Barbell Shrugged - The Power of Breath & Temperature

Episode Date: December 21, 2016

What's good Shrugged crew. This week we are coming at you with a familiar guest, Brian Mackenzie. For those of you who don't know him, Brian is the founder of CrossFit Endurance, the author of Power, Speed, Endurance, and works with some of the top athletes in performance sport, such as CrossFit, surfing and endurance athletics.  We dropped into RVCA headquarters to chat with Brian about a performance metric that is so often not talked about, breath. We dive deep into how you can use breath as a tool to control the nervous system, and bring your training to the next level by simple learning how to tap into your breathing pattern We also get into how Brian is using things like ice bathes, sauna, and the unique combination of the two to control the body. We brought Brian on the show to chat about performance breathing, but naturally, we couldn't stop at that. We get into training philosophy, nature integration, and a bunch of topics to get your gears turning in a new way.   

And it's like, look, if I'm going to bury myself all day at work, don't expect to go perform real well in a workout. And be aware of what you're doing and maybe just do some ice and some heat so that you can downregulate or upregulate and then be able to downregulate yourself. We'll be right back. We're doing breath, heat, ice. I mean, there's a cool training facility. This looks like an MMA gym mixed with a CrossFit gym. But the thing that you've been getting into is the heat, ice, and breath. And it was a couple years ago you introduced me to the Wim Hof breathing method. Yep. And I had heard about holotropic breathing before, and I had done some stuff one-off

before, but that method specifically stuck with me because of how easy it is to use. And so, yeah, I mean, that's really changed a lot of things for me. It's how I start my morning. Uh, can you tell us more about where you've gone with breath since then? Because it's been a couple of years and it's been over a year and a half since you've been on the show. Yeah. Um, I, the Wim Hof method is arguably, I, well, not, I think it's probably the greatest,

uh, driver to get people engaged in actual consciousness or work with breath. Yeah. It's such an easy feat. And Wim, his whole thing is feeling is understanding. And here you go. In three minutes, you're euphoric and you get to a deep state of flow. You've got this sympathetic state going off, but you're non-reactive about it. And you enter into this special place for a lot

of people. Some people, it gets very emotional, which just means, hey, there's other things in there that we may need to deal with. Right. And, you know, I've spent a lot of time with Wim and working with Wim and his group and, you know, one of his top instructors, Casper, who is arguably one of the greatest teachers I've been around um i've spent a lot of time with so understanding the science on all that and then actually delving

into a lot more of different methodologies and in actually you know figuring things out with like the tummo breathing or the tummo meditation that the buddhist monks do which is where the kind of the inner fire thing comes from with wim hof That heating up, that is actually a Buddhist monk thing that's been around for thousands of years or hundreds of years. And, you know, you find paths into certain places and other things and you learn how to connect dots. And so for me, it's become, it's not just Wim Hof stuff, although I incorporate a lot of the Wim Hof stuff into what it is I do.

I'm actually incorporating a lot of other breathing techniques into stuff and programming it in manners to create special effects per se. Whether that's deep, transcendental things, or it's just, hey, I want to be ready to fucking train and go hard, or I want to uplift myself so fucking train and go hard. Or I want to up, uplift myself so that I can downregulate immediately. And, and, you know, I, so, um, and, and that's an important piece is, you know, we put out, I've been putting out a lot of information on the breathing height and heat and the ice. And these are all sympathetic things that, that we're introducing to people,

but people don't really understand that. And I kind of caught wind of that today with with somebody asking a question and it was like oh and you know these things are a lot like weightlifting or crossfit or training and except i'm breathing and i'm creating chemical warfare on my body inside on my physiology without working really you know i'm breathing and i'm creating these these catechonoids i'm getting these catechonoids i'm getting these catechonoids to dump into the system so i've got norepinephrine adrenaline i've got dopamine entering the system and i'm saying my my body's going wow okay you're a fucking fighter flighter freeze right now and this kind of goes into one of the theories of like not theory but the

analogy of the lion and the antelope where lion the antelope will engage where the lion goes after the antelope and we cannot tell the difference from either animal physiologically they're both in a highly sympathetic state heart rates are pegged whatever there's there's no difference the difference though between the two animals the lion wants to be there and the antelope does not now if the lion doesn't catch the antelope, what happens? They both downregulate and go into a parasympathetic state. What do we do? We stay freaked out.

We stay freaked out. We continue working and stressing ourselves out, and then we go jump in a gym, and we start training our brains out in another sympathetic state. And we made the choice not to downregulate or ignore that tiredness. Hey, I'm getting tired today. I should probably take a nap. Oh no, I can't because I'm at a nine to five and we're not allowed to take naps. And you know, well, none of us here are at a nine to five, but the fact is, is these are all things I'm really starting to push and get out. And Andy and I are even doing some work here to where

it's our, is technology and what we're doing really getting us to where we should be. And why aren't we actually doing the things that we have really been great at? Like, you know, the work within McDougal, that Chris McDougal's done and showing with natural born heroes, things like, Hey, guys picking up 800 pound stones. Why isn't anybody picking up an 800 pound stone anymore? We've got some of the strongest, biggest guys we've ever seen in the history of man, but they're still not picking these things up.

Why aren't they doing that? Or running back-to-back 50-mile runs without aid stations and sugar to fucking fuel them. They're just running in nature because it's needed. All of these things and is technology really getting us there? So I think that's a big download for you. like why you know all of these things and and his technology really getting us there so i think that's you know a big download for him but so a lot of people probably heard you say all those things and all they heard was you breathe and you get all these benefits and they're thinking and they're thinking

so they hear you say you know you breathe and you get all these benefits but i breathe all day long i've been breathing my whole life, ideally. Yes. What are you talking about? You mentioned Wim Hof breathing, but how is that different than the breathing that I've always done my whole life? Well, it's a hyperventilating technique. So Wim Hof's breathing is a hyperventilation technique. Hyperventilation is defined as a negative CO2 environment.

That's it. So that could be holotropic, or that could be Wim Hof, or that could be fucking whatever Hoyce Gracie's doing. Because Hoyce Gracie was doing this stuff 30 years ago as well. I had a conversation with him about it. But it's more or less take a big inhale, let the exhale go, and repeat that fairly quickly. And you can go faster or you can go a little slower.

But you're going to get to a negative CO2 environment, which you're going to start to feel euphoric, which is that place where those chemicals are starting to dump in. And that feeling is where a lot of people are chasing. And feeling is understanding. And it's like, oh, shit, I can feel good. And then after you do it, you're like, wow, I feel charged right now. Well, you are.

And that's just not necessarily mildly euphoric. Some people get to a pretty intensely euphoric state, if I'm not mistaken. Very true. And the theory is that, so, from a

chemical standpoint, melatonin minus CO2 equals DMT in the human body. So, if we've got melatonin present and we go into a negative CO2 environment, you

may just trip the fuck out on your own supply. And I think it has more, a lot of it to raising the pH of the body and getting that pineal gland really exposed and allowing stuff like that to happen. But I do believe that that is the state and plenty of us, especially here, have experienced that as well. What do you see as the benefits of doing this? So someone's listening to this, but it sounds like it might be fun achieving euphoria. Some people...

Not. I would say... Not my brother. I would say a lot of people are just like, why would I want to go after euphoria? And I'm like, why wouldn't you? But there's also some other benefits. What are the benefits to a euphoric state and having that experience? And what are the benefits to consciousness?

I think that for me it comes down to consciousness. And as hippy-dippies you want to make that, I take that out of the hippy-dippy, I think. And I've been able to connect that into what human like what's going on around us right now these people are fighting they're doing their stuff and it's like okay how do i make them more aware of what their breathing is and and what's going on with that and that is what consciousness is and if we can just open that layer of the onion up which is which is basically that dirty ugly layer of the onion and just go crack crack, here we go. Okay, here's where you're at, and now you're conscious of your breathing.

What else are you aware of? And that's where we start to become aware of our own behavior and things like that. And that's why people like an Eckhart Tolle or a Deepak Chopra or all these very big spiritual leaders, they all talk about breathing. It's why yoga has talked about pranayama for thousands of years it's just breath practice right well it's yeah you're conscious and you're becoming aware and i think that's very that's a very enlightening thing regardless of being an athlete or being a yogi and you know back to doug's question is well so

we breathe all day and i mean bisbing was in here the other day, and he's like, yeah, yeah, breathing's easy, man. I do it every day. It's like, yeah, you do. And you're only taking in 15% of the air that you are capable of. That is what we're doing. One of the things I found interesting, I was hanging out with this woman who reached out to me. She's a neuroscientist. She just wanted to know more about how, I say, raising your awareness.

Because I'm in the practice of trying to raise my awareness all the time. Yes, you are. I think everybody here is. Yes. And she was wanting to know, like, what are the practical benefits of that? What are, like, the physical performance benefits of that? And for me, I was like, I really can't tell you. It's something that, like, once it's experienced,

once you go to a place and you do really deep holotropic breathing or something like that, and you peel those layers back, you go, what is it that you're aware of that you might need to look at? And then you look at that thing, and then you deal with it, and now everything in life gets easier yeah like that's performance enhancing yes but you now don't have something blocking you from doing the things you know you should be doing anyway i think the majority of athletes are struck their struggle has not to do with uh i'm not on the right training program or

i'm not you know i, am I counting my macros properly or this or that? I was like, why is it that training and watching what you eat is difficult? And that's where the awareness piece comes in. And all of a sudden people have that increased awareness and everything they knew they were supposed to be doing for a decade now becomes easier overnight because they had maybe a holotropic experience yes and for me it really came down to as a kid i was pretty agnostic i was violent um i did not like authority whatsoever i still don't i'm not violent anymore uh. I still don't. I'm not violent anymore. At least I don't express myself in that way.

That doesn't mean that violent stuff can't arise in me. And this is what I become aware of. So anger has, and anybody who's followed me long enough has seen where I've gotten pretty angry about stuff and reactive about things. And it's like, like yeah i created this methodology and people talk shit and i got up and said go fuck yourself and as okay as that may be i'm not necessarily totally okay with that and the deeper layers of where i got with that was if what i'm doing is supposed to create an outlet for that anger, yet the anger is still present. What was the point of the outlet? And this is where we start to look at performance and human

performance and athletes and elite athletes. And you can take MMA athletes, for instance, and I've watched this with MMA as I have with CrossFit, is we have people who are living in this no more different of an addictive cycle than chemical warfare of what drugs do. It's the exact same thing. And you've got people who are repeating the same thing over and over, expecting a different result, expecting to have themselves enlightened to some degree. And I am only speaking from personal experience right now. And then having conversations with other professional athletes that might be here that, you know, and them being able to relate to that and saying, oh, shit. Yeah, I was experiencing this, too. And it's like we start to see that we're using something to try and get somewhere and deal with something.

But we're not actually dealing with that. And this actually goes even far deeper with the breathing stuff, because what I've picked up on is people who are huffing and puffing all day long and trying to get high on their own supply or, hey, I'm doing tomo meditation. Well, it just so happens that the reason these guys are doing tomo meditation is because they're getting an incredible amount of serotonin released in the system and they can give themselves self-orgasms. And so without jerking off or without having sex, they're actually having an orgasm and this is why they're doing this. And so there's really, we're seeing no difference in the Buddhist who is enlightened per se and the athlete who's chasing something or the drug addict who's doing something and

we're correlating this human deal one's exogenous someone's seeking it from the outside and another person is seeking it from within exactly yeah exactly and so this is where that starts to really open up and it becomes apparent of you know when when i was doing a lot of ultra running people were like what are you running from man like fuck that's a lot I was doing a lot of ultra running, people were like, what are you running from, man? Like, fuck, that's a lot of running. And I'm like, why do they keep fucking asking me what I'm running from? Like, I'm not running from anything, you know?

And it's like, and then you figure out, oh, wow. I get it. Your friends might be able to see something you can't see. Six hours into this shit, I'm in this place where I finally wanted to get to to let go of all the shit that was going on. But why can't I do that just sitting here or just being present or just doing that? And I think that's what it really comes down to. Because if we're coming in to train to compete at something and yet that competition isn't fulfilling what's going on,

what the fuck is the point of competing for it if you're not getting any better? So the way that we've all, you know, like, Starrett and I have really looked at performance is through a movement practice, and it's like, hey, okay, great, you could do the Ido Portol thing, which is phenomenal, and Ido Portol is probably the greatest mover we know of, right?

But that requires four hours a day of being in the gym. What does that do for you as a human being? And that's where the real substance of this comes in. And I'm not knocking down Ido Pertol. I think he's incredible at what he does. He's probably far more enlightened than I am. Well, I think a lot of his message is, what are you doing with your movement? Exactly.

Whereas there's a lot of people that are moving for an hour, and that's where it's limited. Yes. for an hour and that's where it's limited yes the hour in the gym and one of the things that i i've seen him be a proponent for is get out and do something else too of course use it for something of course and and that is what it should be but it's like are we going into train for points or time or are we going into train for position and understanding that position and why we're utilizing that position and these shapes that we make all day long and i'm in i have back pain or i have knee pain or i have hip pain it's like i'm very aware of where injury comes from and that is through movement it's not through intensity it's not through volume it's not through load you can lift as much as you want you can go

as hard as you want or you can go as long as you want those are just variables those are just catalysts in exposing the weakness in the movement and so that's kind of the the process of all this and it just so happens that the breathing stuff really gets people to go oh shit there's more to all this so sorry let me see if um i'm interpreting this correctly yeah when you were six hours in to those runs or whatever, you got that state of where you wanted to be emotionally and you could let go. And you're seeing that now, or you saw that in CrossFit, where that's why people wanted to leave the gym

feeling wrecked every time. Because they could get that emotional release. That's why you want to fight or you want to spar all the time because you get that same emotional, I'm here. But the problem was that wasn't solving the core issue. You feel like the breathing gets you to that same physical space or emotional space without

all the physical damage so that when you go back to the physical practice, you can focus on quality instead of just getting to that emotional release. That's a hell of a breakdown. Holy shit. And I'm out. Peace. Next week. Well done, Doc. It's a hell of a breakdown. Holy shit. And I'm out. Peace. Next week. Well done, Doc. And it's not that the CrossFitters are doing that.

It's this CrossFitter did that. Like, this is what I experienced. And then, by the way, I had a few conversations with some people around the area that just so happen to be elite. And, you know, they're more elite than I. And, you know, it's, wow, it's the same thing. And, oh, by the way, the behavior patterns are the same thing and oh by the way the behavior patterns are the same and by the way behavior is everything intention is nothing so you know you can intend to

be such a nice guy and then blah you fucking hit somebody or you know just whatever somebody makes you react in a specific way and your behavior elicits something completely different so it's behavior that really defines us and I think that when we can really be aware of our own behavior or even our own emotions, like if you can just step back for a second and be like, why am I having this reaction, this emotional response to what this guy is saying or what this gal just did? Why is, why am I having, and if you, for me, when I look deep enough deep enough wow we are but reflections of ourselves aren't we and and i'm i'm not trying to be i'm not a hippie i definitely am not i i i i you know i haven't even sounded pretty hippie i haven't even been to burning man oh so you know

it's it but this stuff i think is very important because I've been trying to talk about this for 15 fucking years and I'm finally at a place where, holy crap, it makes sense now. Now this is what we're trying to break through is getting people conscious of what it is they're doing. Not just, Oh,

I just got to go move and I got to work. I got to get on a treadmill and go run or i got to go run 400 meter repeats or i've got to do this crossfit endurance thing or this power speed endurance thing it's not no there you don't have to you there's this thing called fucking nature that'll provide for you if you pay attention to it and by the way going out in nature you're going to work just as hard if not harder and survival will be real. Training in the gym ain't going to be real. And that's where I think we've really differentiated ourselves. And that's kind of the stuff we're going to be talking about with the book is where it's,

hey, is what we actually are doing with technology and what we're doing getting us to our real selves? And do people really know what they're doing with technology? And we just don't believe they do. Are you looking at – when you look at technology and health and wellness, are you looking at a potential integration? Do we need to be looking back and then integrating with what's happening? Or are you talking about maybe we should step away from technology altogether?

You want to go? No, you go, and I'll finish any errors you make. Yes. This is why he was brought into the book. I don't think we can step away from technology at this point. And if you do step away from technology, you're fucked. But it creates quite the dependence. It's kind of like drugs.

It's, hey, drugs have a use to a large degree. And drugs can be an amazing thing. And they've actually made it so that we as a species have survived a lot of shit we probably shouldn't have. Which I don't know. There's some deeper layers there that I won't get into because I'll probably get a lot of hate on that. But I'm just waiting for the bottleneck to occur, and it's going to come, but to some degree it will. But if you don't stay with the technological curve

of what's happening and what's going on, you're going to be left behind and in the dark and not know what's going on. But if you're not using the technology to do what it is the lion and the fucking antelope do so naturally, then what was the purpose? You can just get lost down that hole really quickly. And you spend a lot of time, a lot of energy,

a lot of emotional energy on things that really might not matter that much. And so you can miss some really big things and what will happen eventually is you're going to break, the system's going to break, or more than likely, you're going to give up. Yes. You're going to be like, well, I spent all this time, I've done all this, and I marked my heart rate, and I had this done, and this done, and this done, and three years later, I'm worse than I was before, and I'm hurt, and I'm tired of this, and I'm out.

And you're like, okay, now, were we effectively using the technology? So what we're going to be talking about really is not at all stepping away from it. It is really trying to identify what is that really telling you? And do you understand what that means? And is that actually tactical for you? And then let's make a decision of, I know that's available, but do I need that? For me, a lot of technology around training specifically and nutrition and stuff like that, you know, even like a piece of technology around training specifically and nutrition and stuff like that you know even like a piece of technology might be being able to weigh your food or something like that because i see it as a really good calibration tool sure something to be used on occasion heart rate you know there's just a ton of things out there where we can measure something that's going on in our body

for me i like to use it as a calibration tool as in I look at the numbers I kind of look at what I might be aiming for and then how does that make me feel like correlating that to a feeling allows me to be more in touch with what's happening with me in every moment versus only the touch points in which I'm interacting with technology because I want to use technology to make me more free and capable and I don't want to use it to be more reliant. Like, I can watch a person who's reliant on Facebook for dopamine because they're checking it every 90 seconds. Oh, my dopamine's low. I need to see if anyone liked my post.

Right. You know. Well, that's the, I mean, you know this as a creative yourself. But what's one of the biggest mistakes you can make when you're in a period of creativity? Seeking other input. Because then you're like, oh, God, I'm going to go look at that, and then that. And then you're all off in tangent. When you see that flow, when you get into flow, you need to get the hell away from

those things and then let it go. But if you continue to seek external stimuli, then it's blocking the actual flow that you're in. So that takes away your creativity of saying, actually, no, I'm going to go run today. I just of saying, actually, I'm going to go run today. I just feel like running. Or I'm going to go move today.

Or I'm going to lift heavy. Or I'm going to do this today. Yes. This is the physical practice I want. But my sheet says, my sheet says off day. Well, I don't care.

What are you feeling? Well, if you've detached from that sensation of feeling, then now you're stuck in really weird choices for programming or for movement or whatever you're going to do.

Instead of being able to use that as calibration or awareness to say yeah no actually i feel like gonna get another session in i'm trained this morning but i still feel amazing here yeah and the way i say is you know if somebody is you know say typical american sedentary you know well we're all trained to be sedentary eight hours a day in a classroom sit at a desk stand in line so on and so forth you're trained to be sedentary um so now we have to retrain you how to move um and so we're now having to use technology to help get you moving well again so for me a lot of it is i was talking to doug about this a little bit on the way over here is like there's like a remembering so like i i i spend a lot of time now remembering what it now remembering what things were supposed to feel like.

And so what we're talking about is what am I connected to? Am I connected to like source or am I connected to like this external thing that was normalized across a big population of physiologies that is now going to say, we want to try to make you as normal as possible by the average of all these people. We know your heart rate should be here, so we're going to try to fit you into this box. Instead of you listening to what it is that you were meant to do when you arrived. Yeah. If it wasn't hippie enough earlier. No. No, no, no, no.

I think that's spot on. But even coming back to your heart rate analogy, I think there's two really interesting things that we're going to, you know, two things of many that we'll point out. But it's like the heart rate thing. Like, hey, why are you looking at your heart rate? Well, my aerobic threshold or my zones

or my lactate threshold or these things. And it's like, okay, can you feel that? Do you feel the shift in your aerobic threshold or my zones or my lactate threshold or these things. And it's like, okay, can you feel that? Do you feel the shift in your aerobic threshold? Do you feel the breathing, the breath change? Do you feel the other breath change? Do you feel the next breath change? Do you feel the acidity of the blood? Do you feel those things changing?

And if you don't feel those things changing, then the technology has become superfluous. Or it's just a buddy of mine who owns a gym on the East Coast, they had a workout and it had running in it. And he was participating in it. And one of the students looked at him and goes, hey, where are your running shoes? And he was in Vans. And he's like, I don't need running shoes? And he was in vans. And he's like, I don't need running shoes. My feet work perfectly fucking fine. Thank you. And I'm like, that's it. That's absolutely it. We've been convinced that you actually need a specific shoe in

order to go do something. And you don't. And so now you've got powerlifters back squatting or squatting in weightlifting shoes and blowing patella tendons off at squatting 1,000 pounds. And, you know, it's not happening all over the place, but it is happening. And I'm watching guys who squat a lot of weight in Olympic weightlifting shoes with a lot of fucking problems going on as they squat. And you're definitely not saying Olympic lifting shoes are bad. No, I'm not. And that's the thing. So the technology's not bad.

Weightlifting shoes are actually needed if you're going to fucking catch heavy weight in the bottom of something, whether on a front rack or over your head. It's an important thing to have. But you better understand that if you're going to be in Olympic weightlifting shoes, working out in Olympic weightlifting shoes for quite

some time, you're going to need to work on that dorsiflexion a lot because you're shortening that range of motion, and therefore up that chain, you are going to create compensation. You had a post. It was you or Kelly, but Kelly was doing it. Starwreck was, and you were on an airdyne bike, and you were doing intervals or something, and the workout was effectively, and you can correct this, something like how long can you go

or how many of these can you do until you break position, right? So I took that as inspiration, and we did that at home with Natasha. She's elbows are out, like things are here, just every bad position possible next. She's going along, and I'm like, hey, explain to her again. No, no, the goal is not time. The goal is not distance. The goal is how long in perfect position.

She's like, got it. Gets back on. And I'm like, damn it. So I use technology. I pull out my phone. I videotape her when she doesn't see it. I show it to her again. She's like, oh. Oh. The next rep, she goes, boom. And she's up and she's perfect.

And she just, she didn't know what to feel. She didn't know what the feeling was supposed to be like. So you did your point earlier. she was able to calibrate very quickly, and then we took the phone away. I don't have to put an EMG sensor on her to let her know, like, okay, have a laser go off every time your shoulder moves forward. She immediately felt it. She got about 20 seconds in and goes, ah, damn it, I lost it.

Well, correct yourself, damn it, I lost it. And then the comment of the century, which, like, shocking, she goes, that last one was easier. Weird, right? When you can actually breathe, the whole thing is a whole lot easier. Breathe or you're in position for your body weight to be connected. And it was Starrett going from 300 to 1,300 watts and moving up 100 watts every five seconds, right?

And so position didn't change change and he started breathing to begin he started instead of the breath following the work up yeah he's going and he didn't need to do that because metabolically he wasn't at that place but he started doing it and so he got ahead of where the acidity is going to get and maintain position and people like well a why is he breathing like that to start and b shouldn't position change no it should never change no matter what's happening and that's the problem that we think and that's where we drift off into like one of the fights I had with running is oh there's such a difference between sprinters and long distance runners really I've posted videos of Haley Gabrielsa Lossi and the same bolt side by side running in slow motion and they run exactly

the same to me there's some minute differences because of speed but other than that they're doing everything the exact same way. Yeah. So the breathing practices often are, especially in the case of Wim Hof, they're associated with some of the cold water or ice immersion stuff. Like what's the connection there? Let's take a break real quick and then talk about heat and ice. I think it would be nice. Okay.

Cool. Yeah. Cool. We're going to go through the basic setup on a bench press now I'm not gonna claim this setup Dave Tate and Casey Williams have reorganized my bench from the ground up They have a video out on it I'm gonna let you guys know how it worked for me and how I'm gonna teach these guys So we're gonna do a four point stance Four points of our body are gonna be in contact with the floor and the bench at all times

We got our feet our butt upper back, and our head. That's going to be the most efficient and most stable position to be in to transfer force from the floor into the bench, into the bar. Now you may be asking why I keep saying into the bench. From a very basic physics standpoint, you are not pushing the force into that bar. The amount of force you push into the force into that bar. The amount of force you push into the bench allows the bar to go up from you. So you want to drive as much force as you can into the bench to allow the weight to

go up. And this is the most efficient way that I have been taught how to do it. All right, so I'm going to have you lay down on the bench to set up. First I'm going to have you put your hands on the frame of the bench. The first thing that we're going to do is we're going to set up our foot position so that we can get into the proper back position. So I'm going to have his feet further out so that his knee is below his hip. This is going to allow us to drive back into the bench.

This is going to be similar to squatting. You're going to make the same motion. So he is now going to squeeze his glutes and externally rotate his knees outward, which is coming from his glutes and his hips. This is gonna produce the most amount of force, recruiting the most amount of muscle, giving the most amount of stability,

which is going to move the most amount of weight. His next is he's going to drive himself up into the bench. You will feel your traps roll up and below you. When this happens, he's going to have an arch in his back. I should be able to pass my hand through his lower back. Now, before we talked about that bridge structure. This is a stable structure in the human anatomy. He is now the extreme.

He is in an extreme stable position so that if I walk up to him and he's benching, he's barely gonna shake and move because he is externally rotated, he's fired, and he is braced throughout his whole body. After he has his foot position locked in, his back is locked in, upper and lower, now we're going to move to his hand position on the bar.

He's locked in everywhere else on his body, now we're going to get him locked into the bar. So, after you're locked in, I want you to keep driving into that bench, back towards me, now you can grab the bar. This whole time he's not stopping with his leg pressure and his leg drop. That stays activated during his walkout, during his eccentric, during his pause or his isometric, all the way back up on his concentric. So, tension in the legs, squeezing your lats nice and tight.

You're pulling the bar apart lift off keep that tension in your legs walk it out we're gonna take a big breath up top with our balloon and we're gonna reach our chest up to meet the bar good go again this whole time he's driving with his legs back towards me keeping that force from the floor going into the bench which is going into the bar. There it is. Notice the order of operations like he got tight before he put his hands on the bar. A lot of people will then try to get tight. That's a huge huge point that Alex just made. Why is that significant?

Well I mean if you try to get tight with your hands on the bar you're probably that Alex just made. Why is that significant? Well, I mean, if you try to get tight with your hands on the bar, you're probably gonna be in the wrong position anyways. On top of that, now this goes to squatting and deadlifting. If you try and reset or become tight with an external load on you, it won't be as set solid as if you do it before you lift the weight out.

Because you can't do that in a regular day. And that's the difference between training and competing. You'll never, ever be able to mimic it, and you just won't. You can't do it. And it's kind of like you typically wouldn't squat, bench, and deadlift all on the same day. You just wouldn't do that because that's not conducive to pushing yourself to like focus

in on that movement right you can squat deadlift one of the like the wim hof stuff is actually fairly easy to do and and you know that his he's got free stuff on his website that you can go through and like just go to wim hof.com that like that that is perfectly fine to take that to another level it would be something like let's understand lung capacity let's understand performance around this because no athletes i know that other than free divers are actually using apnea training or doing anything of this sort and they should be because it really gives you a gross understanding of how much like co2 retention you have how much lung capacity you actually have, and you can actually start to create more room. So getting access to that diaphragm and understanding that.

So that was one of the reasons I worked with Training Master so long was just to kind of get people to understand using the diaphragm. It's a mechanics thing. Yeah, it is. I think this is where people get a little mixed up. And we even talked about it in the first half of the show as mostly physiologically based we didn't really get into mechanics yeah the mechanics of it so your diaphragm actually which sits underneath your rib cage like so up in here if i hook my fingers in and it feels weird right if you can get in there and dump all your air you can get up in there and you can start to feel that diaphragm.

That is your guiding force for breath control and breathing. And most athletes that I've run into aren't actually using their diaphragm at all. Right. And because they're in a shitty position. So if you're in a terrible position, meaning if I'm flexed or if I'm overextended, you don't have access to that. You're going to be a chest breather most likely. So one of the things we do is we take like the 12th rib just below it, soft tissue, wrap the hands around so you're around that kind of 12th rib on the side

and then your hands are around your gut in front. You just squeeze. And now let your gut, pushing your hands out, initiate the breath. So it's and that dictates how your breath falls in so we'll typically work from a seated position having people do that for a number of breaths like 10 20 whatever then we'll go into some apnea training which is like a one four two split so it's an easy split of let's just say my inhale was one second my breath hold would be four seconds my exhale would be two seconds everybody's going to be much higher than that so think about five

seconds 20 seconds 10 seconds so if i inhale for five seconds and then i hold for 20 seconds and then I exhale for 10 seconds and I repeat that process. And that is a great technique for down regulation and getting lung capacity. And so doing that, something like that prior to actually doing any training so that you can not only actually calm yourself the fuck down, but get the lungs, get the rib cage open, get the gut open, get everything open so that you're filling with air and you're dumping all the air. You're actually setting yourself up for a better performance, correct? Yeah, you are. So a lot of people might feel that's counterintuitive, that you would want to down-regulate before you train as opposed to up-regulate. That's the same reason I take C4. You would tend to think that you would want to

down-regulate after training or before you went to bed or something like that. So why down-regulate before training? Well, we down-regulate, get yourself calm, ready to do what you're going to do. Then we can up-regulate with something like Wim Hof, where we're going to do the hyperventilating technique for maybe 30 breaths or 50 or 80 breaths and or a couple rounds without doing long, extensive breath holds. And that's kind of where I've taken this where we'll do about three minutes of the hyperventilation technique where it's just three minutes of that and you're getting up and up and up and up. And so CO2 lowers, O2 kind of raises as a result of that CO2 lowering getting up and up and up and up and so co2 lowers o2 kind of raises as a result of that co2 lowering so you'll even see it on the oxygen saturation levels if

you're wearing if you put a pulse oximeter on and it gets up to about 100 it'll get up to 100 and you will be charged and you will have a lot of oxygen going on and you'll also have started a sympathetic state and then starting to warm up and actually being more aware of what's going on. And so that's kind of the driver into what we'll do. I won't necessarily just do apnea then train. I will also, but I will use apnea at night regularly for down regulation. But one of those things and coming back to the ice is the ice is a lot like training or like doing the breathing to a sympathetic state not necessarily the apnea but something like a wim hof or a hyperventilation technique that's a sympathetic state that is literally putting you into that stress state

it's your body you have a choice at that point when it's done to down regulate yourself and so I like to actually do cold showers or ice baths before bed so that's almost like counterintuitive because everybody goes oh yeah when I do ice baths or so cold shower I feel more awake yes you do because you're in a sympathetic state I started doing the cold shower I went to the bulletproof conference yeah and Kelly was on stage and he and he talked about the cold shower before bed. I'd been doing it in the morning. I jump in the ocean where it's plenty cold right now. And then but then I was like, oh, I was the intuitive thought for me was a hot bath or something like that would help me mellow out before bed. I started doing the cold shower before bed and started sleeping like a baby. Weird. Yeah.

It's amazing. Your body paid attention. Your body, you allowed you. So that whole thing with, hey, you know, like the antelope and the lion concept, right? Well, if we go to work all day, know the difference from the head up like or the shoulders up between work and working out the body doesn't so the body doesn't know the difference between the stress and the body will react over time and this is where we start to see people chime in about adrenal fatigue things like that because it's a consistent peppering of hey i'm an entrepreneur i crank all day and then i go crossfit all night

and then and or a couple of those yeah well regardless or i go run here take crossfit out of the equation this is what i saw i go run five seven miles yeah your body doesn't know the difference between those two things and so what's occurring is is you're just fucking smashing yourself and then you try and down regulate and sure you might be sleeping well for some time but then all of a sudden you either a are getting a sleeping disorder or b you're not recovering and and and you're starting to pick up on the like oh i'm starting to my tissue's not rebounding my things like all this stuff i'm in more pain i have it band stuff i have fucking quad stuff or i have knee stuff and it's like yeah you've got stuff because you're not paying attention to that

that rebound effect of if i go do ice before bed what's gonna happen after that rise up well it should drop out and if i don't let that drop out, then I'm literally screwing myself. And so it's a choice to allow yourself to downregulate after that and calm down. And if you can train that response, it's just like training a bench press or a back squat. You think that explains a lot of why we can't really handle that much working out? Yes. Compared to what our normal physiology should be able to do? I 100%. Here, take your dog. Why can your dog

fucking outrun? Okay, granted they're quadruped, but... Ghostface can't run out and run anything. Gnocchi can, but not Ghostface. Both my dogs could outrun me any day of the week. They actually pull me on a skateboard. So they're pulling 190 pounds around for a mile at like a five-minute pace. They're hauling ass, dude.

And then they go, and as soon as we get back, they go and crash. Yeah, Ghostface has that part down. He's got that part down. He down-regulates all day. He's got the laziest dog ever. That's one of the best dog names of all time, by the way. Ghostface Killer. The dog's the Ghostface Killer. Yeah, that's great. He down- the laziest dog ever. That's one of the best dog names of all time, by the way. The dog's the ghost face killer.

Yeah, that's great. He sound regulates like crazy. They know how to shut it down, and it's not a constant, I'm on the move, I'm on the move, I gotta do this, I gotta do that. No, no. And it's not important. We think what's important is I've gotta start a business, I've gotta crank at the business, I gotta be on the computer all day, I gotta fucking answer emails, I gotta do

this, I gotta do that. No, you fucking don't need to do any of that. You do not. You hear that? I'm not doing this answer emails. I've got to do this. I've got to do that. No, you fucking don't need to do any of that. You do not. You hear that? I'm not doing this stuff anymore. Done. Hey. Brian said.

No, no, no. You don't get to talk about it anymore. To the degree. Brian, you're off the show. To the degree that it doesn't make you happy. Right, right. And that's where this all fucking comes around full circles. It's like, oh, so if I'm getting upset when i'm doing this why am i doing it and because all i'm doing is just setting myself off and if if the training makes you upset when you're

going and training the gym and you're freaking out and throwing a spastic fucking because your friend time didn't drop or your mile time isn't fast it's like dude never seen that what was yeah never never seen a chick throwing a tantrum in a fucking gym you know about not pulling weight or doing something i mean i watch it every week when i'm over it oh yeah you know this gym we work out of too you know and it's like i don't get like why are we not paying attention why is this fun it's not fun that's not fun that is not fun and and there's nothing wrong with answering emails and doing customer service and doing that stuff if that's what you're enjoying doing. But be aware of whether the enjoyment begins and where it ends.

And that's the process. And it's like, look, if I'm going to bury myself all day at work, don't expect to go perform real well in a workout and be aware of what you're doing and maybe just do some ice and some heat so that you can down regulate or up regulate and then be able to down regulate yourself and you know it's like you know hey should i be doing a sauna or a jacuzzi before i go to bed and it's like might not be the best thing because of what happens is an impact of that and that's like a big stressor and it's a very hard stressor to do and it's like that's why we end on cold when we do heat is we close down the pores we uplift the system and we go okay time to come back up and star at and i had a lot of

talking going on about this which is why he has began doing the cold before bed so So you use the cold before bed to shut down, but I don't know if you're playing with this anymore, but I know you used to do the cold right before training too. Yes. You still do that? Yeah, I'll do that from time to time. Why? Get up.

Same reason. Because the cold allows you to go wherever you want, right? Dude, she went and did a 30-minute time trial on the skier after doing a five-minute ice bath. It took her almost 10 minutes to get her heart rate to like 120 wow yeah she warmed up and did all that and then went and got in the ice five minutes and then literally came and started the time trial and she was like at five minutes she's like dude my heart rate is at 105. And I'm like, holy crap.

How interesting is that? You know, and I'm not saying anybody should go out and start doing that. But Wim is literally boasted about stuff like that. You want to PR something? Go do an ice bath before you go do it. You'll PR. Or I'm just like, hey, why don't you just go to hyperventilate for, you know, three minutes and then go snatch.

And I have seen it time and time and time again where people are PRing things because they're doing some breathing right before they do something and they set themselves up for success. Yeah. We're not telling you to do it, but if you do do it, let us know what happens. Only if it worked. Oh, if it doesn't work, I want to hear about it too. Yeah. Yeah. We're not telling you to do it, but if you do do it, let us know what happens. Only if it worked. Oh, if it doesn't work, I want to hear about it too. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Especially if you break yourself. I totally want to hear about it. Yes. Video. The ice is an interesting thing because I think it's similar to the training mask. A lot of people misunderstood the application of the training mask.

And now I've also heard people talk about, oh, the ice thing might be overused because they're talking about it in the context of inflammation. Yeah. And what you're talking about is this now, this is in the context of downregulating the nervous system. Yes. Do you want to restate your nervous system? Do an ice bath. You know, and there's a lot of people, so, and then there's the cryo thing,

and it's like, which is very interesting. And I get it. And it actually can be cheaper than the ice thing because I buy ice to do this stuff. And it probably costs around $30. And I guess cryo is like $25 or something. The cryo thing where people say they're in this tank and it's like 250 degrees below zero, that type of thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's the deal with that? I don't know much about it.

Well, one, there's nothing in nature that's that cold. So from a genetic standpoint, just my brain says, okay, we aren't even coded to deal with that. So how are we going to deal with that? That's a superficial thing, which is also why when you go do cryo, and everybody who does cryo will understand this, you get out of the cryo, and you don't have to go warm up because you'll warm up in a few minutes. I've done it. Right? Yeah, I've done it.

And that's what happens, right? Yeah, I rolled right. It was counterintuitive for me. I was working with somebody, and it was John from Onnit. He was like, hop in the cryo, and then we'll get training. I was like, all right. You're the coach today. And I did it, and I was like, I feel really good as soon as I started.

Yeah. And you're getting all you're still getting a lot of the things that are set off from from a stressor. But here's where I there's work that needs to be done. I could take somebody who's been doing cryo and stick them in a three minute ice bath and they're going to be like, oh, shit, I'm getting hypothermic now. Like I did notice this. Like when I got in there, there were other people doing it and they were like, oh, my God, oh, my God. I got in there, I was like, all right, no big deal because I've been doing ice or at least just even cold showers.

So it wasn't a shock to me. But after doing it because it's only three minutes and it did feel like superficial, I didn't feel like it was would transfer over i'm not it's something that cold on from a superficial perspective i is just gonna shut down capillaries and stuff so quickly that it's like okay so i'm just gonna literally keep core warm and i'm fine but it's working for people like that's the thing is you can still get benefits you can still get hormonal and neurotransmission response out of it. That's just a bit early.

They're just going to have more time. I'm sure they're going to find some benefits, and I'm sure some have. So it's not, I don't think any of you were saying it's bad. Feeling is understanding. So if you feel great doing it, by all means, you should keep doing it. Yeah, not saying anything against it. This is a different tool. Yeah, exactly.

I wanted to add a couple of research points to what you said earlier about the negative aspect of the ice. Yeah, not saying anything against it. This is a different tool. Yeah, exactly. I wanted to add a couple of research points to what you said earlier about the negative aspect of the ice. Yeah. Where everyone was saying like, well, don't use it for this, don't use it for this. Well, if you look at the research on hypertrophy, that actually looks like it's fairly clear where if you're

trying to gain muscle mass, you probably don't want to ice the muscle immediately after training. That looks like that blocks inflammation, and that actually resultingly blocks hypertrophy. So I wouldn't, if you're trying to gain muscle mass, I wouldn't finish your training sessions and then do a bunch of ice bath work. Probably not a good idea. It looks like you need to wait three, four, five, maybe six, eight hours, or maybe not the day at all. I've heard the same argument for anti-inflammatories, right? Ibuprofen and whatnot. Exactly. Same thing.

But a new paper just came out, and I think I sent you this one, that showed it actually was effective at significantly increasing mitochondrial density and function. So maybe if you're using it immediately after intervals with the goal of trying to get better endurance, perhaps it is beneficial. Right. So it's not that this stuff is good or bad for you and we don't necessarily know exactly what what the stuff is and so at this point what i'd say is keep your eye on the research yeah but then listen to the people who are doing it every day and say hey look i'm tinkering and this is i think i think this is

what i'm seeing here because that's the best we have right now yeah i find a lot of people say something works or doesn't work and they don't actually know what the outcome of the tool is supposed to be. There's something that the tool is supposed to be used for and there's a specific way you're supposed to use the tool for a very specific outcome and if you don't know what the outcome is supposed to be and how to use the tool, then of course it doesn't work. That's the most frustrating question. I'll get a tweet.

Does this thing work? I'm like, for what? Does creatine work? I don't know. What are you trying to do? Even the hypertrophy thing begs to answer the question that if, like, hey, are you looking from a vanity standpoint? Are you looking for a life standpoint? Because if it's vanity, by all means, you probably shouldn't be doing any ice. Because you've got to be big.

And you've got to put on that muscle size, right? That explains why I've been losing weight. because you got to be big and you got to be both, you know, you got to put on that muscle size, right? But from a mitochondrial perspective, I mean, as we know, mitochondrial biogenesis is a great thing. And, uh, you know, the more mitochondria you have, the healthier you actually are. So, um, that may weigh in for you over the other one, but by all means you shouldn't do that. But I like to actually do things like I'll train and get in the sauna. And so we're stimulating that whole heat shock protein thing and stressing the system even further after it's heated up. And whether it's squatting or whether it's doing some interval work, I'll literally get in the sauna and have the sauna running so that I can do that and stress it even further. And I like that. You know what?

Unfortunately, we're going to have to shut this down soon. Oh. We're out of time. We are out of time. We are scratching the surface on a lot of things. I know. So the fortunate thing is we're like an hour away. I know.

You're not in Tennessee anymore. We'll just do more shows. You're still here for now. Yeah. Yeah. Don't go anywhere. Spring, bro. I'm out. All right. Well, we got to cram them in. Yeah. We'll be good. Yeah. Don't go anywhere. Spring, bro. I'm out.

All right. Well, we got to cram them in. Yeah. We'll be good. Yeah. Thank you, by the way, to the Rooker guys for letting us record here because this is super fucking cool. Yeah. It's awesome.

Yeah. Absolutely. People want to find you, see what you're up to because you're up to a lot of things that we didn't even mention. Yeah. Where should people follow you? A lot of the stuff that we're talking about will be integrated from a performance perspective into the Power Speed Endurance subscription model, which is not a very expensive thing. We've got it down to like $7.99 a month, I believe, right now. So it's a very easy way to kind of figure out

and start to integrate some of the stuff we're talking about. And that's where a lot of the work that I'm doing is at. With regards to just my social channels, it's at Brian McKenzie on Twitter and at I Am In Scared on Instagram. And, you know, Facebook, you can find me. If you can find me. Beautiful.

It's a challenge. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me, boys. Yep, thanks, Brian.