Barbell Shrugged - The Intersection of Mental and Physical Training w/ Kenny Kane, Matt Hesse, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #555

Episode Date: March 10, 2021

Diesel Dad Class 3 registration is live. For busy dads that want to get strong, lean, and athletic without sacrificing family, fatherhood, or fitness.   Register Today.   FitOps equips veterans who are passionate about fitness, health, and wellness to find success after the military. Using fitness and the leadership skills that they gained during their time in the service, veterans are equipped with a new mission: to help improve the lives of others. Focusing on professional and personal development, veterans who graduate from FitOps are experts in fitness coaching, and are awarded a fitness industry professional certification and designated as Certified Veteran Fitness Operatives (CVFO), which gives them the tools necessary to launch a career in fitness and leadership.   Kenny Kane is a life-long performer and coach who is fueled by improving quality of life for people in principled ways. He bought CrossFit Los Angeles in 2014 with a vision to build a unified coaching team and the business to support it. The business rebranded in 2017 as Oak Park, a nod to the Kenny’s roots in Santa Rosa, CA as well as a symbolic transition to something evergreen. His dream has always been to create an environment where he can be a student and learn entirely new things from the people within it. As the Oak Park coaches and community continue to evolve, that dream becomes more of a reality.   In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged: Why is mental health so easily ignored in fitness How to bring purpose to your training What has the pandemic and social distancing done to mental health in the US Building trainer with a deeper understanding of human needs How do we equip kids with the knowledge of mental and physical health   Connect with FitOps Connect with Kenny Kane Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram ————————————————   Diesel Dad Training Programs: http://barbellshrugged.com/dieseldad   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa   Please Support Our Sponsors   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   www.masszymes.com/shruggedfree  - for FREE bottle of BiOptimizers Masszymes   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://prxperformance.com/discount/BBS5OFF Save 5% using the coupon code “BBS5OFF”

Shrug family, in today's episode of Barbell Shrug, we are talking to Coach Kenny Kane from Oak Park, LA and Matt Hesse from the FitOps Foundation about the intersection of mental and physical training. Today's episode, we dig into why mental health is so easily ignored in fitness, how to bring purpose to your training, what the pandemic and social distancing has done to mental health in the United States, building trainers with a deeper understanding of human needs and how we equip our children with the knowledge of mental and physical health. Before we get rolling, Diesel Dad class three is live right now for busy dads that want to get strong, lean, and athletic without sacrificing family, fatherhood, or fitness. Head over to barbell shrug.com forward slash diesel dad. that want to get strong, lean, and athletic without sacrificing family, fatherhood, or fitness,

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and use the code shrugged to save 10% off your order. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Vagabond Shrugged. I'm Anders Vardar, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash, founder of FitOps Foundation. Matt Hesse, you're co-hosting today. How awesome is this? I'm co-hosting? Yeah, you're in.

We're all just hanging out. You're right next to the guy interviewing him today. You got a promotion. Yeah, you're on. And our good friend, Kenny Kane. What's going on, my man? Good to see y'all. Very good to see y'all. I love that we just got the tour of your house. What is the current state of Oak Park?

Are you guys, do you still have a gym? We have pivoted and we have pivoted and we have pivoted. Matt came in for a workout yesterday. We seem to be finding our way through this giant mess. So far, knock on wood, successfully with, you know, and I would add a modifier to that. Successful in 2020 is different than perhaps any other year. You're kidding. It might be survival, but we're actually doing okay. Like, I'm pretty proud of how we're doing. It's awesome. Yeah, this is really cool because, Kenny, I don't know how many people actually know your entire story,

and I'd love to kind of backtrack a little bit. But having Matt next to you, and we've been down to FitOps a couple times this year now and talking about kind of the behavioral health, the mental health side of fitness. I was talking to Travis before the show, and he actually didn't know the full story of kind of the last two, two and a half years of everything that your kind of transformation and fitness and coaching. Can you just give

everybody just like the high level overview of where you were and just how much things have changed in your practice? Sure. Like, you know, Travis, when you and I last like really connected, we're in that workshop together. And, you know, I was in the middle of like basically a string of deaths. What happened after that was a natural disaster and a few more deaths. And so and then as you know, we're both guys who are kind of late to the baby, baby making and baby raising game. Yeah. We're bringing chickens, having multiple kids. So all these things were currently running into each other and combusting. What I chose to do is, is, is to kind of evolve our,

my brick and mortar business CrossFit Los Angeles into Oak Park, Los Angeles, with some legacy contribution of CrossFit and what into Oak Park Los Angeles with some legacy contribution of CrossFit and what it's been to us we've been open as a as a as a CrossFit gym for 17 years now as we record this but also the I was looking towards the future and and very much looking towards the frankly the psychological aspect of physicality. And really, that was the reason why we shifted. I just felt like, look, we're in Southern California, which is just broadly a very physical culture to begin with. But then I just felt like there was so much more being left on the table. And I believe that everybody's physical practice should be metaphorical and literal and

figurative ways to make them better human beings in the way they run their lives, make them more durable, make them stronger and make them healthier for the variety of contingencies that are going to happen to us as humans. So the rebranding was in part to honor where I grew up, the fitness business owned Oak Park in Santa Rosa, California that burnt down. And my sisters and I had to give it up after my mom died. And then of course, when it burnt down, it was just like a double nail in a coffin that was already. So, you know, it's also been an opportunity to kind of reinvent a future where, you know, if, if I look, if I forward, think about like, what will my legacy be, you know,

and if I'm looking at my eulogy and, and, and Anders is speaking at her Doug speaking at it, they're going to go, Hey, you know, this guy really felt like, you know, our physicality can make us better humans. And he built a place where people could train that and be that routinely every day. And, um,

you know, in the end, thousands of people were productively and meaningfully affected by that. That would be a cool piece of a eulogy. Yeah. Personally, that's what I'm after. You know,

um, if I'm looking backwards from, from when I go down and, you know, and Travis just finally to wrap it up. I mean, I think the biggest symbol for me was actually eulogizing my mom and seeing a thousand people around

them, the Oak Park business, and just kind of realizing she was a coach and the generational effect. There was five-year-olds at that funeral and there were 93-year-olds at that funeral. There were international basketball coaches professional soccer coaches speaking at it as well as swimmers and synchronized swimmers and olympians gold like people had been touched by her efficacy as a coach and it just brings me back to like there's nothing new about that we our modern decoration of physicality is something that the monastic traditions the martial artists and the yogis have been doing for thousands of years but the massive influence on people's lives and in really meaningful ways and i i take to that you know as deeply as i can so we just i

just wanted to have the business kind of reflect that that deeper sort of um perspective and the symbolism of the tree the roots of an oak tree are deeper and wider than the actual branches. And so I really, really look back to my mom, to Andy Patronic, to all the people that have been before us, to all the people that I've learned from all these master coaches along the way,

like all of that, all the amazing people that have been through our gym and gone on to open their own gyms. Like 17 gyms have come from ours. Yeah. 17. 17. 17. That's pretty incredible.

We had the best post-offense in the 80s. You know, we used a lot of coaches that went on to then win Super Bowls. And, like, that's something that I think is pretty cool. Is your gym now at your house there? Is that where you've pivoted to? No. No. Somehow.

And Matt was there yesterday. Somehow our doors are open in arguably the second, maybe third tightest restrictive area in America. Business, but like training and at Santa Monica. I mean, how are you doing that? Are you just like hoping they don't come and say something or what? There's no hope. It was a simply concrete do do it we're actually doing it by the rules okay we created nine socially distanced training squares and if we have an overflow there's actually space to put a 10th

and 11th and 12th person per hour um and we we run our classes like that we run a lot of our privates out that we're like fortunate and blessed that we, we run our classes like that. We run a lot of our privates out that we're, we're like fortunate and blessed that we had a parking lot to do that. Oh yeah. And I, I just committed some of my own money to, to the parking lot just to kind of, to, you know, astroturf it and put a rig up and all that kind of stuff. And he said, look, we're going to get in the community. Nobody left that the bulk of the community stayed with us.

We retained, you know, you know retained 95% of our population through it. Well, the good thing is there's nowhere to go. Everyone's got to be doing the same thing. You have that advantage. I think what happened is it was just so chaotic for a lot of gyms. I think we were a combination of prepared and lucky. It wasn't one or the other. Right.

You prepared and you steeled it. And I'm like, yeah, but we're kind of lucky. I was in the old location. Right. I don't know if I'd be saying what I'm saying right now. Yeah. Hey, it's going to be on a podcast. Yeah.

Everybody in my garage that you see in the back. Yeah. Matt, why is the new location better than the old location in the same town? I mean, everything. Everything starting from the landlord to the relationships there, the location itself, the spaciousness of the indoor facility when we get to use it, the luck that we had basically a 4,000 square – parking space that we can –

Right. Yeah. I mean, in Santa Monica, 4,000 feet is like, you just don't have that. Yeah. I thought it's CJ Martin.

He said the same thing. I thought him just yesterday. He's like, they pivoted dead to do the same thing. And they put it, everything's outdoors. Like, gosh,

man, that has to be so hard in California because there's just not enough. In the middle of the hood too, in downtown San Diego. But, Matt, I'm really stoked that you reached out to me the other day asking if I knew any powerlifting coaches in LA. And I was like, I think what I really want to do is send them over to Kenny Kane because Kenny is like the only person that I really know that is facing or kind of putting one foot in front to get into the real world, into the training atmosphere and take those lessons.

Because I feel like Kenny is one of the only coaches that I know that's really incorporating a lot of the stuff that you guys talk about at camp into a very practical like meaningful business yeah thanks Anders I mean first of all thanks the introduction I got my first Olympic lifting yeah he's got he's got a little tear all right on the thumb yesterday it's his virgin knuckle skin yesterday so you know i've been on i've been on the show a few times you got perhaps camp multiple times um i'm sure most of the listeners know what fit ops is uh if you want more information you go to fit ops.org and check it out um but essentially uh in a nutshell we are taking veterans uh military and affiliated veterans, and transitioning them through out of the military into the world of coaching through a campus, which is based in

Arkansas. And it's a eight week online pre-study and a three week on camp experience. And it's all built around what I, what I inadvertently and subconsciously built for myself when I transitioned, which was this blueprint of physical awareness of who I am as a as a athlete or as a human being, physically, who I am mentally or intellectually, and what I want from my brain cognitively, and from a growth perspective, and then who I am emotionally and spiritually and what I want from my soul. And, you know, I think all of those things for me have been a guiding light, so to speak, in my life. And, you know, Kenny's approaching it from a clinician's perspective and seeing that, you know, the silos that we put up as experts in our respective areas, meaning physical training, the best coaches in the world are coaches that have an EQ and understand how to motivate somebody beyond just the, I want to be this physically. Well, why do you want to be that physically?

And then that comes into the sort of the mental piece and the emotional piece. And, and so, you know, what I'm, what I'm building it and what we have built it at the fit ops campus is the connective tissue between physical and mental and mental and emotional, emotional, physical. And so I believe that the, and Kenny and I were talking about this yesterday, that the next generation of, of clinicians, coaches, athletes, you know, I think a lot of, a lot of us are doing it inadvertently or subconsciously like I did it, but building the understanding and the consciousness between why we do what we do in those respective silos or verticals is what our campus is all about. I happen to be doing it for veterans and helping them transition out of the service into meaningful careers

to serve again as trainers. But I think that that can be taken across a lot of different areas. And, you know, he's obviously doing it now in his practice and his facility. Yeah. Kenny, as far as getting buy-in from your coaches, what a little bit of that process of just having trying to have a different conversation in your coaches meetings and implementing some sort of strategies over a little bit of the the process that I know it took a long time to get everybody kind of bought into this system can you just dig into a little bit of just what what it actually looks like becoming a coach at Oak Park and how you present this case for going deeper?

Funny, like I was just, you know, we've got like three apprentice coaches that we're working with right now. And recently I was just a very talented guy who works at a gym locally. He's worked at multiple gyms and like a lot of trainers in the space when you're 24, 25, 26,

you're working at like five different gyms often or three different gyms. Whether you're in the strength and conditioning, whether you're in cross, it doesn't really matter. You're bouncing around. And it's like sometimes it's group class model, sometimes it's private model, and you're just getting your rates right and, you know, getting out of that sort of green phase. And so I'm going to answer this by saying this.

I'm still fumbling, and I feel like I have some structure that will be effective to answer the question. Recently, I fumbled when I was interviewing this 25-year-old. And he was a horse, just a remarkably capable athlete. But he was thinking of the whole thing from the athlete of what was important for him. But it was still this like myopic focus on what he could get out of the training, who he could train with to better his physicality and all these other things.

And I realized, this reminds me very much of one of the episodes on the Body of Knowledge that Dr. Galpin and I put together. I said Dr. Galpin, right? Andy Galpin. He's just Andy around here. And he hates it when you call him doctor. Oh, then I'm definitely calling him doctor for sure.

If you want to get under his skin, call him doctor. Perfect. Now I know. And as grumpy as he already is, he'll get more grumpy. Perfect. Perfect. So we had an episode called, you know, the cook, the baker, and the chef. And it was basically about like that as it relates to physicality. But I realized that this kid was coming to me as a cook. His way of thinking of training was from a very singular mind of like, this is what CrossFit is and

this is what we do because I'm this and I can do X, Y, and Z and because I'm hungry to learn. But he was thinking of it like, when I come, I'll clock in. And cooks, what is, you know, they have a couple of dishes that they can make. Yeah. And I realized, oh, he's talking to me like he wants a job as a cook. I'm looking to him like I need to hire a chef. Oh. And what a chef does. I'm with you.

And so what a chef does as a coach, and look, there are different kinds of coaches. There are times where a baker has to be the coach, a cook has to be a coach, and a chef. But for what we do very specifically, the way that our organization runs, we can only hire chefs. Like bakers and cooks do not work in our facility. And learn that the hard way. And so he was thinking of it from the lens of like, I can cook these dishes for you. And I'm thinking like, okay, like on any given day, you've got somebody's family member who, and this is like a true, like, just let me just give you like an hour format. We got one high profile, highly functioning professional CEO who's just overcoming a severe alcohol

addiction during COVID. You've got another student who had a suicidal sister. You've got somebody else who just put their puppy into, you know, the 13- old dog into surgery. You got somebody who's like feeling great, who's a physical horse. You've got two other people who are scrambling to get there on time because, you know, they're juggling, like all parents juggling COVID, school, who's getting there. And so now you've got a workout, but like, like if you just go as a cook, here's the workout, you know, you, you have to be able to on the fly go today. What I've been given is some,

there's some produce that was locally farmed that doesn't have E. Coli. There was some, some, you know, there was a, there was a, there's a farmhouse locally where I got some, some, you know, there was a farmhouse locally where I got some ribeye and I'm going to make an amazing salad with some ribeye. And that is what is happening on that day. So you have a plan, but the plan is contextualized by what is happening in real time by humans. And so, if you can't think of it from the frame in our facility, from that regard, it's not really a hireable situation. And so, Anders, I offer like my own failure. Like we were talking like this kid, like I'm sitting here as a 50-year-old male going and looking at him going, he has all the material assets, except for his mindset is misaligned with

what we're looking for. And so what has plagued me in the past is my, in developing coaches, is my sense of optimism. That can be debilitating. Seriously, no kidding. If you're optim, you know, it's just like thinking, you know, and it's the same sort of martyr bullshit that we can all fall into as coaches. Like, oh, I'm going to help this person, da-da-da-da-da. And at some point you have to kind of go, no, these people have to willingly choose to walk the path that you've laid out for them. Yeah, it's got to want to be a chef.

They've got to want to be a chef, man. Right. And so the structure, the actual structure of it is we have like an apprenticeship program that looks different that for experienced coaches than it does for inexperienced coaches. Like I've got one gal that's coming in, she's 10 years into her career. I got two people that are like very green to all of it. It matters, but all of them go through the tenets. So I have them read five books. They have to understand those things. They go through psychometric testing to see what their blind spots would be developmentally. And then concurrently with those five tenets, there's five blocks of the apprenticeship

that we take them through. Now, there's intellectual development during this time, but there's also psycho-emotional development at this time. And on three sort of pillars, are you self-aware enough to be aware of how your energy is? Are you able to regulate it so that you can inform your decision-making process in real time? And are you able to reflect in an iterative way to grow yourself, not just as a human being, but professionally as a coach? And so, everything

that we kind of do lends itself to there's a through line for our business and i've talked about it on this show and i've talked a lot a lot about it on the body knowledge but you know change is inevitable and growth is optional and so buy-in has to happen from the person but you have to systematically and relationally be able to support the buy-in that's happening from the person i am not a person after close to 35 years in the coaching world and having grown up, you know, with my mom as a unintentional mentor for even before that, realized that this whole process of developing as a coach is so never ending that the oscillation between being a student yourself and being a teacher is like this iterative yin yang never ending cycle and there just has to be

a sincere desire to like learn develop push grow teach reflect and right now we're living in a in a time where people don't like to reflect. They like to do a lot, but without reflection, there can be no growth. And so in those scenarios, changes will happen for the coach professionally, personally, for the athlete that they're guiding physically. But if you want to grow somebody, you've got to know something about, like, as Matt said, the eq there just has to be some competency around that and that has to be interpreted in a very authentic and sincere way yeah how long is the the internship with you guys or apprentice program yeah so we have a

craftsman's workshop which is for professional coaches who come and stay with us we're doing that online at this point right now um and that's like a two-week deal but there's about two months of work before you do the actual two-week apprenticeship or craftsman's workshop the it's 10 weeks for an experienced coach um and usually about five months um to six months for an inexperienced coach and then they still have about three to three three to six more months of development just just learning. That's the timer. Turn it on. Off the music.

Turn it off. And I think what's so cool about what Matt's got going on, Don, at FitOps right now is like you get these coaches that are coming in and they're super excited. And all of the conditions for success are built into FitOps. And it's this perfect scenario where everyone's bought into the same cause. Everyone's all about growing in that three weeks they're there. And then they get out into the real world. And now all of a sudden, they have to kind of objectively view, oh, where are my real

weaknesses? I'm no longer in this perfect bubble where everybody is on my team. And Matt, I'd love to hear your thoughts on kind of that process of, you know, I know you guys have the continuing education with Johnny Martin, kind of that process of breaking down some of those things that they think they're good at, need to get better at, and just not chipping away at their weaknesses, but exposing them and saying, hey, let's pick this up and get better because we all need to be able to have the conversation that Kenny's having right

now. I think, I think you're hitting on a really important point. It's, it's, um, uh, it's something that when you come to camp, as you, as you came to camp, I don't know if you had to come down when you left, but imagine being there for 20 days in this bubble where you're, you're learning and being invested in and all the distractions of life are away from you. And, um, you know, you're, you're a sponge of physical, mental, and emotional change. And then you go to the military, um, uh, as you're transitioning, because you go through this time of, I have structure, I have unit camaraderie, I have, you know, three squares a day, I have housing, I have very little responsibilities outside of my job of whatever your MOS or duty as in the military. And so we're really aware that the transition out of camp into this career as a coach at a novice level for most of these guys is a important piece of work we're doing in building

infrastructure to support that transition. Part of the curriculum is what I'm working on now. Part of the reason I had you connect me to Kenny is I'm going through that exploration from myself. And that is what I'm calling blueprinting, which is, you know, ultimately it comes down to helping them find their purpose. Purpose is not something you like, oh, I read a book. My purpose is this. Purpose is something you discover after you put things in alignment for yourself to, to go where you ultimately are supposed to go. I believe you can find your way to purpose quicker if you have an understanding of who you are physically, who are mentally, who are emotionally. And there's obviously other things that go into that, but ultimately if you, if you anchor yourself

in, in what, what I'm doing today is three pillars. My three physical pillars are, I want to become proficient, um, from a novice level this year as an Olympic lifter. I want to become, um, proficient in Pilates and adjusting my, my posture and structure and building the connective tissue, um, uh, to my, so that my strength can improve and I'm more flexible. And I want to become conditioned at all levels of intensity and at different weights tactically from a cardiovascular perspective. Those are my three physical pillars. And I have three mental pillars and three emotional pillars. That same blueprint, every vet that leaves our camp, they'll leave with their own blueprint and they'll discover it while they're on camp.

That blueprint is not meant to be a hard and fast, this is what it is forever. It's meant to be a starting point with all kinds of resources and tools so that they can come home and jump right into their blueprint and get after their three pillars of each space. So that's literally why I had you connected with Kenny. It's the work I'm going through myself now yeah others to do that work until i until i do it myself and i think we all have some subconscious or um subconscious aspirations that turn into what we call goals but i think we're pretty loose in our goals uh most people are and they don't they don't do the daily work to achieve those goals. What I'm doing is building a blueprint and they're going to get that same blueprint

with their goals. And we're going to follow them and check in on them. Hey, you said this, this, and this, where are you at? Let's make sure that we'll leave with that plan. Yeah. Kenny, the, the days of, um, and my point and with me as N equals one, I want to work out all the time. I'll just open a CrossFit gym. God, it's so common. Yeah. Then I had to learn how to run a business. I just wanted to lift weights and not go to work for a little while.

Me too. Little did I know. Little did I know. Are those days of being a coach, I mean, have we hit just kind of a critical mass where the CrossFit piece is sliding at a slow downward slope and the necessity for coaches that can have a deeper conversation? Is that really where the industry is headed? Yeah, look, I think what's happening um unintentionally it's a combination

there's a little bit of chaos happening so some of it is intentional some of it is just chaos just leading to a development of coaching i love hearing him talk by the way i can just but honestly like keep talking um look the day i don't know anders to answer that part of the question but i do know that people are professionalizing and taking it very seriously because people are really putting together right now like look training and as matt i love matt's language like this these silos we can't silo some of the language that they use at FitOps and what Matt uses specifically is this idea of connective tissue, right? So that's just another way of saying that coaches now have to think, they have to become

capable in multiple areas in order to get the physical body to work, right? Because we've got a skeletal system, we've got a nervous system, we've got a fascial system, we've got a muscular system. Like all these things are their own independent entities and doctors can literally spend their entire careers just focusing on one. And for those of us that are in the field, working with bodies in motion daily, we have to be the unifiers of those things. And so now it turns out, hey, what's happening in the melon has a lot to do with your digestion. And oh, by the way, if your digestion is a little bit funky, so is likely your fascia are going to get bound and not going to be as malleable as it might be

in the collagen and the elastin fibers are going to get a little bit more thick and rigid. And then you're going to feel tension. And then when you're tense, you're going to get a little bit more thick and rigid. And then you're going to feel tension. And then when you're tense, you're going to get a little stressed. And then you're in these like things that are interconnected. You know, is it the diaphragm not getting connected to the, you know, through sort of vagal tone or like what is it? Like there's all these complex things happening all at once. And yet, we're in a time we can start to understand these things in unsiloed ways, in more interconnected ways that relate to people's emotionality in real time. And if you

can't tap into that, you're just, you know, you're a coach that is thorough, but not helpful and we live in the age of information abundance and man it's so easy to be thorough right yeah can you be helpful and coaches need to be helpful and I think that's what we're seeing is that they think we're seeing a movement to fit coaches figure out helpfulness requires not what it used to be 10 years ago. I also wonder if you guys did a study on the longevity of a coach who understands the importance of EQ. Longevity meaning how long do you keep your clients and how do they migrate through their life and their transition to your point. If you coach them from a pure clinical, I'm coaching you and I know some great trainers who are here and insanely intelligent and I'll stand them up against anybody from a clinician's perspective. But I also know coaches who are less clinical,

but have a high EQ and their clients stay longer because they understand them emotionally. And to the point of connective tissue, if you don't understand your clients emotionally and you continue to just train them, eventually they're going to get bored of that training, change their life anymore. And they're going to move on to the next thing, which is the yo-yo of dieting and the whole magic pill. Oh, like all of that is due to they just don't continue to grow and i think that's why it's so important we migrate the holistic nature and what he's doing i think is going to transform the thinking within crossfit dude i think that stands

true whether you're talking about you know like you know high level athletes which is what i deal with mainly or the regular person. The coaches who do not – they're not able to tap into the psyche of the athlete. They tend to lose those athletes, or they tend to never get them in the first place. But if you can't relate to that person on multiple levels, it's just not going to work out because a great athlete is a mental mess every single time. Like the best of the best. I mean i'm one of them as is a great that is a hundred percent true because they're challenging themselves always to grow right challenge comes frustration and aggression and right and training is a perfect place uh what did he say yesterday? It's when two things

are similar. Complimentary? What was this when we were in class? You were talking about their precursor. Antecedent? I can't remember. That's a very fancy word. He's got a lot of

fancy words. Matt, regarding EQ, I think most coaches that listen to this show, they have a good understanding of how to go. If they don't understand really good high-quality technique for Olympic weightlifting or whatever it is, they know where the resources are to improve on something like that. But as far as EQ goes and emotional intelligence, what are good resources or ways to improve that specific quality?

No kidding. I'm writing this down if you have some. We really put him on the spot there. I mean, I think each person is different, and each person's goals are different. And, you know, it's part of the work that I'm doing right now. I'm going to take a page out of Kenny's book here and tell you that I'm fumbling through it right now, trying to make sure that I put the right resources in place for our veterans to be able to grab onto. Ultimately, I believe from a motive perspective, an EQ perspective, it's relative to the person's own goals for themselves and what they want

themselves to be from a consciousness perspective. So, you know, you go through what we call, what I call blueprinting and you understand that, you know, for me being present with my kids and my wife, when I come from a background of, of trauma and fear and repeating trauma and fear and trauma and fear and trauma and fear, it's hard to stop and be present when you're in that. 100%. Incredibly helpful. And as a tool, when you're a CEO or an entrepreneur and you're constantly evaluating risk and making adjustments in some ways, but it's also highly debilitating if you don't keep

it in check because you could end up changing things over and over and over. And pretty soon you've, you basically you've recreated everything 400 times and now you're, you're confused. Your employees are confused and your company's confused and your customer's confused, whatever your customer might be. So I think you're broke. I think from a, and then you're broke. You know, if you see that happen a lot, man, where people just keep changing and they, You're broke. I think from a – what's that? And then you're broke. You see that happen a lot, man, where people just keep changing.

They never get out of park, and so now you're broke. I also think that the emotional understanding and the consciousness of human beings in general is changing. And I see it really clearly in the military. What used to work in the military to motivate young soldiers into becoming mature soldiers no longer works. You can't train basic kids in basic training the way that they trained me when I was in basic training. Their consciousness has evolved. Their emotional understanding of themselves, obviously they're still young, 18 year old kids, but they're, they're more, they're more evolved than we were at that age. Human beings have, have changed. And so the training has to change. And you look at someone like, you know, Jocko Willenick, for example, um, you know, Jocko is highly disciplined, highly trained. He is, you know, I think from what we think of what soldiers are, what they were, he is the prototypical soldier.

The future of leadership in the military is going to have to bring in more EQ. You have to emotionally understand your soldiers in order to motivate them. So young soldiers now will not be motivated by aggression and force anymore. And, you know, it's going to be a really interesting challenge for the military to navigate that because ultimately, you know, as a, as a part, part of, you know, getting off the cattle truck and basically training part of the experience is getting the shit scared out of you. And that's your first experience of compartmentalization. Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.

I don't know what I'm going to do because this guy is intimidating and scary. And in my ear, kids now are like, I'm not scared of you. You can't touch me. They've seen all the movies. They know what's coming now. And they know that you can't do anything to them. You know, they've, they've in some way, maybe some people might be like, that's, that's, that's a rescinding consciousness or I don't know,

whatever you call it, backwards of consciousness, but de-escalation or something. But it means that we have to evolve. And I think, you know, from, from you asked me, you asked me what some resources, but, you know, I'm literally in the middle of this process of trying to understand what best tools are. I would just say that that that each person's journey is their own. And you have to you have to first understand what you want for yourself. And there are a gazillion books out there and teachers and leaders who can take you down those paths. But I think it's individualist. Yeah.

You talk about the kind of the growth and what somebody coming into basic training looks like and expects now and how they don't. Kenny, have you noticed a change in the last couple of years of what a coach coming to your gym looking for a job and that conversation has to have changed since a decade ago when i had my gym funnily enough i mean kind of what matt's talking about what we are in this like era of you know people coming in going you don't get to tell me what to do and you have to respect me, which is a different sort of like, I understand I own the place. Right. And so it is, it's just, it's sort of, and then,

how about his egoistic, right? Just, just my own ego, like going, I'm the owner. And then part of that is them recognizing their, their ego in it, but they can't yet recognize their ego and going, I'm going to tell you, you know, this is how you're going to refer to me X, Y, and Z. And this is what I expect. You just kind of go, okay. And so there's, there is a gap right now with a gap of practicality, let's just call it as far as like gym functioning goes. Because there's a, there's a malappropriated perspective that, you know, incoming coaches often younger coaches,

let's just say think. And I also think that that's an opportunity for, you know, older, you know, at this point, 50, are you really 50?

50, turn 50 December 1. Lord. Travis Smash is so happy. He's not the oldest person on the show It's the first time Because your birthday was the other day, right? You were 47, 48? I'm 47, yeah

Because your birthday was the other day I'm like, man And you're on that thread And I'm like, fuck I'm older It's coming, man Three more years Let me tell you something, Travis

I did this workout with her gym it was called kane's 50th and it was just a monster workout but it was like it was something that i trained for and dude like we are in a different time we're in a different time where 50 year olds can just be beasts and have fun and yeah i'm hoping able like it's just it's a it's a different time than when we were i'm banking on that really cool there's also like uh you're you're because this type of training you've been doing it for so long it's iterative and that it builds on your face right no totally you know there's a there's a uh totally command sergeant major who's the outgoing ciac um john troxell i think maybe you guys have either met him or or heard of him um he's on my board but he's 54 55 maybe um and he is you know from a physical physical perspective um obviously age

catches up with you but he has such a base of training from his entire time in the military that um he still crushes it at 54 years old. And, you know, his, his point, I think this is a, this is a part of, you know, why continuity of training is so important. If he stops, that base will go away very fast and you'll never get it back. And that's life. Like why this, you know, holistic approach to training needs to, it needs to be part of woven into your life as part of just, you know,

like brushing your teeth every day. It has to be, or as you get old, you won't age well because you don't have the base and it's hard to ever get it. And once you lost it, Take it a quick break in the show. I want to remind you this week from Monday through Sunday, diesel dad class three launch is going on. Registration is live right now over at barbellshrug.com forward slash shrug

inside the Diesel Dad. You get three goal-specific programs. EMOM Strength is our 40 to 60-minute program for top-end strength, speed, and power. EMOM Aesthetics is the 20 to 40-minute hypertrophy-focused functional bodybuilding program. And Density Weight Training is our 15 to 20-minute workout, to 40 minute hypertrophy focused functional bodybuilding program and density weight training is our 15 to 20 minute workout maximizing volume intensity with minimal rest periods to maximize

muscle growth and fat loss three programs inside the diesel dad class three registration is live right now over at barbell shrug.com forward slash diesel dad and when you get started, within 24 hours, you will get access to all of the workouts, free nutrition resources, as well as access to the DieselDad Dojo, where all the dads are hanging out, getting jacked, putting videos up, hanging out, talking about dad shit. Get over to barbellstruck.com forward slash DieselDad. Class 3 registration is live right now. Anders, can I just go back quickly?

Did the host just completely cut you off? That's inappropriate. No. What he just said made me think of two things related to what you asked and what Travis asked. Yeah. And that is, like, look, when we're talking about coaches coming in and development of people, it's not unlike the military, right?

There's a different perspective. And yet, there's some things that are evergreen, agnostic of time period that we're in, right? All humans want a sense of consistency or some structure, and all humans want some sense of novelty or new. Now that's different for everybody. So some people are more, you know, they're more on the novelist side and they just need to, everything needs to be new and there needs to be very little structure. Other people are like structure only, very little new, but everybody needs a little bit of that. Just cycle emotionally. We all do. And so that stands to reason that like programmatically, coaching wise, you know when to keep people going, dose them with a little novelty

or dose them with a little consistency. And that's the coach's game of like foundations are getting weak. We got to go back to some structure, right? Okay. Interest is waning. Now we need to buy some novelty. And so if you have the capacity to teach novelty, and if you're staying fresh as a student, then there's things that are invigorating you that you can put in front of your person to keep them compelled, right? And then once they kind of hit those signposts and back them up a little bit and go, okay, remember, like John Wooden said, tie your shoes before you go out to dunk. And I think that was a direct quote from Wooden. So that's one. Two, I would offer on just like coaches development. We use MarketForce, which is, it's sort of a business psychometric,

but we use it as one of the two that we use for development of coaches. And really it just talks about like what your default under pressure is. And so what you just have to realize is that we're all surviving. Like our brain is here to keep us alive. Yeah. And so we are just stress responding animals. And so, you know, the more conscious we are, the more thoughtful we can about, we can be about what stressors we put in our way with intention and how we respond to, to real life danger in real time as well.

You know, Neo seeing the matrix basically. And, and so, you know, with the, with these psychometrics we understand like like i i test as in this thing like i i very much bias freedom and creativity like those are things and novelties to some degree i'm i'm oddly structured so i have a weird kind of split. I'm very much a Jekyll and Hyde with these things. But my team, for example, tests, they need a lot of what and how leadership. I offer a lot of why and when, right? But as far as like coaching goes, all four of those questions must be answered at all times for any group of people. And so, you know, Market Force helps me and my team understand each other under default. So, when I'm under pressure, I'm going to go, this is our why

and this is when we're doing it. And other people are going to go, but what are we doing and how are we doing it? And in my head, I'm going, I just answered why and when. And they're going, but what and how? And then I look at them and go, you know, when is this going to happen? And they're going, well, this is how I'm doing it. I'm like, yeah, I see that, but it needs to hit the turf and let's see it. And so my tempo is different than theirs. And that's a biological rhythm that's unique to me and different from them. I actually really wanted wanted, if you can dig into that even more, just because you and your personality, it doesn't take too deep of a Google search to pull up Kenny Kane,

standup comedian going crazy on stage, telling jokes and running around and having as much like that's your, that's your superhuman power. That's your character. Many people don't have that. You're very good at connecting with people immediately, and you could go deep right away, and they feel comfortable talking to you. A lot of people don't have that skill.

So how do we kind of bring that out? Because that really is that secret sauce that, as Matt was talking about, like developing that relationship to stick with a client for a long period of time.'s there's two answers to that like one is like and to matt's comment earlier about like look in the end um i think that the whole fitness industry needs like uh like if we just look at the waivers in the contracts let's just say like that's the so we signed a waiver for safety but then the contract

thing i would like what i'm trying to get my business to like 2022 is to have all contracts be based on the season of somebody's training and so that that way the coach and the business is on the hook for what the person says that they value in that season of their life. And it gives them focus. Yeah. So somebody could say, it's brilliant. It's their blueprint. And so, and what happens then is then the coach. So I've talked about this before. I remember one of the first episodes, I was, I was kind of brewing this up like years ago, but now we've got it really concrete and Doug, I shared the video with you.

But look, you know, I think that growth for human beings looks like this. You have the, if it's a grid of four things on the upper left, you have somebody's purpose and that you as a coach needs to help them find purpose and purpose should be an evolutionary thing. So purpose can be sustaining for a life or it can be, it can hold somebody for a year or two and then they need to evolve their purpose. Like it can be both. It's not one or the other per se. Then their actions have to alignment with that, with that purpose. They're the ones responsible for that. Now, responsibility focused coaching will say, well, that client didn't turn up and

they didn't do X, Y, and Z, and therefore they're an asshole. And so there's a character assassination of that person. But could it be also that that coach didn't do a good job of keeping structure, novelty in front of that person to keep their actions forward progressing? And that is a competent coach that can be able to do that. So to Matt's conversation, you can sustain a client for a long time if you have that broad capability. So if you can keep, if you can keep structuring in front of somebody in different iterations that connect deeply with something that's meaningful for them,

then you can iterate. Now there's an eject button that's built into this whole formula, which is, hey, when the relational quality between the client or the athlete's actions and the coach shifts so that the client or the athlete no longer views the coach and the coach no longer views the athlete as like they can support each other and that there should be a monetary exchange, you can say, we've come to the end of the growth road that we agreed on and i can no longer help you you need to be on this person and move on or move on to another coach and also at the beginning of the process too where you say hey you're just not where i'm at you need to go find somebody else. So it's, it sets up a cleaner,

a cleaner exchange of money. Yeah. Relationship for the, for the patent. Yeah. I feel like Kenny Kane is always on mushrooms. Is it just me? Like he never has any shallow thoughts.

I've never heard him say anything frivolous. It's always like this. Like, I feel like I need to be on mushrooms when I'm talking heard him say anything that frivolous ever. It's always like this. Like, I feel like I need to be on mushrooms when I'm talking to him. The only two good hours I've ever had. Wow. I love, this is so much fun.

I feel like I am getting like a lecture and I'm taking all these notes and anyway, I'm done. Go ahead. Keep talking. Please. Kenny. When you think about the intake,

the way that gyms intake customers today, all these gyms have perfected measuring their body weight, they're doing this big assessment on their body, but they're doing zero on what they emotionally want to get out of their training. I think the, the, the point he was just making about the contract that you put them in, like this is what we're agreeing to. It,

it allows the coach to have a better understanding of what they're trying to achieve in their life in general. And it connects their physical goal with their other goals in their life. And that's the connective tissue that i think is so important because how many people out there uh stop training they're like i don't know why man i just i don't i've lost that love and feeling i don't know right right um and if you don't know your why uh then what what the hell is the purpose in in in killing yourself you know it's basically like you're torturing yourself, and that is not what fitness is supposed to do.

It's supposed to make you feel good mentally and emotionally, and then vice versa. And I think that we just, by nature, the industry has to evolve. And if you look at the big box chains, they're so far, they built all this infrastructure to do assessments. And the coaches don't get any training to evolve themselves and so these personal trainers inside of these gyms these big box gyms they're doing what they were taught but they have no ability to evolve because they have no awareness that it's needed and so this incubation that's great inside of his facility to change the way that that we view our businesses and our customers

our clients I think is is gonna it's going to be the precursor to the entire industry so it's I think it's an exciting really exciting it's a cool time um kenny i know you've kind of um spent the last probably week or so hanging with matt and got him into classes and stuff and gotten at least the the overview of fit ops but does that whole structure i mean i know it's exciting exciting all of us we keep having him on the show he He's basically brought himself in. But when you start to think about just kind of that emotional quality of coaches, a lot of the people that are coming to you that live in LA, they're kind of chasing the dream and chasing waves and just want to move to LA to live the dream. When you think about, you know,

somebody coming back or transitioning out of the military and then getting into coaching and then having the PTSD layered on top of that. What, what are just some of the thoughts that pop into your head on, on how we can start breaking down some of the the mental health issues as well as realizing like what you're already talking about is a challenging proposition to say, we have to be emotionally intelligent

along with having the physical attributes and to be able to coach people in the physical, which is initially what they're paying you for. There's two things here. I think like what effective coaches can do and Matt and I kind of talked about this the other day, but really like a good coach, like I have unintentionally become ageist only because in let's say like I'm taking coaches on because most of the time younger people haven't been to their knees.

And there's something about that. We're living in a time where, you know, gone are the days of a rite of passage. You know, we're not in a tribal situation we're at 13 or 14 some boys like there's like you know here's the you're going to be out there for three days on your own here's a knife good luck you know gone are those days and too bad and there's something

there's something that is lost and not having gone through some sort of gauntlet. And I don't want to say that that is a necessary mandate to understand other humans. But I will say this. If Buddhism and Hinduism have been talking about what's universal in humans is pain. Yeah. Pain. What did Greeks talk about? They were talking about like what we do with this human pain that we're feeling. Like there's nothing new about, there's a bunch

of self-help books, but like the conversation about humans dealing with pain, it's existed before the internet. Now we're amplifying it because of the internet. We're amplifying the ease of all things because of the internet. And what that means is that people are less physical and they're practicing. The human condition in modern existence is one in which you don't have to go through difficult things. Also, you can hide from difficult things emotionally and duck out and find a bunch of other places to put whatever might be ailing you so now you're conditioning yourself daily to to scroll to video to have your behaviors repurposed for some third party that's making trillions and you're getting sucked along this vacuum so you're just some some vacuum pump to

like suck time and energy out of. Meanwhile, you're doing no development. Meanwhile, there's no effort being put into anything to develop. Now that's a gross, and I'm not talking about like generational weakness, but I am talking about, this is not just for 18 year olds. Like there's like humanity is doing this. We bias ease as part of our survival mechanism. The problem is, is that we're not also biasing doing the right hard things

routinely to develop us as people, which our privilege of resources in this era of time, we have the resources to be privileged enough to choose to do hard things. And we're not routinely doing that. And beyond all that. So what that means is for a generation of coaches that are coming in is just sort of like, you know, without this sort of conduit of hardship, like it's hard to have a humane conversation. So when I think about what Matt's doing, and he's put a couple thousand people through this program and you've

got people who know pain who know like being put under it who know having to reinvent themselves when the odds are against when people don't understand like I connected with my you know with my cadre I but now I go into you know civilian life and it's just like, it's not a life or death situation. So people don't relate at the same way. And so there's an emotional breakdown. And so, which is, that's just human. So then the conversion here is like, like great coaches, I think can just listen to somebody and go, I, I like, I hear your pain and I know it. I actually know it. And I'm your back, I'm your, I'm your backstop. But in the meantime, you know, you got to go through this, this, this training, you got to go through this gauntlet and I'm going to be here for you. And a good coach can elicit that, can bring that out. And, um,

I never thought that I would be the ageism person too, but after a decade of business, now, when I see somebody that's like the personal trainer and they're making, they're like a year and a half, two years in, and they, I just go, Oh, you're like starting. Awesome. That's so, so cool. Um, it's, it's a really interesting thing, um, in the respect, especially everyone that's on this show, but the people that we have on here and that have been doing this for a long time now, they've all been kicked. I thought that things that I went through with best friends

and losing them because of business and trying to get relationships back, you go, oh, I'm just par for the course for everybody that tries to play this game at the level that we're trying to play it at. It's just normal. We all go through this. Every single one of us has to go get curbed a couple times before it means anything. Not being curbed, it means you're not challenging yourself and you're sitting in this mundane existence that is not going to grow. You're not going to grow consciousness if you don't challenge yourself.

And that's where pain, pain is a gift to growth. And while you're in it, it sucks. Um, like totally sucks. Totally. You come off the other side.

Um, if you don't, if you don't have a higher consciousness and understanding of why you went through it, you failed to learn the lesson, and you're going to go through the exact same pain again until you learn it. Again and again. I think there's even science could say that there's more to it than what we're all saying, that even if you look at the development of the brain, until someone is older, it's not there. The prefrontal cortex is not going to be developed until almost 30.

Some people, it's 30. And so be developed until almost 30 some people it's 30 and so like you know those younger dudes not being aged it's just being real you know it's not ageism it's realism it's like you just you're just not there yet until you get a little bit older then go through the pain and then have the brain to be able to understand what the pain meant you know like when i went through struggles when i was 20 it was way different than when i went through struggles when i was 30 because i thought of it in a much deeper way. When I was 20, I didn't give a shit. I was like, I'll come out of this and I'll figure it out.

You know, because my brain didn't even, like, it didn't even know how to analyze risk. You know, and as I got older, it started to do that and I started to think deeper. So, yeah, it's not really ageism. It's just damn real. It's real. Yeah. It's just damn real. It's real. And, you know, when you have clients coming to you, Kenny, that walk in the gym, most of them probably don't want to deal with this right off the bat. They want to just get a workout and go home. Money.

They think. Yeah, exactly. That's what they think. Right. And when I break down training, like, and again, MarketForce really helped me understand this. I did a couple of other training protocols that we did with this profiles and stuff like that which is i find really helpful so any coaches listening either of those are good resources and i have a mental skills coach that i use explicitly who's one of our coaches but um he's he's got a side business that's doing really

well called equipped to evolve and his name is jared cohen and he like anytime i develop somebody like him and i work in tandem going through all these psychometric um development pieces but like when somebody comes in to train what they're really everybody wants a sense of they want to get good at something or they want to feel more confident. And at the core, those are the two basic things that are in or around the motivation to take the first step. Your job as a coach is to try to understand, okay, is it primarily a confidence thing or is it a competence thing and how closely are they related? That step one step two will be okay how do i develop this person and keep them compelled um motivating them the appropriate way because some

people are going to look at you like does this person know what they're talking about other people are like gonna go does this person see or feel or hear me? You know, and everybody coming in, it's like highest level, lowest level. It doesn't really matter that that's, that's, that's the human thing. And so I just feel like with time, like the more that you kind of understand that, like, like the more that you can, you can detail that again, that's a chef kind of figuring that kind of thing out. It's not a chef going, yeah, we don't want to deal with that. And by the way, Anders, you know, human beings are at this, I think of this convergence point.

Like if we continue to duck out of the shit that we want to avoid, we're SOL. I mean, it's lights out. I think we're just like really right in the middle of it right now. We are. Like it's the amount of trying to protect humanity that we're just seeing on a national slash global level of stay in your house,

don't do anything, be afraid of everything. We're all just going to take care of you. Not even to be political, it's just the statement that's coming out is insane that everything is just, we all need to be protected. We're all supposed to have the same extreme low levels of risk. We should never face adversity. We should never have to go and worry

about anything. So just sit in your house and hope somebody comes to take care of you. And that is like the national message right now. It's insane to me that that is the message that's pumped out of seek safety at all costs. And we'll just shut down the world to make sure that we all feel safe. It's interesting. He was, we were talking about the social, social network,

social dilemma. Yeah. One, one conversation with him, maybe one, maybe one of, um, we did two hours on social kenny's social dilemma

the the thought that comes out of what you just said and what he and i were talking about is you know we're in we're we're in the country that's supposed to be the freest country in the world free thinking free enterprise free free every you know it's it's a the land the land of opportunity. And I feel like there's a bit of control mechanism being put in place through fear. Fear is about, inciting fear is about controlling. And I talk about this a lot on campus, on FedOps camp, because fear and control are, they're hand in hand. You try to control your fear and you try to manage fear through control. And so I think that what, you know, Travis, you were just talking about and the conversation that we just had yesterday about about what how social media and media in general is influencing how we feel how this pandemic is incited fear

and everybody it to me just makes me go shit what what's what what's happening with control because there's so much fear and yeah a healthy control and fear, not a healthy way to live. Yeah. You can use fear as a, a catalyst to desire change. But when fear paralyzes you, um, then it's debilitative. And I don't know if I'm making a point. No. Yeah. I totally understand what you're saying. Along these ways, like, you know, and to take that a little bit further.

And again, this is the idea of of uh the center for humane technology but they but we're really at a point right now where our relationship cognitively and so much of this what are we talking about like our cognitive health as it relates to fitness and health which is what this show does like this is a fitness show in the this is a strength show this is but what we're talking about is you can't separate that from our cognition. So we have to now respectfully start to understand the platforms that we're using and you know, more than it's a tool like we have to understand actually what it does. And as we do that, I think that the conversation solution to improve it before it takes over our strength

as a species, that's when they say AI takes over. So it's not, it's no longer a sci-fi thing. It's a real thing where the AI has to exist off of energy somehow it needs a material resource its resources will likely be human beings and so that's what that's what are concerned about is like when you start to understand it with greater depth you just kind of go okay and ironically how do you solve for this make people strong physically yeah mentally make them willfully take on difficult painful challenging conversations that confront all of us as a species if we silo this if we avoid it the oceans are gonna continue to acidify and people are gonna continue to use control and fear and we're gonna be sucked into this vortex

of like well I'm gonna look at my cat instagram videos and it's just like all the other shit's falling apart and it's like and and and look like we can train for this physically to prepare ourselves mentally to keep ourselves sharp and so to me it's like and somebody could even challenge a list maybe a a, a, a, a smart ass listener might go, well, isn't that using fear itself? Kenny, you're, you're projecting a future that's very fearful. And it's like, well, um, perhaps I'm not saying that to invoke fear. I'm just, I'm, I'm, I'm instead attempting to communicate this as an invitation to understand it rather than just say, uh,ny's

got an aluminum hat he doesn't know what he's talking about and i want to go underneath my cover and look at my cat that's the one but he is just right um let's make ourselves strong mentally and physically and again all of this there's none of this is novel like matt and i were talking about this like he's talking about warriors developing their minds and bodies. That's not new to the U.S. military. It's been around for a couple hundred years. It's been going on for thousands of years. Mind, body, they're connected.

He finds to corroborate that, but if you do, turns out it is interconnected. And so I just went off there. Sorry. Travis, that was for you. No, I was just thinking to myself that you guys are hitting on my biggest fear as a parent right now. I was like, I'm looking at my two boys, especially. I mean, and I've got two girls, but I look at my two boys who I see as like, you know,

future leaders of their household, you know, and like somehow in all of this, even though I grew up so hard in the mountains and it was just like, you know, my, I would go play on 600 acres when I was like six by myself, you know, wandering around in the woods. But I look at my two boys and I would be so fearful to let them do that. Like, uh, I don't know what has happened to me as a, as a person. Like, I want to help them avoid the hard things, but damn, man, like really those hard things is what made me a good man. It's like, and so it's like, you know, like you're just hitting on everything that scares me as a parent,

because I feel like I have, I'm weak. And, you know, right now as a father because I try to protect them from everything versus like, eventually I'm going to have to say, okay, man, you're going to have to sink or swim and like, you know, maybe save them before they drown, but throw them in, you know, like, yeah, this is like, it's just because you're just really like, I guess what you're doing is just making me feel super guilty about like

something I've been thinking about a lot lately is like, I need my kids to be, to be put through trials. So they grow up strong and like they, you know, they haven't been coddled their whole life and And I, and I raised two weak men. I don't want to do that. You know, I think it's actually one of the hardest things to think about is like forcing adversity into your kid's life because there's no real reason for them to have it. Yeah.

Like the role of competitive sports in modern society, like especially combat sports you know aggressive sports football wrestling etc yeah i never grew up in that one well yeah people see hockey as like such an aggressive sport but when you're actually playing it i don't really know if i i like bought into that level of aggression in any fights i got into it's's such a skilled thing. You're standing on ice skates, so your skill level matters so much. I mean, yeah, you get hit and all that.

I don't know. It's probably like, in a way, jujitsu to you, Doug, where it's like, yeah, I'm doing it every day. I don't feel like I'm going to go get hurt and all that. But, yeah, it's like the forced adversity that you need to put into people's lives. But at the same time, you're, you don't want them to see people struggle even though you know that's where it all comes from. I'm honestly scared to put my six year old, like, I know I'm going to,

I'm going to do it. But like the time I've been talking my whole life, that when he turns six, I'm going to take him to, you know, either jujitsu or wrestling. I have my buddy who's really good at that. He puts out lots of great athletes and he's good with youth. I'm going to take him there. There's a part of me that dreads the day when he wrestles or spars another kid his age and that kid wins.

Cause I know it's going to, you know, it's going to crush his heart. And then, but it's such a great time for me to teach him to say, yeah, that happens. Now, what are you going to do to like change this outcome? And so it's a great teaching tool, but I just dread the moment where I'm looking in his cry, you know, tear tearful eyes and I'm going to have to say something to him, you know? So, yeah. It's funny, Travis, like when, when I started martial arts as a kid,

like I was recalling this with Matt, you know, cause I didn't do the military, but when I was testing for my black belt when I was 14 turning 15 years old and, and, and I'd started when I was seven. And I remember about 11 years old I bowed to Mr. O'Hara and he, I looked down as I was bowing to Sparhan and the whole class would sit there and you know

cross-legged position just wait to get the shit kicked out of him and back then this is when there was no litigation for yeah

JoJo's that beat kids and so I always appreciated my mom she was so clever she never she never at least she just paid other people to do it. Anyway, I bowed.

I looked down. And he just, I mean, he uppercutted me so hard. I came up. And then, like, immediately was just gushing blood from my nose. And he just looks at me. And he goes, never take your eyes off of your opponent. Now go clean up. And it was just like blood all over my knee.

A great lesson. I bow off. And I look back at that and I'm just so thankful that I had that opportunity. I hated it at that time. I love that instructor. And I always had a benevolent sort of relationship with them. But like, I mean, that moment, like there's only one way to learn that specific lesson. It's hard. Take one of the no's. Totally. And like every trick that I ever did, like my head was on a swivel. I was always like

situationally aware of this. I wasn't looking away lesson but at 11 you need to know that and you know that yeah like well it's a little crooked and because of it we never actually checked it but like you know i mean these are the things and and you know and it's funny travis because like you know protectively i'm with you jordan peterson talks about this like our role as parents is just not for us to be liked by our kids which is the hardest thing to be self-disciplined super hard our job is to make them prepared for a world that doesn't give a fuck yeah that's a great point and you know and that's it and it's 12 rules and ever since i read that chapter i was just like man i'm a guy who likes to be liked me too i took my i took my disc exam just the other day and i'm an influencer that likes to be totally i'd like to chavis let's you

and i talk about your disc profile separate from this on a call yeah it crushed my heart because it was so right i'm like damn man but you know actually uh matt i care about what matt thinks about this like i feel like society now right now is raising men to be weak and cowards like you're gonna give an example like when i was in high school in the mountains like if two kids were arguing and they started fighting the even the teachers would like watch for a while and let it go on and like and you know what though like there became a pecking order and people figured things out you know and like there was a lot of bullying because like people knew if you bullied that you would have to answer to it because it's just the culture of the Appalachians, you know.

And so, like, things were way different, you know. Like, I remember getting in a fight when I was in ninth grade with a senior who was monstrous, and we fought. I mean, we fought blood to fly. And, like, teachers are, like, literally teachers are holding people back from breaking it up. And, like, I remember looking as I'm fighting thinking, I wish somebody would break this up,

but you know, but I was like, all right, I'll keep fighting. But like, but nowadays, if you did that, the teachers would be fired.

The kids would go to the, now society would tell you, you're to back down from that. You're to, you know, to walk away at all costs, no matter what someone is saying to you or doing to you, you're supposed to not fight.

And if someone punches you and you start fighting back, you're both in trouble. Like, that is crazy. That is not teaching reality to me. That's teaching, like, you know, a world of, you know, to be passive, you know, passivity or whatever it's called. And so, like, I feel like they're setting, you know, men up to be super weak, but thoughts. I mean, I have a lot of thoughts about that. I respect the old, you know,

culture of, of taking a whooping for doing wrong. I also think there's a strength in, in, and maybe we're in this transition time where it's looked upon as not a strength, but a weakness. Um, I think there's a strength in, in, um, controlling yourself and, you know, I guess I don't, um, it kind of goes back to what I was saying about basic training and, you know, the, the, the level of empathy that a drill sergeant now has to have towards a young kid who's not willing to do what he tells him to do unless he, he understands them. And so I don't know that I'm a, I have any expert opinion at all about, about, you know, whether the,

the pecking order through masculinity and power and strength. And I do believe I was never the kid, I've never been the kid or the man that needed to use masculinity to be comfortable. I actually use empathy to be comfortable. I like that. What's allowed me, when I see somebody else getting picked on, I like that empathy is a stronger strength than strength itself, and that you can use empathy to maneuver yourself in the world in a good way versus bullying yourself way

through the world. Obviously, sometimes war becomes, you know, you're fighting and there's no choice but to be aggressive from a strength perspective um but you know i think i don't think i feel that that empathy is a is a stronger strength and strength itself i don't know if that makes sense i like that no i i like that it's a totally different angle you know um i think think, you know, to your point, Travis, like, are we raising people to be weak? I think that the conversation to invite is like, you know, how, again, there was a time where humanity had to have warriors to kind of have a pecking order. But then, you know, only a few of

the warriors could become kings, right? And so there's an evolution in man and the kings aren't fighting, but the warriors are. And so at some point there has to be an evolutionary nature of people. And now since we're, you know, we're in a civilization where there are means and there are resources that people don't necessarily have to compete over, you know, as we develop ourselves emotionally, you know, there's some understanding and some old principles. One is the first rule, and it's kind of biblical, like do no harm. Like a basic assumption for most of humanity. Like in most of our law, most of the structure for society like builds around that.

Like if you're intentionally harming somebody, okay, we're going to have to do something. Now, what you do is up to society and the culture and the time and the place but like let's just like expand this like emotional development out so at the very base like most humans if you're a poll eight billion of them i'd say the good majority of them go like that sounds smart and yet most of us forget that's how that's how the fabric of our society will succeed or fail agnostic of economic institutions or political institutions. The next one is, you know, as far as emotional EQ develops is, you know,

do, treat others like you'd want to be treated. That's sort of like the golden rule, right? So that's the second step in that, like that shows a level of consideration. Like, hey, I'm treating you the way that I would want to be treated. And let's say that that was like very 1970s, 80s, maybe parts of the 90s. Now we're in this generation where the third evolution of that is treat others how they want to be treated. So the problem with you treating, like if I'm treating Matt the way that I want to be treated, he's looking at me like my coaching staff did going, hey, Kenny, I'm what and how, and you're treating me like why and when.

And so it's just a basis of frustration, right? So we can't, what they need biologically, what they need emotionally is different than what I'm providing them. So my job as a person who's developing himself a psycho emotion is to go okay how can i understand this person what their triggers are what the deep are right and what's important to them and the the total evolution is how do i hold my space and and keep what's holding me? How can I evolve to understand this other person? And then kind of bear hug all of it and just go and then that then becomes the platinum

or excuse me, the diamond rule. So the platinum rule is treat others how they want to be treated. And if you just look at this year, like what was, and this again, like people are going to wrong and right it for the wrong, to me like what was and this again like people are going to wrong and write it for the wrong to me undereducated reasons like people are reacting going i want to be treated this way and people are like well those people need to do x y and z and go through some shit and not like i'm not the villain and now they're villainizing me and this that the other and just you know so like black lives matter was very polarizing for you know it's very unifying and polarizing concurrently when really what was trying to be communicated

is there was a lot of people just going hey i am seeking to be understood and there was a lot of and in the some of the tonality in the way that it was communicated was i want to be understood so much so that what you say or think doesn't fucking matter that's how and so that should be frustrating to anybody because now now you're devalued right right so both of these things need to coexist right and so if people if people were to take responsibility for their emotional development then they could could say, hey, look, like, there's a lot to understand here. Let's slow down. And let's think about this beyond 140 characters and judging people wrong or right, and evolve this thing a little bit more. And if we do, then we start getting into this, again, this is market force stuff that i'm parlaying here but but now you're getting into this like

this this this economy of higher intelligence for people and again humanity is at a point where we can choose to have that level of understanding it just requires a lot of effort from its participants and you know resources to understand it like we're currently doing, but also, and the willingness to try to digest it. But then also this, like, if we don't do this, like, we're only going to misunderstand each other. We're only going to judge each other. We're only going to wrong each other. And we're still, and from my view, we're just wasting time by doing all of that. I'm like, I, in my heart, I have a sense of urgency, like there are some serious things that need to be solved.

And like this sort of heuristic judgment of black and white, right and wrong stuff is just like, man, that's not, that's not exactly what we need to do. We need to be able to hold what's true for ourselves and seek to understand others with, as Matt said. I totally agree with you. And if you were just to frame that, I, I, I bet most people would disagree with like that's a that's

a reasonable premise yeah it takes effort to kind of discipline yourself against the rage that you feel when that other side is pushing your biological button i love this that is awesome and and we need to we also need to go yeah we're fucking animals yeah we get this right that's you know what i mean that's also true i do yeah we're also capable of not being our dogs and we're also capable of having long form conversations more than a hundred it doesn't appear right now but yeah i think we are i think people need to remember that that's the probably the best statement all the whole show is yes, we need to remember that we're capable of long-form conversation.

Kenny Kane. Anders. Where can people find your course? I know you're not on the internet. I have a very simple website. I'm a very simple man. Yeah. I do like chocolate.

Send some to Oak Park LA. Yeah. So we're at oakparkla.com. For coaches out there that want to go through like our craftsman's workshop, we work on developing coaches that have been doing it, I would say five plus years is usually a good time to kind of enter our program. You can email info at oakparkla.com or email me directly, kenny at oakparkla.com if you have any questions about that workshop. It's cold in California right now.

Don't feel bad for them. They're like six blocks from the beach. It's probably four foot today. It's just gorgeous. We're overdressed for this situation. We worked out yesterday like 72. was it yesterday? Like 72? It was like working out, 72 degrees, just lifting weights. Beautiful.

Out in the parking lot. Matt Hesse, where can people find you at FitOps? FitOps.org is the website. I don't even know what my Instagram handle is. I try to stay off that thing as much as I can. You found your partner over there, Kenny. You can email me at mhesse at fitops.org. And obviously, FitOps has an Instagram that has all the trimmings and excitement on it.

If you guys haven't gone to the FitOps, if you're feeling down, just go to the FitOps website. It's awesome. Matt, one of my most exciting things about 2021 is getting Kenny Kane and Travis Mash to stand on that black mat in front of all those people and act like they know what's coming. And then it's just going to – the wheels – it all comes out. That's what I was talking about. But, yeah, I'm scared. No, no you don't no need to be scared we went down and i feel like i've told you this we did six shows before i got

up to give my talk and i have this big fun speech about how to make it in the fitness industry and um when i have given it to people like equinox or crossfit gyms and it goes it's like kind of cheers you up inspires inspires you a little bit, gives you some stepping stones to kind of figure out a little bit of your purpose, who you want to coach, why it matters to you. And I stood up in front of these people that had just laid out the most real, authentic stories I'd ever heard in my life and completely exposed me to what PTSD is and military life

and the transitions and how much fit ops saved their lives. And I cried for 45 minutes and was like, this is hard. I just want everyone to know this is hard. But if you are down to play, play the game and do really hard things every day, you got a chance. I think to follow up on, on, um on um uh what you just said in the question travis asked about you know books i think the first place that you start when you're trying to evolve your yourself uh emotionally and uh to um figure out who you are and what you are and what your purpose is you got to go to the space of mobility and, and dig into your story. Everyone has one. We all think our story is, you know, more traumatic than others or because, because it's so traumatic to us.

And to the point of pain we all have pain in our background. We all, all of us, our hardest pain when we, when we confront it and go through it, overcome it and grow, that's where consciousness growth happens. And black Matt is about experiencing vulnerability and telling your story so that you can begin your journey. And so I welcome, I welcome everybody out of that Matt who, who is, um, and you, you'll find yourself there when you're ready for that growth. Yeah. Perfect. Travis bash.

We're going to buy you. Massily.com baby. There it is. Doug Larson,. MattSalee.com. MattSalee.com, baby. There it is. Doug Larson. Instagram. Doug Larson. Thank you, guys. Matt Hesse.

Always a pleasure. Kitty Kane. We got to get back out to SoCal when this world opens up and they want us to be a part of it again. It's always a pleasure hanging out with you. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We're Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. BarbellShrugged.com forward slash DieselDad. That's where all the dads get strong, lean, and athletic.

That'll sacrifice a family, fatherhood, fitness. Everyone's throwing up the guns right now. And Walmart for everyone in LA, San Diego, Palm Springs, and Vegas. We are in performance nutrition. Come and hang out with us. We have three programs on the shelf in the pharmacy. We will see you guys next week. That's a wrap, friends.

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