Barbell Shrugged - Training to be a Superhero w/ Brandon Routh - 282

Episode Date: October 18, 2017

Today's episode is a something unique.  Today we look at Hollywood and what's it's like to get in shape for the big screen.   Brandon Routh is a Hollywood actor who currently plays The Atom in the TV show DC's Legend's of Tomorrow on Netflix. Brandon is best known for playing Superman in the movie Superman Returns (2006). Yup, he's a superhero.   In this episode we discuss the kind of training and nutrition he used to get in shape to portray a character who has seemingly unlimited physical strength.   Hope you enjoy! Mike and Doug   Subscribe to Barbell Shrugged's Channel Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Barbell Shrugged helps people get better. Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. Find Barbell Shrugged here: Website: http://www.BarbellShrugged.com Facebook: http://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast Twitter: http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged Instagram: http://instagram.com/barbellshruggedpodcast

I have a little, yeah, I feel like I, you know, my suit is such that I don't have to be that big. The suit is very imposing. I have a big enough frame right now that it makes the suit work. You know, for shirtless scenes and that kind of thing, you know, vanity sake, I could lean out. I could probably drop about five pounds, ten pounds maybe. You know, and so lifting heavy could help with that. Um, also just dialing in my diet a little bit more and then doing more burst training. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Bledsoe here with Doug Larson and Dr. Andy Galpin.

And we have traveled up to Venice, California. And we're hanging out at the Human Garage again. We like it here. We do. It's nice. Gary's a man. He loves having us up. Yeah.

Earlier today, we got to go and train at Deuce Gym, which is also here. Always a pleasure to be over there. Absolutely. Thank you, Logan, for housing us today. Absolutely. He's always so open to having us come by and train at Deuce Gym, which is also here. Always a pleasure to be over there. Absolutely. Thank you, Logan, for housing us today. Absolutely. He's always so open to having us come by and train. Very cool dude. Yeah, it's actually really cool that Andy, Doug, and I are still training together.

It is cool. Because we met like a decade ago. So it's been about that long. Yeah, we started, I haven't known you for a long time, but if you're a new listener and you don't really know our background, we started on the University of Memphis weightlifting team all together back in 2006. And we're still just like back then. We loved talking about training, and now we're talking about training, just doing it on microphones.

That's right. So today we have Brandon Routh. He's an actor on Legends of Tomorrow. You're the Atom. That's right. Yeah. And you're also known really well for playing Superman in Superman Returns

back in, that's about 10 years ago. A long time ago now. Yeah, I'm the old Superman now. The old Superman. The old guy. I mean, that's actually pretty interesting.

Yeah, like different Supermans for different eras and stuff like that. Yeah, we're all, you know, passing the torch forward. Are you buddies with the new guy? I've met Henry

very, very briefly in passing uh during a press event one time but i haven't had a chance to really sit down and talk to him yeah he's a busy dude we should have you guys fight i was just gonna say i think he's i think he's uh currently uh getting a lot more workout time than i than i am yeah i don't know how well how well i'd fare but we had an awesome workout this morning, and it was really cool to be trained by Ryan, super knowledgeable. It's really cool being trained by a guy who works here at the Human Garage and then also handling strength and conditioning.

That's rare to find that. Yeah, you know, I had been coming to Human Garage for a year before I really started working out, or maybe a little bit longer than that, before I started working out with Ryan and doing the biomechanical side of things here. I had a trainer named Ray Campisi. I'll mention Ray. He was a wonderful person.

He passed away. Bring the show at the beginning to it. Good start. Sorry to hear that. And so naturally, it was kind of a natural progression to coming into here and all the things that I learned from him I've brought into here and kind of keep him with me. Nice.

And I've been happy to then step into a different type of training, putting even more body and core integrity, structural integrity, at the forefront of the training. Yeah. So some of the things we talked about before, it sounds like to me the way you were training. So when you prepared for Superman, which was in 06, I imagine you were filming before that. Were you in really good shape before that? Or was that a role you had to really train hard for?

I really trained hard for that role. So I started training in 2004. We filmed in 2005, and the movie came out in 2006. So it was November of 2004, and I started working out. And my trainer's name was Gunni Gunnarsson, an Icelandic gentleman who's amazing and a dear friend of mine. And we started doing something called rope yoga, which is something he developed, which is a kind of mix of Pilates

and yoga. He developed his own. It's called a crafter machine. So it's a simple pulley system. You lie on your back for most of it. It's very core driven and a way to strengthen the core and the hamstrings to take the legs and the quads out of it so that you can lengthen your back. Anyway, we did a lot of that. And that was a leaning out process that I worked on with him.

When I moved to Australia to film the movie for about a year, Sydney, Australia, transitioned to a different trainer. So are you choosing your own trainers? No, the producer, Gil Adler, Gilbert Adler, had been working out with Goodney. And Goodney's not just a trainer. He's a life coach is the easy way of saying it. He was kind of like my first guru, if you will, as far as opening up my viewpoint to a bigger view of the world.

Your auric fields? Just my body and taking responsibility for thoughts and how that affects my body and how I'm seeing the world. And you were about, what, 24? I was 24, yeah. And you mentioned speech. Speech, yeah. You know, speaking with

integrity and you know, can versus will or try versus I will. Right, right. Couldn't or could versus would even. All these kind of different ways. Right, right. Our verbs. To have, to intention, intentional speech, essentially. And he was using the body as a way to reflect where we're holding

physically, where we're kind of stuck and using that as a tool to then have a dialogue about, oh, your shoulder's very tight with this and it's consistently tight during this movement. Maybe there's something, what does that, and,

and certain emotional, uh, uh, affectations or traumas can hold, be held in certain parts of the body. Um, so this opens a dialogue to that. If,

if, if the person is willing and open to discuss it. Yeah. And that was my first kind of, uh, my first, uh, experience with that type of thinking,

which helped me with Superman, because that was kind of the idea from our producer, was to get me, help me more in that heady space of having as much power as I can, and it really helped me step into that, step into the character and start to think more worldly, with more awareness, in a bigger way. Was playing that character where you had to hold a lot of power,

it sounds like it transformed you in a way. Yes. Yes and no. So I'm kind of working through all this stuff now. You have emotional trauma from the role? Yes, in a way. So I had to do a lot of exploration, what it's like to be the most powerful being in the world. And live in that space to a degree through using different various acting techniques and explorations and meditations. Bodywork, I did Alexander Technique, Terry uh notary who's a well-known movement

coach he's worked on a lot of the ape planet of the apes movies and has done a lot of he's like amazing he used to be a cirque de soleil performer um you know getting better body control and this whole body movement experience of trampoline and all this work to have my body flow and move and be open and expressive. And then the dreaming and thinking about questions about being a spiritual guide, like an inspirational person like Superman, anyway. That kind of stuff. So I did all that work and worked to bring that to the character.

And then I was also hesitant to have that in my personal life because my ego and a lot of things were telling me, well, I don't want people to think that I really am, think that I'm Superman and walk around like this. Self-righteous a-hole. Is that who Superman is? No, he's's not but definitely not but as Brandon

trying to live out that experience I had a lot of self judgments my inner critic was very strong about that so I kind of

dampened a lot of dampened myself a little bit and was lesser than for some time I think and it's been kind of acknowledging

that and understanding that through many different modalities of healing and learning about myself I'm coming back to accept my own personal power because I think why I tell everybody Superman is there for us to aspire to be like Superman. We all have that ability. I mean, we're not going to fly and have, you know, heat vision, but I think we can absolutely attain that awareness, that compassion, and that worldliness and care for everyone in the world

if we just allow ourselves and follow the path. So I'm curious, like, what are the expectations imposed on you as far as what you need to look like physically? Do they come and say, okay, like, you know, we're recording on this day. You got to gain 20 pounds of muscle. You got to lose 10 pounds of fat. Like, you have to, you know, build your upper body up. You need bigger arms. Like, do they come and tell you what you have to look like? There was a... I think there was a...

There was a standard. There was a... They essentially built a suit that had padding in it, right? The way they did the suit 10 years ago, it was like a muscle suit and then the blue suit came over it. So I needed to get bigger in a way

and lean out. But I didn't have... But there was came over it so i needed to get bigger in a way and lean lean out um but i didn't have then but there was a point actually where i couldn't get bigger because i was too big for the suit um you're a fairly big guy you're what six two six two i was six two and three quarters of the time i'm now six three and a half thanks to the human garage and you're what when you went from 200 to 225, something like that? I was like 208 when I started training. I dropped down to 196, and then I filmed the movie at about 225 most of the time. Right. Wow.

My body had never lifted heavy. I'd been in athletics and all kinds of stuff and been in the weight room, but never had anybody teach me and really lift heavy and feed myself the right way. So I put on 20 pounds of muscle. The first time you do that, it comes on easy. Oh, yeah. And I was 24. Especially your size.

I was 24. 24. Oh, geez. 6'3", 24 years old. That's a – So it was great. Yeah. And so then I had to maintain that, and I had my own challenges with that,

the pressure of that whole experience and just Hollywood. I could talk for hours about that. But, yeah, there was a lot of pressure to do that. Sometimes it wasn't in your face as much as I would have liked them to be like, hey, you need to lose weight. It was kind of like, oh, so how's your, you know, what have you been eating lately? And I think I would have liked a little more directness. Because I was like, oh, I came from Iowa. I was like, oh, unless somebody says something to me,

like everything's all good. I was very naive. Not understanding a lot of the clues that probably other people would have gotten. Was someone helping you with your nutrition back then? Did you have someone make the meals for you? No. So their trainer, he'd gotten me on a, the new trainer that had gotten me on like a meal plan

of prepared meals, but I was also more picky about eating, so then I didn't, you know, it wasn't, what should have happened if I had had more power, this is my first big movie, and would have understood what I needed and spoken out about what I needed, I would say, I need a chef, please, to be cooking every meal for me

so that I won't, don't fall off the wagon and I don't, you know, I need a chef, please, to be cooking every meal for me so that I don't fall off the wagon and I'm doing exactly what I need to be doing. So what I think I need to be doing. Because I had the support from a nutritionist who was in Los Angeles, like feeding supplements and protein and all the stuff for my workouts, but not somebody guiding me on a daily basis and helping me with the food aspect, which I know now is about 90% of it. I mean, if you're building mass, the workout's a bigger thing. But for losing weight, for me, I feel like 90% of it is what you're eating, not what you're doing physically. I want to go back a little bit.

You were introduced to new movement practices to open up your body for that role. What did that look like? Well, something called Alexander Technique, which is a fairly common stage actor and actor's technique. I don't remember so much of it now, but it's sitting in a chair. It's thinking of a string held to your

head, floating and pulling you up. It's a jaw back, spine alignment, and all kinds of things. Then moving fluidly, moving with intention. So every step is, you know, forward with intention and I don't do it on a normal basis, but now I feel it. It's like, it's a flowing and Terry would just do this. He would have me do this thing with moving my hand and it's, instead of just like putting my hand up,

it's, it's, there's resistance in every, there can be resistance in every movement. It's not real resistance, but it's intentional movement, and it's a slight resistance, which is how dancers move, and they flow, and it all comes from the core, right? It's not about getting from point A to point B. It's about getting there with a little bit of tension. Yeah. I don't know if I'm explaining it right,

but if all of your movements come from the core, then there's intentional movement to it all, so it flows. If you're just listening and you're not watching at home, as he's explaining this, he's moving his hands, and sometimes you move it, it looks herky or jerky or forced, but then when you move it like that, I'm mesmerized. I'm like, ooh, that's so pretty.

Because if I was thinking of Superman, I didn't want to just clunkily walk down. He's going to hypnotize us. Right, exactly. I'm going to be at home practicing. I'm holding my shorts up right now. In the strength and conditioning world, kind of what you're referring to is we call that moving from core to periphery.

Okay. That's a common principle of movement that if you're doing it correctly, you're moving core to periphery. If I'm swinging a golf club, I don't just swing my arms. I initiate with the hips and then that's when the swing starts, not when I just start moving my arms, etc. Everything is connected and the more we can keep that in our consciousness the more effortlessly we move it feels like more work when you're doing when you're learning or

training and then it becomes second nature but we've learned you know inaccurate ways of moving because of we've got we've gotten injured we rolled our ankle and then we started moving that way and it we compensate and we move not in a physically sound way. So the walking was a huge thing. You just walked and walked and walked and walked with intention. Instead of clunking away, it was moving with chest open, core in line and flowing. If you watch the movie, hopefully you can see that I can see that work that I did versus my normal walk. Just as Brandon was.

There was an intentional, a lot of work with Superman and trampoline work and floating in that space. We used my swimming background for all the flying stuff because I felt it was going to be a lot like swimming. Flip turns and how I moved and how I did strokes would be how I was going to fly. So we did a lot of pool work, and we built basically a book of moves so Terry could call something out, and I'd fly. That's how I'd fly anyway. So that fluid movement work that you were doing, the Alexander technique, as you mentioned, is that something that they were specifically asking you to do

because there's a certain amount of grace that is expected for someone who's playing a character that has the mystique of someone who's the most powerful being on earth or is that like something that most actors would normally go through no i think this is specific for superman i mean uh actors would do alexander technique to move and flow it's an acting technique that that a lot of um stage actors use i don't know if many film and television do it, but it wasn't something that I was exposed to prior to doing Superman. And it was Terry who was hired to be the movement and to help with that. It was his thought to go through this process because he wanted it. His feeling about Superman as he was focused on the movement was to make him as flowing. If he's graceful, if he's the most powerful being on Earth,

he's going to float. He doesn't take effort. Things shouldn't take that much effort. Certainly walking and taking off even shouldn't take effort. Now, you have to make a little bit of a modification to that because you also have to show the movement on camera. So if you just lift off, it's not as exciting. So there's a balance of having some explosiveness,

even though in my head i'm going like i don't have to do that i just float away right um but that's not exciting on camera fair enough that's moderating what what the work that we do and then being flexible and open to speak to the have the director's vision and and everyone else um you know express themselves so you were saying that you know that was 10 now. It was the first time you'd really lifted any appreciable heavy weights to put on 20 pounds. And that was, like I said, 10 years ago. And now you're working with our friends here at the Human Garage. These guys are leading edge.

They're very innovative. They're very intelligent. And what they're doing is very modern. They're pushing boundaries, so to speak. So, like, now with the training that you are doing, how does that compare to what you were doing? And how do you think about movement now that you're doing something that is much more modern? So very good question. The movement was focused in how Superman moved, but not always in with how I was lifting.

Focus on body alignment and where my hips were and where my shoulders were, where my chest was open, was not the focus in certain aspects of the training when I switched trainers. It was more focused on lifting weights, getting big, and losing weight. What did that look like, though? Was it a lot of barbell work? It was barbell, dumbbell. We did a lot of... It's like bodybuilder type...

Machines and everything. Yeah, yeah, machines. I mean, we did bench press. We did a lot of dumbbell flies and press. Dips, pull-ups, you know, traditional stuff. There's a video. If you search YouTube, that's a little bit like a two-minute thing of me working out 10 years ago.

Yeah, and that's all good stuff for the record. Yeah, yeah, sure. Especially if that's the goal. Yeah, and it was beating. It was, I had to break the muscle open to build the mass. So it was heavy Yeah, and it was beating. I had to break the muscle open to build the mass. So it was heavy weights, and it was intense. And that was basically pretty much five days a week.

Sometimes I was up at 4 a.m. running through the park for my warm-up because I had to then go to work. So I was working out for an hour and a half and then go shoot it for 14 hours and then getting the sleep that I could and doing it again. But I had two months to lift heavy without the filming part. And then it went into maintenance. So the difference now is I've built that muscle mass, right? And so I have good muscle memory.

So I've maintained a decent affair. I'm about 210 right now so there's 15 pounds more of mass that I have had on my body before which would be interesting to do an exercise to see how long it would take me to put that muscle mass back on at 37. But now I'm focused on the health of my body, the fluid movements,

keeping everything in alignment and doing a lot more body weight stuff. You know, we use weights when I'm working with Ryan, but it's a lot of, it's kettlebell and a lot of just, you know, body focused integrity and core based integrity. And I get a heck of a workout without having to, you know, beat my body up necessarily with heavy weights. And when you say having that integrity, what does that mean? I think most people, if we just leave that out there, I think there's a lot of room for assumption. So I started with Ryan.

I was like, when do we start lifting? So I can, you know, because that's what I was used to. Get yoked. Traditional. Yeah. Because that was my way into getting lean and doing all kinds of things. And we spent, he's like, oh, we'll get to it. He tricked you, didn't he?

He tricked me. Liar. One thing I tell my students, when you first start training athletes or clients, lie, lie, lie. That principle goes for where you meet anybody. Women. Yes. That's how I got Natasha. So we spent essentially a month and a half. I was getting two sessions a week, maybe three sessions, mostly two a week, working life, my squat movement was not in line, not the way you would want it to be if I was completely healthy.

Hips moving back, core engaged, all kinds of things. weeks and different exercises to build that integrity of having the movement be such that I wasn't putting myself in, in a position where I was going to get injured. So we worked and kind of like baby steps to reteach my body and rewire my system and my nervous system to do, do it, do it the right way so that I can increase weights. And then I can do things like climbing the rope, which is not a squat, obviously, but it's building that core integrity that I can jump into that, not hurt myself,

and actually surprise myself that I made it to the top of the rope. I don't know if I ever climbed a rope that high. Before you jumped on the rope, you were like, man, there was question in your mind. My brain was nervous about it. Oh, it wasn't question. He was clear he wasn't going to make it up there. He was like, I'm not making it up that thing.

And I probably said it. I was trying to be nice, Andy. He said he wants more direct. That's what I'm giving you. You're right. But I grabbed the rope, and my body responded because I built that integrity. So then I wasn't thinking about it. And my body, like all the firing mechanisms were in line.

So the switches were on so that my body wasn't second-guessing it. It was integrity and it just did what I asked it to do. Whereas three months ago before I started working with Ryan, I wouldn't have been able to do that. What we're talking about is athleticism.

And I think a lot of people who have challenges with coordinated efforts a lot of times, it's not so much maybe a lack of coordination as their body's just not connected. And once it's connected and you've done all these things that you've done with Ryan, a new skill is a lot easier to pick up. Yes. We want to rush to get big, to lose weight, to get the beach body or whatever. And you can do that. Like, people do it.

Like, everybody's mostly doing that. But at what cost, right? Right. You're tearing muscles. You're creating scar tissue in certain areas. You're degenerating your hip by getting,, by getting, you know, um, uh, damaging your, your, your cartilage and joints and how much, like the issues that I have from, from poor movement. I was like, I'm athletic. I play soccer. I swam. I do all kinds of stuff. I've been working out, lifting heavy weights for 10 years. Um,

I don't have to do this, but yes, but I I've, I've injured myself along the way because of that. So now I'm reteaching myself and taking the time and the care for myself to do that. And I'm having a great time with it, and I'm feeling better about it, getting good results. Yeah. This sounds very similar to our friend Summer who works with Ida Portal. And across the world, doing muscle-ups is like a skill that a lot of people aspire to do. It's a relatively low-level gymnastics skill. But for the average person, it's a fairly difficult thing to pull off.

So you sound like you're familiar with what a muscle-up is. I don't know that I can do one, but I'm familiar with what it is. Seen it before. And so this person, she'd never done one before, and she'd always wanted to do one. So she's working with Ida Portal, who's a very well-known gymnastic-oriented person who is definitely a qualified teacher how to do a muscle-up correctly. And she put together all the component parts of it and did all the prep work correctly and had all the adequate mobility ahead of time.

And then when she went to go do it her first time, she was just like, boop, boop, and just popped up and was like, oh, that's how you do it. And then she went and told people, like, I did a muscle-up on my first try, and they were like, no, no way, no way. And she was and told people, like, I did a muscle-up on my first try. And they were like, no, no way. No way. And she was like, yeah. Like, I did all this prep work. And it just happened because I did it the way it's supposed to be done.

As opposed to most people, they just try over and over and over and over to try to get it. And they keep missing it because they don't have the proper foundation. Yeah. You're still playing a superhuman superhero right now? Yeah, super. Superhero. Something like that. So do you feel like – sorry.

Well, I'm not super something. He's just a superhero now. This guy's super. We didn't give him Andy his quality of the day. Sorry. So do you feel like the training you're doing now, which is it's core-based and it's integrity stuff you're doing, it's not as much heavyweight, hardly any heavyweight stuff at all.

Is that still enough to keep you physically looking like you need to look to play a superhero, or are you not concerned with that at all? Yes, it's keeping me. You're still maintaining that muscle. I have a little, yeah, I feel like my suit is such that I don't have to be that big. The suit is very imposing. I have a big enough frame right now that it makes the suit work. You know, for shirtless scenes and that kind of thing, you know,

vanity sake, I could lean out. I could probably drop about five pounds, ten pounds maybe. You know, and so lifting heavy could help with that. Also just dialing in my diet a little bit more and then doing more burst training. You know, I've been doing a lot of learning with Ryan and retraining my body, burning calories but not doing as much burst training, which is what I've gotten into and just ditched the whole long cardio thing. Talking about just like high intervals?

Yeah, raising heart rate, taking a rest, and then doing it again. Gotcha. heart rate lower you know taking a rest and and then doing it again gotcha um uh and so doing that mixed with diet stuff i could shed what i need to shed um but i i don't feel like i you know i'm able to keep my body um in pretty much exactly where i want it to be without having to to lift heavy and and to have sore muscles all the time like you used to. Right. Let's take a break real quick. I want to dig into how your nutrition has changed over time.

Yeah. I know that probably for all of us, the difference between the 20s and 30s. Oh, boy. A little bit different. A lot different. We're back with Brennan Routh, and we do want to dig into a little bit of nutrition as well because you've actually gotten into some interesting things lately that are much different than what you were doing before.

And so, question, when you were doing the Superman role, how did you prepare for that role versus how you're doing now? Well, Superman was, again, back in 2004. And the first thing we did was to kind of lean out, drop a little bit of, uh, baby weight that I still had, uh, I think, um, which maybe I still have a little somewhere actually. It's from your baby though.

Yeah. This is, yeah. My son, my son's. Um, so we, it was lean meats. It was veggies, um, for that phase. Um, and then when I started bulking up, it was, you know, whey protein, uh, designs for health had a,

uh, protein powder I was using back in the day. Uh, glutamine, ribose, you know, uh, carnitine,

um, BCAs, AAs, um, but the standard standard. Yeah. And then focus on, you know,

uh, egg whites and chicken in the morning and avocado and greens and that kind of traditional lean meats, low fat, high on the veggies. You had a hard time sticking with it, it sounded like. Yeah, because I wasn't satiated. Were you living in L.A. at the time? You're in Australia, though, right? Australia most of the time. So new food.

24 years old, new country. Yes. A lot of stress. So the weekends weren't great for me. The weekends is where I definitely cheated

more than I should have because I didn't have the knowledge, I didn't have the understanding and the knowledge that I have now. It probably didn't sound as important to you then

as you now know it is. The nutrition? Yeah. I definitely didn't know as much about nutrition. I didn't, intellectually, I didn't sound as important to you then as you now know it is. The nutrition? Yeah. I definitely didn't know as much about nutrition. I didn't – intellectually, I didn't have that knowledge base. I was using other people's information and knowledge for how to do that. And it worked for the bulk up. It definitely – I mean I got – I gained a lot of mass.

I kind of destroyed my stomach a little bit and my gut a little bit because of the massive protein that I was eating, which is not always good for the liver and all kinds of other functions in the body. And then I got to a point where it was like a stalemate. Like I looked great, but I was holding on, retaining a little bit of stomach weight that kind of never really went away during the filming process as much as I could have gotten. And that was, you know, I can blame a lot of things on myself, take responsibility for that.

How long was filming, though, for that movie? Did that take you like three? We filmed for about eight, nine months. And then what does it just maybe like one minute, what does work week look like when you're filming? Is that Monday through Friday, nine to five? Monday through Friday, 12 to 14-hour days, maybe a couple 15-hour days depending on.

The worst part, the most challenging part for me was when I was doing the flying stuff. So it was a second unit shoot. So first unit was shooting acting stuff essentially and second unit was shooting flying on a green screen for two months straight. I pretty much did that. You pretended to fly for two months?

Yeah. Wow. Dang. There's that many flying scenes? And they didn't always use as much as we shot. Of course they don't. Fuck. Too much was CGI in my mind.

So you're trying to eat well while doing all that. Trying to eat well, yeah. Flying in the movie was crazy. I was literally getting five, six hours of sleep because I had to train at least three days a week to maintain. Right. And that was early in the morning and then going to do the workout. Meantime, the process of flying is I put on a harness. You have to tighten everything down so you don't want to injure anything.

And you have to – so my whole body is under compression from that. My legs are under compression, core and everything. And then I'm trying to do that, pull on this basically rubber band rubber band suit which is the muscle suit then i pull on the blue over it so every time i did this i'm pulling um because doing this it was dragging so the blue suit was dragging basically like a hose like a woman's hose oh um like that doing this every time so my i still have still working stuff here at the Humor Garage, working some structural knots and things that have not released yet from the back from making this movement.

Doing so many upright road sort of things. Yeah, and then I'd have to change in and out of the suit and the harnesses because different ways of flying require different harnesses and different pick points, which is where they tie the wires to. So just even doing that, getting is where they tie the wires to. Just even doing that, getting in and out of the suit was a workout. Okay. So back to your question of where were you talking about?

It destroyed your gut, you're saying, right? Yeah. So what do you feel like destroyed your gut? Was it too much protein? I think it was too much protein. Also just, I mean, the stress. You know, adrenal fatigue and all kinds of other things. Lack of sleep and overwork, you know, created a lot of stuff, dysbiosis and other things that weren't fantastic.

I developed some food intolerances during the process. I might have had some going in, but, um, some developed because of that. So what do you, how do you do it now? What's your approach? My approach? And well, now I eat, uh, I don't eat lean meat, um, very often. Um, about four years ago, a friend introduced me to the Bulletproof coffee. And then I went down the rabbit hole of, of, of learning about, um, the, the qualities of, of of of good fats and that kind of thing yeah that's actually the very first thing i ever heard you say actually right before we met because we met here at the human garage you're sitting over there on this couch just talking to somebody and i was like standing there talking to gary and i could overhear you in the background talking about

like essential fatty acids and which ones are in which things and like how they act in your body and i was just like over here and like who's this guy talking about like all these, all these like nutrition concepts. And Gary, I was like, Oh yeah. And then he started talking about you. Yeah.

Uh, I've become, you know, I, I became very passionate about it. I think one of the reasons was because, um, at this similar time,

my son was turning a year old and it was going to start eating solid foods. So I wanted to understand what I was going to be feeding him and do right by him. So I was reading all this information about nutrition, not only for myself, but for him. And that really opened my brain, my mind up to understanding how much food impacts us and how much the quality of food impacts our bodies

and then on a bigger scale, the world. So I became very focused on high-quality, clean, powerful nutrients and had profound effects for me. I basically experimented with myself for a good couple weeks and months and my wife and did some blood testing and these kind of things to make sure that increasing higher fat wasn't, you know, damaging me. And when, uh, we'd done enough of that, um, and my wife could see the results, not only, uh, on the test, but also my ability to communicate and have more emotional capacity and all kinds of other really awesome things that happened. Um, we started feeding my

son, um, not Bulletproof coffee, but it not Bulletproof Coffee, but cut out largely, cut out gluten and many grains and put more fat in his diet more than we maybe would have done before. I just had this flash of an image of the new book. It was like Bulletproof Coffee for infants. Yeah. Oh yeah. But I remember being in a similar boat where 10, 12 years ago, in fact, when me and Andy were roommates, I remember making pasta and chicken every day. Yeah. All the time, playing college football,

just eating pasta and chicken, pasta and chicken. It's cheap, and I think I play football. I need a lot of carbs. I need a lot of protein. I just need a lot of just meat and energy, so to speak. Now, I've swung pretty hard the other way as well. A lot of us have. We're more like in the paleo world.

We're eating a lot of healthy essential fatty acids, a lot of veggies, still a bunch of protein. And then carbs are more kind of like as needed depending on your training schedule and what have you. It's more activity-based than anything. But fats are kind of widely accepted now in pop culture as being a good thing as long as they're the right types. Exactly.

You know, I just have had so many positives come from switching away around my eating. Taking control and having that education, understanding about what I was eating was an important aspect. Because then I was actively fighting for myself and taking responsibility for the food I was eating. It's so easy to just go, oh, I'm going to go stop in McDonald's or wherever and just eat this and not take the moment to go, oh, wait, what I'm eating really affects me. And everything I put in my mouth is a choice. And that can affect how I feel. So I didn't realize at the time,

but that's what was happening. And now with my busy schedule, I travel all of the time and I'm surrounded by junk food on set a lot of the time that I have to make sure that I'm taking care of myself. And so I have all the snacks that I can have. I don't eat the food that everybody else. I'll pass and I won't eat on the plane.

I don't want the food that I paid for or somebody paid for me if I'm in first class because it's not going to help me. I'll have a fat fudge or a bulletproof protein bar or something else that I've brought and wait until later to eat. Because also I can do that because my brain isn't going crazy. I don't have hangry feelings. Insulin is not controlling my brain i am in control and my sugar cravings are are largely gone um so you're new the nutrition you just talked about the movement stuff you talked about earlier those are all fairly accepted in the the crossfit and the weightlifting space and stuff right now but has that really been embraced in the acting world in Hollywood? Or are your co-workers like you're crazy still? You know, no.

I've converted several. Everyone in Hollywood's got weird shit going on in Hollywood, right? You're the least weird of what they're doing, right? Everybody everywhere has weird stuff. That's true. I am learning more and more that I'm not perfect. What? It was hard for me to understand that, except that I am not a perfect person. Interesting. I understand that more and more that I'm not perfect. What? It was hard for me to understand that, except that I am not a perfect person.

Interesting. I understand that more and more every day, and that makes me better, but not perfect. So Bulletproof Coffee is now on set. I've become friends with Dave Asprey and the company, and so they sponsor us, the show. And our lovely craft service makes it for us every morning. So that's been great. And so, yes, I've converted some people.

Katie Lotz, who plays White Canary, who actually introduced me to the Human Garage. But I introduced her to Bulletproof Coffee. So you're even now. Yeah, pretty much every day. And some other castmates will partake from time to time. Vancouver's a very healthy city, by and large. And so there are a lot of crew members who they work out.

They do like a CrossFit workout. The camera crew does it during the lunch break. That's cool. They break out the kettle balls and the ropes out of the trucks, and they're doing their workout. And some of those guys do the Bulletproof Coffee. So, yes, people are accepting it and they're and and some of the other people in in in my show's universe um are intrigued in it but it it's it's a weird shift right you have to really like take the plunge because people will try something like bulletproof coffee once but if

they don't have the knowledge i think it's hard to change those things because food is so ingrained. It's comfort. It's like, oh, no, it's just this. I'm going to have this. It's a challenging thing to change because you have to take responsibility then for all the food you've eaten before. Food is just a hard thing to change for people.

It's great to hear you say this because it sounds like you're an environment, and this is one of the things that I get a little bit of resistance from, is I'll be posting, you know, constantly on my Instagram stories. Like, oh, that's what I'm eating right now. People are like, well, you live a fairly unrealistic life. You know, it's, and because the truth of the matter is, is I've built the structure of my life to where i don't have to make a lot of good decisions they're already made for me right because i've designed my lifestyle to have really great stuff around me and not any bad stuff but you did that i did that you made the

conscious baby some baby stuff to do that i didn't just have no doubt about it and you know a lot of people that's that's hard to get across yeah and I'm an entrepreneur, so I do create my – I think I have a little more freedom than someone who has a 9-to-5 job. And you were talking about you're on set and there's the junk food right there. I don't wake up and go to work and have junk food in front of me. So I am in a different spot. But you, on the other hand, you are being exposed at all times. So what is it that you're – you always have the good choice with you good choice with you as well. So it sounds, and you're also fatigued. You're traveling a lot. You're working long hours. And I imagine people think, Oh, Hollywood

actor, he's got it so easy and good. And as we're talking to you now, we're saying, Oh wait, he works really long hours. You may have some time off here and there, but when you are working, it gets crazy. And when you're tired, that's when, he works really long hours. You may have some time off here and there, but when you are working, it gets crazy. And when you're tired, that's when it's the hardest to make the right decision, right? So can you tell us more about having that discipline to stick with it? Because, I know you put Reese's Cups over here, and then I've got to stick with my healthier option, and I've been working 16 hours straight.

Sometimes it's like, oh, fuck it. I'm going to eat that. Yeah. It's a very challenging thing. When you're towards the end of the night, if you had a long day. And if I haven't done the work to feed myself before I get too hungry, then it's an even harder choice. So sometimes it's going, oh, I'm not really hungry yet, but I know it's been this amount of time. And I have this much to do.

It's then I should eat something to bolster me so that I don't fall off, you know, make the bad choice. It's challenging. I don't always get it right. I tell you, many nights, I know a place that has great gluten-free pizza that, after a long day shooting, I'll order and I'll eat. It sets me back a couple days in the workout, but also not because then the next day I'll then intermittent fast, and I won't eat for 18 hours. And so, I mean, my brain is thinking, okay, so I'm, I'm burning some of that, uh, uh, some of that off that I, um, but you know, I have, I've made it, I created an environment. So I've, I, we have fat fudge on set. We have bulletproof, uh, bars on set. I have bulletproof coffee on set. Um. I can do that.

I bring my own protein powder and give it to the craft service. Yes, I can have somebody make the shake for me, but if I was in a 9-to-5 job and I had a kitchen in my office, I would go and make the shake for myself. I work too much. We work 14, 15-hour days on set. They're not paying you your time to make shakes.

Right. It's a stupid business move. We can go into all kinds of things about that. Very stupid. I definitely have a lot of, my life is very different than many people. That's no excuse to go, oh, well, he's a Hollywood actor.

I can't do that. Yes, you can. You do it in your own way. You take the baby steps. You take the steps. This didn't happen overnight for me. These were conscious choices. I learned from each one of them in a way to create this plan for me. It was, I took responsibility for what I was doing and what I wasn't doing and, and made steps to, to make it workable for me. Um, so I, I support my, a lot of stuff I buy myself. I did the work to get these things up here, to get these on set. It wasn't just somebody said, oh, we're going to have bulletproof coffee one day.

It was like I made the negotiations. I did that. And so to support all for me. Because by the same token, you have the power and the income and the ability to say, I want a bunch of shitty stuff there all the time. Yeah. So you have even more leverage than the average person to have way more access to crap that you don't need. Sure. So in either case, you still have to be the one in control making the decision to put the good stuff or the bad stuff in front of you.

Yeah. So you have to take that out as an excuse because it's really taking your own responsibility away. Anytime we're comparing ourselves to somebody to say why I can't do something, it's just not helpful. Like I have, yes, I make more income than the standard person. Bulletproof products, some people would say are expensive. They are expensive. It's more of an expensive cup of coffee than going to Starbucks or making just regular Folgers coffee yourself. But then you think about, okay, well, this is the only food I'm eating in the morning for me. It's the only

breakfast I eat. So if my cup of coffee costs me seven or $8, that's my breakfast. I'm not, I'm not eating anything else. Right. Um, and, and I get this much more, this, this much more work done. Right. Um, and I don't eat all these other things. And I don't stop and get this food and spend all these other things. So you can calculate the cost in a different way. Or you do baby steps. You do what you can do.

If you can't buy bulletproof coffee beans, then you can't do it. You get the butter, you buy somebody else's coffee, and you do it the way you can. If you stop yourself before you start, you'll never get it done. Maybe you can't buy all organic,

but you can still make better choices about the food that you are eating. What is capable? What choices are capable? Are you capable of in your environment? And I think if you start to make those little choices, you find that you have more capacity and more belief in yourself that you can

start doing other things. If you just go absolve all responsibility, say, well, I can't do that. I'll never get there. You'll never will, but you can't just jump.

You can't just go from, uh, never having done a squat to doing a squat without doing it steps in between like we talked about before or the muscle up. Right. No. What, uh, what are your favorite products? I mean, you're having to, without doing the steps in between, like we talked about before. Definitely. Or the muscle up. Right. What are your favorite products? I mean, you're having to, you're limited on time.

You're obviously eating food that's pre-made in some way, whether it's packaged or being delivered. Yeah, if I wanted to know what it is that you're eating and supplementing with. Well, I pull aproof coffee every morning. I've said that about a billion times. Do you make that with grass-fed butter, MCT oil? Yeah, it's usually Kerrygold. In the States, it's Kerrygold. In Vancouver, they don't have Kerrygold.

You can't get it, so it's a company called Rolling Meadows, or Kiwi Gold. They have a great unsalted butter. I brain octane versus the XCT oil I use. I like the mentalist beans that Bulletproof has now, but I do a lot more decaf for various reasons. I'm cutting caffeine out to a degree. Fat fudge is a staple a lot of the time.

Bulletproof collagen bars. I have, I can't remember the companies. I have a couple of different, uh, uh, a hundred percent grass fed, um, uh, jerky or beef sticks that I'll, that I'll have on set, especially for traveling. Um, what's the one that makes everything they've got, uh, Texas, Texas. Um, I'll think about it. I can't remember. They make everything. They make tons of different bars. Oh. They have a venison one that I like a lot. I'm having a hard time thinking about that, too. I feel like we were just at Paleo FX, and we had so many of these bars that I can't remember.

Oh, there's so many now. Epic. Epic. Epic. Good job. So I have a lot of... Yes. Got one.

I like the venison, epic, and I travel with those bars. Yeah. I do various nuts. The Peely Nuts I've been enjoying. The what nuts? Peely Nuts I've been enjoying the what nuts? Peely Nuts P-I-L-I are these the new ones

that are supposed to be like the healthiest nuts on earth? I think they say that they kind of are they're very buttery I've never heard of them and all of a sudden

they popped up you can get them at Erewhon here I met the gentleman who started the company and he was cool there's the Baru Nut which is also

a really crazy one which I found at Erewhon here in Venice, an awesome grocery store. If you're in L.A., hit Erewhon because, yeah, the selection there is ridiculous. Yes, it's amazing. I do that. I mean, I have various – I use a lot of Bulletproof supplements, but also I use Siltep, Natural Staxan on it, and a couple of companies that I've used. I like Siltep.

I was actually just talking about going back on Siltep, Natural Staxon on it, and a couple of companies that I've used. I like Siltep. I was actually just talking about going back on Siltep. I use different nootropics, and I was talking about that because I noticed that when I came off my last nootropic, I wanted something for better memory tension, and I noticed that that product is really good for that. That, when I started using it in conjunction with work, was huge for me. There was a little bit of fear that would well up

doing scenes that I had a lot of dialogue in, a fear of going up on my line. And when I started taking it, I noticed that that little fear wasn't there and just flew. It just flowed. I didn't have that hiccup of thought or worry that I wasn't going to remember the line. It was just there.

That's another thing. You have to perform pretty every day. If you go out and pound a bunch of beers and then show up the next day, that doesn't really work. That was a long time. It's been a while since I did that anyway, but when I started doing eating and changing my diet... You have to take care of yourself.

You don't have to, but there are people who don't. I couldn't imagine trying to show up to something and just feeling like shit regularly. This is such a better way to protect myself and not protect myself, but to treat myself with care and be respectful of my body, I guess, in a way. And I can better than present myself and have more gratitude and have a more joyous life um more consistently it's something i'm working on every day but i definitely when i'm fueled properly and i have the brain power to do it it's it's much easier to have this conversation and talk here than if i didn't you know i had i did have my silt up this morning and alpha brain is

another one i do both of those together um You're stacking, which is common. Alpha, GPC, you know, clean. I do a lot of brain stuff depending on the day and the demands. I won't do it every day if I don't have intensive brain or communication stuff that I have to do. Then I'll lay low on that. I notice a difference when I'm taking some of those things with my movement. It's like I'm much more connected with my body with certain nootropics. Not all, but some I do.

I haven't. But with alpha GPC, it seems to be really good. That's cool. I'll have to pay more attention to that. I haven't had that awareness. Yeah. What's not related to fitness or health? I'm so interested, though.

How do you remember all your lines? Did you get like, okay, you go to bed at night, you get like an hour, and then you got to do the next day, or do you do like an hour, then shoot, and then an hour, then shoot? How does that happen? Well, we usually get our scripts at least a week in advance. A week. So you get a week to remember all your lines.

Sometime. Well, but we don't shoot all of the whole script in one day. You mean you don't shoot the whole show live one time? Oh, man. That's not how it works. What? It's a farce. Okay, all right.

I mean, when I was on a soap opera, I did that, but that was before I knew anything about it. Oh, I didn't even know about a soap opera. Oh, yeah, way back when.

Oh, we got to pull that. That was a long time ago. One life to live. And so, you know, but we'll have a day where we'll shoot, call it pages. We shoot pages. That's how we explain how big our day is going to be. We shoot between seven to nine pages of dialogue a day.

If you look at a script that much, sometimes it's action. And sometimes it's just wall-to-wall dialogue. And we have a big cast on our show. We have seven or eight series regulars. So sometimes we're standing around in the Wave Rider, which is our time ship, and I'll just have a couple lines a day, which is hard. Yeah, but it's also really hard to stay in it for 12 hours because I'm just not doing anything.

You've got to get bored. It's scenery. You don't want your board to be too hot or too cold. You want it to be right there in the middle. Yeah. Just right. And then other days where it's just two actors in all day and you have four big scenes,

which generally is more exciting because then I'm doing my job. I'm able to inhabit the character fully and really give and share and get into a flow with the other actor. Um, and, and so what I, what I've done is when I have bigger dialogue days, uh, this is actually, uh, a, uh, skill that my, that my wife started doing and, uh, or trick and, and, and I've started doing it now, um, is to record my dialogue in my audio app, and then listen to it in the car. Like if it's a big, if I have a big day coming up, I'll do it a couple days in advance. And on the way to work, I'll listen to it.

And it just kind of settles in. And if I do that, I don't have to sit down and memorize. It just kind of is there then in a fairly natural way. Have you done any work with Jim Quick? I've met Jim. No, we haven't done that. We haven't, we're always like meeting in social situations and haven't gotten any of his skills.

Yeah, yeah. I've heard so many stories of him working with actors and them having just phenomenal results. Yeah. I think because when I shifted to this way of eating, I didn't have issues with it anymore and I don't have worries about it. So I've already, even though I don't know those tricks and those skills, I didn't have issues with it anymore and I don't have worries about it. So I've already,

even though I don't know those tricks and those skills, it might, I'm using, I don't need them as much maybe because my brain is doing, is doing what it's supposed to be doing because I've cleared up other, other avenues. At home, if you don't know who Jim Quick is, uh, that's his last name spelled K W I K. And he is just awesome with cognition overall speed reading memory Just focus all that stuff and he has just he has these courses and stuff. You can take online It's pretty cool. He came and visited me on on set one day, too. Yeah to check out the gym He's like a superheroes. Yeah nerd like he loves comic books all that stuff So like he loves being able to like work with you guys totally Yeah, so we mentioned that being tired onset is a challenge you work on really long days etc

you know if you if you compare nutrition training and your rest and recovery across the board and you said like for three days you didn't eat very well for three days you didn't really train at all or very well and then for three days you barely slept at all like by far and away not sleeping is going to be the one that really just makes you lose your mind and is going to be the most troubling. So given that out of those three, the one that you're getting the least of is the one that debatably is the most important as far as your, just your, your motivation, your, your cognition, your, your ability to focus your, your, your motivation to do almost anything. Yes. Um, how do you manage that while you're on set, given that you don't have as much control over your day

as you might have over your training or over your nutrition? Very, very good question. And I think it's the thing that I'm challenged with the most is sleep. I know all the facts and I know all this stuff, but I haven't taken control of that aspect as much as I have taken control of other aspects of nutrition and health. You know, there's a couple of supplements I take for nighttime. I take Magtech or some kind of magnesium 3 and 8 product,

sometimes L-theanine for relaxation. I use the Bulletproof Sleep Induction Mat sometimes before sleep. I have filters and stuff on my phone so that I try to stay away from my phone before going to bed to help with natural sleep. Sounds like you got more dialed in than most people. Yeah, but I struggle with the challenges after working a 14-hour day. I want to go home and I want to relax. I want to turn on the TV and just veg for a little while. But sometimes I fall asleep on the couch because it's so relaxing and nice.

You need a harder couch. Then you've got to wipe your kid as well, right? Well, I'm in Vancouver, so sometimes they're up with me, but a lot of times they're in Los Angeles. I fly back every weekend, which presents issues. That's more to do. So more than anything, I think the most important thing is just creating a schedule

and sticking to it as far as I need seven and a half hours of sleep to function best at least. Then trying to stick to that and moving my sleep time earlier also is more beneficial to sleep because I think

the hours would tend to between going to sleep between 10 and 12 is better for most people for good sleep. So falling in that window is challenging because if I'm not working, I'm with my son or doing things throughout the day and with my son and doing night-night and all that kind of stuff. And then you want that time for yourself as well to, to be your own person for a little bit. But, uh, you have to, the, I think the mind game is going, well, I know I will have a better day if I go to sleep now, even though I feel the pull and the desire to do, you know, to watch one more show or do whatever it is and stay up. So, um, that's the, I would imagine after 14 hours of being a superhero that you're kind of wound up.

So do you have a hard time winding back down before bed? And if so, what do you do to get turned down? You know, I'm very grateful. My body chemistry works pretty well for sleep. High five to that. I do too. I can go to sleep anytime, anywhere. I've always fallen asleep pretty well. Nice. I don't necessarily need the other things for sleep, I've always... High five to that. I do too. I can go to sleep anytime, anywhere. I've always fallen asleep pretty well.

Nice. I don't necessarily need the other things for sleep. I just take it to help get a more restful sleep and get more out of my sleep. So I stay away from caffeine. You know, I don't drink, try not to have caffeine past 2 p.m. And so then I don't really have issues being too wound up at all really. So I guess I am sometimes wound up and my brain wants to keep doing things.

So I guess sometimes I do have, and maybe that is I'm not accepting that I do have some challenges, which is why I don't go to sleep early enough because my brain is still going, oh, I could do this, I could do that. We got a therapy session set up for you. We can figure this out.

Therapy session. Where can people find more about what you're doing what you're up to uh well you can follow me on instagram uh brandon j ralph um uh twitter same thing facebook i think the same thing um i don't have a personal website but that's usually if anything interesting is happening in my life i'm there i don't do much when the show's not on because that's mostly personal time and family time but as the show's

starting up again I'll be doing a little more Instagram anyway for sure and we start Legends in July and it'll be out

probably October our third season you can find us on Netflix if you haven't seen the show it's fun silly superhero stuff and yeah excellent October, our third season. You can find us on Netflix if you haven't seen the show. It's fun, silly, superhero stuff. Excellent. Thanks for

sharing with us today. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Brian. At home, make sure you go subscribe on YouTube and head over to iTunes. Give us a five-star review and a positive comment. Nothing less. Thanks. Later.