And the big things were you had to be able to develop a relationship with people. Yeah. And that doesn't become couch psychological stuff. You know, it's basically like, how do you resonate with a human, you know? And that's called consulting. That's one of our biggest pillars of our course, right? On consulting and how to sit down and like take some time to figure out someone's why. Yeah.

And when that is missed, I think fundamentally, that's the biggest issue within fitness today in the delivery is that no one's having a conversation. And no one's really trying to get to the bottom of really why they're doing what they're doing. Absolutely. It's turned into like a medical system where it's like I got 15 minutes. We got this on-ramp program. Just get in and let's get it going and we'll take care of everything.

But you forgot to ask like, well, why are you really here? Yeah. It may still benefit you. But that why you're really here will come back to haunt you in a couple of years if it's not taken care of. So consulting is big. Obviously physical assessment, you know, what are really simple basics of like how to get someone up and going and where do they start? Program design, which is my niche. That's what I like to get into because I love painting pictures. So that's my big one, right? Nourishment, which is basically how to

take care of people with basic lifestyle guidelines, which includes nutrition and rhythm and consistency and things like that. Yeah. And business and how to wrap the business around that. And that business portion was really directed at principle-based in the beginning. And now you would look at our education system and see that it's directly influencing a coach to, you know, how to set them up for success so that when they finish the education, they can go out there and at least make an attempt of becoming a good coach, you know, or a successful coach, I should say. Yeah, that's awesome.

So business, nutrition, assessment, program design, consulting. Yeah. So what were like some of the first steps that took you into like really dissecting athletes and like, what were those, what were those first steps? So like, I know like your big thing is energy systems. So like, let's say, you know, you win the CrossFit games, you start seeing that this sport is growing and there's athletes are, you know, they're really good in one area, not so good in another area. Like how do you figure out scientifically to be like, okay, this is what I need to do to your body to make this adaptation so that you can become this good. Like how, like what is the thought process behind it? Yeah, I'm not sure if I'll be able to explain the thought process.

I know that's really hard, but maybe like in a – No, but we'll tease it out. If it's not clear, then be sure to ask me something a little bit more in depth on it if I'm not getting to it. But I do want to clarify that I'm specifically known in strength conditioning for energy system training, not that I don't enjoy being in that area. But it's because I asked that fundamental question when CrossFit started of like, what is work? And how do you improve someone who's not just extremely talented? And I think that plus, you know, being in a lab, you lab, because I did some scientific research and I know research methods and I was in exercise physiology, you can't escape that style of thinking. So back to your point on how to formulate a plan to help people, especially within conditioning or a metabolic environment, and how to get people to higher levels.

You go back to basic principles of physiology as a starting point. That doesn't mean that those are correct because I have since, I guess you could say my academic years, changed into my own version of what fatigue is. Now, that goes against what Tim Noak's method or a peripheral method of fatigues concepts would be. But that's all under the premise that people get tired on a treadmill and we dictate energy based upon how they get tired on the treadmill with a metabolic cart or exchanges of, you know, O2, CO2, et cetera. And that's what we've used as our academic model of like, well, that's what fatigue is.

This happens and you see these things occur. Well, what happens if that's not the model of fatigue that's used in the lab? Meaning, how can you turn power clean ring dips and running around a building in an incremental state? Are you still with me? So imagine if you did that in an incremental state, right? So this is what blew my mind up, right? Because then why I probably look like I'm

really heavily interested in energy system training because there's so much shit we can dig our teeth into that will fundamentally change our whole concept of what makes people tired. And that's what I believe is, you know, the starting point, how do you dictate, you know, how you move people forward in, in fitness world, which is a broad case, you have to figure out their limitations. And those limitations go into blocks, right? So there's different kinds of limitations that prevent people from raising up. And you use that plus what we call principles of maximal physical potential, training age, anthrop know, anthropometrics, et cetera. And that should just give you somewhat of a concept as to how you help individuals.

Notwithstanding, you've got to look at the sport and say, well, what's actually required? And then you work your way backwards to see what kind of things you need to work on to get them over to that spot. I wonder if that helped. I hope that helped a little bit. I was saying, like, during that time of, like time of like someone doing like an incremental workout like that, like are you taking like, what kind of samples are you taking to figure out what's really going on inside of them? Yeah, well I wasn't mentioning it to say that we're, you know, we're testing those exact things. The reason why I mentioned it is to make people understand that there's a million possibilities of trying to figure out incremental

fatigue and what is fatigue. Just look at the six events at the regionals, right? So those may never be done again. And so why would you want to test how people do in them if the dose response of all of them for every person is different? Do you see how that just becomes like, well, how the fuck do you determine what happens in a fatigue mechanism and mixed modal training? Right. It's almost impossible. It is impossible. Right. I'll give you an example. So we, we've tested in this answer your question a little bit. We've tested kettlebell swing, burpee and rowing and multiple methods of it with, um,ulation, posture changes, lactate, heart rate, yeah, with the Zephyr bioharness and, you know, some other things. And we try to port them on as well as a MOXIE unit just to determine saturation of O2, et cetera, et cetera.

This is the stuff I'm talking about. Yeah, but we picked those three because anyone could do them. And it was honestly, to be honest, is that it's easy to set up for a lab setting. It's not complex. They're not running out of the building and doing all this kind of shit that you can't actually watch. Or they have to do an overhead squat and they can't just do it because of their shoulder and not actually because they're tired. Yeah. So I looked at those three things in the lab, et cetera,

as well as a bunch of other pieces. But that would be the first true mixed model testing. And we saw some really interesting variations in people, right? What you would expect is like, well, everyone gets a variation. But underneath the context of physiology, you're not supposed to get that variation. Does that make sense? Like you just do this, you do this work, and this is what you'll see on the graph.

And you take everything from that and you just put it into training. It's all submaximal. It'll work its way. It's like, no, that's not the case. Yeah. So for some person, they had, you know, changes in heart rate that were different than the other. For some person, they have a higher absolute score of lactate than the next person. You know what I mean? some person they have a higher absolute score of lactate than the next person first you know i mean so the the you know two things that i'd take from that is um number one it's almost impossible to effectively recognize what the dose response is in mixed modal training right so we got we got to own

that just be like wow i don't know what's going on everything's going on right um and then it's very hard to take percentages of that and say well if, if that's what we got in that test, this is what you need to do in training. Right? Yeah. Yeah, it's mind-blowing to try to get inside, to try to figure it out. But what keeps me at peace is principles. And so that's why what I teach, I teach work and rest scenarios, interval method and pace method, because I believe the truth is in training. And that's what helps people dictate what they're

doing. And if they're, if they're doing what they perceive to be as a dose response, right. And this today is, is falling, you know, uncomfortable in people's, you know, styles because I'm pushing sustainability and I'm pushing sustainability of dynamic contractions. Yet the other side wants to push unsustainable methods. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And I know why the push is for the unsustainable methods.

Yeah. And I know why I push sustainable methods. Can you go into that? And I can see how that feels. Yeah, for sure. Especially the other side because that's what happens to most gyms around the world. And it's not one system. It's culture, right? Yeah.

Fitness is – this is deep, but fitness is pop culture now. So fitness has been completely disrespected. And with the advancement in technology and information, people think that they can get fitness like they can get an answer on Google. Now, that sounds fucking retarded, right? But people actually think this, right? It's in a genetic code now. So try to extract that from a four-year-old whose parent has believed that for 30 Right? It's in a genetic code now. You know? So try to extract that from a four-year-old

whose parent has believed that for 30 years. It's fucking impossible. I talked to someone recently who literally told me, I told my own agent, and he's like, I heard you can get in shape

in just like a couple days. I was like, what? So the entire system, including academia, including academia, is based on this idea now that, you know, um, you know, humans are supposed to be adapting faster than others. Why we're here is to try to figure out

how to get shit done quicker. You know, we're praising celebrities and, uh, and biohack models, right? We're praising this, right? Yet we forget that people can't improve. Right. Fundamentally, it's going to last for a really long period of time if they don't put the time in. Yep. Right. So see where that meets. That's called the unsustainable fast track model. And that model is fucking robust. It's robust because marketing, advertising, you know, that's much stronger than education. That's much stronger than education, right? Much stronger than education. And the entire fitness system has backed that, right? Through great marketing to get people in, right? Because we're promising the fast fix just to get them in our door. And that's what makes money. And we're even backing it up with white paper evidence of some bullshit 20-second on, 10-sec off protocol that gets you fitness in a couple of weeks. In 30 days. And now we're trying to come up with research that will be a one-minute protocol where these academia folks are pushing this idea on a broad sense of fitness.

So that's the big intersection. I call it the fast track model. It's really, you know, people believing in intensity and unsustainability. Yet my question would be, what's the fucking hurry? Yeah, I like that. Do you think then that what it comes down to, because Fish and I are sitting here and the more I learn about fitness and the more I get into just fitness in general, not even CrossFit, I naturally, even before I knew who you were or what you guys do here, started gravitating towards a system that is more like yours, more sustainable, more like, okay, how can I go into the gym five days a week and walk out and still feel good enough to go on about my day where almost the gym is like a an energy booster and i like now i feel better now i can go instead of oh my god i'm so beat up i gotta go home and take a nap and just stay home and i don't want to do anything for the rest of the day do you think that just

comes with education and with experience is it because these people are just people that are gravitating towards the here is a 30-day program to get you shredded just in time for summer. Is it just that they don't know any better and it's just because the marketing and everything is out there? Yeah, it's too strong, you know. Yeah. You'll sit down with someone for 90 minutes and explain that to them. And then when they leave, they'll get 35 different iterations of why your shit is questionable. Yeah.

100%. With very strong evidence. It's sad. With very strong evidence, of course. And I'll give you one little example of that. If we were to put 100 people in an unsustainable model and 100 people in a sustainable model and all regular similar humans together in a fitness program,

within the first year, you will get better, quote-unquote, results of fitness in the unsustainable model. For sure. Right? Yeah. So who the fuck cares about unsustainable model. For sure. Right? Yeah. So who the fuck cares about a 20-year program? Yeah. Right?

Who gives a shit about that? No one's going to put money into it. No one's going to consider it. So all you get is a one to two-year peak, and then all these people just get churned into the system, the biohack system, for the rest of their life, or they get spit to the curb and disease happens and sickness occurs. Absolutely. And now we know there's a fucking robust system to help those folks.

Oh, yeah. The big pharma, I mean, medical mafia. Yeah, exactly. And I thought it was super cool what you said before we started recording when Fish asked you, like, are you still training for the 800 meters? And you're like, no, no, I don't do it anymore. And then he was like, well, what are you training for now? And you said, well, just standing upright when I'm 90 years old.

Hiking at 95. Or hiking at 95. I think that's such a cool way to look at life. You know what I mean? Yeah. We're like – I don't think I'm going to get to 95, but it's a good goal. I'll be honest.

Always got to shoot for the stars. Yeah, man. For sure. I was actually going to ask you this question then later on, but I think this is perfect timing right now. Where do you see – and, I mean, we're talking about how CrossFit kind of came in and people were pushing against that. Now you've got these two models kind of fighting against each other. Where do you see the fitness world when you look at it?

Where do you see it going over the next 5, 10, 15 years? Do you see a swing at all towards the sustainable model? Well, the downside of, as I said, the information age and technology was that everyone's an expert and this is exactly how you get this shit quickly. The positive side of that is, I believe anyways, with the advancement in technology, human measurement will get to a really scaled,

less expensive, high degree. And so I think within, let's call it 10 years or 15 years, we're going to have everything we need in terms of self-measurement on our phone or on a hologram that'll give us indication from our sweat or heart rate variability or something. We wake up in the morning time. That'll tell you like, you probably shouldn't have done that yesterday. Yeah. So we're going to have a lot better measurement, you know, after we eat a meal, you know, you know, A1C scores over four weeks, right? It'll just be a constant, like little signal for the individual or blood sugar throat that it'll just be like beep, you know, $5 app made by Apple, by the way,

who is it? No, Apple is committing a huge amount of money into this. So you can guarantee that over time it's going to run through their system okay um and you know everyone's on board that biotech is the biggest you know um investment source over the past five years you look into where money is going and everyone is interested in customization and personalization of what humans are doing right so you can see the push on things we see in the front end of the market right of like dna shit, HRV testing, wearables, like that's all, that's all feelers, right? There's, I've, you know, companies that will be unnamed are doing stuff. They did that shit five years ago of stuff, of human measurement

stuff that would just blow your fucking mind, but it just can't go to market due to testing and expense and the shit that they, the scores they get with it. But it'll be unfolded in the future. That's really cool, man. I hope that that's true. But back to your point, will the future be? Well, you're kind of going to know what's going on all the time, right? You're going to have a pretty easy way of determining what's going on with your cells, you know, hydration, et cetera. And if you just get beat over the head with this loose idea of fitness that you're doing,

it's pretty much going to tell you all the time. It's like you probably need to rethink that because I'm calibrating your age every day and you're not living as long. Something isn't right. Yeah. A hundred percent. I think that's really cool. I hope that.

I know I wear the whoop and I know a couple of athletes here do as well. So that's just a feeler. Yeah, it's a feeler. But just that already changed a lot for me. Exactly. You know, just waking up in the morning and getting that recovery score. And, you know, I had a couple of beers last night, and then you wake up, and all of a sudden you're in the red. And you're like, oh, okay.

So it does actually have an impact. So the downside of that is that no one really knows what to do with the data. Right. Right. But the good side, back to your point, is that I think there will be a spot for a fitness coach or a health and fitness coach in the future because that consumer is going to need to have some knowledge on what they should do with their scores. Yeah. That makes sense. So you're going to have to consult with someone who's a fitness coach, who's a leader in society, who's more respected than a number of other professions.

Yeah. Because it dictates what they need to do day-to-day to live long and prosper. And it won't be a default method. I love that. I think we're right in the middle of it. I could be biased because I'm a fitness coach and I know the power of it, but I think you guys know the power of it too. We have tools in our pockets that can transform a lot of things, right? Definitely.

And just using them correctly. That's right. And I think it's cool, too, that you actually decided to make a business out of this model that's actually not preferable when it comes to, like, media and marketing. And, like, it's way easier to build something that is a 30-day plan and you're giving out an e-book and marketing on Instagram. Yeah, there's challenges with that. Building something like this.

So what made you want to do this over just everything else? Uh, I think it just was the coaching, you know, I wanted, I really feel, um, that, you know, the brand and how my medium is through the brand that we want to make a big impact on fitness, you know, and timing is everything, you know, so I started in the mid nineties and you know it's now 25 years later so I got to see things right and when you get to see things you just start to change your priorities you know so I don't want to say that like at 17 I just knew you know these things don't do it's like you just see the change of your profession and the change in fitness as a culture and it just gets really disappointing and so instead of complaining I just fucking said you know we can do something

about it so how do you do, what do you do? Just like give coaches principles that they can go out there and like make a big impact, and now we're at the point where we're creating businesses so that they actually can do it brick and mortar and make it work. That's really cool. I was going to say the unsustainable model of like what CrossFit is and what like cross-training is or whatever you want to call it, I feel like everyone who's been doing that for, I would say like maybe five years, they're already getting spit into that other cycle and they're all looking for

basically what you're doing or like that interval weight training model. Basically. I think IWTs are coming back like big time. A lot of people are getting into like the bodybuilding stuff and trying to go full circle. Right. Yeah. So I think like right now you're like

smack and like the best the best time for like what you preach right now i think it's a great time i think a lot a lot of people are going to be going into this into this route yeah i kind of knew from the original like looking at the people that won in the sport or that i saw progressing not even champions but just people that were like on the street, just clients of mine, you know, and then saw them like actually doing well within the unsustainable model, they had this big base of support of bodybuilding, you know? And so when that question came out way back, which is now 12 years, it seems like 50 years ago of like, what's going to make people really good at this. My comment was bodybuilding, but what I really meant was, you know,

lots of contractions, you know, that are not at a fatigue rate. And those people who did that, which is basically pure strength conditioning models, like you're talking about IWT and bodybuilding or functional bodybuilding, you know, people are searching for that now for two reasons. Number one, they got spit out after a couple of years and didn't see progress, so they got to go back to the basics. And number two, they're starting to recognize that they want to climb this massive peak in potential they better have a robust base support head to toe and that doesn't happen through doing burpees and uh and fast barbell stuff yeah

exactly and the functional bodybuilding is something that you guys have been preaching now for some time too and actually i started doing it um on the last cycle that um you guys started and i absolutely love it just because one it takes intensity out of it a little bit and it just too and actually i started doing it um on the last cycle that um you guys started and i absolutely love it just because one it takes intensity out of it a little bit and it just allows you to be like more connected to the movement as well yeah whereas who doesn't like the pump yeah exactly the pump feels great so where do you see one of the things that i ended i'm doing it with a couple of buddies of mine and one of the things that dave asked me is how do you see that the functional bodybuilding base so i'm now i'm

doing this and then last week i've been doing this for like six seven weeks now however long it's been going on last week saturday because it was my buddy's birthday i jumped into the saturday class which is like a partner workout and did like a real like wad type of workout and i'm not gonna lie it wasn't fun yeah it wasn't great coming from super slow contractions and just like doing that with the, I mean, you guys have a little like my con stuff at the end. Um,

how do you see that transition going? So like once I'm done with the function of bodybuilding and I'm transitioning back into CrossFit, what should I do? And what are some areas that I need to pay attention to? Yeah. I, uh,

first I want to clarify that Mike Lee and Marcus Philly probably would be able to speak on a deeper degree of this. It's basically their invention of their programming that led to popularity of it. I don't have anything to do with the systems or development of it. That was one of the biggest questions I had when I first saw the experience of it was because I think those kinds of contractions, you know, in functional bodybuilding are years away from the metabolic contractions that occur of dynamic contractions at a sustainable rate. Yeah. Not like a couple of weeks away, years away. Right.

So to take, I'll just go back to principle, to take slower contractions, just think of it as like a hamstring curl, right? Anyone who's done bodybuilding knows what six really challenging hamstring curls feel like on your hamstrings, right? Yeah. But within our sport, we have to turn those into an aerobic mechanism. Now, that sounds fucked up, but if you don't, you die out sooner than the next person. You just blow up. So there's two things that have to happen. You either need to dampen your CNS so you don't get that effect with each contraction,

or you need to figure out how to maintain those contractions with a phosphate recovery or whatever the fuck you need to do, which is why more lower NME or more endurance-esque individuals in the sport of fitness survive because exposed people just die or burn a quick death over time because they can't actually dampen the contraction. So to move from slow contractions, not just to faster contractions. There's like eight steps in between of doing that. Okay. And you move those slow contractions to the point where all the dynamic ones are not just performed, but they're performed at a sustainable rate. Right.

Right. Because everyone thinks, oh, you can do pull-ups, you can enter. No, you got to do pull-ups that are sustainable. Now you get to enter. So you went from like slow contractions right to here, which you deserve to get punched in the face. But it's a good experience. Totally, yeah.

It's a good experience. Yeah. And we're going to have Marcus on. We're actually going up there next week. Okay, great. Then I'll ask him. We'll ask him that one because he may have a different opinion on it. But my belief is there's a long time.

You mentioned the biohacking stuff now a couple times too, and a lot of people that we have on the podcast are super into that. And to be honest with you, I thought a couple of things that they have mentioned are really cool. So are you completely opposed to the whole biohacking lifestyle, or is it just – Well, I'm being broad on that. So if you want to create context to each area, we can have a discussion on it. Absolutely. So I'm more talking about – well, one of the things that I really like doing is – where do I start with this?

Okay. So kind of like the routine stuff. So I like the routine, like morning routine, nighttime routine, kind of the hacks to get your day going and then wind down at the end of the day. That's not a hack. That's been when the sun and the moon has been here for a lot longer than a hack. Okay. So let's just define that. That's rhythm.

Let's just define the biohacking stuff that you object to and then the biohacking stuff where you're like, okay, that's something that I can totally get on board with. Yeah. So fast track fitness would be one. Okay. So just do these really hard intervals, high intensity interval training. I got you.

And that'll get you this immense amount of unbelievable experience and suffering. And through suffering, you'll get better, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So that's a biohack. Fasting for people who shouldn't be fasting. So they'll use preliminary research on chimpanzees or rats and slap that over into a human model to this unfat, uneducated person who, or sorry, I should say overfat, uneducated person who just sees it as like GH improvements and longevity, yet they're in metabolic disruption. That's the worst thing for them, right? Those are two examples. Another one that's getting a lot more play, which I'm a little bit concerned about is psychedelics or nootropics, simply due to the fact that I think 99.8% of most humans don't even have a real great concept of consciousness or reality.

And so what they get in that is an extension beyond what they have as a great base of support, and they fall in love with this supra-conscious level, yet they're running from what they don't have as a base support. 100%. So with people who do have, which I'm saying is a very small amount, very small amount, have that really great consciousness, they may actually be leaders amongst us, actually, who could get to that supra-conscious level and share stories about what we should do in a non-drug-dependent state that helps us become more conscious.

Absolutely. So there's lots of positives to that, but I think there's maybe 30 people that should actually be allowed to do it and then just speak to us in languages, but don't sell those mushrooms to people who don't have a great base of support. That's really cool.

Like they can't, you know, not to berate it, but they can't fucking, you know, navigate in life. And so if you can't navigate in life, this is just an extract of something that you're running away from what you can't navigate, which you're responsible for, right? So, and of course that can get weird and uncomfortable, but that's where I draw the line on that.

And I see it being a lot more prevalent i'm a little concerned about it because it's crazy right now it's accepted drug use basically i went to austin yeah for paleo fx and it was just like common conversation amongst everybody and it's the first time we ever like heard of it and it was just everywhere yeah i'm with you 100 though on the you're not trying to you don't want to escape anything right so like for for the people that are playing around with that i've always thought that um if you like you said already have that great base and you have that great connection everything and then it's like okay well let's see what this does and i think that plays back to fitness as well right like

you don't want to just jump in and well how long is it going to last how long is what going to last anything that you do that's a hack you you could ask that question. Yeah, exactly. Is this just to help you for six months? No, I really like it. Oh, so you're going to do it forever? So what are you hacking? You know, we just believe that, like, all of a sudden, you know, children will be born in, like, three months, not nine months.

Right? We're laughing at it, but it's like, fuck, if you were to cut yourself in 1600, you don't repair yourself faster today than you did in 1600. But we believe that we do. Bio and hack can't even be a word. It actually makes no sense. And that's where it squeezes on the side

of artificial intelligence and reality and what that is. And we'll probably get to that point where we're slightly human and slightly non-human and that's when we can probably have the real conversation on a hack because that's the truest hack is that we get built up to the system and we're hacked

from intelligence from bits and bytes and it for sure all comes down to taking the shortcut again. You know what I mean? How can I biohack my way to this instead of just actually putting in the real work? For sure. Exercise can be used as a – I was an adrenaline junkie too. I know what that is like.

So exercise can be used as a biohack. People do exercise to get cortisol to get themselves through the day. Cortisol is an anti-inflammatory, high mental acute, you know, kind of activity. So if people need to exercise, you know, to like stay vital, that's a problem, but that's a biohack, right? Because eventually you got to say, well, how long will this last? And it ends up in being challenging to the organs over time. Pre-workouts is a biohack. So people can't actually do the task imposed. They need to get to a super level of mental acuity or cell volumization, you know, prior to doing the activity.

Again, you got to ask, well, how long is that going to last? And what happens when you really need to have it and you don't have it? Yeah. Right. And you're not connected to your thing, you know, are you going to have less connection? So just lots of examples of it. What do you think about the red light thing that everyone's going on to right now? Red light therapy for recovery?

Yeah. No, not that one. What is that called again, the red light therapy? It's bothering me right now. There's a name for it. I don't know, but I've heard of it in rehabilitative assessing. I never heard of it for that. Red light or laser therapy is done for

red laser that's it yeah for tendon disruption and things like that no not that but we're talking about

people changing bulbs into red lights have you seen this no at Paleo FX it was a huge thing it was a big booth people were saying that

they're changing all the lights in their house now to red light because the blue light is yeah that's fair toxic yeah exactly especially like being in an office setting just like we are right now under the LED lights all day light because the blue light is toxic.

Yeah, exactly. Especially like being like in an office setting just like we are right now under like the LED lights like all day. Yeah. Changes like melatonin levels and blah and like all this. Yeah. You know, that could, if it takes an overall, you know, if it takes an overall stress away from the human, I think that's a little bit different. You're kind of pulling out and you're taking like shitty carpet out of your home and not

bad paint and not using deodorant, you know, that those are good. Those are just good basic principles. I think, I think you're working away from a hack, but you know, we really need to say though, um, just based upon the red light thing, cause it's, that can carry over to foods and you use paleo effects as example. I mean, we have these large organizations and movements, um, and we forget to simply ask the question, like, what happened to humans? Like, why can't we eat some gluten or drink a few beers and not get the shit kicked out of us? Yeah. And I think, just think overall, humans are less resilient. And we're using all these ideas,

what we see, which people get failures on. We're like, oh, that's the culprit. Gluten's the culprit. It's like, gluten's not the fucking culprit. You're's the culprit. It's like gluten's not the fucking culprit. Yeah. You're a week. Allergy. I just know it wants to talk about it. Wasn't a thing. Yeah. You know what I mean? And now resistance to antibiotics, et cetera, et cetera. But it's, I mean, I think we need to real look and that's why we love fitness, right? Cause we know fitness creates more robustness in people, right? Stronger immune system. And if it's done effectively, it wards off all that shit. We hear all the stories, right? Clients like, oh man, you know, improve my fitness. Now I can go do these things. Yeah. Right. Um, and it's simply because they're, they're more resilient humans

and you just feel better. But we shouldn't pick on the, the et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. You know, maybe you're just, you know, weaker. I think it's really cool to draw that line in between, you know, the biohack and just healthy living in general. You know, like changing your light bulbs and stuff actually helps you be better and take some stressors away. You're navigating better in this place. For sure. Yeah. I actually want to jump into what you mentioned with the pre-workout and just supplements in general.

And then maybe we can go down that rabbit hole a little bit as well too. Yeah, for sure. I stopped taking pre-workout like a long, long time ago. I was taking it in college and then after that never again. I've always had insane jitters and then just crashes afterwards. So yeah it facilitates an overreaching state. Yeah so let's talk about that a little bit and then every now and then I'll do like a black coffee as a pre-workout so maybe you can jump into that that's a good thing bad thing whatever you think. Yeah. Anything that, uh, you know, cause I guess coffee would be some more of a stimulant too, that takes you out of your normalcy, you know,

and, uh, I drink coffee. So as an, you know, as an excerpt to that, um, I used to be, we're on the topic of supplementation, um, you know, coming out of university, yes, please. Yeah. Coming to university, you know, our only knowledge on what supplementation was was being pushed from the bodybuilding industry. You know, so Muscle Media 2000 and Dan DeShane, Amor DePasquale, guys that I would follow back in the day. I mean, they were still into hormone use as well, but supplements were like the big thing out there. If you remember T Nation and the start of, what's his name, Bill and his brother that started that body transformation way back in the 90s. Anyway, supplements were big then. And, you know, when I was first seeing it, I was like, these things are the fucking answer.

You know, like HMB and DHEA off the shelf and creatine. And like, holy shit, you know, you get to try this stuff and you do it incorrectly and correctly and fucking tried everything. But it's because at the time it was like, we were sold, right? Remember I was a coach in fitness. We were sold on this notion that these are the answers, right? So it basically was almost a fast track back in the day. Um, and so I got really deep into it, deep into it to a point where I followed other people who pushed it really heavy too, and started believing in this idea that these supplements will fix, you know, everything. Right.

And then I got deep into those, you know, the practice of it. I had like at one point I think like my wife will remember but like $15,000 worth of inventory in this little closet next to my office. Yeah. Right. But I was pushing that shit heavy so every client that would come through be doing body composition measurements and nutritional lifestyle and program design they'd also be leaving with some form of supplements right and then I started recognizing with data like body fat scores general fitness etc you know you get to look at you know so many different people making improvements and changes and whatnot and I saw that for those really that

did not do any supplementation or just had, you know, basic shit in order, they were getting just the same results and no different. And even the folks that we like said, this is the answer. These supplements are the answer. They really didn't make massive improvements on general health measures and all those other scores. Right. So it takes time for you to recognize you're like, yeah, we're pushing the ship. We have fucking no idea why we're pushing it. Right. And that would be everything. You know, I'll give you an idea that it wasn't just, you know, a vitamin mineral supplement here and there was everything. Yeah. And so then I became super interested in saying, well, what the fuck does work and what is supplementation? So I followed my doctor around, Dr. Jeff Drabot, who I met in 2001. And he's a

naturopathic medical doctor. And every couple of weekends, he'd be going traveling the world to these conferences to learn about, you know, what they were giving as their medicine, basically, right? Like, how do you give out these supplements to people? And here's all the research and whatever. And I just followed him around and recognized it was way outside of my scope. And that there's a lot of political innuendos inside of supplementation, just like there is inside of medicine. So it's two of the same areas, really. But a lot of them did have some positivity, due to the fact that people didn't have access to great food anymore, and soil erosion and changes in the environment. And a lot fucking people were stressed out. Right? So, you know, that would just give you indications right there, what you probably could focus on in a broad base support, something that doesn't necessarily mean

to be supplementation because it could just be breathing, but something that focuses on stress management, something that focuses on micronutrients or the balance of that, and something that focuses on the microflora because of those three things that we just see in humans today, right? We don't get quality foods, fucking soil changes, accessibility, whatnot. And we probably don't have those quality of foods as we did in their 17,000 different iterations of them. And you probably need to have some support for stress and what the fuck is happening today. And so many people trying to keep up with the Joneses. So I learned all that and recognized it was way out of my league, but started, you know, with Dr. Drabot making supplements. So then I got to see the background of making supplements, right? So we had like a liver supplement, adrenal, multivitamin, amino acid, post-workout,

et cetera, et cetera. And that was just really cool because you got to see first, you know, cost margins, et cetera, et cetera. So back full circle, I'll tell you that, um, it, you need to have a real good analysis and a great assessment with an individual before you want to prescribe anything. Um, that's, that's not just foodstuffs. Um, and so if I would not have told you that 10 years ago, I probably would have said like, these are the three basics and folks should really be interested in that. But I saw so many iterations now where I was just trying to be smart and trying to look like I knew what I was talking about. And by thinking I was leveling up by it because I was offering supplements and using it or taking or giving it to someone to the point

where I think possibly we could be erring on the side of caution or unsafety by just loosely saying, ah, four grams of fish oil a day is going to be a good balance for you. And I've seen so many different human iterations from testing and Dr. Drabot's stuff and some of our coaches that test that, that it really is super individualized. And if you slightly squeak in the wrong direction, you may be unfolding some things inside, especially when it gets to the adrenal stuff and, you know, working on the cells and anything that's a false energy source, you know, even massive amounts of B vitamin or amino acids, for example, that people just loosely throw out, but that could start changing physiology to,

to get you into that overreaching state. So sorry, I don't have like the top five you're probably looking for, but that's what led to my story on it is that i you know more so today i kind of push it to medicine and say you probably need to get some really good advice but this is the fucking ironic thing is that well i guess it's 90 percent of people could honestly just fucking sleep better yeah or drink water or chew their fucking food and it would take care of a lot of those problems that they're looking for in a supplementation to fix it if that makes sense absolutely so if i was um an athlete out there maybe just even a regular person who doesn't have um an opex or it's not

in your system right now what are some tests that i can get done at a doctor's office or wherever to test exactly those things that you've mentioned? Yeah, you may not be able to get a test at a quote-unquote doctor's office. There's functional diagnostics that you can do now, and that can be done online with some people. FDN is a program by Reed Davis that, you know, they coach coaches on what to look for in those basic tests, which would be urine, saliva, blood, and an array of different things. And I would go that route.

If there's something they wanted to investigate, the Dutch test or dried urine specimen test is a good one, DUTCH. You could just research that. And we got our practitioners here in Arizona. I'm sure they'd love to hear from folks who are interested in doing the testing on it. Awesome.

And just do your research on it. I know Chris Kresser has different versions of some testing too that he's been advocating to get people into that area of like, well, what we need to look at really that's going to be a good base support. And I enjoy that because at least it's asking a little bit more investigation on what should be, you know. I have one that I'm really interested in. A lot of people are getting these home kits that tell you what you're allergic to,

food-wise, like your, what is it, food allergies. Yeah. What do you think of these things? Yeah, there's still more work to be done on it, you know. What they may be just getting presented in the data is like a food stuff that they've been getting somewhat of an inflammation on for a period of time. Or it could also be an immune response based upon their trajectory in time.

Like they may have had an overabundance of shitty dairy when they were like 3 to 19 years old, like someone like myself. And so casein and other things are going to come up in my system simply because I eat shit dairy and had way too much of it, you know, for 16 years. So does that fundamentally mean that that's a really shitty thing to stay away from? Well, if I do stay away from, I actually feel better. So that's some of the things you can extract from it. But just remember that based upon retesting, we've seen that people pull those things out and then they go back to that same test over time, and it doesn't show up anymore. So what does that tell you?

It tells you that, you know, you've got to have the basics, fucking variety in food, go with high quality, and maybe it won't cause a stress to the system. But someone could come in with those tests, be completely anxious, fried, and working their ass off in training, and present with all these inflammatory things. And it's fucking got nothing to do with the food. It's got to do with them not being able to absorb it and break it down. So everything's a fucking invader. So when you get the test, they're like, oh, Ryan, fucking almonds.

Almonds is my problem. That's what my problem is. Like, almonds is not your problem, man. Four hours of sleep a night and you're a junkie for fitness, six cups of coffee today, that's your problem. And calming down the nervous system and all those things. Yeah, but there is some good tests. MRT is a mediated response test that you can do. So they're getting better with those.

They're looking at like just call it a deeper level of understanding as to what's happening with your, you know, nervous system and foodstuffs and how they kind of interact. So I wouldn't disregard it. They're getting stronger. When you think about the adrenal test where you put the saliva. Yeah. The Dutch test is the best one for that now because that's a dried urine specimen for 24 hours. So it not only gives you an indication as to what's happening with those hormones that are important to look at, but it also looks over a big period of time, and it looks at different metabolites of each of those hormones. So not only what you're producing at a specific amount, which the old saliva test would do, the four points during the day,

there's just upgraded versions of that now that would give you a little bit more information. Okay, Dutch test, I remember that one. Yeah, for sure. Since we're on the food topic now as well, and you mentioned this, we had Mike in here earlier. He mentioned it. I saw a couple of your athletes actually posted about this way earlier. It's the whole chewing thing. Yeah.

You guys are big on that. Yeah. So go into that a little bit, if you don't mind, just what the chewing, your food actually can do for you. Yeah, well, you know, it's actually – The biohack. The biohack. Yeah, it actually – it's like Matthew Walker's interview on Joe Rogan a couple weeks ago. People were like, do you hear about this fucking sleeping thing, man? You fucking sleep eight hours.

You're going to live longer. You're going to feel good. I was like, that fucking blows my mind that we're talking about that. It's the same thing for chewing. Right, totally. It's so simple. It's just one of those things that just we float by. We just keep forgetting that it's not – obviously obviously it's not like just the chewing, right?

There's so many things around that. Number one, to try to get into a parasympathetic state when you're trying to break down foods, right? So, you know, it can't be a visual, but if you're, you know, putting food stuff in and like inside you're like this, right? From something that just happened or shit you got to do or fucking stuff you're flipping through on Instagram. Or you have to leave in five minutes or – Yeah. Yeah. You're not digesting that food well.

Now, of course, with that statement, people are like, well, how the fuck do you know? What are you measuring that can dictate you're not – and I don't have that. I don't have that. So it's, you know, why chew? Well, why not? That's really the thing that you should be looking at. And if your argument is, well, I'll, you know, get things done quicker and et cetera, et cetera, most case you're going to end up with those kind of inflammatory food results. You're not going to be digesting your food well.

Your system is working harder to break the food down. But we know all the positives of it. You know, the smell starts activating shit in your body that can help in digestion. When you're chewing your food and breaking it down to small pieces, digestion starts in your mouth. So it starts to surround it with shit that's going to help break it down and get through your system. You want to pull out all those great nutrients that you're spending

all that fucking money on for good food. You want to enjoy it. And so we just say simple things like, you know, put your fork down, have conversation during meals, chew your food quite a bit. And we think that's one of the big, you know, things that we can impact folks with because it creates a more consciousness around breaking their foods down. And so simple too. I mean, everybody can do that. Yeah. It's a little challenging at first. And my, my question would be, you know, what's the hurry again? So people are like, well, I don't have time, you know, to break down food.

Well, you don't have time to get better, you know, or live longer. How many chews or how long are we talking about for a mouthful? Yeah, we just use a terminology like 32 chew because people remember it, right? But is there something different between 31 and 32? No, it's not. You know, you just need to break because, I mean, think about a strawberry, right? You're not going to chew a strawberry 32 times. But you want to get to the point where you're breaking it down

so that your body is having a really easy time of absorbing it. And then so you can think in your mind, right, just think about foodstuffs like, you know, fucking trees and nuts, which people could be big on a big raw diet kick. You know, that's going to end up in having a big gut rot or an issue with your immune system and your digestive tract because that's really hard to break down. Anything raw. So if you do have that, yeah, well, if you do eat anything raw,

you have to chew that shit really well. Okay. Really well, which is possible. But I would say if you're not getting those nuts or seeds, for example, down to like a butter, or if you're not breaking those trees down, i.e. like raw kale really effectively, that stuff's coming out through your ass. It is. Love it.

And you're probably not going to be using all that beneficial things that are inside of it. Definitely. Yeah, I think that's cool. Wow. That's something to think about. What do you think about juicing then when people, when they, because I know when you juice something, it does change like the glycemic index of it. Like it does change like the, you know, everything about it.

So what do you think about something like that? Yeah, well, I won't sound like a hypocrite in that I used a lot of different kinds of juices for people when I started giving them exercise prescriptions because they didn't fundamentally have the time to sit down for 90 minutes at their morning time for breakfast. And so they would blend up, you know, fats, ground flax, dark berries, whey protein, and maybe a couple of other things. And I would get them to like sip it, but chew it as they did it. Right. And I actually got okay results from that. Sometimes too, I want to caveat is that I was replacing a shit breakfast, right? So I don't want to sound like that was the answer. But and I also just wanted to point out that I did prescribe it a lot. And juicing can mean multiple different things, right?

But I would assume that if you're going to blend that stuff up and it's at a good temperature and you're still chewing as you're basically absorbing it, I can see it being beneficial all the while recognizing what's the big picture, right? If someone's juicing because they think it's like going to save them from cancer or if they're juicing because they want to lose weight, then obviously, you know, juicing may be okay, but you're probably doing it for the wrong reasons. But I think as an excerpt in someone's dietary profile, I think it may be okay as long as we stick to the side of, you know, real high nutrient density and low sugar.

It's just not the same as chewing though, right? No, no. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, no, no, no. Yeah, so good question. I would still get people to like squish it around in their mouth and still create some, you know, and even some companies have done that with supplements where they put like little bits of food inside of their supplements and post-workout supplements, which is a good idea because it makes people chew.

Oh, wow, that's a good idea. I'm going to hit a super cool segue right now. I'm going to go from juicing to juicing. In the fitness realm, especially in the CrossFit realm, I mean, taking steroids has been such a huge topic, and then we had Ricky Gerard after the games last year with

the whole SARMS incident. Yeah, that's too bad. Yeah, and a lot of people are bad. I was cheering for him. I know, he's a cool guy. Actually, I met him in Grid and I don't know the history of what he was doing at that time, but I thought he was quite special in Grid.

And to see him get into CrossFit and do well was kind of exciting. I still don't think he deserved all that negative press just from Sarms. There's people doing way worse things than that in my opinion, but go ahead, finish up. Yeah. And that's, that's basically the question I was going to ask is there's a lot of people, especially outside of CrossFit, they're like, oh, they're all, they're all on the gas. They're all on the gym. It's like everybody's using, everybody is this, right? What is your, I mean, you've worked with a lot of athletes and obviously you don't have to mention any names, but what has been your experience with with that yeah i think we're we'd be naive to say that any sport is not going

to be you know sport is folly right so just really think about what are people getting out of sport you know just ask that fundamental question and then you know if you can't cheat it's probably not a sport yeah and uh and that kind of sounds weird coming from myself, but a sport is folly and sport is entertainment. So we can't be so naive to think that people are not going to try whatever they can to raise maximal physical potential. Especially once prize money gets involved. And if that stuff is accessible, right, if that stuff is accessible, like Coke was in 1910 for cyclists or heroin, you know,

which was accessible, or nicotine or, you know, IV methods of putting shit in your body to climb up mountains, people are going to try what they can within those realms to make it happen. So I think we just have to recognize and not be so naive to think, you know, that there's a special sport out there that's not going to have that involved in it, right? For sure. First and foremost.

Because then it doesn't, like, make it, you know, we're not classifying what is right and what is wrong because it's not really a have that involved in it, right? For sure. First and foremost. Because then it doesn't make it, we're not classifying what is right and what is wrong because it's not really a moral thing in my question. I think it's an individualism thing. But if you want to do that, you've got to pay the price. And we can't be dumb to think that it's not happening. And yeah, that's just the way it goes. It's, it's, it's always, it's always unfortunate. And I think to be honest about the system to CrossFit, I think they're, they're doing

the best job they can. Right. But I do think it's unfortunate of the outsider's perspective on how hard the athletes work. I tried to be vocal somewhat shape or form online but you just get into like YouTube is just fucking madness is chaos to kind of get into that but I think it's really unfortunate that there's that what you said that slap tone on top of everyone being like that and they all must be that exactly and those are generally coming from people who are weak and have never really done anything yeah really no to be completely honest and have never really done anything. Yeah. Really.

I'll be completely honest. Anyone who's really done anything or worked their ass off is probably not going to be the first person that speaks up and makes those comments. So they're either trying to get a play in the market or trying to sound popular or just like stick it to someone to get some vibes happening. Most times, you know, take this the right way. They're not smart enough to do it. Secondly, it's costly. And then third, you know, there's really not, from my perspective anyways, from what I know about physiology and that usage, it's not fundamentally going to be a massive

difference in work capacity long term. That's probably a long story to get how that happens. But when you change, you know, hormones inside and you have a new chassis, the new chassis takes a long time to develop. All of the neural inputs and cell usage and ATP usage at each cell, et cetera, et cetera, that takes a long time to develop. Like I'm talking years and years and years to develop. So unless someone like creates that exogenous hormone usage for eight years, right. And then quote unquote goes clean. And then two years later starts to participate in the sport. That's, that's a possibility where you may get some, you know, actual great results for their max potential. But if you're just inside the system and you're probably using it because you're

not reaching your max potential or you're something you're missing, quote unquote, then it just, you know, you're going to suffer because your body has to work in coordination with what you're giving it naturally from the tasks that are in front of you. Which is when injuries happen. What's that? Which is usually when injuries

happen. Of course. Yeah. Because you're working outside of your means right your brain is your body is like i have this and your brain's like you can't do that but your body's like oh yes you can yeah because it gives it gives feedback loops that are different right so you can just imagine how many repetitions especially within the sport is required to like learn all that stuff um which you guys know it takes a lot of reps to get good at that right yeah for sure and so um so i really don't think that fundamentally is probably helping. In indirect ways, you know, just basic principles, it would help recovery tremendously.

I was going to say, that's usually like every professional athlete's first thing is like, I didn't use it to get better. I used it for recovery. I go to, I have 100 baseball games a year or this or that. Yes. So there's no doubt it would help a recovery. Um, except it's not studied enough. And this is where, again, I would say that it's probably, it may help in recovery, but I think the downside of what it's doing for the lack of connection to your metabolic output is probably not worth it.

Okay. You know what I mean? Like, so you're going to recover better, but you're also going to be building a better chassis. That takes a really long time. To get used to. To get used to. So I just don't, we don't know enough. You know, we don't know enough yet. There's probably some supplements off the shelf that are actually doing some of those things, right, that are making some great improvements.

So it may take us a long period of time where we say, we got this five-year study on mixed modal fitness, and this is what the supplementation regime was, and this is what we saw in the output, and it could come back to just milk, you know, chocolate milk or something. Yeah, that'd be great. Now, for someone like me, who I'm not competing, I'm not in any sport, I'm not getting tested, I'm not doing anything, I just like to work out and I want to look good, right? And we were talking to Mike about this too. Kind of like the, if you look at the graph and you kind of got longevity and you kind of got fitness over here and they over cross at one point. Do you think if done correctly, there's any benefit for the average Joe to be on steroids? Yeah. If, cause, well, I've seen it in a medical state. It's not that I prescribed it, but you end

up having people fall in front of you who fall into that category, just what you'd prescribed or described. And in most cases, those individuals have gotten there for unfortunate reasons. Okay. So I'll give you some examples of a human that goes to war that fundamentally at 21 years of age shouldn't see things for a couple of years or do things for a couple of years that they're really not capable for their prefrontal cortex of handling. Okay. And I'll just keep that loose for an idea. But a lot of those young men come out in a hypogonadal state based upon them trying to derive.

What does that mean exactly? Shit's just not working effectively. Okay. Okay. And it's not because they had to be so resilient to put up with what was going on. They had to continue to recover and rebuild all the time way too frequently. So when you get put back into a regular situation, you just don't have the pieces to like function.

Right. So you're 29. Right. And you can't get an erection and your vitality is low. Your mental acuity is off and you're slightly depressed. Yeah. You know, fishing for your own salmon and living in the woods is not going to help that. It possibly could, but it's not going to help it. So there is advances in science. It, you know, you use the word steroids, let's just call it like vitamins and minerals and amino acids. Okay.

Because that's basically just what it is, just different forms of it. We just create different namings of it. But it's just supplementation to basically get those people back to like functioning. Yeah, back to baseline. Back to baseline. Let's take another situation. So you may have an American football player, right, who's made a great career, who still has the pieces working upstairs and has got money in the bank and is 10 years finished to 34 years of age.

And I can fucking guarantee you he's not like running around with his kids in three years, right? So, you know, who are we to decide what kind of things that are available for medicine that's going to help that person? So I can give you – and then there's more and more examples of that. But you got to come back to the points like how did you get there? That's why I say with unfortunate means, right? So if you come in at 32, you're like, I'm over fat. I'm fucking stressed out, et cetera, et cetera. I want this to get more fit.

You probably don't need that. What you do need is to get your shit together to recognize the base support that's required to build up. And if you're fit, resilient, young, and you just want to do that shit, I would hope you're doing it for money or professional means. And then all the fucking power to you, man. You're just going to need some medical advice over time to make sure that you're managing those things. I see it as a different light now. I was 18. It was like, oh, that's bad shit. At 26, you know, looking at anti-aging back at the time or traveling around with my doctor and seeing what people were doing, like in a medical profession, they were helping fucking thousands of people. Like I'm talking like giving them new lives.

Yeah. So who the fuck are we to decide and classify steroids in that arena when it's like one-fiftieth of the total amount that a bodybuilder was using? Yet it improved this person's life forever? Like, I don't know. You can see there's a place for everything then inside of it. So then there's a slight gray area. Back to your point. It's like, well, where does that area lie? And it's gray. It's not black and and white but there is circumstances where it's very beneficial

obviously in a medically supported situation um but you know unfortunately in most cases it's a default method that's an awesome answer man thank you i like that i also like that he kind of pointed out that by taking it it's not going to create an athlete that isn't already on that path of becoming super great. Like it's not, I think a lot of people really underestimate that. They're just like, oh, like he's on steroids. That's why he's, that's why Matt Fraser is on steroids. Yeah, and we need to criticize those people is what I'm saying. We need to criticize those bad ideas.

And you're fraudulent if you're not criticizing those bad ideas. Because we believe in hard work that gets people to high performance. And so we need to speak up and berate that. You can't allow people just to have that conversation. Number one, we don't fucking care about what Matt Fraser thinks about that. He's probably strong enough to not give a shit. But we care about it in terms of the integrity of what we hold true, which is hard work. And so I really think that's unfair, which is your point.

I think it's unfair that people could slap that on top of an unknown new sport. Yeah. Right? Especially with the females, right? Like they get hit a lot, and I'm far more empathetic, you know. A lot of males can possibly take it, but for females that's – Take all the meaning and respect basically out of the hard work. Exactly.

They don't know how many hours they need. You don't see the background stuff that people put in, right? What is it exactly about females and their genetic makeup that lets them create more muscle mass and faster, I think, than men? I think it's actually been studied, right? Their cross-sectional muscle fiber

area is just better than ours. Yeah, well, same in the lower body, but different, like, makeup. You just gotta go back to evolutionary means of the differences, right? And hopefully we're not going to get into that unsafe territory of conversation. But I think it's that females generally have a lower neuromuscular efficiency because it's a neuroendocrine response, right, in fitness. So whatever contractions you do, you know, your chassis, as I described, it is different, right? I mean, there could be some little gray areas in between there, but most cases females have a lot less

testosterone, right? So anabolic drive is led by neural drive. And so when they do all of these moderate weight, high repetition, high volume activity, I think it does give them a growth hormone response that's higher than what you're going to get in a male. Because a male has a higher propensity to burning out due to the neuroendocrine response every time we do contractions. That's simply a penis and vagina thing. That's just different. And so you can just see it with practice as well, which I think leads to that larger increase in lean mass. I think there's a lot of other factors that go into that as well. Secondarily, one area that I have philosophically on it is that when, you know, these females have a burning desire to get better at what they're participating in. And like you can see with young gymnasts or, let me see, like hockey players in their lower body, you know, you will morph into what's required in the sport, right?

So if you come into the sport and you don't have that carriage in the upper body, you will morph into what's required in the sport, right? So if you come into the sport and you don't have that carriage in the upper body, you will do whatever is fucking necessary to morph into jack traps and a big scap and terrace minor that's now the size of a fist because you have to maintain all the contractions that are within that sport. So there's something about that too that the brain says, okay, I have to be able to do that. I need to grow and create that size in order to do it. So I think there's a physiological representation that causes that. And I also think there's an emotional thing that they know they need to be able to do in order to be able to, you know.

And if you get that plus a cultural thing, which is what's happening with the Icelandic girls, you get a fucking juggernaut. That's a juggernaut. Definitely. Which I think is, I have an interesting thought process on that. Culturally, they really changed, let's just call it gender equity in regards to politics and business way back in the 90s. There was a big upheaval in terms of what was, you know, perspective over there. And so they created these massive changes in really what was happening in culture for the differences in the gender. And so if you just formulate an idea on that, you know, those are moms now that are breeding.

You can see where I'm going with this, right? Because when you watch those girls participate, you know, there's something different in their eyes than I see from a number of other females that I work with. You can see it in the odd person, you know, every now and then, but they have something deep in their bones, like deep cultural, you know, stuff that I think just makes them rise up amongst others. And I think it may have been some of those cultural shifts back in the nineties that really makes a big impact on that because we forget about that because you can ask the question like you know of course we need like 30 or 40 years of it but you know you didn't have to look too far to recognize that rich froning where he was from and what was being happening down there there's something different about about that right i don't i don't want to

like get into what it is or maybe i don or maybe I can't even put my hand on it but there's something different it's like the grunt work factor we even got to be careful of what we're calling it but I'm telling you there's something different about that and it'll take us a long while to kind of see it back to back

but there's probably some pieces within Matt and Rich that we could extract and go hmm that's interesting it's just that with the islamic girls we're seeing it like in a small little area um and we're just so robust over here on this side maybe we're not seeing it but i love it because it's such a it's like almost like a third approach like people always talk about just your body and what you're physically able to do then you got like people that are saying oh it's just in your dna like you know what i mean

like he was born like this he's just strong and now i like this it's like the third one where it's like it's the cultural response to whatever you were brought up to do yeah that's that's like so deeply rooted inside of you that it comes out in those stress situations like how do you deal with losing yeah right and we know with champions they fucking hate that right they hate anything they love play, right? And finding solutions to movements, right? And they'll just find, they'll just play all the time. And it looks like Mac cons and intervals and shit, but it's really just play and they can find solutions to move better than other people, but they hate losing. And they may not present that in a podcast

or tell people about it, but it's a burning desire inside or that like what we consider heart of a lion or, you know, that kind of thing that it's really hard touch and grasp. And I'm sure if you guys spoke to them, you can kind of get a little piece of it. If you poke them enough, you'll, yeah, it'll come out. It does. Yeah. And that's, that's admirable. Absolutely. You know, cause I think we all like to have a piece of that in us sometimes and maybe we see it in a work at every now and then. And we're like, yeah, good job. It's so hard to teach too and it just comes out. It is.

So back to your point, you know, maybe understanding that it could be a little bit of a cultural thing could be a good understanding. Yeah. And it can lead us into practices of how do we develop that in other people. And I think that brings us full circle again too to you talking about having that relationship with your athlete and knowing those little things about their background to maybe be able to like push those buttons. Yeah. In the right setting. Yeah, because if you figure out their why, you'll recognize that a lot of people are not doing it to get to the games. There's a lot of deeper pieces underneath it,

and then just the journey in fitness becomes something that's just quite special then when they figure out why they're doing it. Absolutely, yeah. You want to do like a 10-minute just random questions? Okay. Like a little just shoot the shit? Yeah. Okay. You could just like –

I was going to say usually it's like three questions that take place in 90 seconds, but 10 minutes of random – No, it doesn't have to be 10 minutes. It doesn't have to be 10 minutes. We'll do something – yeah. We could be done in three minutes. I don't know. It depends on how many things.

I'll say something and then you can say something. We'll go back and forth. And you don't have to like go into depth on these answers at all. Okay. It could just be something super – I got it. Thank you. Super depends on how many things. I'll say something, and then you can say something. We'll go back and forth. And you don't have to go into depth on these answers at all. It could just be something super shallow. I've always wanted to know. I know what's coming. I'm so excited. Let's say the CrossFit Games are tomorrow.

Should I have sex with my girlfriend before? The morning of? The morning of. Or should we not do it for a whole week or a whole month because i know back in the day in the olympics like they didn't do it for like a year going into it like just crazy things yeah i'd like to just debunk that i'd say do it do it a couple times it's you know and it's probably an assessment outside of a dampening but i do really think physiologically that we are there's different humans that partake in our sport.

And the whole, you know, you stimulated you theory and, you know, power potential and work capacity, that's all different in our sport. And so we have to think like, you know, the model in the sport is different than any model that's been done. So any white paper evidence or, you know, it's like, oh, they didn't have sex for a year before. Yeah, but what was their sport? Oh, lifting a weight? It's a little different. You know, so I'm not saying it's massively different, but the organism that goes into that competition, I would believe, needs to be as dampened as possible.

You can't be as excited. You need to be dampened. Right. Calm. Yeah. So, well, dampened in multiple different ways. So your nervous system needs to be in a great state. I can see your face right now. You can to be dampened. Right. Calm. Yeah. So, well, dampen in multiple different ways. So your nervous system needs to be in a great state. You can't be jazzed up. I can see your face right now. You can't be jazzed up.

So, I mean, not that we have lots of evidence on it, but I would say do it a couple times. I like it. I'm in the port-a-potty now. Yeah, exactly. I gotta go back to Reynolds again just so I can try it. Right before. Alright, I got one. How about smoking weed? There's a lot of, like, big athletes. We were talking about Usain Bolt yesterday, Michael Phelps big athletes. You say, we were talking about you said yesterday,

Michael Phelps that, you know, they have been known to smoke weed and a great, especially like aerobic capacity as well. Do you have any experience with that? I don't have enough experience to say personally what it would have an effect on like my own performance. Yeah. And just college age playing around with hash oil or just experimenting with marijuana as a young kid to kind of, oh, that's kind of interesting.

But I never really got it in practice to say, oh, this is what could affect. Notwithstanding, there's been, I guess, some pros and cons to it in usage for people in fitness. And some of the cons would be that it becomes a dependent thing for individuals. So they're using it as a dependency to create a parasympathetic environment or calming down effect or, you know, whatnot. And again, it goes back to my same conversation is that if you don't have the base support for it, I really don't think using it is going to create massive increases in aerobic capacity or changes in that. I would argue the fact that if anyone's using it and they make that statement, they were already elite at a certain level,

and they're basically just using it for different reasons because of whatever it takes. But it's not resulting in an increase in performance because they are using it, if that makes sense. Totally. Fair enough. I hear people say all the time, like, you're going to trash your nervous system, like if you do, like, a 100 max deadlift, which is true. Well, that depends upon training age. I was going to say, so when people are throwing this term around,

like your CNS is shot or this or that, can we like, let's say I did trash it. How would I trash it? How would I not trash it depending on my age? And then like if I did, how long would it take me to recover? Yeah, so in simple terms, the closer you get to your maximal physical potential, which means, you know, a lot of years of training, then the higher opportunity you have to reach that maximum threshold as to what you're talking about. So let's just take, you know, 20 years of practice. You're in a good state of health, right?

And you're doing a strength training program and you build to a max. You may take weeks and possibly months to recover from that max in what you just described in that deadlift. But we've got to realize that it's not a trashing, right? It's a stress that you emotionally have had to overcome. Because the limitations in someone doing that max at that point is not like new knee sleeves and a better wrist strap, right? It's fucking smelling salts and a kick in a kick in the balls or slap on the traps, which means that your central nervous system is the limiter in you lifting that weight after 20 years of experience. So if you overcome that, you need to take a big fucking break from it. So let's go back through every iteration backwards of that, right? If you're one year into training, there's no such thing as trash in your nervous system because you can't even express maximal expression of the nervous system.

So when people say they feel trashed, it could be just hearsay or just drama, basically. And the greatest indication is when can you go back and do it again? And your brain will always tell you that. So if they're like, oh, I'm trashed, but the next day you're like, oh, fuck, let's try this again. They do it again. They're probably seeing us probably wasn't trashed because you will have indications of not being able to do it no matter what or it will create injury. I'm not saying people should be stupid enough to get that. So training age dictates where people can get on their maximal potential,

and in most cases we throw that word around. I know where your question is coming from. I feel like it's thrown around way too much. It's thrown around way too much, and it's generally due to probably drama and people making folks want to think that they're really working hard. But unless they're measuring it, you know, then it's probably going to be a false sense. Yeah. Whatever happened to the Olympic team or, like, the Team USA that you were putting together?

Is that still a thing? Yeah, the IF3. Yeah. Yeah, that's a real thing. We have a goal of putting functional fitness in the Olympics for 2028 as being our big goal when it's in L.A. And it's known that L.A. is going to be hosting. That's still almost 100% in line. But, yeah, we have a long-term vision of having some governance around the sport.

More importantly, recognition of the athlete and the coach, allowing people to recognize that this could be something that you can grow up to do and want to become as an amateur level or do it full time, you know. And, you know, grow it to a sport that becomes well respected. And people look from the outside in and go, wow, you know, that's fascinating. And what do I do to get involved either as a coach or an athlete or a spectator? And it's well understood and people know what it entails. And, yeah, we want to build that. So we're, you know, heavily involved in that. IF3 is a name.

We now have 53 countries that are interested, 17 that are designated. Wow, cool. And we have to get to around 40 to get to the table with the IOC to be respected for sport governance and start creating. 2028, huh? Our world championships. That sounds exciting.

Yeah, sorry, bud. Our world championships. The first event is way too long, too. It doesn't have a yoke in running. The longer the event, the better, I swear. We have the World Championships in London in October.

We're pretty excited to bring out a bunch of new things and have countries represented it. We're looking to build it. Pretty damn excited about that, so thanks for asking. That's awesome. I'm super excited about that. I remember I emailed you about that and I wanted to come out but it was literally like i had to buy the ticket and like like that day and i was like oh colorado i just can't pull it

off yeah yeah you would have been good to have in that one actually go up against alex smith see how you held up on those gymnastic pieces oh yeah that would have been cool it would have been a nice show great i love me some gymnastics all right you, you like you some challenge. Yeah. You like that. I just got, he's got a switch dude. It's so funny. Like whenever I can see it together, um, like I was just joking with Alex Smith and he was like, yeah, yeah, I could do that. Whenever, whenever we're going together, I wasn't a joke, right? I do my best to like keep up with him. And then every now and then if the workout allows, I'm actually able to keep up with him for a certain amount of time and then all of a sudden he just sees that i'm still there and something

just switches and he's gone and every time i'm like doesn't like to lose dude almost had him yeah my biggest thing is my knee i've had like it's like bone on bone so it just kind of screws me yes but dealing with an athlete is going through that now. That's it. Get some patterns. Nichols? Oh, no, Jake Berman. Yeah, great young athlete, good potential, just some mechanical stuff that needs to be fixed. Hiking a 95 fish.

I'll for sure be doing that. Good for you, man. All right, I'm all set. How are you? Yeah, I'm stoked. That was a great episode. All right, cool. Jay Fitz, where can anybody find you?

Opexfit.com. Yeah, cool. Yeah,, where can anybody find you? Opexfit.com. Yeah, cool. Yeah, and jayfitzopex. Love it. Instagram and James Fitzgerald Facebook. All right. Dude, thanks so much for taking time out of your day. Yeah, love it.

It was great questions. Thanks for having me. We came all the way out here just for you, basically, so I hope you like that. Awesome. I did. It was fun. Thanks, buddy. Yeah.

And that will wrap it up. Thank you so much for tuning in. We guys love having you here. We all see you have such a blast recording these episodes. So hopefully you guys have just as much fun listening to them. And we also have a lot of fun connecting with you guys. So go ahead and hit us up on Instagram, either at CrossFitChalk, at YaisView for me, at Ryan Fish for Ryan, or just at Shrug Collective. Slide into those DMs. Let us know what you guys think, what you guys like, what you guys hate, maybe some topics you want us to talk about. Even if you just have follow-up questions for us or the guests on the show, we're always going to be more than happy to answer those.

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