Barbell Shrugged - The Future of Human Performance Technology w/ Dr. Andy Galpin, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash #772

Episode Date: November 13, 2024

Andy Galpin, PhD, is the Executive Director of the Human Performance Center at Parker University. He is the Co-Director of the Center for Sport Performance and Founder/Director of the Biochemistry and Molecular Exercise Physiology Laboratory. He is a Human Performance scientist with a PhD in Human Bioenergetics and over 100 peer-reviewed publications and presentations. Dr. Galpin has worked with elite athletes (including All-Star, All-Pro, MVP, Cy Young, Olympic Gold medalists, Major winners, World titlist/ contenders, etc.) across the UFC, MLB, NBA, PGA, NFL, Boxing, Olympics, and Military/Special Forces, and more. He is also a Co-founder of Vitality Blueprint, Absolute Rest, BioMolecular Athlete, and RAPID Health & Performance.   Work with RAPID Health Optimization Links: Dr. Andy Galpin Website Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, Dr. Andy Galpin is coming in here. We're going to be talking about the future of human performance technology. One of the coolest things in here, the digital twin, something that super, super geeks me out. Thinking about how we can run all of the algorithms of collecting the data and understanding how each decision can be made going forward. We're trying to optimize performance really is like one of the coolest things coming in the future of technology in the in the human performance space which gets me really fired up as always friends make sure you head over to rapidhealthreport.com that is where you can go learn more about all things lab testing human performance lifestyle and how we can go build protocols that you are going to be able to go

optimize your health and performance. You can access all of that over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner. Doug Larson. Travis Mash. Dr. Andy Galpin, welcome back to the show, man. This is a huge day. Coach Travis Mash has not been on Barbell Shrugged in like two months. The people, they need you. And then Galpin, you're like three or four months. This is like a reunion show. I think maybe more than that.

I feel like it's like more than that. Is it? Like a year maybe almost. Maybe. I can't remember the last one we did. Now that you say that, I just assume it's been um long time yeah maybe that is um today on barbell shrug we're going to be talking about advances in technology for human performance who better than the guy i feel like if somebody creates something new in this space

they all they have is an idea until galpin signs his name underneath it, which is fantastic, man. That may be a bit heavy, but okay. We'll start there. I'm giving you the credit. I'm giving you all the street cred here to start things off. Dude, what's going on in the space lately? I know there's tons of things that we've been throwing back and forth inside our program, but I'd love to know just what's lurking

under the surface that is going to be changing human performance here. Yeah. You know, what's, what's interesting is, you know, collectively, I've spent most of my career kind of on what most people see it from the outside, right. Sets and reps and, and, and most of the time and stuff like that. But the reality is I've spent most of my time not doing things like that. And then certainly currently right now, that's not what i'm spending the bulk of my time doing like i

don't really coach people like travis does they don't write workout programs that i'm not spending too much time on things like that um so there's a lot of stuff coming down people are abreast at this point to artificial intelligence and chat gpt yeah you can throw a bunch of cues into chat GPT and get a workout program built, but that's not really what I'm talking about here. I'm more interested in kind of walking through and talking about the actual changes in technology. And the reality of it is,

it doesn't take somebody very much time and thought to think about what's actually going to be changing human performance. And we've always known this is coming, but I actually think that this is the time. The reality of it is some of the technologies that are here right now that are available, people have no idea about, and it sounds like sci-fi. And they think, oh, this is some stuff coming now, but it's already here and you can purchase some of these things now. And then some of them will be coming online in the next couple of years. I think in general, when people think about kind of sports science technologies, they think great, you know, velocity transducers, jump mats, force plates, things like

that. And those are great, but they don't really apply to that many people. There are way more interesting things that are being worked on and that are available now that are, again, what I would say like collectively solving the human performance problem rather than these super niche GPS trackers or IMUs or things like that. So that's when I pinged you guys, basically. I was like, let's, let's have a conversation. Let's kind of share with the world some of the things that are happening out there.

Because I fundamentally believe this will change how all of us are approaching it individually and personally, but absolutely is going to change how coaches, practitioners and people move forward. Because some of the, many of the things we've been doing for a long time with kind of our head buried in the sand, they're just,

you just don't have many more months or years where you're going to be able to get away with that. Just a second ago, you said the, sorry, just a second ago, you said sorry just a second ago you said all three of you want to jump in and get on this um you made a tweet because i think this is like a high level like really good place to kind of start this is um you made a tweet not too long ago i

want to say you were down in san antonio um and you were were talking, I believe it was about most of the technology that we use now tells you like what's happening to your body, but nobody ever really tells you why it's happening. Like you can look at your aura ring, which we use. Um, I have mine on right now. Um, and you get to see how you slept last night or how recovered you are. But nobody ever tells you why you slept the way you slept or why you are recovering or under recovering or why you should be able to push your training today. Is that really kind of like where the next level of technology is going? Okay.

So I think right out the gates, I'm realizing this is no way going to be one episode. We'll see if we can get this done in under five episodes. I think maybe we'll start here. Look, the reality of it is, in my opinion, this comes down to a very short number of items. Item number one, there are technologies available, and some of you are aware of them, but you need to assess your current state. And so I collectively have stole the term from Cody. This is Cody Burkhardt, our friend who runs Human Works for NASA. But he basically is calling this the human sensor. And I can give you guys a lot of examples of some rad sensors that are on board, everything from things that will sit in your toilet to collect continuous urine and stool, to chips that can go in your tooth that will give you full-time and continuous and perfect analysis of everything that goes on and in your mouth, quantities, nutrients,

things like that, to nanoparticles that are available to be floating around, and a bunch of other technologies that are available for all kinds of things. So the reality of it is, you are quickly going to be in a spot where you are just the human sensor and everything that's going on in your body being processed is being very accurately measured and quickly. Once that information is collected though, and this is what you're getting at, Anders, that is just simply sort of describing what's going on, right? How are you sleeping? What are you eating? How much are you pe paying? What's in your pee? Things like that. The next step though, after that is evaluation. What does that mean? Is that good? Is that bad? Is that terrible? And enter problem area number one. And because we, all of you are mostly familiar with

the idea of preventative medicine versus critical care and things like that. So all of our normative values for the most part are based upon you know rda values what's going to not give you scurvy that whole classic thing right understanding where you should be at right which is don't die over here but then what's okay what's good great is a whole area that is missing but coming on board so once you evaluate where you're at understanding is that good bad or worse the third step then is where do I need to go, right? So I need to then get here. This number should be at this level. My activity level should be here. My cognitive speed should be this. My neurofiring rate should be here, whatever you want to do. And then the fourth

step is how do I then get there? And the fourth step is magical because this is the power of coaching, right? If I tell you, most coaches, I need this person to get here with the respiratory rate. I need them to get there with their total amount of lean muscle mass. I need you to get here. People can write those programs, but they don't necessarily know where to go right now. And so with these four steps, we're now connecting the dots. Where am I at? Is that good, bad, terrible? Where do I need to get to? And then how do i get there the reality is the overwhelming majority of consumer-based technologies are simply telling you

where you're at they can't do the other parts and so it is kind of what we say is you're they're telling you how you're sleeping how you're eating but they're not telling you why you're doing that why you're feeling this way why so then they can't deploy the solutions they just give you a bunch of random like oh meditate more and drink more water and like blah blah blah so on the biggest service this is really where we're after and then finally technologies that wrap that whole thing up into one cumulative consumer-based piece um it is where this whole thing is going. It's where it is actually, for the most part. All right. I'll let you guys have the microphone now. Wait. So a minute ago, you said something about the human performance problem. Is that what you

just laid out? That is the problem right now? You have the data, but no direction on how to use that data? Yeah. So parts three, two, three, and four are two and three, right? Is this good or bad? And then where should I go? Are basically what I call the dead zone. Because we have absolutely no problem because the current thing we're measuring is not great. The easy example here is sleep. So let's just take a sleep monitor, a tracker, and we already know there are just no clinical grade sleep technology out there that can evaluate accurately how you're sleeping. Sleep stages, you can't get those on any actigraphy or tracker at all. They can give you how much you're sleeping and things like that, but they're going to have no insight whatsoever. But even further than that, it's way bigger than that. The entire idea of measuring and caring about your sleep stage scores is entirely wrong. It's based on extremely old thought processes

that were just randomly basically laid out. And so we have a huge problem of even paying attention to sleep stages. It's a fundamentally wrong way to approach sleep. And I can go on and on about that and give you examples of why. But that's what I mean. Why are we even – one part is about developing and making sure that technology is accurate and valid. And the validity part is a challenge. Accuracy is really high with technology. Most tech in the human performance space is really accurate validity

the difference there being like is it actually measuring the thing you're measuring and sleep stage is a good example they're not right so those are losing that but they're getting tighter they are getting much tighter but the bigger problem there is like why are we even care about measuring that in the first place? Are we sure we should actually measure that? Do you really care about that? And that's a huge hole in that side of the equation. 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. And then we're going to go through and analyze

your lifestyle. Dr. Andy Galpin is going to build out a lifestyle protocol based on the severity of your concerns. And then we're going to also build out all the programs that go into that based on the most severe things first. This truly is a world-class program, and we invite you to see step one of this process by going over to rapidhealthreport.com. You can see Dan reading my labs, the nutrition and supplementation that he has recommended that has radically shifted the way that I sleep, the energy that I have during the day, my total testosterone level, and my ability to trust and have confidence in my health going forward. I really, really hope that you're able to go over to rapidealthreport.com, watch the video of my labs, and see what is possible.

And if it is something that you are interested in, please schedule a call with me on that page. Once again, it's rapidehealthreport.com and let's get back to the show. So it's really being more strategic about what we're measuring and why. And then because of that, we then have to evaluate it and figure out the solution. So we're not really have stepped back and thought about like, what is the actual end goal here and what problem are we trying to solve? So that's what I collectively call like the problem area. Andy, are you saying that like deep sleep, REM sleep, that we shouldn't even be tracking that shit? I mean,

For the most part, it's pretty much useless. Yeah. I mean, I'm being a little bit inflammatory there, but there are clearly some uses of it. But the idea of like tracking on any wearable and saying, oh, yeah, we changed the amount of the sleep stages. It's the wrong approach. For sure. Probably more of a waste of time. Can you give us an idea of like. Yeah, OK, so here's the basic idea. Okay, let's just say you pick your favorite wearable.

Again, it's nothing against – or we have a great relationship with them. So pick any of them. It doesn't matter. I can hack your deep sleep instantaneously. I can double it overnight. Easy. Go train for four hours. Go work really, really damn hard, right?

Now, tomorrow, take the whole day off and don't do anything. Here's what happens your brain is determining what sleep stages it's in at what phases based upon the demand and the need and so if you're then trying to make changes on that and you're not acknowledging the fact that it shouldn't be the same think about it this way no you guys would all quickly realize it's ridiculous to think that you should do the same workout every day and eat the exact same food every day. Why would you think your sleep should be the same every day? It shouldn't. It should be reactive and responsive to the cognitive demand, the total energetic demand, all the stimulator going on. So your stages should be staggered and changing.

If you had a very cognitive demanding day, if you had a very run a marathon and sit on a couch and stare at the wall all day, your sleep should not be the same response to those two days. And so then trying to be like, oh, my gosh, we had my sleep stages are going off and then making changes on individual days is fundamentally wrong. The better approach is you should be letting your brain decide what stages it wants to be in based on the actual demand of that. In addition, the whole idea of that in addition the whole idea of deep sleep and REM sleep in general is actually fundamentally flawed the amount of time you should be in each of them is um it's not junk science at all but it's very misleading science the science is fine it's just interpretation it's the classic thing like it's a very similar story to if you guys are familiar with calculating your max heart rate.

So take 220 minus your age. Well, yeah, like at a population level, it's totally fine. But in the individual, it's almost meaningless from a coaching perspective because it's that inaccurate. The same thing with sleep stages. I have no idea how much deep sleep any of you should be getting because it's not the same between all of us. And it shouldn't be the same every night, and it shouldn't be the same every week or every month you should be letting your brain decide that and getting that thing so that's i don't want to make the whole thing about sleep but i can go on on on that but that is the example of what we're talking about is it's not

being measured appropriately and the only way to do that is to run more clinical sleep stuff. But the current solutions are really poor. Obviously, you guys know I have my sleep company and we're much better at that. But that's just one example of saying, okay, we're really doubling down on a thing that we didn't step all the way back in the first place and say, like, why do we even care about that? Is that actually the right thing to be paying attention to? Because, again, to the initial point, it's still just telling you how you're sleeping. And it's not telling you anything about why you're sleeping or recovering or

training or adapting or any other thing we want to talk about. Can you give us like, so where does it need to be? Like even with your sleep company, like, so like forget REM, forget D or the same every night. Like where do we need to be? Where do athletes need to start looking or thinking like. In terms of sleep. Say what did you say? Yeah.

Yeah. It's definitely one of the most important regardless. Okay. Right. So you want to pay attention to a couple of more things. Everyone's probably heard plenty of times, the total amount of time and consistency, especially consistency with waking up time is very, very helpful. Sleep staging is going to take care of itself. You need to be paying attention to how restorative and efficient that sleep is. So it's what we call the architecture of the sleep. In general, the autonomic nervous system is a much better way to track that and measure that and monitor that. We need to be paying attention to a combination of things like your resting heart rate,

the pattern of your heart rate throughout the night, what your respiratory rate looks like overnight, and then most importantly, how restorative it actually feels how are you performing um here's a more tangible example travis uh imagine if and spoiler alert we can imagine if we could actually measure cognitive speed the next day and so of saying like well you need to feel good no no i'm going to measure how fast your brain is firing the next day. And that's going to tell me whether or not you're sleeping appropriately. And that's exactly what I'm talking about. That's the kind of technological stuff where you can put an earpiece in and we can actually measure your cognitive speed the entire next day. And then retroactively come back in and architect your sleep behind that based on not just like,

I felt great. You felt great. Yeah. But you also had three triple espressos in the morning. And then another one in the afternoon, like, felt great you felt great yeah but you also had three triple espressos in the morning and then another one in the afternoon like yeah you felt great all day like that's not actually that's not representative of a normal thing um and in addition that will change like you felt great but what did you do today um yeah i was mowing the lawn and listening to podcasts and i saw it like well sure but were you in like really hard meetings and memorizing things and making tough decisions no then you felt terrible right right whatever cases um so that is a better example of if there are objective metrics you can put behind

it and there are just so many other ones you can get physiologically that represent that the last thing i'll say is an easy easy example is waking up if you're waking up every night especially multiple times to the level where you can cognitively remember i woke up twice last night say is an easy, easy example is waking up. If you're waking up every night, especially multiple times to the level where you can cognitively remember, I woke up twice last night, right? There's just no way you're sleeping efficiently. That number should be zero. You bring up an interesting point in this. How invasive do these technologies need to be? Because most of what we have right now is a wearable, which is a piece of it, but it's as much as it's able, it's essentially shining a light down,

tracking a bunch of heart rate stuff and making judgments based off of how fast that light reflects back. Do we need to have internal tracking? Because right now it's like, you have to take blood out of you. There's nothing that's consistently going to be with you to understand your your internal yeah well so this is the reality of where it's going right people want these things to be less and less invasive if you want them to be less invasive but also a hundred percent accurate which is probably not and also don't steal my data yeah right yeah Don't give it to the FBI, please. What do you want with this? No, that's great.

Okay, so let's go in a couple of different areas. Imagine if, Travis, you guys use a force plate or some sort of gym wear daily in your stuff, right? Every day, yes. All right, yes. Great. So you have a force plate that you paid somewhere between $2,000 to $25,000 for, and it sits there, and you maybe have a couple of them, et cetera. Great.

Well, what if I didn't have to do any of that stuff, and I could get all that information and zero force plates were needed? That'd be brilliant. Okay, we already have that in multiple technologies. You don't need a single force plane ever again. That's there. You can do this in two different ways.

You can do this in two ways. One can be camera-based. So there are markerless camera technologies already, which can give you full kinematics and kinetics on any movement continuously in real time. And all you do is set a camera up. This is completely non-invasive, you don't do anything you just have a couple of cameras set up in your facility um when you were talking about san antonio i was down at the san antonio spurs facility they're branding a building a brand new billion something plus their facility and this is

what they have um so they've got these cameras set up around their court. And so they get real-time feedback on all actions, the entire practice. And again, you can get full-time kinematics and kinetics off of that. So you want to get forces and joints and angles and everything done for every single rep for every movement the entire time, all fully digitized almost instantaneously. That's already available, right? That can be purchased right now. So you can get all of those things. Imagine Travis setting that up in the corner of your room and getting all those things done and you not need a single...

We're building a gym system. It's super expensive though. No. I got robbed. You probably got robbed. Probably did. Awesome. It depends on your definition is super expensive i guess relative to like buying force plates it's way cheaper

you know oh no i mean we got the vicon like it's super expensive yeah so now you're just talking motion analysis stuff um what we're talking about is a little bit different technology we are getting full real-time stuff off of everything here. In addition, you can match that up with things like wearable force plates. So there are multiple companies now that make both IMUs as well as full axle-loading force plates on shoe inserts. And so you can put these things in the shoe of individuals and get full force plates off of them in real-time, full-time for everything you're doing. And this is obviously has a ton of sport implications. It also has implications for things like early onset Parkinson's detection.

And so we know that there can be changes in the gait that can be picked up way faster than any actual change you would perceive in your gait. And so early detection of neurological disorders can be identified before any clinically meaningful things will be picked or clinically noticeable things will be picked up. So before you start feeling weird, start losing your balance more often, you would get an alert sent that says, yo, we're seeing this dip. This is associated with early onset neurodegenerative disorder of any kind. Go get this checked out. So those flags are available. And again, like pretty cheap for the most part that

can be put in your soul. So from just like a motion analysis perspective, those are two options. Other options are things like the dental inserts I mentioned. So being able to get full analysis of everything that goes in your mouth, everything you're breathing, all sent back to your phone is one. There's another company that I'm involved with called SolveX, and they use a technology called digital phenotyping. This originally came out of a couple of labs in Harvard. I think a lot of publications on this, but this is for psychological and psychiatric distress. So this is a basic program that can sit on your phone that you don't do anything with. And they use a combination of not just like what websites

you're searching and what you're typing and looking for, but how often you're charging your phone, how often you're checking back in, the rate at which you're typing, a whole bunch of geo-tracking data off this. And this is very highly associated with psychiatric disorder, depression, suicide prevention. It's a project that we got approval to do with the army on and to tracking things like that and so this is again andrews this is passive you don't do anything of this there is a ton a ton a ton of obvious ethical issues that we could like have a little conversation of but in terms of like passive technology for the sake of just trying to help people before they commit a heinous act like you know a really one like suicide this is not for like are you feeling a little bit down today

this is just like yo grab travis he's flagging like he might be in an emergency right now yeah that's like as far as you can take it. Which is what the military is. Digital what typing? Digital phenotype. Phenotype. Yeah. And there's a lot of papers on this. It's been studied in a lot of populations. So things like that are available. Again, nothing you would use as like, oh, your energy is a little bit low today.

No, no, no, no. This is like just really, really, really bad flagging. Red flag called the emergency team there. There. So there are also camera based technologies that can be put in to identify your sleep. So very high resolution stuff that can be sent in again, there's you want someone monitoring watching this stuff that's entirely up to you. But we can identify a number of sleep disorders just based on simply a passive camera that can be set up in your room

based on how you're moving. and a bunch of other inferences you can find there. There are nanobot technologies that are available for tissue repair that are coming on board. This is the basic IV insert that can be done intravenously in your arm. And those are now being shown to target specific muscle, the paper actually that just came out was on muscular dystrophy, I think, being able to target specific damage in those areas that are all going to be available as well. So that stuff is also coming on board. So I can go on and on. The stool analysis one is another example. The urinalysis one.

Blood analysis is one. There are kits now where you can actually get blood draws done from a finger stick. It's a tiny prick of your finger and within five minutes you can have something like a dozen to 20 biomarkers instantaneously identified now this is not like theranos like a thousand markers from your finger sort of thing this is this five to twenty really high quality ones um We're using this right now in the NFL for readiness. And so we get this thing done Monday, typically like Thursday, something like that, maybe Wednesday, and then again on Friday.

And we can actually profile inflammatory responses throughout the week, post-game, and how they're doing, and use that to set standards for the individual player throughout the week as the season goes on yeah and we can identify then by the time friday or saturday comes how far they are along in their individual recovery and that is then able to allow us to determine what they do for practice on friday and saturday you know like what company can you list some of these companies i mean like i can tell you any of these companies um let's talk about the blood marker that you just talked about that's all yeah well there's a bunch of the beauty of it

is um i am company agnostic and so there's a lot of different ones you can use and you know tribes you and i can um talk afterwards but um some of them are better than others some of them are like more than others for different things so it kind of depends on specific forms and features and if you want one individual person versus another one um look i've been doing this for almost five years with things like that with taking daily blood daily urine and saliva on people like every single day for years so there's you have a lot of options and a lot of more companies are coming on board with all those things uh do you think it's getting more affordable though like you know like um well always yeah i mean as time goes on these things always become more and more affordable um it also depends on what you mean by affordable

so that i mean yeah the clientele i work with yes it's very affordable yeah but like trying to come up. Yeah, exactly. Or the college weightlifter or even the Olympian. It only makes $3,500. Oh, the Olympian. For sure. Yeah.

Yeah. Perfect. One thing I really wanted to spend some time on, digital twin. There isn't a single thing that seems more exciting to me than being able to run the simulation before you put it into an athlete or into yourself. I've always wondered, and it actually has created over time, like the nihilist, none of this matters versus every tiny little thing matters, but nothing in the middle matters at all for sure.

Like if you're just casually going and doing it, and I would love to run the simulation, like what if I had done these training or going forward, if I'd like to accomplish this goal, here's my eight options based off of my lifestyle, which one is going to get me there faster and the most efficient, effective ways. And I imagine me getting over myself and my own personal goals and expanding that out into like a medical field or how we're able to see disease in the future. What is, what is like the, the, the overarching idea of the digital twin and how many different areas can we

start to see this in? Cool. Do you guys all know what the digital twin is? Andrew, it seems like you're on board. But Doug, you sent me that stuff from Stanford. I don't think I'm all the way filled in on this. I'm not sure the audience is not. Just brief. I've only been briefed.

So I'm definitely not anywhere near up to speed as you are, I'm sure. Okay, great. So let's go all the way back to uh the mid 1960s i think something like that um this was the apollo mission so you guys have all seen the movie right where they have the oxygen tank or something break tom hayden saved the day yeah so if you guys remember what happened is they had that thing a break way up in space and they didn't know how to fix it they weren't prepared for it and so they had to have a bunch of the engineers on earth actually build miniature versions of the entire thing run it through a bunch of trials figure out

which solution is going to work and then they said we found it this is the one sent it back up to tom banks told them what to do they fixed it and they all survived right that see apollo 13 13 there you go some of that right that sparked the right after that nas came and said we're starting what we're calling the digital twin project which is we want to be able to build digital twins of everything we build so in case something like that happens we can run digital we can run experiments digitally before we actually ever build it so since then that has been normal, common practice with NASA. That has transcended now to industry. And so for decades now, every car you've ever had built, every school you've ever been in, every building you've ever

been in, all your cell phones, all these things, they make digital replicas of them first, run them through all kinds of simulations, figure out where the breakpoints are, all that stuff, solve the problems first before they ever put a nail into a single piece of wood or weld a single piece of metal together. That digital idea has been around in manufacturing for a very, very long time. Well, more recently, in 2000 or so, you guys remember the Human Genome Project, right? And we spent all those billions on making the genome and preventer and all those folks initially sequenced it and they came in and said oh okay great we now have an understanding of the genome of a human being really close closely

after that they started painting what they call the molecular signature molecular portrait of cancer and they started trying to say like what is this signature of individual cancer? If we can do that, we can figure out what's going on. Then we zoom on from there. We've got the molecular athlete project that gets launched. You've got the government launch what's called MotorPAC, some molecular transducers of physical activity, these giant projects across the world. world all of this was to say we need to understand the entire molecular cascade dna to molecules the cells of how people operate it's always disease right and cancer and things like that so that we can do the digital twin but for the human body and so what is available now

is the digital twin for the heart is already here. And in fact, this is being used, I think at Boston, maybe Boston Children's, I forget which hospital, but it's being used. And so prior to having heart surgery, the surgeons will go in, they'll run, they'll make a, they'll scan your heart, make a digital twin of the heart, run it through a ton of different scenarios, different surgical options, identify which one's going to have the most success. And then actually that's the decision making they're making on how to proceed with your operation. So they're able to run that because the heart is very, it's pretty straightforward, right?

It's just kind of connective tissue. It has a couple of moving parts, but it's really not that difficult. So being able to run a digital twin of your heart is pretty available. There's two major companies that are now working on a digital twin of your heart is pretty available there's two major companies that are now working on the digital twin for your brain and they're getting much closer now they're not able to figure out like how memories work and things like that you're just talking about macro structural stuff yeah right so if i go and cut this part out what's going to happen if i go and remove this lesion there, there.

So it's like, we're not anywhere closer to understanding consciousness and, you know, hard problems, soft problems, stuff like that. Macro structure. The lung is actually getting pretty close as well. And the kidneys are there. And so what they've done is they're just going organ by organ system. But eventually it doesn't take long for you to realize this is going to happen. We're going to be able to create digital twins of you based on

imaging and some biomarkers. If we can get all your organs on board, it's not then very difficult for us to put the entire system together. And once we can do that, we are now at the age of digital twins. So the digital twin for medicine is pretty far along um recently in the last couple years they've launched the digital the digital twin for the immune system which is very interesting because you know you guys have probably had dan's probably said this like a billion times but if i wanted to perform surgery on your cardiovascular system i know exactly what to pull out if i want to perform surgery on your cardiovascular system, I know exactly what to pull out. If I want to perform imaging of your skeletal system, I know what to look at. Immune system is not a thing. It's everywhere, right? You can't just extract the immune system is a major project that they're working on. But the digital twin for that, as well as a bunch of other collective systems, are being

published now. So these are papers you can go look at. These are Google digital twin and pull up all the research papers on these different areas. Once that's available, and as these things become more available, here's what you're going to be able to do. Number one, you have to assess. I run tens of millions of simulations instantaneously. Because of that, then I can identify step number three, which is

what is my specific and high precision solution for the target I give it. And then step number four, I just go execute. Now, we can come back to why that step number four matters for coaches. You're going to become really, really, really valuable, in my opinion. But the reality of it is, instead of you having two things, there's both a clinical prognosis here, as well as a determinative action that we can do. So clinical prognosis is, let's just say I've identified something, you know, is wrong with your shoulder or something. I can then do that, run infant simulations, come back and say, okay, great.

You're going to have to have a shoulder replacement in three years, period. Or no, you're going to be fine. You're going to be able to have 100% recovery. I'm going to know the exact answer. So I will know all your prognosis. Not only identify what's the issue, but I will know exactly how your shoulder will respond. And there'll be no question about that. Like we're going to see exactly how you're,

from a training perspective, same thing. Let's run Ryan through 5,000 different training approaches, 5 million different training approaches, 5 billion training approaches, and figure out which one is going to peak him for paris done right no problem so i can identify prognosis and then i can set plan of action i can run you through any amount of supplementation any combination what if he takes this supplement in this medicine does this with this sleep whatever you throw it all in right because it's quantum you can do all of it right and it's going to spit you back exactly what to do from there then you have to go then execute it right you got to go do the work put the plan in do all the stuff right do the training and

you know all those things but your your ability to there um where this is really going to be helpful is saving off catastrophically bad decisions like getting you 95 versus 97 is like really cool but it's going to keep you out of like, yo, do not do that. This is going to give you some really, really, really bad outcome. Your body's not going to respond to that at all. So that is on the highest level. That is the digital twin. And now I think where you were saying, Anders, here's the reality.

I know of at least three companies that have that available right now for human performance. No way. Yeah. Again, guys, I told you, this is not like some sci-fi shit coming. This is stuff that is available right now. In fact, I know the one group that you were mentioning earlier, they can predict marathon performance like six months in advance

for their individuals. So they're getting a pretty good idea of exactly how their people are going to perform very far down the road, which is cool because that's exactly where we got one of my pitchers with our stuff, which is all of our internal data. I knew within a half mile per hour where his vehicle would be ahead of time with way less technology. But that company is available right now. What is that company? That one is specifically, this is actually part of the WUSAI Human Performance Alliance,

and that is Spexa. I think it's a Swedish or Finnish company, Swedish, potentially available. But they have one for resistance training. They have one for endurance training. They have a bunch of different things that are available third or thread or something like that as your strength training one but then they have a full digital twin option that is available it's not public facing you can find the website and stuff

but it's not like they're they're they're the machine behind the stanford um usai human performance alliance thing that it's uh it's pretty cool stuff that one specifically is the the one um i mean when you sent that over i immediately nerded out and i was like whoa this is uh even for a brain like mine when i read everything i went this one changes at all this is insanity what they're building behind the scenes and then um when i, when I thought about the medical implications, I went and talked to my dad about it and he like, with all the stuff that he's had going on over the last year, he immediately was like, this just fixes everything. Like the doctors can run every simulation through and know exactly how to help you based off of your physiology, your life, like the entire,

and it's relatively automatic. You don't need to take blood every single day and hope to guess the future. You can, you can actually run the simulation before it even starts. Like that one just immediately clicks with, with people's brains where they're like, oh, oh, wow. I totally get it yeah the idea of like well let's just try this for eight weeks you know yeah see what happens come back like and i think that's it that it it tweaks the piece of your brain where you go well i wonder if i had done x y and z instead of this and that and where would i be athletically or how strong or whatever it is like it takes all that guesswork out. And I would imagine even teams that are going into a combine,

maybe it just eliminates the combine because you can find Tom Brady well before Tom Brady peaks four years after he gets drafted and, and see where that guy's going. And it's just so obvious now versus, well, let's draft this guy in the last round and see if he's kind of worth it. And he turns out to be Tom Brady. Tom Brady. Yeah. I think this is more important than steroids or any drug ever thought about

being. I would, if you had to choose one or the other, this is going to be way more powerful because even people who take drugs, cheaters out there, China, anyway like uh they still make mistakes they still make mistakes they go too hard you know they take this drug they go too hard they get hurt or ten tal just bombed out because he made mistakes it eliminates well i mean at least reduces mistakes exponentially it's huge yeah no there's high level olympic caliber athletes it's huge there's a lot of uh problems you know with many of these things of course and limitations but the reality is this

i don't know how you can have your head in the sand anymore like it's just coming right like this yeah this is where we at um i think to kind of bring people back to earth a little bit, I think the fun part is part four, which is, okay, let's just imagine I had this perfect supplementation sleep and training, blah, blah, blah, plan for you there. You got to get somebody to go do that for the next three years. And you got to make those decisions in real time. Do we take that? Do we go up 5% today? Do we back off? Do we cut it?

Whatever. So to me, I think the art of coaching actually is going to become more and more and more valuable because imagine this future. Anybody, I actually had somebody send this to me the other day. Somebody literally said, I typed in a chat, TBT, if I was hired Andy Galpin for consulting and I wanted a program that did this, blah, blah, blah, and put on all this prompt in, what would it look like? And they sent me the output, and I was like, that's pretty much exactly what I would have programmed for you, right? Pretty close. So the ability – I mean, it was very general.

It was like I'm 30 years old. I work out three days a week. I have 30 minutes. Okay, it was like three sets of 10. It was very – Yeah. Yeah, yeah. 30 years old. Like, I work out three days a week. I have, like, 30 minutes. Like, okay, it was, like, three sets of 10. Like, it was, like, very. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Push, pull, push.

Okay, great. Like, pretty standard. Getting a program, getting an nutrition plan, like, that is not going to be hard at all. There's almost no more value in that. That's running very low. But people are going to want your personal time and attention. They're going to want you there in person to interact. Like, can I exchange with you as a human being? Can you get me motivated to do this we should go over here, or this is what I want to do. Here's my strategy, because I've done this a bunch of times. And this is why I really made a point earlier saying, look, part one, two, and three, and four. But part two and three are still terrible. All that technology is great for

medicine. It is saying, look, we know if we do this with your heart valve, it's going to have this response. That's amazing. It's not saying here has an optimized heart function. Here's how we increase your VO2 max. It is simply saying like to make the valve not break, go here. Coaches are still the only key to understanding this is what it's going to take to get to that stage. You can tell me where we're at and your analytics are better. And in fact, my general answer is like, coaches should just kind of let that part go. the sensors and tech are just going to be better you're just going to get outpaced super fast well you should double and triple quadruple down is then it's like how do then i get to that spot how do i make sure i am getting better at getting

outcomes from people and then assessing that's great and i know your hip angle is at this degree but i think your hip angle should be here. Tech can't really do that. Until we can run the simulations on a lot of things, which are coming, you won't be able to do that. But you still have to optimize for something. So we're optimizing for what? We can't optimize for endurance and power. I want to be 280 pounds, but then I also want to be the fastest guy in the field.

Not going to happen, right? So you've got to pick strategy. And I want to be 280 pounds, but then I also want to be the fastest guy in the field. Okay, not going to happen, right? So you've got to pick strategy. And that's still you. Yeah, look, I think for you, based on my experience, I think we should optimize for this. We should optimize for recovery or workload or speed or whatever, right? And the machines will never tell you that because it still has to be a prompt, right? Remember, when you ask that digital twin to run a simulation, the initial prompt has to be run a simulation and tell me what's going to be the best. Thanks.

You got to fill that in, right? You have to tell it what to go for. You can't. You can tell it something like better. Yeah. Like it's still up to you as a coach and you've got to know what you're doing and still make really, really tough decisions. Right. We're going to optimize for making

sure we're healthy. This is a good example. With one of my recent fighters, Tatiana Suarez, which is actually one of the dopest things ever because we always set super specific goals before all training camps, right?

We have these things printed out. We see them daily. This kind of stuff. Our top goal for her last fight, which is a title eliminator fight was to not hurt your back in camp right top goal and then it was like other performance and stuff goes later right and so every single day we're always doing like are we doing the thing right now to make sure we're maximizing this top goal and then when she won her fight in her post-fight interview she was like yeah we had three goals and then she was like she won her fight in her post-fight interview, she was like, yeah, we had three goals. And then she rattled off in her post-fight interview

all three of our top goals for the camp, which was like, ah, dope. It just really landed perfectly with her. And the reason I'm saying that is this. We would have made different training decisions. How much we're working, how hard we're going, do I do that extra round? Do I do this other things? If the top goal was something like endurance or whatever, whatever, right? It still came down to me manually saying, these are the top three goals I pick. Now you go

run the simulations, tell me what needs to happen to maximize these three. But I had to pick that, right? Because I knew her history and all those things right so we have to come up with a goal you still have to tell it to like optimize for what in that particular case i said look if this means we lose some endurance and we lose some speed or we do whatever but in exchange for that we increase our chance of being healthier because in that particular fight the number one thing was like dude you got to get to the fight. We can't win fights if we don't get to the fight. And so you have to make that decision. And it was the right decision because she went to the fight and completely dominated.

And, you know, it all worked out. So you still have that touch, which is, again, I believe the coaching, human performance, physical therapy, high-touch doctors, like all of these people that I collectively call kind of human performance folks, dieticians and sports psychologists, all that. I think you're going to be more and more valuable because people are going to still need the strategy and then the actual tactics, you know, for them based on your coaching experience, right? Because a lot of times it's 50-50, right? What do we do? Go here, go here. And this is when the coach goes, you know what? This is where we're going, Right. I think those soft skills, um, anytime we have athletes come

into our program and they ask about their trainers that they have in person, I'm like, we're stepping back because the skill of seeing what somebody looks like when they walk in the room, you, I don't think you can measure it. It's, it's a spidey sense that goes off where you go, that guy doesn't look right. Like why, why does his face look like that? Or what, why does he moving slow? Cause the athlete may not know they, they just go and perform. They're just pushing. Um, and, and really seeing having somebody there to actually be able to monitor and know what that person looks like,

and then ask the right questions because if you're just following the piece of paper, it's, it's very, very hard to know those day-to-day decisions on intensity and how to change things up. Which I really think is the best combo of having somebody on site that can really just manage and monitor what the day-to-day fluctuations look like while having your digital twin show you what your perfect, perfect future self is. I think this is eliminate so many clowns on Instagram and all this social media, like, cause it'll make, you know, give me some random program obsolete. Thank God. Like get rid of those people and like, you know, clear the way for people who understand, you know, human performance.

I love this. Yep. Yep. I agree. And there's also, there's an interesting conversation about resource deployment. And so it's like, oh, this is great. If I have 50 grand a month to spend, what if I have 3000 this year total? And that still is going to really come down to you is like, you got to know the individual. What are we going to, you know, let's really want this motion capture. Now we really want blood work done now we really want sleep stuff done we really want

a meditation app or whatever and so you're gonna have to still be able to pick from that person they spend their limited resources on right yeah whatever it's going to be so um you know lots of decisions being made but yeah there's a little bit of insight into some of the pretty cool things that are again available right now i love it where can people find you yeah uh pretty much as you guys know all i use my social media for is science shit so twitter and instagram that's uh pretty much all i do is post studies and cool things like this you're putting out a bunch of studies these days too that's all i do man back back in the lab. Oh, yeah, man. We just published a review paper on rhodiola. We just published one on acute changes in the microbiome with exercise.

So, like, you know, within a couple of days, two weeks, we got another one coming on tainted supplements. We got another one actually just got accepted. Wait, wait, wait. Tainted what? Tainted what? Supplements. Supplements. Yeah. And then we just got one actually on some really cool stuff on the residual strength.

And so this is the difference between the strength you actually have versus how much you should have and how that is this very strong predictor of actually this is this is dope really quick this is the first evidence i know that directly shows strength training protects brain health not mental health strength training directly not not correlation causative in protection of physical brain health through aging and that paper has been accepted for publication and we got a couple of other ones in that same with our Phenol Games project. So yeah, it's going to get you and Dan on here at the same time.

Talk about that really early. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Tommy disagreed to come back on the show. You can be a co-host on Tommy's show. We could talk about that. Tommy was the lead author on that. That was his project. We got another one. We'll collect the data on with Tommy and then we get Grant Tinsley on to do the Rode that. That was his project. We've got another one we're collecting data on with Tommy. And then we get Grant Tinsley on to do the rhodiola.

That was his paper. Love it. Okay. Right on. Travis Mash. Go to MashLead.com or MashLead Performance on Instagram. Love it. Doug Larson.

You bet. I'm on Instagram. Douglas E. Larson. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We are Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. 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 is over at RapidHealthReport.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.