Barbell Shrugged - [Super Brain] How to Understand Your Brain Better w/ Andy Triana, Dan Garner, Anders Varner, and Doug Larson #707

Episode Date: August 9, 2023

Andrew Triana content provider for Muscle & Fitness, Rebel Performance, founder of TPV, Allostatic Labs, and most notably, an extremist.  “Coach Andy” and “Athlete Andy” reside on polar opposite personality spectrums. “Athlete Andy” has competed from 175lbs to heavyweight with standout performances in multiple weight classes, known for intensity and his ability to perform. “Coach Andy” is a frighteningly well studied specific preparation specialist who prides himself on logic and long term development. Encompassing a unique lens and authentic passion, Andy hope to share his concepts with the performance community over time. To learn more, please visit rapidhealthreport.com to see Dr. Andy Galpin and Dan Garner do a free lab, lifestyle, and performance analysis.   Andrew Triana on Instagram Download Andy Triana’s Nootropics eBook Dan Garner on Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram  

charge family this week on barbell shrugged an insanely smart human being andrew triana is on the show and we are going to be talking about how your brain works how you can train it things he's doing with uh super high level athletes to get them prepared for things like the pga tour live golf as well as strength sport athletes but an insanely smart human being and super cool that we were able to sit down talking about emotions, how they affect performance, nootropics. He also has a book out on nootropics. If you have any interest in checking that out, make sure you get into the show notes. As always, friends, make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That is where Dr. Andy Galpin and Dan Garner are doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis that everybody

inside Rapid Health Optimization will receive. You can check that out over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Marner, Doug Larson, Dan Garner. Today on Barbell Shrugged, Andrew Triana. Welcome to the show, man. Excited to be on. Thank you guys so much. It's an honor. Been listening to episodes as you guys progressed over the years. It's quite cool. Yeah, there's no better way. Mark Bell connecting you and Dan Garner. Now you're hanging out with all the meatheads. Yeah, Mark's the best at that. Hey, I'd love it if you could just give the, we're going to be talking a lot about neuroscience, brain health, brain performance.

Where did you kind of start digging into this realm? A little bit as your business progresses over the years, but I went to school for applied exercise physiology, did some graduate school stuff, and then did some postgraduate school, like continuing education. And along that, I myself was participating in Strongman. I had a good amount of public coaching clients in different worlds. And over those years, I did a lot of consulting with literally people on every continent at this point. So along that path, you know, you've interacted with so many people, you hear back like, wow, this was so useful or all these things. And coupled with that, like when I would go to seminars, I'd hear stuff about the brain being so important and it being your words in research, like the central governor or like

higher courtesies. And it's just like, when you poke at that bear, you don't necessarily find too much. So between people consistently asking about it, giving me good feedback, having a couple experiences like that, I just found myself revisiting it more and more and more importantly, using it as a lens when I participate with athletes or make sports performance decisions. Yeah. You mentioned a little bit pre-show talking about decision-making and this has to be something, it's super cool to me understanding one, the conscious decisions we're making, the subconscious decisions we don't know we're making, but kind of influence everything that's going on. I'd love to understand just even at the highest level before we dig into the pieces of that.

What is like the pathway? And maybe that's not even the right way to describe that. But what is like the decision making process that our body goes through? And we can kind of apply this to the sport performance if that's like the framework that you typically are using it for. Yeah, so what we're looking at is like behavioral output, right? What ultimately happened. And, you know, something I love as a tool and what I teach my mentees that I got from Robert Topolsky is I keep stepping back in like 30 second to a couple of second, depending on how deep you are chunks. And because all biology is anticipatory, if you kind of go backwards that way, you end up filling in so many blanks and see why. So when we look at a behavioral output, what actually happened, the first layer of the onion

being peeled back, if you will, when you look at it is what's like this cortical seesaw going on. So in our brain, if we were to look at what areas are active relative to your frontal and prefrontal cortex, which is decision making, it gives you an idea of why what happened actually happened. So maybe we saw your amygdala being hyperactive. Maybe it's your anterior cingulate. And I'm sure we'll talk more about all these areas, but seeing what's kind of balanced in this behavioral output seesaw is what we're looking at when it comes to decision-making dynamics. So it's not, you know, oh, you're so stupid, Brett. Why didn't you like remember to do this technique I taught you? It's more of Brett's brain and motor pattern has been trained to be active with an amygdala. So if the amygdala is not on that behavioral output, he doesn't have access to it.

Maybe with the same repeatability or success rate or maybe the same volition. Can you dig into what the amygdala does? What is its role? That way we can kind of tie that to that statement there. Yep. Let's start by looking at the nervous system breakdown between parasympathetic and sympathetic. I'm sure your listeners are aware of that. We're dealing in the sympathetic nervous system.

If you ever get caught up in the web of terms and you're looking at amygdala and parasympathetic in the same sentence and not in between them, you're looking at things incorrectly. So we're in this sympathetic world in the same sentence and not is, you know, in between them, you're looking at things incorrectly. So we're in this like sympathetic world in the first place. That's to do with being active, vigilant, anything like that in the first place. And now when the amygdala is turned on, what I tell people is we're looking at either a sword or a shield approach. We're looking at, are you going to outwardly be aggressive relative to the neurotransmitters being secreted and active and stuff? Or are you going to be defensive and kind of be putting a wall up front and receding behaviorally? Now, both of these can be behavioral outputs at the same time when the amygdala is turned on. It's not as much as saying your amygdala is just for anger or just for being

recessive and fearful. They're mirror images superimposed on the same side, like you're left and right. It's more that hormones are blind and neurotransmitters are blind. So when they're turned on in association with the amygdala, if it's sports, it's in association with a sensory motor cortex. That's the equation and seesaw you get to determine why the behavior happened. So how do you apply that? Would you apply something like that in sport or in a warm-up then to guide certain behaviors in certain directions? Absolutely. And the cool thing is we can track this through easy biometrics. So let's say this person, they just do this and clearly

in some type of amygdala driven mindset, you don't need to put on like EMG radar detection, like, or electrical like software to see what's actually happening. We see this through behavior because we reverse engineer kind of that little seesaw equation I talked about. So I saw, wow, you know, I use an SPO2 and heart rate monitor for, you know, via pulse oximeter. And it's like, wow, this guy's super sympathetic. Wow. These behaviors go along with an amygdala being aggressive. And we see this separate from like their regular self. It's like, wow, this guy's super sympathetic. Wow, these behaviors go along with an amygdala being aggressive. And we see this separate from like their regular self. It's like this athlete self is, wow, this is clearly an amygdala guy, let's say. So when I do my neurological warmups with this person, two things come to mind.

One, the contraindications to having your amygdala turned on is lacking peripheral vision acuity. So I'm going to do some vision drills that enhance their peripheral vision. And two, I'm going to do things that help foster work capacity, time to fatigue, and that entrance to the amygdala doing things that might be more aggressive in nature or fast and sharp in nature, rather than someone who I'm like, wow, this person's truly at peace and calmer and shows lower pulse oximeter readings on the field. And when they're in flow state, I'll do things that

more have to do with flow and respiration and a little bit more of a smooth dance, like type of neurological stimuli. Okay. So are you saying people based on their specific traits and types can have different states of flow to where my flow can be different than your flow. Your flow can be different than Anders. And that flow isn't necessarily one state that is universal, but flow is a state that is individual. 100%. And when we look at what is flow state to this person, sure, we can use this umbrella term of, yeah, you're generally in flow state, but what does that mean to your motor pattern? If we go into flow state with this upregulated neurochemistry and all that stuff, and they're

trying to do, you know, I'm in the golf world right now, this time of year. So you're golf swing, right? Again and again and again, and all these reps that you've gone through, you know, refinement and recruitment patterns within your motor pattern have been done in the presence of amygdala function. If I suddenly get you out of that, you won't have the same access to it. And maybe the same thing is said for how you train. You've done all of this in a phosphagenic environment. Now, if I expose you to a glycolytic one, we're going to have the same disruption in repeatability and success as if it was your amygdala or not your amygdala when it comes to performing. Got it.

Okay. That's super, super interesting. So you're basically just taking someone out of what you've already previously trained or what they're currently used to, rather, what they're used to performing. So would you ever adjust someone's flow state based on that? Or are you trying to find their home? Essentially, are you adapting them to where you want them? Or are you trying to optimize what their individual state and trait flow state already

was when you got to them? Totally optimize, enhance. I encourage them fostering and introspecting about their athlete self, because I can't do that for you. And with athletes I've been with long enough, or maybe in microcosmic points of their career, it might change and we might adjust things for that. Or even like, hey, I've noticed this person acts differently when they're in the top 10 than when they're in the bottom 10. And that might be a small adjustment that we do. But it's always encouraging the athlete to explore their own

athlete self, if you will, and give me the insight into what I see and correlate that with some data to make that decision. Everything that you're kind of talking about right now, I would have before meeting you 20 minutes ago, I would have just lumped that into like sports psychology. But the way that you speak about this seems like this is a completely different path to understanding how athletes are going to be able to, to prepare and perform. Would that, would that be a correct assumption? So I've used sports psychology as like typically helping

someone get through problems with their athlete self, or they have an intrapersonal problem, or maybe it's social or off the field. What I'm typically doing is sometimes I get an athlete calling me in with dysregulation, but it's not like clinical, medical, it doesn't need therapeutic. It more just needs a realignment and like synergy within their own words and actions, if you will. Maybe, especially in golf, we see discrepancy. I see, wow, this is definitely an amygdala guy, but they're going up there and taking 15 minutes between little drills and going really slow and wondering why they're not accurate

and why they're only accurate and repeatable on game day. Or vice versa. It's like, wow, on game day, I'm a mess, but I'm the best in practice rounds. It's the same thing as, you know, following through with your morals, if you will. We see data that says you're X, but you're applying training tools or something, whatever it is, for someone that's a Y.

Shrug family, I want to take a quick break. If you are enjoying today's conversation, I want to invite you to come over to rapidhealthreport.com. When you get to rapidhealthreport.com, you will see an area for you to opt in, in which you can see Dan Garner read through my lab work. Now, you know that we've been working at Rapid Health Optimization on programs for optimizing health. Now, what does that actually mean? It means in three parts, we're going to be doing a ton of deep dive into your labs. That means the inside-out approach.

So we're not going to be guessing your macros. We're not going to be guessing the total calories that you need. We're actually going to be doing all the work to uncover everything that you have going on inside you. Nutrition, supplementation, sleep. Then we're going to go through and analyze your lifestyle. Dr. Andy Galpin is going to build out a lifestyle protocol based on the severity of your concerns. And then we're going to also build out all the programs that go into that based on the severity of your concerns. And then we're going to also build out all the programs that go into that based on the most severe things first. This truly is a world-class program. And we invite you to see step one of this process by going over to rapidhealthreport.com. You can see Dan reading my labs, the nutrition and supplementation that he

has recommended that has radically shifted the way that I sleep, the energy that I have during the day, my total testosterone level, and just my ability to trust and have confidence in my health going forward. I really, really hope that you're able to go over to rapidhealthreport.com, watch the video of my labs, and see what is possible. And if it is something that you are interested in, please schedule a call with me on that page. Once again, it's rapidealthreport.com. And let's get back to the show. How can people on their own or what labs can they look at? What are the metrics people can start to look at on their own to see what type of person they are? And then once they find that out for warmups, um, just like a, a few tactical ways that they can start to, um, implement these things into their life. So the very, very first thing is

learning about your athlete self. And I think way too many people skip that step and they're like, oh man, my heart rates X when I'm performing. It's like, well, what does that mean? Like, is that your comfortable home? Like Dan said before, or is this dysregulatory? Because like I said earlier, these neurotransmitters are blind. So whether you're comfortable or not with X amount of norepinephrine, I can't tell you that, but if I see you do it, then we can talk about some biometrics and why they're important. So step one is figuring out your athlete self. Like this might take years. This might take months. It might take days, but you need to like literally just know who you are. Cause I always tell everyone,

whatever biometric value or thing you're using, it's a screenshot of a moving vehicle. You're just seeing something in motion and getting a number, but we have to relate it to some type of context. You know, putting on your pulse oximeter once it's completely useless. It only matters if I have other reference points and know who you are and know the scenario we're in, right? So the first thing I would say is just like I said, getting to know your athlete self. Two is finding out what cortical association and energy domain you're most comfortable in. So have, whether it's yourself or other people, judge your behaviors. How do they change from normal when

you're in your flow state and performing well? And how do we measure this? This starts with a pulse oximeter and we can use this to kind of give us a ghetto R value, if you will, kind of inferencing. I imagine like a Punnett square in my head, you know, high, low, high, low. And we put pulse, you know, SpO2 on top top heart rate on the bottom and you kind of look around here and then look at what the activity is like is this intended to be glycolytic and am i getting desaturation and sympathetic nervous system because that would mean glycolytic to me and then it's like okay well it's not a glycolytic task but i'm getting a little bit of desaturation and i'm getting a high heart rate so clearly you're sympathetic you know more than i'd expect

for this now it's like let's look at these behaviors. You know, are you rigid? Are you not using many words to describe things and not talking much? And normally you're a chatterbox. Now we take all these data values together and we're like, boom, we have a solid idea of who you are biologically, what's going on and how the data you tell me about how you feel should be interpreted. Now we can go out and look at some chronic things. So maybe let's go through a hard six weeks of training, knowing what we know and take some blood work at the end and then look at, wow.

So when we participate in your phosphagen system quite often, let's say I saw your creatinine value alter a little bit. I saw bun maybe titrate up a little bit. And you know what? I would love for you to be better at nitrogen recycling than you are. And we learned about when you're in flow state and sympathetic and practicing your phosphagen skills often, we have nitrogen dysregulation. So that's something we need to adjust.

And that's kind of how I start plotting things over time for people. Yeah. I think that's super interesting because I've always kind of wondered, and I want to get into like the actual game day performance side of it, but you can watch pro athletes and some of them, they've got to be bouncing around. They got to be laughing. They got to be relaxed. They got to be hanging out, doing things with their teammates, laughing a lot. And then you got the other guy sitting at the other end of the bench that's like dead set, focused, don't talk to him. And a lot of what you're talking about, people are different. They need their own way to kind of find, find their flow.

One thing I'd love to kind of getting into that game day performance. And we could, I think golf's a beautiful example at this. Maybe even baseball where there's like lots of downtime with very, very short intervals of super high intensity focus. When, if you look at golf, you hit, you tee off, then you go walk a quarter mile, then you hit another shot and then you walk a quarter mile. But each time you have to go hit a shot, it's the most intense focus.

Are there patterns maybe globally that everybody can start to look at? Or even on an individual basis of like, what do you do in between those like hyper-specific moments where you need that focus? And then all of a sudden you can completely relax and disconnect and not think about it. And it's actually healthier to not think about it in golf. Do not worry about what you just did, but how do we, how do we have that, that super short memory, get into a relaxed state and then ramp up for that specific task at hand going into the next shot. I like to reverse engineer things and ask

myself, what's the cost? Like, what am I, how am I paying off this shot? It's like, well, the shot's pretty intense neurologically. So we're definitely talking about some cholinergic deaths and obviously it's happening, you know, albeit short, but a phosphagen creatine kinase fluxing based environment. So we're going to pay this off, obviously mostly with proteins, but we need our heart rate to come down at least 30 seconds or so before you actually participate. We obviously would love to be oxygenated if possible. And we would love a very sensory rich environment, meaning your five senses are turned on. So as long as we get you there, however you get there in the first place, that's our starting point.

Let's make sure you do that. And then the walk in between is anticipatorily getting you to there again. So maybe you're someone where it's incredibly costly. It's like, hey, man, we need to be awesome at flipping the switch. You are just so neurologically active. You're so strong. We need to get in and out as fast as possible so we could pay off these debts as fast as possible.

So maybe we're going to use a mental trigger for you to get in and out of a flow state. And in between, I either want you to shut the hell up and nasal breathe and only open your mouth as necessary if you feel like you're not oxygenated, or I want you to totally mess around with your boys and then hit the trigger and get back to it or maybe it's the opposite like frankly like you're on the softer side so i actually don't really want you messing

around with the boys and stuff i need you to hit the shot i need you to worry about your behaviors and i want you to fill out like a little note card for me of like was i focused 30 seconds before the shot or was i like looking at that chick on the sidelines was i actually preparing to mindfully do this or not so you kind of just go backwards from how the person can successfully perform and just give them like the smart if then tool to do so because most athletes only think about the now they're like oh i'm just going to do. But they don't think about it as chess quite often until they get to the veteran stage. And they've had to figure it out the hard way, you know. Where it's like, hmm, probably shouldn't get wasted the night before.

I could when I was 25, but can't pull that off anymore. You know what I mean? They don't think about it as chess. So I let them know that it is chess. And if you do this now, you could do this actually better after. Yeah. and if you do this now you could do this actually better after yeah hey andy can you actually uh shed some light on the idea of wiring bad patterns so what if you got hammered the night before and played a phenomenal game because like it's actually been um discussed uh john jones he used

to get absolutely hammered the week before fights and And it was actually used as like, okay, well, if I lose this fight, then it wasn't actually me that lost this fight, because I can use the excuse fallback that I got hammered that week leading up to my weight cut and fight. So like, I think that in a lot of athletes, they can actually wire some bad pathways that they use as rituals to perform better in a strange way? Because you can go in there more reckless, or you can go in there and just kind of shed some light on how those pathways can sometimes be wired. I love that question because it's something

that we've obviously all experienced before. It's like, there's always that one guy who it's like, if I was making jokes with my friends on everything I would do wrong for a sports performance outing, you do that and you won. You know, there's always that one person, right? The first thing I kind of remind people is it's you that wins. It's not the supplement, whether you're doing like testosterone, creatine, you know, like, uh, like beta blockers, your nicotine or alcohol, it's, it's still you

out there. You're just altering some enzymes and some pathways. And ultimately I remind them that one, you're using the chip on your shoulder mindset as a proxy to be free. And two, you're hurting yourself as a proxy to avoid fear of failure. So ultimately you did the intuitively right thing of you went out there on the mat in this case, or the golf course, or I mean, strength sports, it's, it's common in every sport, right? You went out there that day and you were free because you're, you know what, deep down, I know I'm not in my optimal state, but I believe in myself. I'm just going to go out there and do it.

It's acceptance and the ability to be mindful and participation that allows you to be good. Like just this weekend, I was walking up with an athlete to a tea. I took his SpO2 and oxygen readings and all that stuff. And I'm like, dude, you're perfect. What do we do when success is inevitable? And his response was, just be yourself. But like what I teach people is when success is inevitable, be mindful. It's the same thing. So if you can do something that makes you mindful, whether it's good or bad, it's often more of a performance enhancer than it isn't. Tell me about the development of that philosophy or that statement of when success is inevitable, just be yourself or be mindful. How did you develop that? When it comes to them being repeatable, I think being an entry-level master at a skill means you

can just display, you know, the leverage force, blah, blah, blah, associated with being a master. But being a true master means you can repeatedly do it in multiple cortical associations. So pissed off or not pissed off, you know, happy or not happy, et cetera. And you could do it in multiple energetic domains. Are my legs hypoxic? Am I desaturated cardiovascularly? Am I, you know, happy or not happy, et cetera. And you could do it in multiple energetic domains or my legs hypoxic. Am I desaturated cardiovascularly? Am I not warmed up at all? Or am I like at the very, very end of this, you could still use that same pattern successfully. So being clear about that, what I saw was with true masters, any extra effort is actually an inhibition to what they're already going to do well. It's like you do this properly in every energetic domain and as many cortical associations as you want,

9.9 times out of 10 perfectly. It's more likely that you trying something, whatever it facilitates is going to deviate from you doing something that you're already about to be perfect with. And furthermore, if you have an anticipatory thought or something that's like too rigid, you actually lose the ability. And I guess this brings us back to decision-making from the beginning. You lose the ability to be flexible. You know, so in football, I work with someone in football and football, you have someone in front of you and you're in the open field and any direction is possible. If I go in there always working this left juke, always this, always this, always this. And I'm thinking, man, today's the day I'm going

to do it. When you get in that position, you are far, far, far less likely to go right. So once you're unconsciously competent, then any, any amounts of overthinking decreases performances. Is that similar to what you said? Yeah, essentially. Once all of your systems biologically in the brain are primed to be really good at doing the thing again and again, why would you push anything else faster? Because in the brain, it's more about these areas, wiring and firing is the term they use in neuroplasticity, at the same electrical voltage- voltage dependent speeds, not necessarily faster. The more alike, so when we talk about speech and having an inability or ability to speak well, it's that Wernicke's area, Broca's area, and the arcuate fasciculus are at similar electrical

voltages. So the rate at which one's turning on and doing its job is synergistic to the other. And then you speak fluidly and write fluidly. If one's too fast or too slow, the same way as in sports, we have, you know, uncoordinated mess ups. Okay, so then are you ever trying to pull away something that's otherwise viewed as beneficial? So if I'm supposed to just sit down and do lab work, I know how to do lab work, like the back of my hand. But if I go in there, and I try to do a productivity breathing routine, or a productivity meditation or a product, do you do you ever consider those things to take away from a task that someone's already mastered, even if they are perceived from the outside in as beneficial? I would determine that on the importance of what you're doing. Doing something like that, if it's very important, is never harmful. But I think if it's something you're doing every day and you don't even really need any support at all to be excellent, you might be better off thinking of how do I reduce the costs of doing the work rather than trying to prime myself to do something already better. So it's like, okay, maybe if I take something as frivolous as like 100 milligrams of some choline donor at the end of this, it's like

free to me to do the work. Or maybe I don't know, but you just think of something to rather drop the price of participating rather than fostering greater performance. Okay, so with with the cholinergic system with this different types of kind of energy and flow state and readiness, we're talking about a lot of different concepts. And it sounds like you're hyper specific with the way in which you approach any type of athlete situation and environment. But a concept like brain fog is pretty freaking global and umbrella and not very specific. So I assume somebody has asked you, they must have come to you with brain fog issues in the past. Can you provide some examples on like what that even means, say from a chemical perspective and what you would do about it? Yeah. So I view brain fog as one area or multiple areas of the brain, just being unable to match up to expected demands. And we can view this as having like a lagging body part in a squat or deadlift that's stopping you from being able to do the whole

motion properly. So oftentimes I just tell people, look, with brain fog, you need to recognize, are you unable to be stimulated or are you unable to volitionally participate? Because if volition is there and you're not able to get going, that's a different issue than not caring at all when you normally do care. And those are kind of the two categories I break it into. So if you need volitional support, you're probably actually paying a little bit of extra tax on like your dopamines and serotonins and things. And I'll give you some recommendations for that. And if you're in the other category, it's probably more having to do with clearing waste and having like health prerequisite enough

to actually be good to go. Cause the first time I really thought about it in this manner was talking to a PT friend back in the day. And we were joking about how like the funniest and best way to solve knee pain is to put someone on a bike and increase their like oxidative capacity. And suddenly like knee pain disappears and stuff in quite a large amount of populations, especially those who are detrained. And it's like, well, like it makes you think about pain differently. It makes you think about what's happening under the hood differently. So that's why I started thinking of, well, if we equate that, you know, metaphor to brain fog, let's think of brain fog as this like

ambiguous knee pain. And just by enhancing something in your health system, increasing your ability to cholinergically recycle things, most people's brain fogs are ameliorated. And if your brain fog has to do with like, oh, I need a huge coffee to be in the zone, then it's more so that you just need to stimulate neurochemistry, kind of like what Dan was talking about for the lab work in a sense to participate. All right. So in the topic of brain fog, do you have different strategies? Because it sounded like someone needed to volitionally get ready or someone needs to be stimulated. Somebody needs to stay on task. A lot of people can get started, but they have a huge problem staying going.

Do you approach those as two different chemical events and two different strategies? What if somebody can get started, but their attention span and focus just seems to diminish a lot faster than it used to? Yeah, that's going to go more in like the health group rather than the volitional group, if you will. And these are people that are going to see the greatest return on something like choline, but they're also going to see the greatest return on increasing their exercise capacity and their fine motor skill capacity. These are also people that respond quite well to doing something like a, like, like Dan mentioned, a spatial drill, I believe, or some type of speech warmup, or just doing something that kind of gets the brain actually

recycling, if you will, at a high rate, just like the same way the steady state curve exists with exercise, getting that steady state work recycling curve of the brain going, then participating is oftentimes the best way to go. Okay, so then it's not always just about providing a precursor or providing a stimulatory substance or providing a catalyst. It's also about brain games or brain work, like you actually you do brain exercises. And can you talk a little bit about that and how like a different, maybe provide an example about how some people reach for substances when they could really just use a brain game tool? Yeah, because it's the same context, you know, if you guys went to school, I meant the

viewers, not you guys, obviously, but if you had gone to school for anything exercise science related, they always bang you over the head with like a skeletal muscle contraction and what happens and we have the electrical stimuli started here, blah, blah, blah. And they always talk about like, well, you know, it's calcium and there's leftovers and there's waste. But the same thing occurs neurologically. And the same way you need to expand your work capacity to increase time to fatigue muscularly, that same thing occurs upstairs. So there's still calcium costs. There's still choline costs, all that stuff. There's still substrate demand upstairs in the brain. So taking more caffeine, let's say one, the cognitive focus is really a

side effect. And two, it's only a side effect because you're cranking up neurochemistry, like norepinephrine and all these like players that involve you being focused, if you will. So it's just saying like, oh, I have a nicer car because I make more money, but you don't save more money. You just have more to just spend. It doesn't matter. Whereas someone on the volitional end of things, they're going to be the ones who maybe you actually should exercise directly before doing this. Maybe you need a little bit of caffeine to pay off the initial debts of getting going. Because oftentimes if you're having a work capacity, we'll just keep running with that term related issue when it

comes to focus, like you start hot and then halfway through listening to the podcast, you're like, oh, where am I? And then just take another caffeine dose or more caffeine in the first place. That's never been your issue. That's why you're still sleepy in the middle of it. And you still doze off after 45 seconds. So the brain games that I have people do, if you will, have to do with what I said about Broca, Wernicke, and the arcuate fasciculus before, aligning the areas that you want, whether it's sports performance or speaking or writing, getting them firing at a rate that's worthwhile, maybe stimulate you a little bit, just do some burpees in place or get yourself in a light sweat to just stimulate a little bit of neurochemistry as well. Now with all this firing together, now participate in the task. Because oftentimes the people who are volitionally, you know, struggling,

they're procrastinators because they're kind of people that kind of get off on the high. And like once they're doing it and it's like close to the date that it's due or it's last second, they're like, oh yeah, here we go. And then they pretty much work well.

I've noticed everyone who complains about brain fog has a reciprocal time they are also pretty focused and their problem is just marrying the two together is that is that kind of the same thing on like a like procrastination side it's like having a deadline super impacts the clarity the focus the ability to get into the zone. Totally. So I think having a deadline is the best way to assess what type of cognitive brain fog or learner or worker you are. If you're the type of person who's like, wow, I have two months. That's awesome.

I'm going to take this in little chunks and enjoy every little piece. And I'm going to finish it five days early and then just chill. It's, wow, okay, so you're the person who might actually just struggle with work capacity. And that's why you like doing in 20 minute chunks every single day and having less time on or more time on your plate is comforting. Whereas if you're someone who less time on the plate kind of stimulates you and you're going to wait till the end and go hard. Those are those volitional people who need a criterion amount of neurochemistry

of some sort, just to be excited enough to participate. Yeah. I'd love to dig into it. Slight change of direction here. Slight change of direction here. From a motor learning standpoint, like we used to work with a company that they had like a headphone type product, and they would provide some type of electrical stimulus to to to a hail that's right to the motor cortex uh to the claim was and i have no idea what the science says behind this and so that's hence my question to you um what kind of science is there behind that type of uh electrical stimulation to the motor cortex to uh solidify movement patterns to help uh to help with uh um kind of locking in technique

at a faster rate than you would otherwise, or potentially even locking in bad technique, let's say, if you're doing a movement with a subpar movement pattern. People tend to think about sleep, sleep, nutrition, et cetera, like kind of the normal stuff, but how does something more fringe like this

with electrical stimulation of the brain play into all of the possibilities there so i explain hrv as like there's the hrv philosophy and concept and there's the algorithm so there's like a separation between like the kinetics of what happens and the ability to measure that from the philosophy standpoint electrons cells and everything in between resonate at very specific frequencies. Now, kind of what I was saying about the electrical voltage gates of like these areas need to be synchronized, they're attempting to synchronize things through electrical resonations in the manner you want to be synchronized. The problem is, and maybe this is

me, maybe this is everyone else, I don't know the exact electrical resonations you want to be synchronized. The problem is, and maybe this is me, maybe this is everyone else. I don't know the exact electrical resonations you need to be resonating at. And I don't think anyone does because they're probably different for everyone based on the stuff I said today. So if you're a super hyped up amygdala guy, I would be keen to believe that the electrical resonations that you're going to respond to from a sensory motor perspective are going to be different than the guy who just wants to have like a heart rate of like only 102. And he's just going to barely cruise in his sympathetic nervous system as a pro athlete. And that's how he makes his decisions best. So that's kind of why I tend to lean on

nootropics because there's providing opportune enzymatic and ligand based chances for the athlete to kind of capitalize on. So I think you do need a better relationship with athletes to use nootropics properly. But what I can do is because, you know, you said it correctly, you could certainly learn stuff or bad stuff better. You know, it's like you went out there and had a crap day or your training is totally, you know, randomized, and you just learned like a poor leverage that you didn't even know was poor. When you can kind of set someone up in a scenario where I know this is going to be the proper cortical association, I want to enhance learning and want to make sure they're in the right area, I would lean towards nootropics because they're going to

be blind in the sense that they're going to adhere and amplify what the athlete is doing. Whereas if I give you a specific electrical resonation, I'm not sure. That being said, I have used the Omni PEMF monitor and I've found success in decreasing people's heart rate, autonomics, increasing vagal tone and allowing them to find a more restful state. I haven't found like the same success with it being stimulatory. Some people made them anxious. Some people noted nothing at all. Some people were already hyped up and just thought they were just equally as hyped up. So I found personally the validity in helping people return to normal rather than being stimulated.

But in theory, there's no reason it shouldn't work if you have the right data. I just don't. Okay. Gotcha. Yo, let's go down the nootropics pathway here. Is that what you're going to take it to, Dan? I got something I think you'll be interested in, Doug. Do it.

So I do want to go down the nootropics pathway, but through the lens of unlearning. So I think that it's very, it's very, I think it's easier to learn something than it is to unlearn something in the same way. Habits are pretty easy to pick up. They're very difficult to let go, but to what extent you can relearn new movement patterns. But to what extent can you speed up something that's very ingrained? So for the example, let's say I was with a jujitsu coach for five years, and I didn't know that he was a pretty bad coach. And then I went to a better academy on paper that has better technique, better outcomes, better success rate, better everything. And then that coach says, and we've got to kind of unlearn this stuff. And we got to start from scratch here.

What kind of protocols or strategies would you would you utilize from a nootropics perspective for both the unlearning and the learning of something as drastic as that type of change? It's funny, I'm dealing with that right now with somebody, in fact. So I can personally think about it. But the first thing we need to be aware of is the hippocampus has a logbook, if you will. And if you read the ebook, you'll see me explain this in full depth. But it keeps track of, I call it like two details of the painting stroke, if you will. And the hippocampus is painting a big picture in this analogy. There's the depth of the stroke, meaning how much was involved. Did you just do it a little bit and get kind of stimulated or was it truly an intense experience? And then there's the color of

the stroke, which has to do with these cortical associations. So did you do the beginning of your workout and practice with no amygdala intervention and halfway through you didn't take enough rest and the right song came on and someone pushed you and you got pissed and then you were practicing this in a totally different wavelength, if you will. So we have to now align what we do want and what we don't want. The way motor learning works has more to do with success and failure ratios rather than volume. You know, like changing a mild fibro in the cells attached are very volume dependent. There it's like, as long as I pass this pretty much criterion amount of stress, I'll get this response I want. But for example, and this, I like jokes as ways of like learning things. So imagine you took someone who wanted to unlearn something and they did five

good reps, if you will, the new thing. And then you started talking to them about the bad thing. And like, show me the bad thing one more time and show me the bad thing one more time. And you did 15,000 reps. I promise you that person would have made zero progress. So the first thing we need to recognize is that this is obviously going to go in stages. Stage one is get the old crap out of here. So we're looking at success failure ratios, just in the raw ratio amount. First, we need as much success as possible with the new thing and have as minimal success, if you will, because the success is being proper end outcome. Let's, you know, I said, I'm working with this with a golfer right now. Let's say the end outcome is hitting a ball on a certain shape. And it's like, wow, the new

shot feels great with the first shape. But I went back to the old shot. I got the same shape. That would piss me off more as a coach, not piss me off, but that would be more alarming to me as a coach than you doing the bad thing with a bad shot shape. Cause the bad thing with bad shot shape would have reaffirmed. Oh, wow. stupid i shouldn't have done that or jujitsu in this case like oh wow i see how that put me in a dangerous position to be like countered i'm not going to do this now but if you had a successful experience with it again and what we see is athletes sometimes especially on game day go into like remission like oh this is what i know this has worked for me in the past this is what i did the common one that bothers me this is what i did when i was winning in, this is what I know. This has worked for me in the past. This is what I did. The common one that bothers me is this is what I did when I was winning in college. This is what

I have to do again. In fact, you're making those negatives hotter. You're learning them more. You're enhancing that hippocampal logbook. So stage one is get the old crap out of here and have as minimal success as possible. Maybe fail ideally a few times with the old pattern and recognize the err in your ways. Then add some frequency to it because unlearning and learning is taxing as hell. So now it's like, okay, I saw that like you needed a full rest and like 80 grams of carbs and like, you know, the right day with a good recovery to get it done. Let's see if we can get you into a little bit of fatigue and do it and still do it. You know, so it's like bandwidth of exposure would be kind of step two. And the last thing in step three is integrating it with new environments. So it's like, Hey, you know, I know

you're a golfer, but we're going into glycolysis today and I need you to show me that perfect swing in glycolysis. And then it's like, all right, now you've shown me that if you can use this skill in multiple domains successfully, then you've learned or unlearned the skill. Okay. So in that, in that context and in that example, and the use of nootropics there, can the, can the wrong nootropic used at the right time produce a bad result? Like, can you actually get a negative effect? Or is it typically end-off net neutral, just wrong tool for the wrong job? So the great thing about nootropics and the worst thing about nootropics is user error.

You can like, if you set up your protocols and training and you choose the right timing for it, you can pretty much pick any nootropic down the list and it will act properly because the definition that I use for nootropics in the ebook has to do with antioxidant function. If they're stimulating the proper types of nootropic factors, and if there's a perk that makes it different than something else next to it, and I call that a nootropic. So if you just add anything like that to the perfect scenario, it'll work. Now, that being said, the opposite is not true. You can't just be like, eh, I heard about NuPept on this podcast and I want to get rid of this like little thing in my swing. So I'm just going to take NuPept and go to the range. Just try to feel it. It's like, ah, you would have been better off not taking it or taking it and just wasting

your money. Cause like, you're not going to get the intended effect. Nootropics are the right environment being set up and capitalizing on like one plus one equaling three. They're not like a miracle supplement where it's all just pop this pill and do whatever you want. Yeah. So because we were talking about carnitine not too long ago and how environmentally dependent it is depending on what action you want out of it. But if I recall correctly,

carnitine has some interaction with nootropics, does it not? Yeah, absolutely. Because so I mean, again, another joke I made is you're not storing glycogen in your neurons. So like, where are they're getting their substrate from? This is coming from free fatty acids and ketone bodies, and they're dependent from somewhere else. So what quarantine does to take away the rate limiting factor via LCPT one of beta oxidation, you now have awesome ability to distribute these fatty acid ketone bodies everywhere. And I've just noticed personally, I'm sure Dan, you've noticed the same thing. It's really beta oxidative capacity that most pro athletes and regular athletes missed the

boat on because it seems frivolous or, Oh, I get 10,000 steps a day. I'm fine. Well, it's like the 10,000 steps is more of the prerequisite for being a viable human. I wouldn't say that's like exercise capacity. Congratulations. You got out of bed pretty much. You know what I mean? Um, there's, I always tell people fixing things is not progress. Progress is progress

because we put out a fire because we fixed this thing. You, you, you didn't get better. You stopped shooting yourself in the foot. You know, if you're trying to hammer a nail in and you hit your thumb, are you going to scream at the nail or are you going to be like, damn, I'm an idiot. As a, as a way for kind of like some, some tactical pieces to this in warmups drills that people can be doing just a way that people can start to assess themselves and see things that working. Are there, are there, is there like a good starting place for how the, the average person can start to implement some of these things to kind of like unlock their way into a flow state? Yeah, totally. The first thing I do is I call it

clock games with people. It's a motor vision drill that acts as a great assessment, also acts as a great mini drill to do because oftentimes, I think I believe I said this on the Mark Bell podcast, the worst squatter in the room is the guy looking around. And it's not coincidence that he can't hit depth because of that. Because if you think about it, there's a level of safety the brain has to be comfortable with to let you put a bar on your back, go into full extension of the body and get into the bottom of a squat. You have organs exposed. There's laxity of certain tissues that you might not ideally want lax with 600 pounds on your back, but this is the sport we're

doing. So here we go. You know what I mean? The same thing. There's nothing intuitive about grabbing a driver. I'm trying to swing this thing 130 miles an hour if I can. It's like, that's like the least intuitive thing ever. You know what I mean? So vision is going to be the gateway to safety and participation. And that joke I made about the squatter is if you're not even safe enough, if you will, from a visual perspective to be focally focused and let things go in your peripheral field, you're certainly not hitting depth. You're certainly not going to smack that golf ball. If it's fighting, you're certainly not making contact with your target point i promise so clock games you're going to stand on one leg and you're going to start by having a focal point whether it's the wall in front of you or whatever

and you're going to trace a clock start at the middle and go up to 12 back to the middle to one all the way through the drill is first the skull does not move and only your eyeballs do it. Then you do the opposite and switch legs. So there are four mini little sets that are one going to give you insight about which leg and which visual field peripherally you suck out the most. It also gives you a good understanding of, do I have an inability to dissociate my head from my body and have vision or is my vision completely dependent on the screen and world if you will in front of you not moving incredible man where can people find you um so because of some of the confidential athletes and people I work with I'm a little bit hard to find but not too hard. There is also a website coming eventually, but we'll see when that happens.

You don't need one. You're good enough. You don't need a website. That's just going to delay the website happening. But gosuperbrain at gmail.com is the best way to find me. My personal assistant vigilantly tracks that email and we'll get back to you. And there's go super brain on gmail.com. I do have the performance vibe.com. Um, that is privately for, you know, confidential clientele and that way that they're separated from everyone else I helped. So if you're someone that's in a professional or private field and confidentiality is quite important to you, um, you're, there's a different avenue for you to reach out. That's theperformancevibe.com.

But gosuperbrain.com and my personal assistant are just encompassing to everybody. Love that. Dan Gardner. All right. First, Andy, let people know where they can find you in your trail picks book. So that is going to be on Mark Bell's website. So if you go to powerproject.com, you can just figure it out from there.

It should be somewhat near Dan's fit for 50. Hey, yeah. All right. Good stuff. Everybody should check that out. My man, Andy Triana here, he's absolutely brilliant at what he does. That was a fun conversation, dude.

Thanks for coming on. Everybody here, you know where to find me, at Dan Garner Nutrition on Instagram. There it is. Doug Larson. You bet. I'll second that dude. This was a very cool episode. Appreciate you coming on. Yeah. Likewise guys. Right. You can find me on Instagram, Douglas E. Larson. Yeah, dude. Let me know if you ever want to work with someone that's like a 12 handicap or something like that, that really excites you. I appreciate you coming on, man.

I'm looking forward to having you on again so we can, we can dig into some more aspects of this. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We are Barbell Shrugged, Barbell underscore Shrugged. Make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That's where Dr. Andy Galpin and Dan Garner are doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis that everybody inside Rapid Health Optimization will receive based off their labs, lifestyle and performance. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.