Barbell Shrugged - The Uncommon Link Between Physical and Mental Health w/ Gabriel Villarreal, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #543

Episode Date: January 27, 2021

Gabriel Villarreal is a Licensed Professional Counselor in the state of Virginia. He owns LostBoys Strength & Conditioning, the longest Affiliate of Mash Elite Performance. His strength gym specializes in strength and exercise for mental health. This is where he runs the only Hybrid model of exercise and counseling in the country. Additionally, he runs his private practice, ADHD Counseling in the Roanoke Valley where he helps children and adults manage and master their ADHD superpowers.   His work with Travis Mash is ongoing, working on bridging the gap between counseling and coaching.   Free eBook Download   https://www.clinicallyinformedcoaching.com/thebridge   In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged: How physical health is the entry point to mental health Why fitness plays a massive role in combating ADHD Understanding the brains role in physical development Why mental health is the next frontier in health and wellness How coaches can take simple steps to working with athletes with mental health issues Gabriel Villarreal on Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   ————————————————   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa   Please Support Our Sponsors   PowerDot - Save 20% using code BBS at http://PowerDot.com/BBS    Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   www.masszymes.com/shruggedfree  - for FREE bottle of BiOptimizers Masszymes   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://prxperformance.com/discount/BBS5OFF Save 5% using the coupon code “BBS5OFF”

Today on Barbell Shrugged, we are talking to Gabriel Villareal, who has one of the most interesting backgrounds being a gym owner as well as a counselor for children with ADHD. And today we are talking about the missing links between physical fitness and mental health, how they relate to each other and how coaches and athletes can start to implement some of the things that he's been working on in his gym as well as in his clinic and how he has bridged the gap between the two, specifically working with people with ADHD, and how physical fitness, training hard,

really helps people suffering from ADHD, as well as a host of other mental health issues. Mental health kind of seems to be at the forefront of where we're going with its relationship to physical fitness. And I love having people on like this. We've been covering a lot of topics with the FitOps Foundation, Matt Hesse, Johnny Martin, and the work that they're doing in the world of PTSD. But I think this one probably hits a little bit closer to home for many people with ADHD. And that PTSD is definitely something that is very widespread.

But if you don't come from a military background or have anything traumatic, traumatic events in your life, ADHD may be a little bit closer to home for many people. So it's very cool to have Gabriel on the show. Before we get into this, though, I want to make sure we thank our friends over at Organifi. As always, the green, the red, and the gold. Make sure you take the green when you wake up. You got to get all your greens. It's got the ashwagandha. It lowers stress, makes everything better. The red gives you a little boost right before your workout. And the gold before you go to bed, that's the one with the turmeric and you need the turmeric. Trust me, that gold-based one is delicious. i just got back from a long weekend on the road

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I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Smash, Gabriel, Villa Real. I got it right that time. You were on the show with us when we had Dr. John Rady on. And Dr. John Rady is super, super busy. He probably doesn't want to wake up at 6 a.m. and come hang out with us and coach fitness classes and then jump on a podcast. But you're here, man. This is really exciting, and I'm really excited to dive into mental health, physical health, and the relationship between the two of them.

Because you have a very interesting background in that you are in the clinic working with patients, and you own a gym. And I think there's very few people that are really coming at many of the mental health issues from both sides of that coin. I guess just as like a little background, what did you start to really make the connection that physical health, mental health being connected, but also treating patients and saying, yo, you need to learn how to back squat. We can start handling a lot of these things. Sure. Yeah. I think, um, when I was in graduate school, the story that I, that I tell is, uh, graduate school for clinical mental health, which is what I went to school for. Um, I started training for a half marathon and, uh, with that regimen, I just felt like I was way more emotionally even keeled than a lot of my peers. Graduate school, especially that first semester, is really hard.

The workload is crazy and insane. Every interaction that you have with a professor is like a mini counseling session. And I just started eating intentionally at that time too. And I came to the conclusion that if I had those three things, a lockdown, nutrition, my mental health, and exercise, that I was really resilient. I think that first semester I probably saw half of my peers just cry, just emotional breakdown because of the stress. And so at the end of that semester I came to the conclusion,

there's something to this. um that was in 2010 and then as you guys know uh two years prior to that john ready had just published his book spark and so i stumbled upon that book probably two years after that and was completely vindicated like i knew it like i knew what i was talking yes we're like fist pump i know and so what's what makes it even more interesting and more frustrating is i had brought this to my professors and said you know like i really think exercise is is helping me um manage all this stuff and they were like yeah i don't know i don't know if it really has any correlation to mental health um and the response was like uh okay you're not going to be on my side.

I'm just going to do what I need to do. And then when I finish graduate school, I'll just dive into all of the education that I can get my hands on in terms of exercise science. You know, of course, in walks barbell shrged. Listening to all y'all's podcasts. Fresh out of graduate school, I had a job in emergency services, which the long and short of that is you sit in an office for, it could be a 12-hour shift, or you could be going on calls to hospitals or police stations or schools for people that are a danger to themselves or others. And some of those shifts,

you're sitting in an office for 12 hours. And for the vast majority of those shifts, I was just binging you guys, just listening to y'all. And so after I graduated school, I worked for a year and then I got my certification and stumbled upon,

who's a good friend now, a gym here in Roanoke that brought me on as a coach and essentially helped me start my own gym in his gym. And all under the guise that I would get my license to practice counseling and then start my gym and then open up a practice. And things did not happen in that order. But finally, now, since I have my license, I'm doing that just in two separate locations. So I run my gym and then I run my practice in a separate location. And then here, since the coronavirus, a lot of parents have wanted both things at the same time. And so in the last six months I've done both, I've done, um, some one-to-one stuff. And then we, you know, we work out hard for 30 to 45 minutes and then we have like a mini counseling session for another 15 to 30 minutes. What do you see different, uh, uh, or just the, the experience when you have a training session and then you run the

counseling session like how does that open things up what or what were you doing before you were doing fitness before your counseling um like are there any differences that where you see just how how perception of being confident in themselves or like just how do you view adding fitness before the counseling session and as compared to like what many other people are doing without the fitness yeah what i'm seeing is for our clients that are really resistant so um i specialize in adhd but that's not who I exclusively see. A lot of my ADHD-ers that are teenagers and just resistant to counseling, just like most teenagers are just, you know, they know everything like we did. They don't want any of that feedback.

But post-workout, that whole veil is completely gone, which is not anything that I was prepared for. You know, I go into these sessions, knowing my clients and knowing there's going to be some resistance and planning for that. But post exercise, it's like, I can't get them to shut up. It's like, okay, like, I have another client coming, like, you guys, like, we got to lock this down. And so I'm seeing a lot more just fluency in in howency in how they're discussing things, being open to discussing things, being open to feedback.

It's just like the door is completely wide open as opposed to, you know, it being cracked or just completely closed. Why do you think that is? Like what is triggering that? The dopamine release of exercise or what? All the neurochemicals that, know that we talked about with uh with john rady all those things are pumping um and so you know like we always say travis it's all it's it's great to work out and it's great to have those neurochemicals pumping but if you don't

actively use those new neural pathways and those neurochemicals then what are we doing nothing it goes away then and so what we've capitalized on is immediately giving them those uh those new neural pathways and those new uh perspectives to think of things and to change things yeah i one of my first real introductions to mental health was kind of like going through like mental health bootcamp down at the fit ops foundation and, uh, kind of interviewing seven or eight veterans down there that are transitioning out of their service and into civilian life, trying to get into fitness and hearing their stories, like coming back from,

um, coming back from war, coming back from some really just crazy life experiences. Is mental health really just starting to get the attention that it deserves? Or is there something that's happening in the past, call it decade, maybe 15 years, that has changed in our lives that's forced this to the front? Or is it, I guess, before I was down there, I had never really been really exposed to it that much. And now I feel like it's everywhere. Is that a product of our lifestyles and the stressors that are coming into our lives in 2020? Or is this something that just people were kind of like pushed off and said,

you have a problem and we don't have resources to help? I think for some people, that's definitely the case. But I also think, you know, a lot of people forget that the field of counseling and therapy is really young. I mean, it's barely over a hundred years old. And so anything that that's, you know, relatively that that's new is going to have some sort of stigma or just unsureness. And I think we saw, we were seeing a lot of both is some unsureness of what can therapy really help me? I don't need therapy or therapies for crazy people. So we have these, these stigmas on top of the unsureness of the field. And so I think now the generations that are, you know, in high school and college, what I'm seeing is a lot more of like,

like the pendulum has swung the other way. And it's like, wait a minute, you're not in therapy? Why not? Everybody should be in therapy. I think, and realistically, what I always say is the likelihood that any of us have a diagnosable mental health disorder is 50-50.

And so, right now, there's at least two ADHDers on this podcast right now. And that's 50% down the line. I know the two of them. And so, it's just going to happen. Like, it's not going to happen. And then I know one of the things that you guys have been talking about

with your introduction to Walmart is the obesity rates in the United States. Yeah. So prior to reading the new research, what I always said is like flip a coin. At some point, you're going to have a mental health disorder or you're going to be overweight or obese. If you have one or the other, there's like another 50% to 75% chance that you will develop the other. And so it's just something that is going to happen. I got to ask you, on the way here, I'm reading this book called Nutrition Made Clear. Anyway, what's her name?

By Roberta Adling. So she has a client that she works with. She's a registered dietitian. And she has a client at 25 years old that weighed 1,065 pounds. So like, and like, and the thing is,

is like, so he's at the point where he's just in the bed. He can't move anymore. And so, and his sister and his mom is bringing his food. And they sincerely thought

that they were not, they thought he had some kind of like, you know, metabolism problem. They were bringing this guy 10,000. It was like, it was like 10,200 and something like calories a day of food. And they somehow in their brain didn't register that that was a lot of calories. And so what what what causes a person like you know i mean is it is it hard to go like yeah like at 25 years old what kind of mindset do you have to get to 1065 knowing that you had four five six. You had all these new limits.

Yeah. So how does that person get like that? You did it. Is that a situation where that person just doesn't have any other strategy for coping and they're dealing with something, they're trying to push away mentally, emotionally, and they can't seem to find any other way to do it and just food ended up being the thing?

Yeah. I don't know. What do you think? There's a couple things going on. One of the things I would put money that this person has can't seem to find any other way to do it and just food ended up being the thing. Yeah. I don't know. What do you think? Well, things going on. One of the things I would put money that this person has, uh, like a childhood trauma, um,

and, and childhood trauma, uh, that's probably pretty severe. Um, I don't know the person, but I would guess to get that bad, there has to be some significant event that just sends them on a downward

spiral. Um, the other thing that's interesting is like family, family system series. bad there has to be some significant event that just sends them on a downward spiral the other thing that's interesting is like family family system series which essentially is exactly what it sounds like is what roles do we all play in our families and so the mom and the sister are definitely enable enablers of this addiction which, uh, they all have their own role to play within. Yeah. And so it's, it's all of these things working in concert to getting this person to, to where they are right now. And I think to Doug's point, yeah, it probably is. They have no other coping mechanism and their coping mechanism probably is

food. Just like, um, the alcoholics, uh, coping mechanism is is to drink is there a way to get this person to a healthy weight without dealing with this you know mental health issue not when you're talking about those ways i don't think um i just i don't know i just can't imagine that that that would be something that you you would not come across you know yeah i just think someone is so consumed with whatever is bothering them that until you do you can do all the strategies you want of like weight loss and like until you deal with that there's something obviously like you said there's something some major trauma that's happened and i feel like that

you know in all these like eating disorders like until you like deal with this trauma, I think even if you, even if you like lose the weight or in some cases, even if you gain the weight, it's going to come back unless you deal with this, I know people are getting better at it, but even on my weightlifting team, like there are a couple athletes in particular that until they like get a hold of like this mental block they're having, like they can do all the workout they want, and they're not going to get what they want until they do it. Well, it's like we say is you can give yourself all these neurochemicals and create these neural pathways, but if you don't take those pathways, the analogy that I often use is you're trying to get to work and let's say you only have one way to get to work

and there's construction and you don't know how to get to work. It only is until you take an alternate route to work that you'll know these different ways to solve the problem. And if they're not taking those other roads and they then they can't change and um you know what what i always say uh from that conversation that i had with um with the late chris moore what is you know our demons are patient right like we have to deal with them and so they will they will come up just a few minutes ago you you said basically everyone needs therapy and you kind of just said like like duh like that that seems to be obvious at this point can you

expand on that for someone that's never considered getting therapy doesn't think they need therapy etc like why it might also be beneficial for them kind of like a skinny person that's never considered working out someone says like everybody should work out and they're like i'm already thin what are you talking about i don't need to work out. I'm not fat. Get away from me. Sure, sure. What do you think? It's the same function as having your yearly physical or your yearly checkup with your doctor. You need to set these markers of this is where I am

and this is where I'm going. And the same thing can be said with therapy. I often advocate even, even if everything is going great in your life, you probably need to be checking in with someone once a quarter, at the very least, because a therapist's job is to find patterns in behavior and find patterns in your history to be able to recognize, okay, now we're taking a road that we don't like the outcome of. And I've heard every three years, this is something that happens. And so I can, I can see that you're heading that way. So we might need to work on that so we don't take that road. I advocate that for people that, uh, like life is just good. Um,

just to have a unbiased person looking in and saying, um, we might need to make some changes before we go down a road that we don't want to go down. Um, of course there is what we, what we already talked about. There's a 50% chance that at some point in your life, you're going to have a diagnosable mental health disorder. And so if the, the statistics are such are, you know, almost guaranteed, why wouldn't you want to have something in place where when it does come up, you have someone that already knows you, they know your patterns, they know your behavior, they know your history that can say, okay, yeah, this is a pattern that all of a sudden just showed up because it always was because of that 50% statistic. And this is how we work on it.

Now we're done. Yeah. Can you kind of pull that out back into the physical training world? Like, is that similar to saying like there's 50 chance that you're going to be a type 2 diabetic when you're older or or get cancer or have heart disease or whatever it is and so you train your whole life to try to to push that off and try to try to avoid that so you're being preventative yeah uh you know to say nothing of the other benefits that we already know that come with exercise, it's just as preventative as it is medicinal in the moment. Yeah. When you talk about mental health and that there's like a 50% chance that everyone is going to have some sort of mental health problem that they will have to, at some point,

come face to face with. Can you define what that actually, like the mental health is in that most people may not know that they have it? 50% seems like a huge number. And if you were to say there's 50% of the people are going to have a mental health disorder, I would think there'd just be a bunch of crazy people running around. But that's not actually what's happening because we have a very, well, mostly functioning society and with people that are dealing with things. Yeah. The other thing too is, and I will answer your question because it's a very good question that I usually address and I forgot. Um, as adults, we're

fantastic at coping, right? We, we, these, these problems don't just hit. Um, unless it's something like grief and loss where maybe we lose a loved one, not immediate. It's a very gradual progression down the spiral of whatever the diagnosis is, the disorder is. But to address your question, a diagnosable mental health disorder can be a lot of different things. It can be ADHD, like I have. It can be an anxiety disorder that I had in graduate school for that first summer semester where I was working too much and and taking too many classes and developing I'm there right now yeah yeah and so

it only lasted three months I took medication I got therapy and uh when I came out of that summer it was like that's fine everything's okay never had an issue ever again but had I not had ADHD that's like well Gabriel just hit that 50% mark. He just satisfied that criteria. So it can also be anything like one of the other examples that I use is like postpartum depression. It's like 30% of women or moms will have postpartum depression, which is not something that people talk enough about. It can also be dementia or Alzheimer's in the twilight of your life. It's not necessarily being crazy. It's just stuff that's really affecting,

you know, the way we live our lives. That's like in a, in a negative way. So, and it's not the scary stuff that we see on TV. It's not like the, um, the schizophrenia or the, uh, dissociative identity, which are so rare. It's, it's the smaller stuff. It's like the anxiety or the most prevalent. You know, one thing I'd like to say is that to like, you said earlier about the whole working out and how, you know, it makes things. And we talked a little bit with Dr.

Rady and, you know, we're referencing his book spark. So we started, you know, we were homeschooling right now. Cause COVID is basically making, so we're just, we're okay with that. And so with rock, we started, you know, we were having him go 8. AM, you know, do his classes. And then we started doing it in the reverse. So he gets to play in the morning, and then we put the school after 10 times better.

You know, his attention to detail, his performance, everything, not fidgeting, not getting in trouble. It made everything better. And so there's something to definitely consider. Right now, if you're dealing definitely consider if you're, if you're right now, if you're dealing with COVID and you know, you're homeschooling or, you know, your child is like home doing school, you know, online, like having them be active before that. And even for me, man, like yesterday,

you know, I started, you know, riding my Echelon bike again. And so, so I'm riding my bike and then I come to work. It made things so much better. It is so obvious. I don't know why I ever stopped doing that. It's just, it's great medicine. So if you use something on top of it, like you say. Yeah. I feel like it's wise to continue the analogies between the physical training world, since we're mostly a strength conditioning podcast and, and the mental health world so uh again the having schizophrenia or being bipolar or whatever it is is that similar to what travis was talking about being like super morbidly obese but just because you're not super morbidly obese doesn't mean that you shouldn't be training if you've got

20 pounds to lose like you're a pretty normal person but still training would help you it just depends on how healthy you want to be so if you don't really have like major trauma and you, you don't have any diagnosable condition, still doing meditation and getting your, you know, some, some frequency of therapy, which I actually want to talk about here in a second, it still can't, can be very beneficial, even if you're just a quote unquote, normal, pretty dang healthy person. Yeah. I think it kind of goes back to what we were saying earlier. It's like, it's just like the yearly checkup for your, your physician is this is what's going on. I get my labs done, check my, my, my blood work, see how that is. And is it going up? Is it higher than last year? Is it lower than last year? Well, it's lower than last year. So

what did I do differently this year and how can I keep doing that? Um, it it's, it's, um, yeah, it's essentially just that, except it's for your behavioral patterns or your thought processes. I heard Tim Ferriss interviewing a woman. I can't remember who she is, but she was saying that she gets therapy twice a week. This is a very successful, wealthy person, of course.

She gets therapy twice a week. And she was saying that once a week just isn't enough. It's like, if you do it once a week, like you're just playing catch up. You got to re-explain your situation and all the things that have happened. And then by the time you get done with that, you know, there's not much time to actually go deep and work on your like core wounds or childhood issues or whatever, whatever the root cause is that's causing your anxiety or lack of energy or motivation or whatever

happens to be. What are your thoughts on frequency if you're like, if you're really wanting to make a lot of progress? Sure. I think, um, unfortunately it depends on, on what you want to work on, um, and how fast you, um, well, I'll put it this way. It really depends on, on how much work you're willing to do, which is kind of exactly what you just said. But, but in the sense of when things get uncomfortable in session for the client, are you going to push through that and continue to do the work? Because that work may be very, very uncomfortable. And so for this particular person, you know, I don't, obviously I don't know her but there might

be some trauma that she's like i've addressed that there's something that happened and i need to figure it out and i need to solve it and i want to solve it as fast as i can and there are some clients that are like that that are very much like i have a problem and i want to get it fixed um can i schedule the next five weeks with you and let's knock it out? And then there are some clients for financial reasons that can't do that, or because the feelings are so uncomfortable. It's like, yeah, I will schedule it. I'll get to it. And so there's that uncomfortability piece within therapy that you really have to face what's going on and address the role that you've played in it.

I know, man, when I did therapy, it took me a week to get over it. Especially when it got really good and it got hard and it brought all these emotions out. If I would have done that twice a week, I probably would have murdered my counselor. I'm pretty sure. I joke with you. I tell you, you know, there was a time in counseling where he looked at me and he asked me, he's like, am I in physical danger? And I said, I'm going to have to think about that. Like, I was like serious too. Like I was so like frustrated at the world that I was having to deal with this that like, I didn't quite know how to handle this. And if I did that twice a week I probably would have killed him because I mean it was like it was too much so I guess I think that's a very individual thing for this lady to say that you know it's not enough for everybody like that's that's more than enough for me like once a week

would have I needed a week to process all that mess that was coming out and you know but I definitely think I'm definitely an advocate of counseling. I think everybody, you know, it's good for everyone, no matter how, you know, I guess traumatic their childhood was or not. I do want to talk about the ADHD thing just because that is your specialty. And you and Travis were talking about how, i don't know if i have it or not whether it's a test but i would probably get like a c plus like i do on most tests um 100 i bet you um but yeah what i've had lunch with your mom because she was in that stuff i'm pretty sure

you have adhd buddy um i feel like most of my entrepreneur friends maybe not most but a large percentage a much larger percentage than my other friends my entrepreneur friends have adhd or something similar yes yeah i think it's very common very much because we think so out of the box and because we we have such a, you know, the, the, the term that's used in a lot of those podcasts in the parenting world and things like that are, is differently wired. And it's pretty apropos. We just think differently than a neurotypical person. And that is very advantageous to an entrepreneur. I know I mentioned to you, Travis, the book, The ADHD Advantage by Dale Archer. In that book, he tackles a symptom of ADHD, how it can be a positive. And then at the

end of each chapter, he talks about a actual entrepreneur, millionaire that has this symptom and has turned it into a positive and is, you know, as a result, a millionaire. And so one of the people that comes up a lot in that book is Richard Branson. And, you know, no one would say like, eh, he's not, he's okay. He's, you know, he's not that great. He's a boss. Yeah. But when did ADHD become an actual thing? Cause it's a relatively new like disorder that people are diagnosing.

Yeah. So, you know, it started out as, um, uh, I mean, what was the original term in the first DSM, which is the diagnostic statistic manual. Um, it was like, um, I can't even remember, but it, it had a ring to it of like your brain is broken like and it was very much thought of like you're just dumb and slowly it moved away from you're just dumb and your brain is broken to like well maybe this is an attention thing or maybe this is a hyperactive thing and it's not that they're not intelligent or dumb it's just that these other things are going on it's one of the most recent uh dsm volume uh we're on five now uh it is just adhd which is a stupid name uh because not all adhd years have hyperactivity

um and so um so it has always been a thing it's's really just been how we've looked at it. There's another great book called The Edison Gene, I think. And he makes an argument that ADHD was actually sort of how new things are created. And one of the analogies that he uses is like, you don't get in a boat and sail and just say like, I'm going to in a boat and sail and just say like, I'm going to sail West and hope I find something. You are, are you have some risk aversion involved in ADHD to say like,

I'm just going to get on a boat and sail and maybe I'll find land and maybe I won't, it'll be okay. I'll make it up as they go along. Very much ADHD thing. That sounds just like me. I think you just diagnosed me. Yeah. We're totally going to be fine. Very much an ADHD thing. That sounds just like me. I think you just diagnosed me. Yeah.

We're totally going to be fine. Ready fire aim. I love. I used to say that to Bledsoe all the time. He says that has a ready fire aim approach to life. And it's, it's great if you're trying to be innovative and do new cool shit. I love to like travel and not plan.

It's my favorite. I hate like having all these stringent plans when i travel like it i feel like it puts me in a box my favorite thing in the world is to wake up and like literally pick a direction and go and see what happens it's like like that is my idea and luckily my wife too it's like it's our idea of a good time it's like an adventure yes i mean an adventure. Yes. I mean, an adventure. If like these are planned, I'm already like bored with you, you know, like, circling back to therapy. What do you, what do you think the, the limitations to therapy are? Like if you, if you just have a life, that's just not, you just don't have the conditions right for happiness.

Like you have no community, like you're not financially stable. You know, you're in, you're in a fight with with anyone that is close to you your family and whatnot like how much is therapy actually going to solve any of your problems versus you actually getting getting a job that that makes you financially stable and joining a crossfit gym where you're you're working out regularly and you have community and there's people there that understand you and you have similar values you know you go to church or whatever it is like there's there's got to be other things happening in your life to get you to be happy. You can't just go to therapy and change your mindset,

and then all of a sudden you're happy, but the rest of your life really is in shambles. We're going to take a quick break. Shrugged family, the CrossFit Open is six weeks out, and this week only, Barbell Shrugged's Functional Fitness Bundle for functional fitness athletes that want to improve their strength gymnastics weight lifting and build a bigger engine in six weeks is on sale for 50 off using the code functional at barbell shrug.com forward slash ff bundle increase your snatch and clean and jerk improve technique in the olympic lifts build strength in the back squat olympic lifting

personalized nutrition and joint by joint mobility and warm-ups inside you will get seven programs the gymnastics focused functional fitness program shrug functional weight lifting strength bias functional fitness anaerobic assault aerobic monster open prep and the advanced functional fitness workout builder get over to barbell shrug.com forward slash ff bundle that's barbell shrug.com forward slash ff bundle and use the code functional to save 50 on seven programs buy two get seven free that's savings of over 70 barbell shrug.com forward slash ff bundle use the code functional to save 50 let's get back to the show yeah i think i think it's a really good point because I also think that it is a huge misconception

as to what therapy is, is you're going to go to therapy and someone's going to tell you what to do. I often say that in therapy, depending on what theory you lean towards, and this is my personal theory that I lean towards, is when someone is coming to therapy, they already have the answers inside them. And it's my job to help them like a lighthouse in a storm to find those answers and not to lead them down a path, but to show them these are the paths. This is one that you've taken before. This is a new one that you could take. And this is one that that needs to be blazed. And so in in answering your question, I would say the happiness thing is being able to recognize,

look, you're you're, excuse me, your parents are jackasses. They've never supported you. This is what you've told me over, you know, five weeks. um, your, your husband is cheating on you. Uh, your, your, you know, kids don't like you. Um, and your boss is mistreating you. And these don't seem to be things that you've sought out and have sabotaged yourself with. These are, you know, circumstances. How can you change your circumstances? Uh, well, I can leave my husband cause you know, he's cheating on me and that's, you know, not good. That's not the kind of relationship that I want to be in. And so I can change that and that might get me some happiness.

I can have a conversation with my parents or I could just shut them out. And that's even more happiness. And what decisions can I make thereafter to incrementally increase my happiness, as it were. But it's recognizing those patterns and those things that we may be too blind to see because we're in it. It's right in front of our face, and we can't see the forest or the trees. Have you read Jonathan Haidt's book, The Happiness Hypothesis? I haven't.

I think it's in my Audible queue, though. He basically points out three big things that can help basically anyone's happiness or mental health. It's mindfulness meditation, cognitive behavioral therapy, and or antidepressants, some type of medication, etc. So he very specifically points out that cognitive behavioral therapy seems to be kind of the leading form of therapy as far as results in the real world.

I don't even know all the other types of therapy necessarily, but what are your thoughts on cognitive behavioral therapy specifically? It's fantastic. It's probably one of the most researched therapies and theories within therapy. A lot of these things, you know, we talk a lot about the art of coaching, and there is very much an art to therapy as well. One of my favorite theories is narrative therapy. And it just, I love stories.

I love making stories with my clients and helping them write their own stories and rewriting their stories. And there's just like no data that that's helpful. But we know that it's helpful because that's essentially how we have, that's how we, a lot of us, the collective, we structure our lives is through stories. And if I can alter my story to something like, we'll stay on this sad topic of my, I let my husband cheat on me and we really dive into that story. And it's no, no, no.

I set boundaries and he broke those boundaries. And that is as a consequence, not me hurting myself. And there's a new story that I have reauthored. But CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, is much more regimented and much more precise. It isn't the right word, but that's kind of the word that's popping in my head as far as if A then B. If you have an anxious thought, you should B, do some meditation or some breath work for C to be calm.

And it's very structured in that way. Just depending on the person, it may be beneficial, it may be, maybe beneficial. It may not be, um, for me, if, um, when, when I have been most successful in therapy, like as the client, I want to tell my story. Like I want to talk that out. And the first therapist that I ever went to was, um, uh, like a college campus therapist who was probably in graduate school. And to be honest, it was probably like two semesters in. She was fantastic in that she gave me what I needed unknowingly, I think. She said like six words to me over like five weeks. And those were like six words in different

combinations. And I just talked, I just talked. And as I'm talking, you know, and those were like six words in different combinations. Um, and I just talked, I just talked. And as I'm talking, you know, as we're approaching the 45 minutes, uh, mark of my session, I'm like, oh, okay. I just figured that out. Okay. Well, I'll see you next week. Um, and, and so just being able to author that and have a, have an ear can be in and of itself helpful.

So very uncommon, you know, like, you know, when you're in society, when you talk to your friends, it becomes a, you know, I'm going to tell my story. They don't want to tell their story. And rarely, that's why it's so exciting when you find someone who is a good listener, who just listens, you know. And they don't even have to give a lot of feedback if they'll just, you know, listen, it's therapeutic in nature anyway. So totally agree.

When you're running sessions at the gym, I always think it's so interesting how you can frame strength conditioning just around anything. Very seldomly do you talk to somebody that's going to be running a clinical practice or doing sessions after a workout. What is a little bit of the approach in like intensity? And is there like a sweet spot getting people to open up? I imagine doing CrossFit may sound cool of like ramping up intensity on people. But also, you're trying to rewire thought patterns at the end of that session. And that may be, maybe too much. Like, is there a sweet spot and how people could go about using fitness to kind of break through some of those thought patterns? I think it is, um, dependent on what the goals of the session are. So, um, I have a group that I run with two ADHD years that are, um, eight,

nine or 10 in that age range. And the way that I have structured their sessions, cause they're technically a group cause there's two of them, uh, and group sessions thereafter is a, um, a very short warmup, uh, a strength portion. So we're, we're doing some type of squat, no load on the spine, some sort of push and a pull, and then immediately going into a very short conditioning session, which would look a lot like a Metcon. And that takes all of 25 minutes. And so immediately after that,

we're starting the counseling session for whatever the the topic for the day is for that group um and so i'm trying to ramp them up and that way as they're catching their breath and i know that they're breathing heavy as we're going into the session they're a little bit more dialed in and focused yeah i have to run that group differently than how i would run and it sounds like no shit but um differently than i would run a one-on-one session with um you know that group is for adhd years and i'm doing a one-to-one session with a another person of the same gender of the same age and those things look very differently because you have those two

adhd adhd ears that are bouncing off the wall and feeding off of each other yeah so my class structure has to switch to be able to dial them in to get the work done whereas when i'm one-on-one i can choose how i'm going to either feed the energy or not for that ADHD. And then that particular session is, is structured differently. We do a lot of, we do it very similar, similarly to what we talked about with John Rady, where in the beginning we're doing what I call cardio choice,

where he can pick any kind of cardio to do. So he can jump on the road or he can jump rope. He can push the prowler, push the stride and sled for three rounds of three minutes. And we're doing two strength movements, push, pull, squat, or hinge on any given day. And then we're doing a conditioning session that's exactly like the other boys' conditioning session. And then we're doing our counseling session. I tried doing that with a group.

It didn't work. I just were too scatterbrained and not focused enough after a long day of school, but I could do it with a one-to-one. And so to continue to answer your question, I coach a teenager and do the same thing for him. His goal is to get jacked. And so if we know that exercise in and of itself is helpful, how can we give him that conditioning component that we know

after talking to John Rady, that he's going to get those mental health benefits as well. Yeah, it's like, all right, you just don't rest. Like, we're just going to do these sets. And you're just going to have maybe 15 seconds rest, get a drink of water, and then you're right back to work. Yeah, it is goal dependent i would say does doing things in a group setting how does that shift the dynamic um is that usually a more positive thing or is it just person to person i think it is you know what you set up the group to be so this particular group i set it up uh for adhd years and what we're seeing because of covid is all of my, I don't, I don't have a client at my practice that has ADHD that doesn't, that hasn't also developed anxiety. And so that's what this

group is, is we know that ADHDers are predisposed to anxiety or depression. It's the same thing as the overweight or obese or mental health issue that I talked about earlier, but for ADHDers, if you have ADHD, flip a coin, at some point you're going to be anxious or depressed. And that's a guarantee. Like it's one or the other, we're just predisposed to it. And so what we're seeing with our ADHDers now in the time of COVID is they're all developing anxiety. And so that group in particular is to address their ADHD so that they can get through school, but also this new emerging thing that no one saw coming, which is their, their anxiety. Yeah.

The, uh, would we start to break into, um, some of these like kid? So there's a kid that goes to my gym here, uh, CrossFit Surmount, and he does one-on-one coaching with one of the coaches there and he's got autism. And I have seen such an incredible shift in his mental attitude in that the first day I saw him, he may have been coming there for months, weeks, a year. I don't know how long he'd been there before I actually saw him, but because of kind of the overload of the sensory system, whatever, I don't know all the right words, but he would have music playing in his ear. He had an iPad that he could like watch his show while he was doing burpees and stuff to keep him engaged. And when I first saw this, it was super interesting to me because he would just

sit there and scream all the time. CrossFit sucks. I hate this. Why is it so hard? This is so dumb. I hate you. It would be like a record of him doing burpees and screaming. I hate you basically.

And a year later, there's none of that. I don't know what, I'm not saying it went away in all of his life, but he now 100% views, and I don't know how he views it, but there isn't screaming anymore. There may be like a, this is hard, but there isn't that like anger and aggression. It's almost like fitness gave him an outlet of being able to express it physically when he couldn't mentally or emotionally. Yeah. I, you know, we, I've had coached a few kids on the spectrum and the coach that I hired a coach last year specifically because I was getting a lot of inquiries about, well,

you coach kids with ADHD. Can you coach my, my child with, with autism? And I just couldn't, I just not have enough time in the day. So I hired her and she's been doing that as well. And we do see like a, a night and day difference. And the, the, the thing about kids on the spectrum is that change is hard. Um, new things are hard because, you know, again, they're differently wired and they need to know what's coming next, what's coming after that. And they need to have their, their expectations met. And when they're not, that can create that sensory overload where they, they don't have the means by which to cope. And so, you know, kudos to whoever's coaching that child. It takes a super patient person to do that.

And that's sort of my, why I started doing it in my gym was because I was getting a lot of requests from parents saying, can you coach my kid that's on the spectrum? Because we've tried all these other things and we've been kicked out. Like, no, you cannot come here either you're disrupting everything else yeah you can't you know to our conversation right now you can't give your kid this this medicine that we know would benefit him because he's just disrupting everything else yeah it is um you know you would never do that in like a doctor's office like hey if you can't sit down you can't see your doctor and we're not going to give you your meds like we're's office. Like, Hey, if you can't sit down, you can't see your doctor and we're not going to give you your meds. Like we're not going to be

from the prescription if you can't shut up. Um, but in, in the defense of the other, you know, establishments, um, they don't have the education or means or understanding to, to handle that, uh, those mental health issues. And that's sort of what I'm largely what I'm trying to do with, um, uh, this clinic that Travis and I are putting on next weekend. And this book that I wrote is how do we educate these coaches so that they can have those tools? So that doesn't happen because I'm in Roanoke and no one knows where that is. And so people just can't come to me to do it. Other coaches have these skills as well to be able to do that because there is such a need.

And to your point, this kid is largely doing really well because of exercise. And if you don't have a patient coach, then he, you know, where, where might he be? I mean, I was going to say, have you guys ever coached one, coached a kid with autism? No, I was, um, not, not specifically autism, but I, i uh i coached a wheelchair basketball team and that was a really i mean that was like two seasons of it was the san diego wolfpack out of the va in in san diego and um it was really interesting because the physical limitations are so obvious yeah but. But on day one, I kind of showed up and it was like,

all right, everyone's in a wheelchair. Let's do it. Or working with like the wheelchair rugby team, which they call murder ball because these people are just so aggressive and like running into each other at insane speeds. Like you would not, but it's like a car wreck.

Um, but yeah, working with them, it was really interesting because it felt like a car wreck um but yeah working with them it was really interesting because it felt like i was in a locker room of just a bunch of bros hanging out and they wanted a strength coach and i was the guy so we all just like made it work but i know that you know much like the the fit ops foundation guys where it's like i know their stories behind all this they're not at the va because they walked into the military incapable there they were probably you know knocking on people's doors and doing really aggressive stuff and an ied went off and

now they're trying to figure out where they're at and find their place and luckily you know that specific group found that community of wheelchair basketball they find some where they're at and find their place. And luckily, you know, that specific group found that community of wheelchair basketball, they find some purpose, they're athletes, again, they're playing sports, and they feel good. But also realizing there's thousands and thousands of people that don't have that community. And that's where the first time I met you, Gabriel, was like when we were doing that work and I was really starting to just become very aware of mental health and how it relates to the physical health. Because I saw kind of like on the very positive side that the wheelchair basketball team, the murder ball team, like all those teams became integral pieces of those people's lives because they just gave them a community of people that understood what the hell was going on. And they were athletes. They weren't people in wheelchairs. They weren't like it gave them a home

and fitness and working out and being on a team gave them a place to go be themselves. And it made them happy. And I know for a fact that when they went home, not all of them were just happy like they were when they were playing. Sure. That's cool. I worked with an autistic kid as well. You know, this was maybe over a decade ago, but it was cool to see the way he advanced so quickly.

And like so many positives come of it too because he was able to actually get to the point where he could go to regular high school and he could actually play sports. It just took a long time. It was crazy. Yeah. And he did well.

Like, he was really good at football. As long as it was just, like, he could play the defensive end and just, like, go one direction, he didn't have to make a lot of decisions. He did great. And, like, it was Lance. It took a lot of my paces plus i wasn't near as good a coach back then and so it was interesting i was able to do it at all but anyway yeah i think that that was uh something else that's just kind of like

when i went into that situation and like i was doing the strength training for the team So it wasn't, um, it wasn't, um, no, no blocks. Um, yeah, it wasn't, I was there as the strength coach. So it was like the, the physical side was that what I was there for. Um, but I know that all of, all of those people through the VA, like went to therapy and did all that stuff and, and the connection between the fitness side, um, and, and whatever they were doing in therapy, just it, it made their lives so much better. did all that stuff and and the connection between the fitness side um and and whatever they were doing in therapy just it it made their lives so much better and and it gave them an outlet and i think that like i don't know much about autism specifically out honestly outside of this kid

and watching his transformation over the last you know 10 12 18 months however long i've lived here um but it's it's it's been very cool specifically with n equals one of this kid to watch his transformation and like enjoy working out now like he yeah he's he's he's a better part of the community like he he has a place to go yeah and i think one of the things that i stress to the coaches that I talk to, whether they're there, they email me because they've heard me on a podcast or they come to my gym is, you know, I remind them that not everyone is like us where we're intrinsically motivated and we just want to get in there. In fact, if you do have a active mental health disorder, it may be very hard for you. And if you're, if you're severely depressed, it may be an event to get out of bed and get into the car and get to the gym.

That in and of itself may be the win. What I always say is it also, if they're a kid or an adult, it also may be their first experience in a gym ever. And if it's not a positive experience, we can, I'm sure we all have examples where we did something that we really wanted to do but it wasn't a positive experience then we never did it again yeah the example that I'm thinking of is I played t-ball when I was a kid I had a really bad experience with my coach who's just like a turd he's just a jerk and I was like even to this day I'm like baseball's stupid i don't want to i don't want to watch that i don't want to play that um dumb and what a disservice

to a child or to any person to give them a poor first experience so that they don't want to work out ever again yeah what um yeah how do you how do we kind of get coaches a little bit more open to it though knowing like if they're in a crossfit gym they've got um 15 20 athletes something like that going through um and just it takes a lot of patience i would imagine i mean me just with the wheelchair basketball team it was fun going in there and seeing stuff um but i wasn't dealing with what the coach at crossfit surmount is dealing with in a kid screaming i hate you over and over and over again for a year i mean it sounds it you know like it sounds crazy but in their brain that's what's going on it takes the amount of patience to deal with stuff like that is you're

like i'm trying to help you right right right like i hate you you're making this hurt like how do we get coaches educated to be able to work with people like that um knowing that they probably got into fitness because they like what travis was doing flexing off earlier. Sure. Flexing on Zoom. Yeah, there it goes. There it goes. For this entire reason, thanks to Travis, he really pushed me to write this book, The Bridge Between Counseling and Coaching,

which essentially is that answer. Here are the skills that you need and you can use to just be more aware of mental health issues as they present in your life, but also as they present in the athletes or gym members that you coach. You know, our goal is, if we know that there's a pretty good chance that someone's going to have a disorder at some point, we should be the first line of defense because again, they're going to the yearly physical with their PCP once every 12 months, things can get really bad in 12 months. And so if I'm seeing an,

a gym member three times a week for an hour and I start noticing and recognizing these patterns, I can have those conversations with them. Me being I as a counselor can have those conversations with them about maybe going to go see a counselor to get ahead of this stuff. And how different would your relationship with your clients, your athletes, and really like our collective community, as we keep saying, be if as soon as there was an issue, there was an advocate or someone right behind you saying, hey, I'm noticing some stuff. Let's get you help so that you can get right back on this road. Because that's why

they're coming to see you anyways, to get better. And what I always say is if things get worse, one of the things that's going to fall off first is the gym is depressed. So I'm just, I'll just sleep in and hit snooze or I'm anxious. And I really need to, to, to, you know, again, we talk about how good we as adults are at coping. I'm going to adjust this in my schedule to account for this anxiety and then just go do my job, my actual job. And so how different would things be if we were able to recognize that as coaches? And if you're still like, no, mental health is not a thing, how different would your retention at your gym be if all of your members were like,

I know Gabriel's going to take care of me in all the facets that I need. I know that he's going to take care of me and notice things in me that I may not notice myself and not be afraid to say anything, but also say it in a way that I'm receptive to and that I want to do that work because I'm already coming to see him

because I want to do some work. So this is just more work to be better in a different area of my life. Coaches need to read your book to understand how to do that better. I think Doug's – we've got to wrap it up pretty soon. Doug's got his – he's got to go play blocks. That's right. I think read your book. All the coaches out there, if you want to get better,

I think a good way to do it, get his book, learn to notice these things in others, and to do about it is a key yeah make sure you get it i'll have everything linked up in the show notes and i know you sent it to me and i wish i had read it before the show yeah it's all good and i think one of the things that's that's super helpful i know travis has done uh frequently is he's heard me talk about all this stuff, probably at nauseam. I enjoy this. It's my favorite things. He reaches out and he says,

this is the issue that I'm having. How can I help my people? Yeah. Mom and son in one case. Yeah. And it's like, let's do X, Y,

and Z and ABC. And then let's see if that makes a difference. Yeah. Essentially that book is, is that resource. So that other people, FYI, It's like let's do X, Y, and Z in ABC, and then let's see if that makes a difference. Essentially, that book is that resource so that other people can have it. FYI, too, when I said about the whole working out before school was straight from Gabriel. I don't think he's ever given me a bad piece of advice. I have no financial anything in his book, so this is just me telling you true advice. Yeah.

Where can people find you outside of going to the show notes right now and download the book? Yeah. You can find me on Instagram at Gabriel V underscore LPC. You can email me at clinically informed coach, Gabriel at clinically informed coach.com. Sounds like a rap. Gabriel V LPC. You like that?

It has to rhyme. If you want to get the book or some other resources that Travis and I have put together, they're on my website at clinically informed coaching.com. And you can pick up all that stuff there. My favorite part about everything you do is that at least once a week, I'm going to turn on social media and see you rocking a West side barbell shirt.

I'm like, damn, that guy's supposed to be in the clinic. What's he doing rocking a Westside shirt? Like, chains around his neck. Yeah, you can go hard and still talk about mental health. That's what he's trying to say. That's what I'm saying. Coach Travis Mash. Mashlead.com.

Thanks for being on, Gabriel. Always a pleasure. Doug Larson. You bet. One of my boys does have ADHD, so I appreciate the conversation, and I'm looking forward to reading your book at some point. So appreciate you coming on. You can find me on –

You can reach out if you need anything. Oh, yeah, for sure, for sure. You can find me on Instagram at Douglas C. Larson. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We are Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. Make you get over to walmart.com. Search for Barbell Shrugged. We've got three programs. And if you are in Palm Springs, San Diego, Los Angeles, or Las Vegas, get over to Walmart. We're in the performance nutrition section of Walmart. Three programs for fat loss, muscle gain, and cardio. We'll see you guys next week.

That's a wrap, friends. I want to thank Gabriel for coming by the show, being an awesome friend of the show, and helping us bridge the gap between mental health and physical fitness. Get over to barbellshrugged.com forward slash FFbundle. Use the code functional to save 50% on the functional fitness bundle. Also, I want to thank bioptimizers.com forward slash shrugged. Save 10% using the code shrugged at checkout and organifi.com forward slash shrugged. Save 20% on the green, red, and gold.

Friends, we'll see you on Monday.