Barbell Shrugged - The Mental Game That’s Your Biggest Challenge!- The Bledsoe Show- Episode 133

Episode Date: May 10, 2019

In this episode Adam Chin and Mike Bledsoe dig into what they see happening with Athletes, what they see with our culture and where we have an opportunity to make major upgrades around our mental game in regards to training, nutrition and our relationship with our bodies. They also touch on why they started the program, Enlifted.   Minute Breakdown:   0 - 18 Having different conversations with yourself for progression.  Why changing your workouts, eating better, sleeping more, all require behavioral changes.  Cognitive fitness as a system to replicate behavior changes over time. Deep dive into what is Cognitive fitness and what are behavior changes.   18 - 29  Restructuring the brain in the positive or in the negative and the effects of stress on the brain. How to reduce the amount of stress on our brain.  What causes stress in our lives and what’s the story behind this. How your story and the words you use are creating environments for stress to take over.     29 - 42  How not getting enough sleep causes sugar cravings and increased carbs cravings and how this becomes a downward spiral.  Why Sleep deprivation and brain injuries have the same symptoms. Importance of proper sleep hygiene, wind down routines at night and creating proper sleep environments.     42 - 50: Value of having a movement practice that is energizing versus exhausting.  Knowing the brain and how to change behaviors. What is cognitive fitness for executive functions of the brain? Switching mindsets and the language needed for this.   50 +  Handling the unknown.  Why inflammation isn’t a bad thing.  Having a system and what’s the system of an Enlifted Athlete?  How to get automatic behavior changes from rewiring neurons in the brain.  How to change one than more behaviors at a time. Enlfited.me/shrugged   for an assessment and to sign up for  90 coaching program with Mark England and Mike Bledsoe.     --------------------------------------------------- Show notes: https://shruggedcollective.com/tbs-chin ---------------------------------------------------   ► Travel thru Europe with us on the  Shrugged Voyage, more info here: https://www.theshruggedvoyage.com/ ► What is the Shrugged Collective?  Click below for more info: https://youtu.be/iUELlwmn57o ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

Today we have a really cool guest, my business partner with Enlifted. So it's Mr. Adam Chin and we dig into why we started the program, what we see happening with athletes, what we see with our culture and where we have an opportunity to make major upgrades around our mental game in regard to training, nutrition, our relationship with our bodies. So if this show really speaks to you, which I know it will, make sure to go over to enlifted.me slash shrugged. And we have a program starting on May 15th. So you only have a few days to get over there. Get over to enlifted.me slash shrugged.

It starts off with a little assessment so you get an idea of where we're going with it. Do the assessment. Check the link. We'll email you a link right after you do the assessment that you'll have an opportunity to sign up for the course. Additionally, if you go over to my Instagram account, you can click the link over there and have a direct link to sign up for the coaching program. It's Mark England and me presenting 90 days. So we have a 90 day process that we're going to take you through. And this may be the only time that Mark and I work with athletes and coaches directly the way we're doing it this time.

So if you want to work with me directly, this is your opportunity and lifted.me slash shrugged. Another note I want to make is the Bledsoe Show is leaving the Shrugged Collective the very first of July. So make sure you're subscribed to my channel. All the shows that I'm posting to the Shrugged Collective, I'm also already posting to my own channel. So if you go into Stitcher, iTunes, wherever you're listening to this from, you can go subscribe to that immediately and you can start getting those shows. I'm also posting

some shows already that are not going on the Shrug Collective. So these are some topics that are a little bit different. And if you like any of the stuff I've been doing over the last seven years, then you're really going to love that bonus content over there as well. And for the coaches out there, you want to take your coaching game to the next level. If you want to create a vision for your life and then build the coaching business to support that so that you can show up the best possible way for your clients, get them the results, and also learn how to get more of the clients that you love the most. Then get over there. We've been working with over 60 coaches so far, and they've all gone on to create coaching businesses that they're excited about, that's energizing to them, and is making them the money they really need. Now, one of the things that we really do that is super cool

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Most coaches are having a hard time, and that's because they're still working in the old model, and we get to create a new one. So go over to thestrongcoach.com. When you go over there, you click the button Become a Strong Coach, and what you have an opportunity to do is sign up to get free coaching via email. I have three emails that go out on three different days that are exercises that when you put those exercises in place, what you do is you already start getting, start seeing and making improvements

to your coaching business that's going to make an impact even before you get into the program. So go over to thestrongcoach.com and get started today. And lastly, for our sponsor, the sponsor of the show today is Organifi. They make green drinks. They make red drinks. They make a nice little gold beverage for before bed. A lot of people listening to this show already subscribed to those supplements. And it's something that I like to put in my morning routine. I feel better

when I do it. It helps me get momentum by getting greens in my life first thing. And it helps me get more greens throughout my day because I feel like I'm doing a good job. Plus, the ingredients that are in there are actually energizing. So whereas a lot of green drinks, it's one of those things where it's like, I know I'm doing something good for my body, but I don't really feel any different. This is the type of green drink that as soon as you do it an hour later, you'll notice that it feels different in your body, that you have more energy, you have more clarity. I highly, highly recommend it. The red drink has replaced any pre-workout I've done before.

What I like about it, it has something called rhodiola in it. And that particular adaptogenic herb allows the body to deal with stress better. So if you're going into the gym and doing physical things, you're basically adding physical stress in your body and this helps you process that and have energy throughout your workout and recover from your workout much, much faster. So go over there, go over to Organifi.com slash shrugged. You'll save 20% on your green drink today. Now, on to our show with Adam Chin. You're really going to enjoy this.

This is one of the smartest guys I've ever sat down with. We talk about improving your mental game for training, nutrition, all of that. And we introduce to you the idea of cognitive fitness. Sitting here in Austin, Texas with one of my business partners, Adam Chin, and we just spent, we've been in Austin for three weeks now, and we got here so that we could launch and lifted. So we locked ourselves inside of a house and plowed and plowed and plowed. Some more than others. Yeah. Yeah. And it's been a really fun process. And we also did Paleo FX, which is really good. We learned a lot of lessons there. Good crowd.

Great crowd. It was your first time at Paleo FX. My first time there. Yeah. What was your thoughts on that? I loved it. I love being around people who are in the same conversation that we're in. So instead of meeting someone on the street and, and starting with a small talk, you can go right into DHAs, Omega threes, talking about you know, physical fitness, supplementation,

talking about all this stuff right from the jump. That's the first thing you talk about when you see them, and it's great. I met a lot of wonderful people, and I learned a lot there too. Yeah, what was really cool, and one of the reasons I love that conference so much, it's my favorite, is because it's a more advanced crowd. There's a lot of coaches that have been in the game for a long time. There's a lot of scientists. There's a lot of coaches that have been in the game for a long time there's a lot of scientists there's a lot of people who have been part of the conversation and one of the things that's really cool about paleo facts is there's a uh there there's this they accept the

personal development conversation because once you've been in the game long enough, you realize that all you guys get into personal all you guys in the fitness industry been for a long time end up talking about plant medicine and talking about personal development and all this at some point it's like it seems like a strange trend i go well it's not strange at all it's a natural progression if you've been in the game long enough you either you either uh plateaued and you accepted where you were at and said this is just who i am and i stopped or in order to keep going you actually have to get into a different conversation and that different conversation is is where a lot of the key influencers i mean if you pay attention to who i'm who i hang out with and you're looking at their instagram following

their podcast too it's like yeah the yeah, the conversations around, you know, improving your squats or pull-ups is fairly mundane by comparison because we realized that that's actually not what's keeping you from being more fit and more healthy. It's a deeper conversation. Well, yeah, the mainstream big three of fitness has been, we're going to go mainstream here. You got nutrition, right? As a

component, you got your physical fitness, your movement, as you call it, right? Yeah. And then you've got your rest and restoration, right? Those are the big three. Okay. Everyone, I feel as if we can all agree that that's where most people feel comfortable to having the conversation. Like, yeah, the stuff I put in my body, how I restore, how I recover, and then my movement aspect. The fourth component, what you're talking about, the next progression is the, as we're calling it, and then lifted, cognitive fitness. Right? Because the cognitive fitness is the mental aspect. Some people call it mindset.

Some people call it personal development. Whatever you want to refer to it as at the moment, it's the natural progression from those first three simply because it enables those first three. Because if you want to change how you eat, if you want to change how you're going to work out, how you approach fitness, if you're going to change how your approach to sleep and how you approach fitness, if you're going to change how you, how you, your approach to sleep and how you view rest, all those changes require behavioral change. It doesn't matter, like all that information that we learned at Paleo FX, tremendous amount of, of, of minds when it comes to, again, those big three, rest, nutrition, and, and movement, and a lot of supplementation, a lot of, I mean, Dr. Perlmutter was there, we had Marxists in there, tons of great names, right? And they have a lot of great information. But if you want to take that information and actually do something with it in your life to actually make it affect you,

you know, well, you're going to have to enact behavioral change. Yeah. And most folks simply lack a system to replicate behavioral change successfully over time, replicate that, right? And that's where, again, what we're talking about is cognitive fitness, the ability to be able to do that with relative ease. Yeah. Yeah. And the, the people who are, it seemed to be the most successful I've had, um, the, the, the seem to be most successful in creating behavior change, they're able to grow quickly, adapt really fast. They actually have a system for behavior change.

It's not simply, you know. Think positive. People are like, oh, they're just good at that. They're not just good at that. They may have inherited some really good thought process from their parents or teachers or something like that, but it was a learned behavior where no, no behavior, no behavior is really innate.

I mean, aside from, you know, peeing and pooping and sleeping, you know, those are like, those are the innate behaviors. Everything else from what I've found is a learned behavior. And some people have much cleaner and easier thought processes than others because most thought processes is just shit piled on top of shit as you age,

as you grow up as a kid. It's random, right? You said you may have been taught a successful way to approach one single aspect of your life and that's something you picked up just through observation, watching your parents, watching the people around you. If you're fortunate to have people in your life that were doing things successfully, right? The question is then, can you isolate that pattern, like how that, that, that cognitive progression went and then

replicate it in other areas of your life? So if you have an ability to do that, take that systematic approach and say, okay, this is how I was able to succeed at this thing, and then come over and apply it to something that is unrelated and also excel, well, now you have a cognitive behavioral system, right? So most people are very, they isolate it. They go, oh yeah, they're like, I'm really good at this thing, but they don't know how to get that process to work over here. They don't. I mean, for a long time, I had a hard time connecting the dots.

I mean, I still excel in certain areas of my life, and I'm figuring out what is it. A conversation I was in, I did a workshop with a couple friends recently. One guy is insanely good at making money. Another guy is really good at relationships. And then I was the health guy. And I had already, I, um, I pride myself on being good at relationships and with money, both. I'm like, I'm pretty good at these things. I'm better than say the average on those things. But then when I got in a room with these guys and we got talking, I go, oh. And the big conversation we had was, how do the systems I've developed for being good at health, how do I apply those to money?

And how do I apply those to relationships? And the same thing for those guys. The guy who's really good with money, you go, what are these key concepts? And we started talking about the core principles. And we go, oh, there's actually some similarities here. Yeah. Yeah. And you and I should get into some of those key process a little bit later in this talk. But for the moment, I think it's a good idea to address, you know, our theory as to why this

conversation is happening somewhat underground and in limited spaces versus being something that it's in the mainstream, right? Like you can go up to any city in America and see an orange theory and a, and a, you know, a, whatever, a planet fitness, but are you seeing a lot of cognitive fitness joints in those same towns? You know, unlikely, right? Well, it's something is not, it's not visually appealing. It's not visually obvious. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, you know, a gym is, you know, Oh, I'm making this movement. I can see it.

There's this physical aspect. Um, oh, I'm making this movement. I can see it. There's this physical aspect. And people want to start with that. People are really attached to being able to touch and feel and see. It's instant gratification in a lot of ways. There's very little abstract there. You can see it. Look, I'm fit. I'm going to get people looking at me because I

look great. I'm going to get different sort of feedback from that, right? I can actually feel it in my body. This looks better, right? So there's a combination. Beyond aesthetics, there's also the performance side. People are going to see me do that pull-up. People are going to see me do that. You know, I can pick up that weight. People are going to recognize that. I'm going to feel good about me because I picked up that weight. Yeah, Yeah. Well, and you know, that's, that's a big part of it. Another big part of it is, uh, the fact that, you know, this is what, what really inspired me to get into this conversation with you nine months ago when we started building the, the, the lifted program. By the way, we took us nine months to launch the longest launch I've ever had in my life.

Well, because it's a big deal. We, to put all the records. We did it right. We wanted to do it right, exactly. So one of the big inspirations for me was the fact that, and I've been in the personal development game for a long time, for nearly 20 years now, and one of the things that struck me recently was the fact that we, in this country specifically, in the United States, what we do is we tend to have a binary model of how mental fitness works.

It's either you're Albert Einstein and everything's working great or you're broken and you need to be put away and forgotten. And so when you have a model like that, and again, in this country we we don't talk about mental wellness mental health very often it's something you don't you you don't tell people about even to this day i think it's opening up much more well i think the only time it happens is if someone has a fucking breakdown yeah or mental health only comes up when you're talking about somebody whose life is completely screwed up yeah and thus the stigma thus the stigma either you're either great or you're broken. I don't think people really know that there's an option to improve mental health.

It follows like the Western medical standard of it's not health care, it's sick care. And the same thing with mental health is the only thing that we have is sick care. And I mean, you look at how the – is it DSMO? Yeah. If you study psychology, my first psychology class, we basically started learning how to categorize different people

by their mental illness. It's a DSM-5. DSM-5, that's right. I'm thinking about – I think DSMO is what helps things get through the – by their mental illness. It's a DSM-5. DSM-5, that's right. I'm thinking about, I think DSMO is what helps things get through the, you can rub on your skin, it helps drugs get into your body.

We were just at Paleo, so we had a lot of acronyms pop up in our life, so forgive us, please, audience. Yeah, the DSM-5. It's basically, yeah, I go into that class and I just basically start studying illnesses. So then I start, when I see people, all I see is illness. It's like, oh, that's how you're broken.

Oh, that's how you're broken. The idea of being able to optimize my cognition and optimize my mental health was, it wasn't a conversation at all. It was like either you're sick or you're not. Yeah, I'm in a hospital or I'm about to go to a hospital at some point. It's one or the other. And that model, that bifurcated model, as we know, and now in fitness, I would say over the past, certainly the past 20 years, since the turn of the century, we now have this much more health conscious, you know, health maintenance. We have to, we're building the physical body. Well, a small percent of the population goes, I can do better than not being sick. Exactly. Because if you go back to the 50s,

the only people that were working out was basically Jack LaLanne. And, you know, there was a, it was so small and it became necessary to do exercise because we're no longer doing physical labor. We have robots doing everything for us now, and we sit in cubicles, and we're sedentary. So it's very obvious that we have to start moving voluntarily in order to be healthy. And so the same thing is happening for the mind. And we go, this is the next wave so the next way everyone knows everybody knows in america don't eat the fucking donut and go to the gym that's yeah that's obvious and the people who aren't doing it they're just choosing not to it's

not because they don't know any better they they just are choosing not to. And the same thing with the cognitive fitness now is everyone is getting hip to it. Everyone's hearing about, oh, you can actually... I remember a time. I remember back in the early 2000s and the conversation was, well, once you get brain damage, you're done. Neural pathways are neural pathways. Yeah, that's no longer the case. And now the conversation in the last 15 years has been, oh, you can grow neural pathways. You can grow new neurons no matter how old you are. And it's not something that only happens during childhood. And it's like, oh, when that hit me, when I go, you can actually do things to increase gray matter density?

That was something that was unheard of 15 years ago. They'd laugh at you in science if you said anything about it. Now there are supplements for it. We know that if you go to another country and learn a new language, there will be a part of your brain that actually gets bigger. It's called cognitive reserve. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You can restructure the brain. I mean, just like you said, and the flip side of that, just like we can restructure the brain in a positive direction, we can also restructure the brain in a negative one. And there's a lot of evidence. We can talk about this either now or jump to it later, is the effects of stress on the brain. And that's one of the big things that we're about here in Lifted

is reducing the amount of drama, unnecessary stress, chronic stress that we experience in our lives. Well, what's causing the stress? Yeah, exactly. What's causing the stress in the first place? And yeah, everyone knows what stress is, right? And the biggest sources of stress in America has been linked to, it's either health, wealth, personal health, their wealth, their job,

their personal family's health. All of those things share one thing in common. It's the story around them. It's how they view them. It's the framing. This is what you and I built with our partner, Mark England, is this system that can help a person reframe each and every one of those aspects using a combination of, again, how the brain works, their personal narrative, right, their narrative techniques. And then what's the building block of a narrative? It's words. It's simple word choices. We'll call it story.

Narrative and story, same thing. We'll call it story. Yeah. We'll call it story. Narrative and story, same thing. We'll call it story for the, for the, yeah, for the, yeah, we'll, we'll call it story from now. Story and, and words, uh, over time can create the environment for that stress to, to be nurtured and to take over. And all of a sudden now you've got a chronic stress situation. So we can get into the stats. We can get into that stuff now. We can, we can it. Yeah, roll with it. Okay, cool. So, you know, before we jump into that, I do want to talk about those big three categories before. We talked about nutrition, restorative, like sleep and rest, and then movement.

You know, each one of those three things, usually when we talk about nutrition, we talk about physical health, like how can I build a stronger body and maintain my organ health, et cetera. All those things also apply to cognitive well-being. I mean, with nutrition, you're talking about stuff like, you know, one of the great things Dr. Perlmutter said in his talk at Paleo FX this past weekend was it really got the audience in a very interesting state was when he said, you know what, listen, right now you're probably listening to this and saying, you know, I, I'm, I'm 25, I'm 30, I'm 35. Why am I listening to this guy talk about Alzheimer's? He's like, well, that's because you think that here I am and I'm just going on the straight line, right? Again, binary model, straight line. I'm good, good, good, good, good, good. 85 pops up. Instant Alzheimer's.

He's like, no, no, not even close. He's like, the stuff that's going to cause Alzheimer's, again, and it's happening sooner and sooner now than it ever has between 60 and 80. Kind of like diabetes. Just like diabetes. Old people only got diabetes back in the day. No, no, no. It starts in your 30s. He said it starts in your 30s. So how we're able to, again, he's big in the ketogenic

diet and like there's a lot of people who agree with him. We can get into that, the weeds with that one. But if you can protect the brain and nourish the brain cognitively, right, just like with your physical body, you're going to set yourself up for success both in the short term and long term. If you're eating a lot of sugar, you know, if you're taking a lot of, you're going to set yourself up for success both in the short term and long term. If you're eating a lot of sugar, you know, if you're taking a lot of, you know, if you're doing a lot of like prescription drugs like Adderall, you know, Modeler, that stuff is good in the short term. And yeah, you can get short term bursts from like a big sugar, a candy bar. Okay, and now my mind's back and working again.

But long term, those things do have their cost. Well, I mean, I used to do this a lot, and a lot of athletes do this, is pound sugar before, during, and after workouts. And the main focus is to replace muscle glycogen that was burned during a lactic conditioning session. And so there's repercussions to that. And that's something that there's a lot of science to support that that's a good idea,

but that's in 12 week studies. But when I, the older I've gotten, the more I've seen the effects of that type of behavior over time. And yeah, dumping it, people are always asking me, should I do this? Or is this a good idea or not? I feel better when I do this. It's like, you may feel better that day, or you may feel better that week, but are you going to feel better over years of doing that? You know, I used to be a proponent of pound away protein and some basically dextrose after a workout. I would never tell anyone to do that now. I mean, the only person I would really recommend that to is people who are competing in a sport where they're making money. They're putting their body and life on the line.

That's how they make their money. They need to be bigger and stronger and faster recovered for it. And we're just going to put a lot of the health stuff on the back burner. But if I'm working with somebody who has longevity, like I want to be healthy. I want to, I want to work out for, you know, until my eighties and nineties and make it to a hundred, then I was like, don't touch that shit. Oh yeah. And, and yeah, back to the thing about, yeah. And, and if you think that, oh no, well, fine. You know, when I'm 80 or when I'm 70, I want to be dead anyway. I don't want to like, you know, so who cares? It's like, yeah, but again, back to

the thing, it's not a on off switch. It's not like I'm good. And then Alzheimer's, right? So like brain fog, brain fog is not cool. Like people brag, Oh man, I'm getting a little bit older. I'm losing my memory. It's funny. It's like, no, it's not. That's not funny. That's not funny at all. Brain fog. Again, it reminds me of like people who are obese, you know, or totally out of shape. And you ask them, what does health feel like? And for them, or what does mobility feel like to someone who's morbidly obese? For them, it might be able to raise their arms to like, you know, to their chest or to outside somewhere, touch their head, bend down, touch their knees. That's what mobility looks like. That doesn't mean that that's healthy,

right? It just means that what they can see. And for people who have brain fog, for them, it's just getting through a day potentially, you know, them it's for them. It's just, it's like a basic, a basic level of mental health. And that's, you know, that's no standard, right? So if you're, if you're sick, it's difficult to, for, for me to, uh, listen to your definition of what it feels like to be healthy because you're chronically inflamed. You're chronically stressed. Okay. Do you want to talk about sleep at all? Real quick. Yeah. Let's touch on it.

I think most of this, most of this crowd is, is hip to the sleep conversation. Okay. We know it's important. If you have any interesting stats on it. Well, they do call sleep the very best cognitive answer we have.

Yeah. It's the very best without a, without a doubt. Um, so just like in physical fitness, if you're, if you're rested, you know,

you can take on the world the next day. Yeah. Um, uh, you're, they've done some studies where if you get six hours versus eight hours, your cortisol levels, the rest of the day are higher.

The desire to eat sugar goes up. So if you don't, if you're, if you're, if you're tired, if you're tired, Your cortisol levels the rest of the day are higher. The desire to eat sugar goes up. If you're tired. If you're tired. If you don't get enough sleep, if you're getting five or six hours, then your willpower is down. Your body wants sugar. It wants carbohydrates because it didn't get enough rest. It's looking for energy wherever it can grab it up.

If you're not getting enough sleep, it turns into get enough rest and it's looking for energy wherever it can grab it up. Well, there's a, you end up in, if you're not getting enough sleep, you turn into, it turns into a downward spiral real quick. It's like, Oh, I'm not sleeping well. I'm eating like shit.

Oh, which caused me to not sleep very well. And the next thing you know, you're unhealthy. Well, there's a, there's a scientific reason behind that because a lot sleep deprivation, uh,

degrades the, uh, three, at least three of the executive functions of the brain. When I talked to Dr. Kirk Parsley, the sleep guy, he talks about they look at Navy SEALs, and they look at football players, they're looking at all these guys,

and the reason they were looking at Navy SEALs specifically is because they both experience traumatic brain injuries and sleep deprivation regularly. And if you look at all the traumatic brain injury research and the symptoms of traumatic brain injury and you look at the symptoms of sleep deprivation, the symptoms are identical. Yeah. Identical. They can't, the only way they can tell if it's due to sleep deprivation or a traumatic brain injury is if they have a pre-MRI scan and a post-MRI scan

to see if you lost gray matter. Brightening. Yeah. The, yeah, so the things you're talking about, working memory, cognitive flexibility,

inhibition control. Like if you, people know when they haven't slept, the craving for carbs just goes through the roof. I want something sugar. Your body's in desperation mode. I want to get the highest reward for the littlest effort. Get sleep. We're in a country where six out of ten people are sleep deprived. I mean, hell, I mean, we're in a country where six out of ten people are sleep deprived.

So I'm telling you, that doesn't lead to a high cognitive fitness score. And I know a lot of people, the common thing I see when I work with people is, and most of the people I'm working with these days are coaches. And a lot of times they go, I don't sleep well. It's like I allocate eight hours of sleep, but I am not sleeping well. I go, well, what are you doing? Like, well, I'm on my phone right before bed. I'm checking email. Working right up to bed is like the worst thing you could do.

Watching TV, like all these screens are throwing off light that totally throw off your circadian rhythm. Circadian rhythm is, that's going to signal to your body to be awake, be asleep. And if you throw that off, the whole system, there's a lot of people who focus just on that. You said a funny line recently.

You said, so did you sleep or were you unconscious? Yeah. It's like those are very different things, right? Right. And yeah, the sleep hygiene is massive. I mean, some of the best tips you can do is just simply just change out the lights near your sleeping area. So if you're brushing your teeth, you're blasting yourself with fluorescent lights. If you've got the lights cranked up, you know, get, get a dimmer. And for all you men out there, this is something I've learned is get those, get candles, get some candles, get in the habit of having candles in your bedroom

and light them. And then when you finally get that girl over to your house and you light those candles and you put on that music, trust me, I knew this was going to go here eventually. Had to. Yeah. It's my favorite subject. Yeah, so there's that benefit. And the quote, are you sleeping or are you unconscious, really comes from sleep. When you look at the brain, when you're sleeping, it goes through – sleep has an architecture. So your brain waves are doing certain things. Things are happening in the brain when you're sleeping it goes through sleep has an architecture so your brainwaves are doing certain things things are happening in the brain which is different than when you're unconscious so if you are drinking so say you get blacked out drunk you basically are unconscious you're not

sleeping so you're not getting the benefits of sleep but your your eyes are shut and you're not aware and the same thing with the sleeping drugs. Like over-the-counter and what the doctor is prescribing you, almost none of them allow you to reach the deep sleep where your body is producing testosterone, growth hormone, all the things that are necessary for you to not only be thinking clearly, but for the body to recover as well. And for the brain to de-plaque, there's a lot of insoluble proteins in the brain that

have to have the proper sleep architecture you're talking about in order to exit the brain and for the brain's waste disposal to take place. So yeah, if you're leaning on the whole adage of sleep when you die, i guess uh again when's the funeral yeah so so i can make plans but i mean i i think the reliance on on alcohol and drugs to to go to sleep is a big problem i know there are people you know i've had family members that they're popping a sleeping pill every night before bed and then they're complaining about like i can't seem to lose this weight i go well no shit you're not sleeping you're you're knocking yourself out unconscious it's it's a lie and yeah you got to figure out how to getting proper sleep hygiene you probably don't need that pill if you just turn off the screens light the candles wind down

take a bath. Yeah, take a bath. Make sure the room is cooler than you think it needs to be for most cases. Create a wonderful sleep environment. Seduce yourself, Mike, just like you're talking about with candles and all these things for that girl you're eventually going to get. I guess I'm going to join you here in this tangent. Yeah, seduce yourself into sleep. Yeah.

Let's do it. There's nothing wrong with that. It's not weird at all. I remember a time when, and I hear people say this, they go to bed and they can't turn off their brain. It's like, oh, I can't stop thinking. But if you do the things we're talking about. Oh, so you're out of control.

Yeah. Oh, that's nice. Thanks for letting me know you're out of control. Okay. Steer clear out of control. Yeah. Oh, that's nice. Thanks for letting me know you're out of control. Okay. Steer clear of that one. Yeah. Yeah, so if you do these things we're talking about, if you have a proper wind down at the end of the day,

your mind will be less active. Yeah. You have to create the environment. Environment's huge. We can talk about that a little bit later. But in terms of behavioral change, environment plays a huge, huge component into that. So if you can create a proper sleep environment, I mean, again, I have gone down

the other road you're talking about where I'm playing with devices and I'm, you know, sleeping in a position or in a place where there's too many lights or external lights. That's a big thing too. My wife's big and now she's got the, the, the curtains that block all the external, like the light pollution coming in. That really helps with creating a nice sleep environment. Another thing for me is I found out after years of training that I can't train after 2 PM.

So I can't train hard. I can train easy at 2 PM, but if I train hard to stimulated I I go to bed and I'm my whole body's buzzing I'm just like feels like I'm vibrating in bed and when I used to compete I was training twice a day so one session had to be in the afternoon it was hard training I remember I'd have to smoke a bowl I'd have to smoke weed to go to sleep I would get in bed and my wife would would at me and go, go smoke a bowl

you're driving me crazy because I can tell that you're awake I can feel you humming over there In a way again, this is how I bow on this subject, it is interesting that one of the most natural things to do in the world most people these days are bad

at it or can't do it. I mean, is there anything more natural than sleeping? It's a third of your life. A third of your life. Yeah. And you can get really good at it too. I've gotten really good at napping. I can fall asleep.

I can be asleep in five minutes on this couch. It's a skill to develop. Yeah. To learn how to relax. And that's a big part of it is I used to not know how to relax. My nervous system was always buzzing. There was always something going on.

I had to be moving. I mean, you see me. I still move a lot. But I've actually improved. So some people have it more than others, but just being able to breathe and lay there and not do shit is a huge advantage once you learn how to do it. When did you integrate napping into your routine? Well, I started napping when I was in the Navy, but that was with sleep deprivation. Wow, yeah.

So we would be on deployment and I'd be consistently getting four to six hours a night. And so it was just like grab sleep wherever you can. So that's, but healthy napping, um, happened when I was, uh, when I was competing, it was just, but again, it was, I was so exhausted. It was more about just being so exhausted. Um, I would say the last couple of years I got really good at it, really good at it where it's like, uh, two o'clock, one or two o'clock in the afternoon where i used to pound coffee to get through the work day i now go lay down i take an hour long nap uh because i notice that if i go too many days in a row where i push through with coffee instead of napping i end up

with the brain fog yeah you're talking about and now i can't work for like then my work just turns into shit like i can just sit and work but it's just not gonna be as good yeah you're talking about, and now I can't work for... Then my work just turns into shit. I can sit and work, but it's just not going to be as good. Yeah, you're just charging to the credit card. Yeah. That's interesting. You and I, let's put this on our list eventually, Mike. How about we do an intelligent napping program at some point? Oh, yeah.

Because it sounds like you have it dialed in. We can do some research to back that up. Yeah. I would say the thing that gave me the biggest boost to my ability to relax and nap was when I worked with my friend Anat Perry. And we did a lot of shifts around my relationship to work and my relationship to my body. And then I got – it was a lot of narrative

work, a lot of story work. And then I go, oh, like, it's actually like, I don't have to be always doing something to feel valuable. And then when that hit, the ability to just stop and take a nap became very easy. Well, you know, napping in this culture for a long time and potentially still is in some cases is a three-letter word, nap. You know, like if you catch someone napping, it's like, hey, what's wrong with that person? Especially a man.

I mean, that culture still exists. It's a sign of weakness. A lazy person. Oh, there was nothing. You need a nap, Mike? What's wrong with you? You need a nap? There was nothing worse than being lazy when I was growing up as a kid.

Yeah. I remember hanging out with my dad and him. We'd be talking about something like, oh, they're just lazy. Yeah. And it's like, oh, they might just be chilling. Yeah. Taking a nap in the middle of the day is not lazy. Well, look at Japan.

I think it's the number one ranked country when it comes to sleep deprivation in terms of sleep they get at night. It's like five and a half. But you go to Japan, you look on the trains, you look in Starbucks, people are just passed out. They're getting those naps in. They're the most hyper-competitive country on the planet in many ways. So, yeah, napping. Well, they also have a high suicide rate. Yeah, I omitted that part when I was bragging about that.

Well, they're hyper-competitive. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, again, it's good to show you that you got to take it where you can get it as far as napping. Well, you have the United States is hyper-competitive, too. Oh, yeah, yeah. In different ways than we have. Well, we don't commit suicide here.

We just have things like opiate addictions and things like that. It's a lot easier just to check out. It's a slow suicide. I was talking to Paul Cech about this the other day. I'd say the majority of people are committing suicide. Some are more quick than others.

The bullet is the fast way out, but a lot of people are, they hate themselves so much that they refuse to take care of themselves. They refuse to get good sleep. They refuse to exercise. They refuse to eat well. They, you know, binge drink. To me, this is all, like, if you really love yourself, you don't do that shit. Well, to get all Jordan Peterson on you, like, why would you ever take care of someone that you hated?

Yeah. Like, why would you ever take care of someone that you had no respect for, right? And if you don't respect yourself, you hate yourself. Well, good luck, you know, integrating all these positive personal development techniques. Right. It's like, so yeah. I mean, that's why Brene Brown's gotten so popular recently is because it's a valid conversation that should be had. Yeah. So yeah. I mean, the, and, and, you know, so we've covered those three, the sleep, the nutrition. Movement, your audience is 100% of the speed on. They listen to you.

You got your stuff dialed in. Yeah, I would say the only thing on movement is people are working to exhaustion too frequently. So this is a page out of Paul Cech's book. He has working in and working out. So having as many movement practices that give you energy as zap you of energy. Most people are only working out and so they only value movement practices

that are exhausting. And so having a movement practice that's energizing, going for a walk, certain types of yoga, tai chi. For me, a lot of times, it's a light jog on the beach or a quick swim in the pool or the ocean. These are physical activity that are actually making me fitter and healthier, but they're not exhausting in nature. I worked out for 20 years always to exhaustion. So I've spent the last five years where it's more like I work in.

My working in to working out is more of a three to one because I'm having to make up for all the damage I did. So there was so much exhaustion around it that, and making that shift was, it required me to become injured before I even learned how to work in. And then once I started learning how to work in, I fell in love with it. And now I see that without it, everything leads to injury in a short term. So I do want to throw that out there is I would start off, you know, what's your ratio of working in to working out? You know, I have a lot of people who have been working out for a long time.

I say dial it back to twice a week. Do two strength training sessions a week and then move every day. And the other five days a week, you know, do the working in part, you know, you can be that can be working on mobility and breath work and going for walks and yoga. So you're still moving your joints to a full range of motion, you're still pumping the blood, you're pumping the lymph, you're engaging with your body, and you're building a relationship with your body and you're building a relationship with your body and a better movement practice but it's not

exhausting. Mike come on don't you understand no pain no gain you have to be exhausted and you have to have all that sweat on you and you have to be one to just pass out as soon as you finish that's the only way to work out it's either sitting in a chair in a cubicle for eight hours or you're doing that that's the way way to work out. It's either sitting in a chair in a cubicle for eight hours or you're doing that.

That's the way America works. Yeah. Damn it. Yeah. Well. It's all good. It's a. Now.

Yeah. This has been a nine-month conversation. So, yeah. So, that's actually a really great transition to cognitive. I'm, like, trying to address that without being too insulting. I know. I know. Well, you know. I'm insulting enough as it is. Well, listen. I'm trying to address that without being too insulting. I know. I'm insulting enough as it is. I just try to hold back.

We understand the value of those types of workouts, but the key is, is it not a workout unless it's that workout? Yeah, what I've got now, it's 80-20. Yeah, exactly.

If you're going to failure, go to failure 20% of your workouts. 20% of your workouts go to failure. That means if you're training five times in a week, one of them you're pushing the envelope. Four of them you're working well within really well movement patterns that are easy for you, working inside of progression. You're building a skill.

You're breathing well and easy. You're only nose breathing. Four out of five workouts, nose breathing only is a really great way to know if you should slow down or not. People are using all this technology to figure all this out. If you shut your mouth and then move. That's the only regulator you really need. You'll learn a lot. You'll learn a lot really quick. Mark and I did a few workshops last year on the East Coast and I put everyone through a, not only were they only allowed to breathe through their nose, but we did it in silence. And talk about mindfuck. Because people want to have their music, and they want to be able to breathe. They want to be mouth breathers.

And you take away their two favorite things, and it gets really interesting really fast. But what ended up happening is they became hyper aware. Yeah. Well, it's funny. Three of the things we've talked about on this show thus far are eat real food, sleep, and breathe through your nose. It's like this is the most basic information. It's like how did we get this far away from this, Mike?

How did it – I know that's another topic for another day. And it's amazing that these are the things we're talking about. We want to make it complicated. And a lot of it is, so my friend Max Schenck, everyone knows Max because he's been on the show many times, is he's, this guy's studying like astrophysics to figure out how to move better, right? How to make the body healthier and perform at a higher level. He's so advanced. It's

ridiculous. And so you got a guy like that. You got a guy like, like myself who I'm, I'm not doing that, but I've been in it for so long that I mastered the, I work out two hours a day. I eat really well when I was 15 and max did, you know, he mastered it at such a young age that it's like we, for, and a lot of you are the same way. You've mastered this and you forget. You forget. And so we end up going down much more complicated routes ourselves so that we can keep advancing. And then we only give the advanced protocols to the clients.

So I think, or to our friends, and one thing have really, it's very selfish of us to only be looking at our own perspective. And so that's one thing I do in the Strong Coach is basically teach coaches how to figure out what the client actually needs. But Max is really good with this. And one of the last times we hung out, we were having a good laugh.

He's like, I know all this stuff about movement i can train professional athletes i can get the best athlete you know one to three percent better which is phenomenal like these are things that we know how to do we can tweak the system and and crazy we know so much but he runs a gym and encinitas ambitionition Athletics and he goes, yeah, most of my clients, I just tell them to drink more water and go for walks. You know, that's really what people need to hear. He's, he's so advanced that he's been able to integrate health. He understands the health conversation so deeply that he's like, oh, your feet hurt.

You know what the advice is to your feet hurting? Put your hands on your feet for five minutes a day. No fucking magic trick. You'll figure it out. So simple. Basics, Mike. We've gotten away from it. And those complex technical breakdowns

that you're talking about, well, they get people in the door because they're really shiny and they sound really important. They sound very expensive. And we all do this. I mean, we all get into this kind of thing we want complicated answers to yeah you know we've made the problem in our head complicated somehow and now now it's going to require something special well it's funny because that's that's actually

something we talked about yesterday was that um the all these things you get on these rabbit holes in terms of brain health, in terms of sleep science and things like that, and you can see all this complex information. And there's complex information with movement, with all these, anything you're into. You want to play guitar, you want to learn an instrument or learn a new craft. But at the end of the day, you can learn all this stuff

if you can't enact behavioral change to integrate those new things that information those techniques into your lifestyle well you're screwed right because at the end of the day it comes down to you am i going am i going to integrate this into my into my uh my habitual way of being right and and and am i good at that can i because how many people do we know we've done it ourselves in the past, have been like, you know, man, life's so hard. I try something and I get frustrated because it doesn't hold. You know, I tried real hard to lose the weight or quit smoking or, you know, stop smoking

weed or whatever, and I can't stop doing it. You know, it's like, it's because there's no system there. And a lot of, one of the reasons people have no idea how to change those behaviors is because they simply don't know how the brain works. They have no idea what's, again, very simply what the brain's functions are. So let's really quickly jump into that. So one of the things I think that is getting better in terms of the cognitive health conversation are things like the cognitive abilities that apps like Lumosity were trained, you know, things that you can hone through meditation.

So, like, the abilities of perception, attention, short- and long-term memory, motor skills, visual and spatial processing, stuff like that. We're pretty good at having that conversation. You see this being studied in universities. They're measuring brain function with fMRI and things like that to see what people are able to perform by increasing this capacity, this particular, I should say, capacity of their cognitive ability. But it's the executive functions, the things we talked about before when we didn't get enough sleep, right? Inhibition control, you know, the stuff like having brain,

they call it flexibility. It's like the capacity for quickly switching to appropriate mental modes depending on what's going on. Things like problem solving, decision making. They actually separate emotional self-regulation as another executive function outside of just inhibition. So these types of things, how do we train those? Because you can get all the Lumosity apps that are out there

and you're still going to have to train your executive function separately from that. So you think about in the past... It'd be like coming in the gym and only working on squats. Yeah, it's an isolated workout. Yeah, there's a lot of aspects here. Yeah, so I think in society, in the marketplace, what has occupied this space in terms of cognitive fitness

for executive function has been, in the distant past, religion, of course, was a big part of it. Currently, personal development, Tony Robbins, Landmark, all these things, they occupy that leadership training. You talk about that a lot. And in psychology, you have things like CBT, right? And again, going back to the beginning of this conversation, we talked about how we want to take this personal development thing, which is, again, it's this personal development thing which is again it's very touchy-feely it's very ephemeral and then you've got the mental health mental wellness

aspect and that's got a stigma of like yeah you know i don't want to touch that i want to talk about that right how do we make training the executive functions of the brain your cognitive abilities the things that make you effective as a human being, how do we make that fun? You know? And that's by, again, calling it cognitive fitness. I mean, think about it. Who doesn't want to be fit? We all want to be fit, right?

Physical fitness, cognitive fitness, it's there. So with the stuff we've worked on, we've thus far have dialed into language and story. We talked about that earlier. And using these techniques specifically, we can change how flexible the mind is in terms of, again, we talked about switching to appropriate mental modes. So if you're in one space all the time, you have a rigid way of thinking, like the old adage says, the only tool you have is a hammer. Everything looks like a nail. Well, it's really hard to change your behavioral way of being if you're stuck in

one mindset. And once you learn how to get out of that mindset, can you then replicate it? Same thing with insight into other people's minds. Understanding how the people think understanding where you are in relation to them multiple perspectives being able to get multiple perspectives as i for me have developing that ability has been one of the biggest difference makers in my life. And that, that's something that we, that we do with and lifted is a lot of perspective, taking on different perspectives. We teach you how to take on different perspectives.

We've had some people go through the beta group that took off that they go, Oh shit. I now have a tool when something happens to, to see it from multiple angles that i didn't have before well yeah and then that of course assists with problem solving and decision making oh yeah i mean all this if you have it pulls any of the drama out of it pulls drama out of situations gives you distance we've all heard about zooming out of a situation it's like oh i finally got some space i could zoom out and i could see it for what it really was. We've all had that experience. But most of the time when we zoom out, it's on

accident. We go, oh, fuck, I didn't even realize. Or it's way too late. It's way too late. But learning how to do that in that moment of like, oh, I'm experiencing stress. Oh, why am I experiencing stress? Oh, this thing's going on. Why is it stressing me out? Oh, what's another perspective on this? What's it look like from that other person? You know, how would they think about it? How would this other person, how do they see it? Oh, that's what's really going on here.

And taking on multiple perspectives gives you a three-dimensional view of reality, whereas most people are only getting a one-dimensional view of reality, whereas most people are only getting a one-dimensional view of reality. That sucks. You're ineffective at that. You're only asking those questions that you just asked. You're only asking that when the shit's going down.

You're only training when you have to work. The point, just like functional fitness, and I love your definition. Your definition like functional fitness, and I love your definition. We took your definition of functional fitness is the ability to meet a wide variety of physical demands with ease. We just pulled functional fitness and put in cognitive fitness and said cognitive fitness is the ability to meet a wide variety of intellectual and emotional demands with ease. So you train your mind so when those situations arise, you're already in shape to handle it. It's not a big deal. I've had people, they go,

man, you're really chill all the time. Ten years ago, that was not the case. It was a fucking basket case. Most of us were. One little thing would happen. I'd get one text message from somebody that wasn't even anything wrong.

It was just, what do they mean? And then next thing I know, my mind is racing around the worst case scenarios. And then I find out what they really meant two days later. And I go, it actually wasn't that big a deal at all. But I spent two days being stressed out. It impacted my workouts. It impacted my sleep. It kept me from being effective at my job. The biggest leaps I've made in my entrepreneurial career, I've been getting rid of that shit, not having that haunt me day after day after day. Yeah, one of the most successful people you and I know

is the kind of guy who he loves not knowing what's coming through the door next. Yes. A person, a thing, a situation, he loves that because he knows he can handle it. Yeah. That's a topic you and I brought up a while back as the topic of anti-fragile and the same Tlaib concept of something that gets challenged and gets better after it's challenged, right? That's with proper cognitive fitness and with a proper approach to cognitive fitness,

the goal is whatever happens, you actually seek challenge. You seek in some ways being offended. It's a chance to test out what sort of abilities you have you've been working on for a while. Well, a key piece of the anti-fragile conversation is when you when applied to biology is there's uh there's stress oh was it was it distress and you have eustress so eustress isn't is an appropriate amount of stress that the organism can adapt to it's a stimulus that comes in and now that that organism can adapt to it and gets better, it gets stronger, it becomes more robust. Distress is when you put too much stress on the system and it degrades it past the point

which it can adapt. And so there's something that Nassim talks about, and I think it's an anti-fragile, he talks about this one and uh we see this with training people who over train or you know they use stress as the minimum effective dose and say my minimum effective dose compared to someone else's minimum effective dose or my eustress and someone else's eustress are completely different. And, and so I can, something that is really mundane for one person can cause distress for somebody else. And so that, that cognitive fitness comes in. If you're very cognitively fit, you actually need more uncertainty. You have to have it. And the highest performers I know, they love

uncertainty. It's almost like, ooh, what's going to happen next? And people around them are going, oh, fuck, man. Do we really need to be doing this? Have you thought... This is my favorite. I know I'm hanging out with the wrong person when I come up with an idea and they go, well, did you think about this?

Well, what about this? What about this? Like coming up with everything that could go wrong. I'm like, I don't even know why you're thinking about that shit. If any of that thing, if any of those things happen, it's not a big deal. I can handle it. Yeah. It's not a big deal. I mean, I don't even have to, I don't even have to consider it because if it happens, I've got it. Yeah. I'll handle it. Yeah. I'm competent. And I'm comfortable in that competence. It's funny you brought that up as well. Stress because that eustress, distress thing.

I like how you put it. You called it the minimum effective dose of stress. Because stress is just like inflammation. In and of itself, stress is not a bad thing. Stress is there for a reason. It's a feature, not a bug, right? So stress, what it does is like, Tony Robbins calls it an action signal. But it lets us know if we're in a bug right so stress what it does is like it's a it's a tony robbins calls it an action signal but it lets us know what you know if we're in a situation again uh we should fight flight you know or freeze right what are we going to do something's happening it's an acute stress moment right the problem of course is like you said the distress is the chronic stress and that's the big

killer so if you separate those two just like chronic inflammation nobody wants that let's say hey no one's craving chronic inflammation, not even the most cognitively fit. The inflammation conversation is interesting. So many people were wanting to take anti-inflammatories for after workouts. Got to get rid of the inflammation. Look, inflammation is not a bad thing. I want inflammation after I work out because it's signaling the body to repair itself.

So I'm even careful about adding ice to, you know, if I, you know, get a lump. Like, I only want to apply ice if it's going to get really big. And I want to keep it to a certain size. But other than that, you want there to be some inflammation. It's signaling the body. It causes your body to produce growth hormone and things to do that. You can actually slow down your healing process by icing to get rid of inflammation or taking fish oil right after your workout or ibuprofen. These are really common

things that people have done in the past. And there's some, there's always research that suggests it's a good idea, but there's always research that suggests it's not. But there's a, I've become more of a believer in letting the natural state of the body, there's a reason it's doing that. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, and if you're, if you're the kind of person that you want to, you're staying in stress, you're a stressed out person. People like to, you know, I think still even in this day, people do like to wear stress sometimes as a badge of honor, you know, like, oh man, I'm stressed, man, I got this thing. They talk about it as if it's like something that you can if not it's something that it's like oh yeah I

like it's kind of you said I'm exhausted you know I've worked out so hard I'm exhausted oh man I'm so stressed with work you know and it's like great so you're your brain shrinking yeah that's that's exactly what's happening oh you're creating more white matter than gray matter oh you're you're shrinking executive function that's what that means if you're creating more white matter than gray matter. Oh, you're shrinking executive function. That's what that means. If you're under chronic stress, you're creating a vicious cycle where your amygdala is actually gaining in relative size

than the rest of your brain. And thus, you're going to be in this constant adrenal slash cortisol cycle that's going to make you a stress case. And you're going to start getting addicted to that. Does that sound fun? Because it's not. There's nothing fun about that.

I don't want to live life like that. No. If I, if, if, and the, the interesting thing about this conversation is for me, I had to have experiences of getting out of it for me to really know it.

You know, it's, you don't, for me, I didn't know how stressed I was until I, until the stress was gone. And it was curiosity that took me into situations where I go, oh, I didn't even realize that thing was bothering me.

I didn't realize that the weight of that was so fucking heavy. I breathe deeper now. I can actually catch my breath. And if that's how life has always been, then you don't know. You don't know what you don't know. And I think that's another thing. That's another challenge that comes up

with a lot of the personal development work is the majority of what people get out of the type of training that we're holding is that you are going to learn a dozen or more things that fall into the category of you don't know what you don't know. You know, we operate primarily in, uh, from a view of, I know what I know and I know what I don't know. But then the majority of what's going on that's running the show is what you don't know.

That makes up the majority of the pie. And there's no way to know until you become aware of the thing you didn't. And you go, oh, I just didn't know. How many times have you heard that? It's like, I just didn't know. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's a great excuse.

It's a good fallback. Well, I mean, but it's, just didn't know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great excuse. It's a good fallback. Well, I mean, but it's, they don't know. Once they get the awareness around a thing, now they know, now they can do something about it. Well, if you have a system of learning, it's like, you know, this is what Tim Ferriss is really good about, is he's created all these systems for language learning, et cetera. He's able to replicate intelligence

because he has a system for the intelligence. I mean, it's just like any successful business. A successful business is not the result. Apple's not a tremendously successful company because of the iPhone. Apple's tremendously successful because they have a system of processes that they can replicate over and over and over again.

The iPhone is the emergent property. It's the emergent property of that. So just like with, again, with your cognitive fitness, it's like, oh, I really handled that well, man. I made the great decision. It's like, well, that's right, you did. And if you want to keep replicating that because if not, it's gonna be a one-off It's gonna be a random one-off. It's like I did a great I did great there I did great there that you know that one that last weekend with my wife was a great weekend

I was nice to have one of those every once in a while. It's like well listen man That's fine. And that's a good starter. How about we figure out what you did to make that a great weekend? We replicate that and that becomes your new baseline. That sounds a little more tempting than having a random good night with someone that I love, right? Yeah. Creating new baselines, that's a lot of fun. It makes life way more enjoyable. Well, you do that through processes. You have a system. If you understand how it works, you can replicate it.

And to some people out there, this may sound mechanical. This may sound cerebral. But man, it's like, how about this? How about we create a system that you can replicate loving people and bringing love into your life?

Well, it's the same as a training program. Training programs are systems. You wouldn't go in the gym and do random shit. That wouldn't go very far. You'd probably get hurt. You end up just doing a bunch of stuff you like and none of the stuff you didn't like. I mean, you've seen it. The guy whose shoulders are caved in because all he's done is bench press and fucking preacher curls. And he's got his legs are twigs and he can't figure out why his neck

hurts and all this is because he's just doing the thing that he can see. I was like, this is what I know. I can see these muscles in the mirror and I'm just going to work these. But the person who's really done the work, they go, no, there's a system.

The physical body is a system and we need to work it in a way that makes sense. We need to do legs. We need to integrate the posterior chain. We need to consider the fascia. We need to consider breath posterior chain. We need to consider the fascia. We need to consider breath when we're moving. It's the noob. It's the novice. It's the jackass in the gym that walks around with big pecs and no legs. You don't want to be that guy. Do you want to be that guy cognitively as well? Because for me personally, I can't even hang out with people like that anymore.

I have to – it has to be engaging on multiple levels or it's just not even interesting anymore. Well, it's volatile and it's unpredictable. I mean because this person is going to be unpredictable. I mean they have no system. One day they're going to succeed. One day person's going to be unpredictable. I mean, they, they have no system, you know, one day they're going to succeed. One day they're going to be dangerous. Yeah. You know, who knows?

Yeah. So having a, having a way and which is why we called the lifted course, the way of the lifted athlete. That's it. The system. That's the system. That was a brilliant segue, wasn't it? It's perfect. So good.

I'm getting good at this fast. Is this your first podcast? This is my first podcast with you. I've been on a couple of podcasts before. This is pro-level shit. Yeah, so we created and lifted. We're doing a lot of cool stuff with it. The first thing that we're doing is we are launching the way of the Enlifted athlete,

which is a 90-day training. So you'll get two lessons a week, and you'll be put into a Slack channel, and we will do weekly Zoom calls. So webinar style, you will be able to ask questions. There will be interaction with Mark England and myself. So we'll be coaching you in that program. And it starts on May 15th. So you only have a few days to sign up.

If you're one of the people who listen to the show immediately, you've got a little bit of time. And if you happen to hear this show after the fact there'll be trainings in the future so we'll just sign up and we'll keep you in the loop we have all sorts of stuff I mean we our mission really is to improve cognitive cognitive fitness so whatever that looks like there'll be trainings maybe there's all sorts of other offerings that are in this realm because when we look at the whole, like Adam was saying at the beginning of the show, is you've got your rest, you've got your movement,

and there's this piece of the pie that's been neglected for so long that it's your biggest opportunity. The biggest opportunity to get better as an athlete, to get better as a human, is get better as a human is this piece that this cognitive fitness piece. And so if you're plateaued, if you're wondering what it is I can do next to, to be at my very best, this is really low hanging fruit in 90 days of intentionally teaching yourself and how to think in a systematic way that makes you more adaptable and to, it's very dynamic.

And so we, we built it to be very dynamic. So, so no matter what the situation is, you will have tools that you can apply to that situation. So, and again, like,

like you said, it's a, it's, it's, it's how a way to look at nutrition, change, changing the way you approach your, your workout,

changing the way you look at rest. Uh, one of the, the lessons that we put together that i'm most proud of is the uh how to have a framework ready for when an injury recurs yeah occurs because you and i have had both had major injuries yeah and if i had had this this particular uh information in my back pocket before the injury oh my lord i mean what a what a difference it would make.

I would have, I can tell you right now, if I had this course before I got injured, it wouldn't, I wouldn't have gotten injured and any injuries I would have had, I would have healed much faster. I heal way faster now having this knowledge. And this isn't, this isn't the type of education where you're like, Oh, I know how to do it. Like you get it and you go, oh, it's just this way of looking at it. No, it's a process. We're taking you through a transformational process that is going to, you're going to, there will be moments where you go, you'll be driving down the road or you'll be in the gym and you go, oh, I'm behaving different. And it's automatic. That's the coolest thing about this stuff. And this is what excites me the most

is the automatic behavior change because we start linking ideas together. We start rewiring the neurons in your brain. And all of a sudden, you can't even go back to the way you thought about it. You can't go back to doing it the way you were doing it. You're now in such a new place, you can't unknow. And it's a deep learning. It's not a surface thing. You know, it's not like, oh, you got to like be more mentally tough or think positive. It's none of that.

It is truly a way of shifting. It shifts you at a very deep level to where it'll be more than one behavior at a time that changes. There's all these books on behavior change and habit change. And it's like, oh, you got to focus on this one habit out here for 60, 70 days to really see a shift. But the truth is, is if you go deep enough into who you are and you make a shift down at the core, one degree, one degree shift a year from now is going to,

it's miles of difference in your trajectory. Well, it's like Mark Manson says in Subtle Art of Giving a Fuck. He says that... I think it's Not Giving a Fuck. Not Giving a Fuck, pardon me. He says that gold is,th is where the gold is. Yeah.

If you go down there, that's where the gold is buried. A lot of people want to stay on that surface level with everything in their lives. Yeah. It's just easier. But you get down there, man.

It's a lot of work, but that is where the gold is buried. And the result is easier. The result is life gets easier. Doing the work itself, it can feel like the most excruciating thing you've done. And on the other side is magnificence. If you listen to this show,

if you've been listening to my show for any amount of time, you know that I like to go deep. A lot of you have messaged me going, how can I be involved in something you're doing? When are you going to offer something that I like to go deep. A lot of you have messaged me going, how can I be involved in something you're doing? When are you going to offer something that's like this? This is the thing. This is the thing that I've been wanting to bring to you. This is the thing that you've been coming here to get.

You've been listening to this show because this is the type of thing that you're interested in. So come join us for the training. It's the best stuff. Mark, Adam, and I sat countless hours. I don't even know how long. Weeks on end. We locked ourselves inside a house and put on the thinking caps and had the conversations and we put together.

Everyone's been in personal development for, these these guys have been in longer than I have. Um, and we really put our best effort in this. This is the best that we have. So if, if that's what you're looking for, go to enlifted.me and start off with that, um, that cognitive fitness assessment, and then you'll be given the chance to get into the program. If you want to find, go directly to the program, you can hit my Instagram and click the button there. But hitting and lifted.me, just go through the assessment. It'll get you started. And I'll be posting some links up. Also check your email if you're on the list within Lifted or Shrugged, look for an email from me. There's links in there to everything that we're doing,

so you can go take the assessment. You can go straight to the course and sign up right there. If you have any questions about any of this, you can email me at mike at enlifted.me. Is there anything else you want to mention, Adam? Yeah, we're super pumped about this, you can email me at mikeatandlifted.me Is there anything else you want to mention, Adam? We're super pumped about this training. We're very proud of the material. Just a couple numbers for them. Two hours a week.

It's your time commitment. Two hours a week with doing this material. 90 days. It takes between 21 and 90 days to change a habit. Integrate new habits. That's what we did it, 90 days. That's it. And it's fun. It's going to be a lot of fun.

It's a lot of fun. I promise. There's some hilarious stuff in there. If you don't have fun, I'll give you your money back. All right, thanks for joining me, Adam. Thanks, Mike. So much fun. Again, more fun.

More fun. All right. I know you love this show. Make sure to go over to iTunes, Stitcher. Make sure you're subscribed to The Bledsoe Show. And give us a five-star review. Positive comments. The more of those we get, the more people we get to reach.

And we know that the world would be a better place if that's the case. And if you want to work with me and Mark for the next 90 days, make sure to go over to enlifted.me slash shrugged and start off with that cognitive assessment. From there, you'll have an opportunity to get signed up. Of course, you can go over to my Instagram account and get directly in there. Go to Mike underscore Bledsoe to get into my Instagram account and click that link. And for the coaches, up your coaching game, thestrongcoach.com.

Start getting those emails that are going to help you improve as a coach immediately. All right, team. I'll see y'all next week.