Barbell Shrugged - Unlocking Your Full Potential: The Rise of Health Optimization w/ Sam Miller, Anders Varner, and Doug Larson #697

Episode Date: May 31, 2023

Sam Miller has more than a decade of experience as a health, fitness, and nutrition coach.  His programs help coaches and health professionals improve their clients’ results.  A popular online educator, podcast host, and mentor, he consistently offers simple, strategic methods for transformation and translates complex concepts into leverage for any health and fitness goal. His workshops, classes, and specialization programs have served over 2,500 coaches worldwide. He has been a featured speaker for companies like LinkedIn and a content contributor for industry titans such as Barbell Shrugged, Muscle Intelligence, T-Nation, Elite FTS, and more.  He is a certified nutritionist and licensed, board-certified health practitioner who holds a master’s degree from North Carolina State University and a Bachelor of Science from Elon University. To learn more about RAPID Health Optimization, please visit https://rapidhealthreport.com to see a free lab, lifestyle, and performance analysis from Dr. Andy Galpin and Dan Garner   Connect with our guests: Sam Miller Science on Instagram Sam Miller Science Website Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Dan Garner on Instagram

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, Sam Miller from Sam Miller Science, back in the house. Wanna say we had him on for his book launch last October, November, and he is back. It's always a pleasure having him on. And this week we are digging into what looks to be this new trend of health optimization. And this is something,

a space that he has been in for a long time. We obviously are in the same space with rapid health optimization. And it's been very cool to see how many people He has been in for a long time. We obviously are in the same space with Rapid Health Optimization. And it's been very cool to see how many people are shifting the conversation from working with medical doctors, kind of like a fear or a distrust in large institutions and looking for alternative ways to optimize their health. Sam is doing a great job coaching a lot of coaches on nutrition analyzing blood work really understanding

what comprehensive lab work looks like and how to help their clients so we thought it'd be a great person to come in and just kind of talk about really like the the state of the industry and where it's moving to and and the speed and some of the stats behind what people on the consumer side are really looking for and how he's helping coaches develop those skill sets so that they can help people on a deeper level. You can always go check him out, Sam Miller Science, and then of course, Rapid Health Optimization over at rapidhealthreport.com. That is where Dr. Andy Galpin and Dan Garner are doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis so you can see what everybody inside Rapid Health Optimization is getting

so they can see their protocols. As always, friends, rapidhealthreport.com. Let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrug. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Sam Miller from Sam Miller Science. Pre-show, I cut you off. Dude, you just launched a bestselling book. I appreciate it, man. Yeah. Number one, new release in nutrition, health, mind and body reference. And then, uh, did hit that bestseller mark in November, which was really cool. Um, if you asked me like 10 years ago, if I would have written a book, I'd probably tell you you're crazy, but it was a important vehicle for me to deliver information to the people. So I'm excited. It was well-received and obviously for you listeners out there, like wouldn't be possible without you guys

who actually read the content listen to the content support guys like me Anders and Doug so thank you for your interest in science but health fitness nutrition wait wait wait what was the title of the book I don't even know about this yet tell me about it

the title of the book was metabolism what did you write? oh Doug I to the show we did what did you ah doug i missed i missed the show it was i got the day off metabolism made simple making sense of nutrition to transform metabolic health so metabolism made simple is basically just taking some key pillars that i've learned uh being in the industry for over 15 years and distilling it down into basic practices that regardless of whether you are trying to lose weight or build muscle, what are key themes or general cornerstone concepts that everybody needs to understand as it pertains to their metabolism and metabolic health? And how can we use those levers to

achieve the individual goals that we have. Because far too many books out there, I see a lot of this diet book and that diet book and follow this and this meal plan, and you got to follow this insert at the end and here's your workout. I wanted to teach people to think critically. It's like that scene in The Matrix where Morpheus gives Neo the pill and he can now actually see what's going on. We have so much diet dogma in the industry that like people don't actually learn the critical thinking skill. It's always following, well, you know, so-and-so influencer or coach is doing this, or this person's doing that. And rather than adopting what's best for us and having a framework to test it, a lot of times we just end up kind of following things that other people are doing. And fitness and nutrition are very susceptible to groupthink. So I create the book

to help people have access to the same level of thinking and strategy that I would use if I were working with a client. Awesome. Every time I hear a buddy of mine over the years say like, oh, I'm going to write a book. I'm like, are you having an entrepreneurial midlife crisis? You're not going to finish that book. And if you do, I don't know if all the speaking gigs are coming, but you actually went and did it. Be proud of yourself, sir. I appreciate it, man. Yeah. It wasn't quite the crisis that you may have expected. It was certainly, I think one thing that is incredible, it just goes to show the power of understanding. Like once you participate in health and fitness,

you learn to appreciate delayed gratification and a book is literally the epitome of delayed gratification. You write the thing and then it just like, it's with your editors and publishers for God knows how long. And then eventually it ends up, you know, available for sale. But that's how I actually, I've heard you don't write a book. You rewrite a book. Like once you write it the first time you're like, maybe half done and you got to go. Editing and citation, you know, fortunately I had some, you know, I had editors, I had a citations team, but like, it is really, it's so much more than your outline and initial things. And, you know, as a content creator and Anders and Doug, I'm sure you can relate to this, you guys

have so much content from over the years that you've batched and accumulated. You have ways that you explain things. Anders, you got emails that you write and you know how you like to teach stuff and how you say it and the analogies that you use. And so I went into it being like, man, well, I've already written so many captions and blogs and emails. I've got a bank of content I can just pull from. I'm going to crank this out. And then it's like, no, but weaving it together and creating this

cohesive piece of information, integrating it, and then delivering it in a way that it's readable from start to finish is very, very different than the type of work that we're used to as entrepreneurial fitness professionals, where it's like, hey, I'm going to sit down and write this newsletter. And you're writing for clicks or open rates or getting someone to engage on an Instagram or do something related to your coaching or to teach a concept with a finite attention span. Whereas when someone's picking up your book, they're investing a larger amount of time with you. It's a very different reading experience. So I don't know, maybe it was like a little bit past the quarter life crisis, I guess. I'm not quite all the way to midlife crisis, but it was definitely an interesting experience, taught me a lot of things. And I think for me, it helped to reinforce a lot of what it is that I'm trying to teach folks and practice different

ways of delivery and articulating things that are important in the space. So definitely. I knew you were, I knew you were on a good path because I didn't know that you were writing the book until it was about to be published, which means you weren't just talking about writing a book. You were actually writing the book and then it was ready. Yeah. I'd rather be the person that, you know, you kind of that you walk the walk instead of talking the talk or just work in silence. I don't know. Obviously, the more media society to like, oh, I got a document. I'm making moves. You know, it's like, if you're making moves, you don't need to post the story. I mean, it's okay to say what you're up to from time to time.

But I think so many people got into this habit of posting about stuff before they actually did it. But sometimes you just have to sit down and do the work. And even though it was a longer time horizon, it still flew by, man. Because I mean, in between our little coffee chats and visits that we do from time to time, it was still enough to put a pretty big dent in the book. So, uh, yeah, just like little compounding efforts, just like our health and fitness stuff that we talked about. Yeah, dude, today, uh, today on the show, I wanted to get into a really like this, this massive trend that we are seeing. And we can we can we can

compare to all of the past trends, from like paleo to CrossFit to the zone diet and like the countless things that we've seen come across our, our eyes over the past. Now for me, my 27th summer of training, which is insane. And then 13 years actually doing this to be able to feed my family. Health optimization seems to be like the biggest thing that, I mean, one, we're in it, you're in it as well. You were one of the first people that I actually saw as a nutrition coach that was like reading blood work and helping people with supplementation that was beyond just like fish oil, multivitamin and a good protein powder, maybe some creatine. And that trend seems to have from really, if I were to kind of categorize like the group of people that we are working with the most is really like this baby boomer society that

didn't have all of this infer society population that didn't have all of this emperor society uh population uh that didn't have all of this like very high level information going through their like entrepreneurial or 30s and 40s and now they get to this point where they go well now i'd like to live forever how do i do that and the standard fat loss models is not really like the thing that that is going to get them there sure they might need to lose some weight but it is not really like the thing that is going to get them there. Sure, they might need to lose some weight, but it's not really like the dial that they need to turn in order to be able to go from lifespan of 65, 75 years old to how do I live and live well into my 90s. And or people that show up and they're already in pretty good shape. They already train. They already eat well. They think they're doing a good job, but then they still don't feel

like they think they should feel. They don't feel like they used to for sure. And they're very confused about it. And so they're looking for alternative solutions, but they can't go to a regular personal trainer and their doctor doesn't know what to do either. And so they're like, where do I go? What do I do? And then we're like, we're filling this, this very large gap right now. Yeah. There's definitely a huge gray area. And I think Anders, what you spoke to in terms of baby boomers is accurate. People who are looking to live longer, improved health span, longevity, all of those factors. And then there's definitely younger people reaching out for this too, as Doug mentioned, even as young as I think millennials who just have a general distrust for their medical doctors,

pharmaceuticals, you know, it's close to half the population. It's about 55% that distrust their medical doctor, 46 to 55-ish percent that distrust pharmaceutical companies. Some of that is a byproduct of recent years, but also some of it's been going on for a very long time where if no one asks you about your nutrition, your diet, your lifestyle, your movement, your sleep, and prescribes you a medication, you know, you've probably heard the phrase, it's like, that's not your doctor, that's a drug dealer. But the general sentiment that we have to understand is that people are just, they're wanting more, they're craving more than just caloric regression progression. It's not just only sets and reps in the gym. People want that plus quality

of life. And they also want the energy to go do things. It's one thing to go, you know, uh, exert effort for an hour in the gym, but it's like, okay, how, how are the other 23 hours of the day? How's your sleep? How's your ability to manage your blood sugar, your stress, um, show up, you know, obviously Anders, you talk about doing stuff with your kids all the time. It's more than just the four or five training sessions per week or more if you're an athlete or maybe slightly less if you're a weekend warrior. And I think whether from millennials all the way to baby boomers, it may be for different reasons, right? Maybe with the baby boomer, you're optimizing the lipid profile and inflammatory markers,

C-reactive proteins, certain longevity factors. Maybe the millennial unfortunately has a hereditary risk factor for Hashimoto's and autoimmunity, and they're looking to manage their gut health, thyroid, improve fatigue, brain fog, cognition, because we have a self-employed female entrepreneur who's 32 and she also wants to optimize, you know, not only for her energy levels, hedge against Hashis, and she cares about fertility because she's family planning with her partner. You know, there's so much more to it where if you went to that conventional personal trainer in any big box gym, CrossFit, personal training studio, whatever the case may be, it's like, they're not really able to serve at that level. So then that person goes to their doctor,

they ask a couple of questions and usually they just get frustrated or they're told, you're normal, you're good. You're not sick. So you're fine. You're okay. But they oftentimes want more than that as, as Doug alluded to. Shark family, I want to take a quick break. If you are enjoying today's conversation, I want to invite you to come over to rapidhealthreport.com. When you get to rapidhealthreport.com, you will see an area for you to opt in, in which you can see Dan Garner read through my lab work. Now, you know that we've been working at Rapid Health Optimization on programs for optimizing health. Now, what does that actually mean? It means in three parts, we're going to be doing a ton of deep dive into your labs. That means the inside out approach.

So we're not going to be guessing your macros. We're not going to be guessing the total calories that you need. We're actually going to be doing all the work to uncover everything that you have going on inside you. Nutrition, supplementation, sleep. And then we're going to go through and analyze your lifestyle. Dr. Andy Galpin is going to build out a lifestyle protocol based on the severity of your concerns. And then we're going to also build out all the programs that go into that based on the most severe things first. This truly is a world-class program. And we invite you to see step one of this process by going over to rapidhealthreport.com. You can see Dan reading

my labs, the nutrition and supplementation that he has recommended that has radically shifted the way that I sleep, the energy that I have during the day, my total testosterone level, and my ability to trust and have confidence in my health going forward. I really, really hope that you're able to go over to rapidhealthreport.com, watch the video of my labs and see what is possible. And if it is something that you are interested in, please schedule a call with me on that page. Once again, it's rapidhealthreport.com and let's get back to the show. Also, I have this, you know, and this really speaks to a lot of the programs that you're putting out, coaches that you're working with. I feel like the people that are very interested in being good at what they do, and it just happens that we are in fitness, nutrition, health, wellness, that space.

The idea that you can be a macro coach and still be considered very good at what you do, when there are literally thousands and thousands of macro coaches on the internet that anybody can go find, they have to go learn about blood work. And then once you go learn about blood work, then it seems that the next thing that you need to do is get into cortisol or melatonin and saliva, urine analysis, then gut health becomes a thing. That continued pursuit of trying to be very good at what you do has to almost lead to meeting somebody like you to go figure out what the next level of the game is. Because for many times in my life, why I end up leaving an opportunity or starting a new program or something. I just get so bored

with the information because you stop learning if you are just that macro coach, or you're not really meeting your audience with the next level of what they're doing. So you don't have renewals, you don't have referrals coming into your business. And coaches have to go develop those skills that can continue to make their clients better. Or you're just going to be in that hamster wheel of having to go find the next person that is interested in average macro coaching. Yeah, I think you speak to a couple really good points there. The last point being, there's a retention aspect to having a deeper relationship with someone, right? When you're their go-to health concierge,

you're their go-to touchpoint person for all of that, you have a different relationship and understanding of their life than the person who's just making some macro manipulations on a very surface level. So one is I think depth of relationship and retention. Otherwise, you have this issue of client churn. In terms of the industry as a whole and what you spoke to, I think part of the earlier sentiments that you shared is just really speaking to the fact that success really is like the fulfillment of our own true potential. And I don't think adjusting 15 carbs and three grams of fat is someone's true potential if they are very passionate about health, fitness, and nutrition. I think furthermore, when you make those

manipulations, there's a massive gap between those thousands of coaches in the industry and people who actually understand what happens on a deeper physiological level. I make a macro adjustment, right? What happens? So it's one thing to have this sort of gateway program, right? It's sort of lethal in a way is people learn about macros, but they don't understand the implication of the adjustment they made to the macros or I'm changing your food and your portions, but okay, what does that mean in terms of your micronutrient status? So then we need these different testing avenues to identify potential weak points based on history of dieting or following these approaches or playing macro Tetris because we have certain

blind spots. And, and, you know, even in terms of our own health, even if I were trying to dial things in, I may have a predisposition to certain things. Maybe I need support for methylation or, you know, there's so many other things that could go into it in terms of optimal health. But I think there's really two points you make there. One is about being an expert and also fulfilling your potential, which I think requires continued learning and depth of knowledge. And then the second thing is you can't take for granted how that depth of knowledge carries over into depth of relationship because you're just having different conversations. I mean, Andrew, you and I are even having different conversations now than we had two, three years ago. And it's because we both kept learning stuff.

I mean, we're still down this rabbit hole, figuring stuff out together and texting each other from time to time. And, you know, Doug's there too, but I think there's like a, a level of like continued exploration, which then provides more value for your people. And it's just, you know, it's helpful. Most of us got into this because we just really care about health and fitness too, for ourselves. And we're tinkering and, you know, we like to play with stuff. Yeah. There, there really is a, a depth to the knowledge. Um, and, and once you start digging into physiology, that conversation really is infinite in my opinion, like the, the questions that need to be asked when you're

asking, when you're asking physiology questions, there's, there's an enormous amount of data that needs to be looked at, um, an enormous amount of systems that need to be understood and how they all play together. Uh, but you do get to go solve real problems. And when we first started doing this, like people had been through our diesel dad program and lost 20, 30, 40 pounds felt better than they ever had felt. And then we go and run labs on them and we go, oh, you need to go to the doctor like right now. We can't even work with you because there's serious risks that we would never have seen had we not taken the deep dive and actually figured out what's going on. Like, are you healthier? Of course you are. You're down 40 pounds. It's incredible. You don't have that inflammation.

You're not dealing with how taxing that is on your body. But when you start to dig into health and you're not just looking at pure fat loss, those are wildly different questions. Super different questions. And I think what you're speaking to is both longevity, health span, understanding risk factors, certain predisposition, like you may approach something very differently, just having a few lab markers, right? In terms of, okay, am I going with a different macronutrient allocation? Does someone need some additional nutritional support from a micronutrient? If we're not asking the questions about gut health and some of these deeper things. So some are very important just for your health, longevity and life status as a human and addressing very specific risk factors.

Like for me, for example, um, I'll give the audience a little bit of example. I, you know, have a family history on my dad's side of cardiovascular risk. So what that might look like in terms of my exploration is I'm going to go beyond what my primary care doctor draws for me, which is just an LDL, maybe HDL, maybe a triglyceride. I'm going to do lipoprotein A, APOB. I'm going to look at CRP, which is a highly sensitive C-reactive protein. It's an inflammatory marker. I may go a little bit further. Maybe I'll go get a calcium score done. And I look at actual plaque in terms of the plaque development and plaque buildup. And that provides a, what I talk about with the client cases, right? Is in conventional health and fitness, we have about

90 degrees of the picture, maybe 180, if we're lucky. A full kind of spectrum view of someone's health should be 360 degrees. So if, if Anders and I are in a room and I were to walk a circle around him, I could see the front of his face. I could move towards his ears. I can move towards the back of the head, come all the way around. So he's wearing a hat right now. I can literally see, okay, is that a trucker hat or is that a fitted hat? I'm coming around. Okay, cool. I'm able to see his face. We make eye contact. I have a 360 view of everything that's going on. Western medicine in acute care settings, sometimes it's like 45 to 90 degrees. I think conventional macro coaching and health and fitness professionals doing personal training, maybe it's 45 to 90 degrees. Maybe I do a functional movement screen,

or I have an idea of someone's hip and ankle mobility and what they're doing in the gym, but I'm still only getting part of the picture. And then this gray area that Doug was referencing earlier, that helps to complete this full comprehensive going beyond just this surface level and getting the depth that we need in terms of depth of knowledge and depth of relationship. So imagine being able to not only go 90 degrees, not only go 180 degrees, but have a 360 viewpoint. It doesn't mean you're the one, you know, Anders, you mentioned sending them to their doctor, maybe they need a prescription or maybe they need a intervention or surgery or procedures. So for

example, my dad needed a stent at some point, right? Health coach isn't going to do that. You're going to go to a cardiovascular surgeon. However, the person, if someone would have met my dad in his thirties or forties, and they pulled an LPA, an APOB, a CRP, all of these things, a lot of this could have been prevented. Two procedures could have been prevented. Talk about massive costs through the health insurance system, you know, long, long use of statin medications and things like that, ultimately shifting to a newer, more novel drug, which was very expensive when it first came out. That was even beyond the category of statins. And so you look at a situation like that, it's like, what would a more comprehensive

picture of health done for that person? And that's just one example of someone who had a 98% blockage. And one reason I'm passionate about it, you know, in terms of my health, I've got my own health history. And I've seen this with countless clients as well, whether it's doesn't have to just be heart health, right? It could be fertility, it could be low testosterone, it could be autoimmune risk, it could be certain deficiencies and hereditary risk factors. So I only use that example to describe and articulate how when we only have a fraction of the viewpoint, we really miss the fact that there's more to the story and so much that can be done from a preventive health perspective, but also the optimization aspect that Doug was talking about for younger individuals.

And if you're healthy, you need that baseline so you can prevent future risk down the road, or God forbid, something doesn't feel good three years from now, five years from now, 10 years from now, you've established my status quo of like, this is where I feel my best. So whether you're in a good spot or you feel like trash, both of those people actually should be getting labs and baseline, you know, preventive health testing. Yeah. You mentioned earlier, kind of like the distrust in whether it's pharmaceutical companies, large institutions on the medical side or government side. Do you find many people kind of actually expressing that? Or do you feel like the trend is expressing it without really coming out and like a client saying like,

well, I just don't trust my doctors at all. Because I feel like I kind of see both of those, but I feel like there's a storm coming or this wave of distrust in so many places and really maybe COVID put this thing in overdrive. But I feel like that distrust has taken off lately, whether it's explicitly stated or just feeling the groundswell building. I would agree with that. I would say the general distrust to me initially over the past few years, well, so let's go pre-2020. Pre-2020 was more general skepticism and just overall lack of enthusiasm about their doctor's visits. Right. So it wasn't always overtly negative, but we had this class of, you know, this class of early adopters. So similar to technology, you know, when the iPhone first

came out, you had people who were like, wait a minute. So I've got a screen. I don't have buttons. You're getting rid of my BlackBerry. What are you doing? Early adopters in the industry who are in that situation, I was in the same boat. Scrolling through all those sort of apps with your thumb there. I know, right? And going from my flip phone back in the day. But we do have folks who are early adopters. And that was, I think, really 2010, 2015 to 2020, you had the early adopters who were already a little bit skeptical or less than enthusiastic about Western medicine and primary care. They were seeking alternative interventions. Maybe they had an interest in Eastern medicine and things that were viewed as a little weird or hokey. Those are like the early, early people. I think that general lack

of enthusiasm or bit of skepticism has then picked up steam to where now more people have an overt distrust or they're likely to make decisions on their own with or without, you know, with a health professional, or maybe they're just like, I don't know that I want to refill this medication, or I'm going to go reach out for this second opinion, or I'm going to go draw, you know, ask and find someone who can, you know, or even beginning with a simple Google search, right? So before we hopped on this episode, we talked about how searches, you know, for this type of service, health optimization, functional health, functional nutrition has increased 5,000% over the past five years. So some people may be searching in silence

or even maybe suffering a little bit in silence because they're unaware. And that's why I think this conversation that we're having today is so important is the first step is awareness that there's an alternative. And then it's around, okay, what is the best pursuit within this alternative that I have? So I would say, Anders, I agree with you. Not everybody's vocal. There may be a few people carrying the flag who are extra vocal or really upset, or maybe there's a political flair to it and arguments around it. But then there's definitely the, I'd say, crux or core of society where maybe they're not super happy with how things are going. They don't love it, but they're not as aware of the alternatives that exist. But if presented with one, they might be interested in pursuing it yeah i

you're working with a bunch yeah go ahead doug sorry i was gonna say i feel like like crossfit had this big wave of course like strength and strength and conditioning became mainstream became very popular everyone was training and now now everyone's lifting weights old people ladies everybody and became normal and then the wave after that was like nutrition coaching became really popular, especially like virtual nutrition coaching. And then TRT and just hormone replacement therapy in general was like also on the rise. And so you have people that now, now strength conditioning is normal. Nutrition coaching is normal. Hormone replacement therapy and getting, you know, hormone based labs done is normal. Then you go to your doctor and get your normal cbc cmp type labs normal blood work labs but then you're you're all

piecemeal so you have you have strength and conditioning over here nutrition over here and hormones over here and then doctor over here and so now you have this this very disjointed team spread across many different locations and they're not they're not communicating with each other and so eventually like with what we're doing right now, many people that were already doing this, but it was very fragmented, are like, where can I find this where it's just all one complete comprehensive system where the whole team is communicating

with the other people on the team. And it's just one program rather than a bunch of programs kind of just like stapled together. Yeah, the fragmentation versus integration is super important. And I think we were seeing that because people had to piecemeal things together on their own, or you couldn't find a coach that knew how to set you up for success with your

performance and your periodization that also understood your labs. And I think we need to get to a place in the industry where the norm is understanding that there's a responsibility. If I'm going to manipulate someone's physiology via macro micronutrition, I need to understand how to get them out of it. Right. So even, you know, I came from, you guys are a little bit more CrossFit background. I certainly had an interest in CrossFit, trained in CrossFit gyms for a while as a, like a contractor there using the space. So I'm familiar with the facilities. I'm familiar with the general vibe and classes and all that. And then in my own personal journey, I spent a little bit of time on the bodybuilding side of things, physique side of things, and more kind of the

aesthetics aspect of sport and prepping to get on stage and things. And there's in both examples, both CrossFit and bodybuilding, there's, and you could go to powerlifting, you could go to MMA or UFC with weight restriction and weight cutting. All of these different sports, whether you could have the argument with Travis at another time, if these are actually sports or not, but you know, all of these different pursuits, all of these different athletic pursuits, all of these different physique pursuits, they impose demands on your physiology. Like Anders was referencing earlier,

there's a different type of body burden and not all coaches understand how to alleviate that stress, that physiological stress or that body burden and get someone out of that place. And so we, what we've ended up with is we have an industry of people who can get people dialed at, like get them to a point where they're super lean or they're great at CrossFit or they're, you know, they make weight for their MMA or powerlifting meet, but like, they're really not that healthy. And then you got to have someone who gets them out of it. Or that person who dieted, who was a CrossFitter or UFC MMA or bodybuilding, that person needed TRT, like Doug said. So they went and got on HRT and then they were still going to the regular doctor and they still have their nutrition coach or maybe strength and conditioning coach that set them up for the first, you know, in the first place. to both dial you in from a physiological perspective that enhances not only your body

composition, but also your health. And that's not to say that when you diet, you may have some transient metabolic adaptations, right? But you have a coach who understands how to mitigate that as much as possible. And when I say metabolic adaptations, I just mean there's some natural downregulation that occurs when you're dieting. But if you have a really good coach, they can sort of mitigate or ameliorate some of those concerns through intelligent program design. So what would it look like in five years where you have someone who understands the hormones aspect, understands the nutritional periodization aspect, maybe understands what type of program you should be on and then can move you through those different seasons and still keep your priorities in life in mind,

I think is very important. And then that person, because they speak a higher level language, avoid some of the stigma that maybe the meathead personal trainer might, right? Because you come across a little bit, you know your stuff, you're a little more polished, a little more intellectual, where when you go to a white collar profession, like a doctor, you can actually communicate with that person for the client's best interest. So in Doug's example of fragmentation versus integration, we think about, okay, I understand what's going on in the client's labs and their prescription, or I understand that if the doctor is providing them with HRT, this is what this means in terms of what needs to be going on with their nutrition or their sleep or why we're doing what we're doing. Or maybe they're only going to the doctor

every six months for bed management anyways, but as the nutrition and health coach, I'm checking in with them every week. So it's a completely different cadence of communication. And the health coach still ends up with the deeper relationship because the frequency of meeting with your doctor is just so infrequent that the depth of connection is always going to fall on the side of the health and fitness professional unless something changes drastically about physician communication and the frequency of interaction. Because even if you're on drugs, you're really only getting looked at maybe every three to six months unless you're with someone who's really, really more in this optimal health realm. And they're trying to get you dialed in when you first start

a medication that may be over 12 weeks. After that, you're really looking at maybe six months to 12 months or annual communication that's happening with that person. And that's why I think having this understanding of how this is going to impact the health and fitness industry is super, super important. Yeah. I actually would love to hear your thoughts on this in that the first time someone is going to go bring on their nutrition client and say, Hey, go get your blood work done. They're not going to be great at that skill. And how do we, and this is really like a lot of your coaching program, but what is kind of the step-by-step process of getting somebody that goes, I'm tired of being a macro coach. I want to take this thing in my education further, help people on a deeper level. It's going to start with blood work. That's

the most obvious one. It's the easiest to order. They can, they can work with their doctor. And then what is, what is really the next step? How do they, how do they actually build the confidence and the skillset to take their game to the next level to really be able to help people through supplementation and not medication and being able to actually analyze people's labs? Part of it starts with your own self-exploration. And just like how you probably, I would hope, when you started training, you were training with yourself, playing around with your training program, rep schemes, different lifts, different movements. Maybe you're like, I don't know, maybe Anders was like, oh, I'm really digging the front squat versus the back squat right now. I'm going to do Bulgarians in this training block.

You start off with iterations of what you know, Bulgarians in this training block, you know, you start off with iterations of what you know, and it's most responsible to deploy the information on yourself. So as much as we don't really have, you know, in the health and fitness industry, we should have an oath or ethics and integrity of some kind, but in the medical space, right, it's supposed to be do no harm, right? I still think as a health and fitness professional, just how you would spot someone on a bench press to keep them safe. I think you should also use the same level of care when, you know, act like this person's literally trying to hit a rep with like 315 to 405 on the bar. And like, if they drop it, they're, they're toast without you. Yeah. So you have to have a level of care is very, very important. And I think intention,

intentionality is everything. I think there's, there's going to be some people who listen to this, who are like, I really want to help on that level. And then other people look at this as a way to make money and they're going to try to take a shortcut. And if you skip the level of care and responsibility that's required to do this the right way, you're ultimately going to damage your reputation in the long run. So I do think there's a very strong that like uh what is it like the spider-man quote i feel like i've said this like seven times recently but it's like with great power comes great responsibility isn't that yeah i misquoted i don't have the

action figure thing but i've heard the quote okay you've heard the quote so at some point i misattributed that to batman and i i had some trolls come out of the wood oh if you get if you get the wrong superhero that's bad that's bad news for the people that actually they're genuinely offended some some really important character may have been marvel comics uh once you know once said that but i think a level of responsibility is very very important i would start with self-experimentation and maybe hiring a coach for yourself who specializes in that area or going through something like what you guys do and experiencing it. Then what I would do, or maybe even for yourself, let's say you're not in a place where you're ready to invest in coaching or transformation program, whatever,

spend the money on some testing for yourself, or just go in contrast, the Western medical experience with what we're talking about today, go through and see the look that you get when you're like, can you also pull my free testosterone? And I'm actually interested in what's going on with my thyroid. And they only pull a TSH, right? And you want more information, go through that and see how it feels to be on the receiving end of it for then when you're coaching sally who's perimenopausal and and wants to have her hormones drawn and the doctor won't do it you understand what she's going through so i think a little bit of of self um you know self-discovery is important that's kind of step one and building your awareness i think awareness is key because

then you understand the problem when you go when when you then pursue the education, you have a why behind what you're doing. You have a why you understand there's a flaw in the system. I'm doing this to provide value to people. And I need, I have a level of intentionality with it. Then you can essentially come to a program like what we do in the functional nutrition and metabolism specialization, which is inside of my sort of flagship now is called metabolism school or metabolism school.com. And what we do is we have to teach the physiology first and just basics on here's how metabolism works. Here's your endocrine system. This is what, this is what happens with various nutritional stimulus, stress, lack of sleep. Here's what insulin resistance is. Here's thyroid, adrenals, gut health. But then instead

of leaving it in a silo or just reading a textbook it's like very integrated and then learning how to apply it and this can either be with your i think this is where mentorship and apprenticeship is super important with this type of stuff because you know hundreds of years ago before we had the commoditization of education you would literally shadow someone to be the next whatever, whether it was a shoemaker, if you were a locksmith, metal worker, doctor, you know, before there were super prominent medical schools, you know, hundreds of years ago, it's like you would go and you would work with the person who came before you in that field. And I think we need a mix of both in the fitness industry,

right? Yeah. Yes. You need to go get that initial certification, but you also need some mentorship, some apprenticeship and going through it. I do think first, start with your health journey and then go seek out that education. And then what we do is we have the live hands-on application where we're looking at real life client cases and people and scenarios, and we're walking through those scenarios. That way, when you then hop on the phone with a prospective client, you're able to, number one, discern the issues that they actually have, have an educated conversation. There's less of an intimidation factor because it's like exposure therapy, right? And you're able to actually be in this think tank of other people who are dealing with similar things, or maybe they're slightly ahead

of you, right? Maybe they have some of these clients who are working on some of these cases, trying to address constipation or trying to reduce bloat or improve low testosterone naturally, whatever the case may be. And that's going to give you a little bit more confidence because you've seen it before. It's like the difference between if you played sports growing up, there's a huge difference when you prepare, you watch some game film, you've got the playbook in front of you, and you can go into an event and you're ready versus you just get thrown on the field and you have no idea what you're doing. So this is like seeing the play before it happens. You've run the play before, you've got a lot of practice, which gives you more experience as you go through. But I think this journey for everyone needs to start with self. And then from there, you have a greater understanding of why it's important for other people. And then that's where I come in is I'm, I'm kind of that step after you've been sort of exposed, right? You've, you've cultivated a level of awareness around the topic. Yeah. I think there's also a masterpiece there. And fall into this a lot you mentioned like me going in and you know how did i like learn bulgarian split squats or back squats or why do i like front

squats some it's different stages more than that all of this like i don't have an exercise science degree it's just been like 20 plus years of just figuring it out and when you when you figure it out for that long and you're around the right people and you, you make enough good decisions and you kind of feel like you, you have this like, um, real understanding of, of how these pieces fit together. And then all of a sudden you have to go take, take a look internally. Then you realize like you spent all this time learning a skillset that, um that was really just scratching the surface. And I think that that's a very, very cool thing on the coaching side of it,

is to realize that there is an entire world out there of knowledge and skills that need to be developed for you to actually be able to step into that idea of mastery. Because until you understand the internal side of it, you're really just scratching the surface with sets and reps and periodization and macro coaching. That's why there's thousands and thousands of them that are on the internet right now. And they're all saying the same thing. It's because it's a very hard skill to learn. And it's a very hard skill to develop and feel

confident in yourself and going about it. And finding a mentor that is actually going to be able to teach you how those systems function together is extremely important. Yeah, I love that Anders. And the squat example is great. Like some of it is you had to do reps in the gym. You were not confident about deadlifting or even pushups, right? Like we can all think back to what was like elementary school or sports practice or middle school. You know, if you asked me, Doug or Anders to do a pushup right now, we feel pretty good because we've spent time doing pushups, just like most of the health professionals listening to this. Or maybe if, you know, you got a background, whether it's CrossFit or functional health, bodybuilding, whatever it is, or you're just like a seasoned gym goer, you probably feel fine. You're like, yeah, sure, man. I'll knock out a few pushups. I feel good about that. But there's other areas of the industry where if you just, if you have less reps doing it, you don't, you don't feel as confident. And the best way to get reps is, you know, maybe when you learned how to do it, maybe you watched a YouTube video or you had a trainer in the gym with you, or you had photos in a men's health magazine, whatever it was that helped you get in there in the trenches and do it. But the reason why I think,

and you spoke to this Anders, the reason it's different with the stuff that we're talking about with health optimization is it's this very powerful thing. And so you do have to respect the depth of it. And that's where having, you know, I think going through yourself and then also having some people on your team to help you with it can be, because the difference is, is like if you mess up a pushup, right, maybe you just failed the rep, you missed the rep, or maybe, you know, your split squat form is not perfect. Maybe you like tweak something or, you know, your hip flexor on the down leg is a little tight or it bothers your knees. But when you're doing this with someone else, you have the potential to steer them the wrong

direction pretty significantly. And there's an op, like you, you're not going to hurt someone in the acute setting of a bench press where the bar lands on them. However, you're steering their health over a longer time horizon, which has important implications, right? Like very serious implications. So, and same thing with, with supplements and stuff too. This is why understanding like minimum effective dose and effective dosing of supplements and also what things to use at certain times and why we're doing them and the type of diet style to use and certain micronutrients, you know, it all works together as part of a bigger picture. And that's why I think learning the physiology is so important is because you actually can begin to do stuff

responsibly. It'll even make your training better. It'll make your nutrition better. It's like supercharging the stuff that you already do know and adding a nice layer on top of it. So I love that you kind of use, you know, the, the examples, Anders, like the front squat example and how it connects because a lot of people who listen to this, whether it's their own health and fitness journey, or they are looking to work with people or separate themselves. I think that's a really important point. And I don't know, man, I mean, do you think it's just thousands at thousands at this point to me it seemed maybe it's just because i'm in the bubble but and doug you can speak to this too but i mean it seems like i'd say upwards of 10 000 oh it's it's enormous i um i i actually so there's like there's there's uh an enormous number of people i i say thousands

just because it sounds like a big number, but I'm in the bubble too. I honestly choose not to go on Instagram anymore because I just know there's a billion people that Instagram is tracking me being in the health and fitness thing that they're going to hit me with fat loss information. And I just, I like can't look at it anymore. Like I've unfollowed all those people. They're still great people, but I just don't want to see it. It doesn't matter. It's not that interesting to me. It may be 10,000. It may be 20,000. I don't know the exact number, but it's an enormous number of people. And then it's actually a great lead into what I also wanted to ask of. How can people,

and this is more on the consumer side and less on the coach side of finding somebody that matches them at the level that they want to play the game at. And that I've also seen, and I'll call this tens to potentially like hundred of the 10X health or Mark Hyman's got his program and blood work. And there's lots of people that are out there reading blood and doing more comprehensive lab work. How does somebody actually know where to get the answers to the questions that they're trying to solve? Because everybody is saying that they're advanced, comprehensive. They've moved themselves out of standard medical care. And now that's becoming a catchy tagline. But does the service actually back up the promise?

Yeah, I think that's great that you asked the consumer side. I mean, I like that even getting exposed to when you were shifting gears into this anderson doug you guys have some videos people can watch of this happening right like for a person um i think that's cool i like the video tutorial idea i think you guys still connect with people i mean my understanding anders last time we met you guys were still doing phone calls with people to kind of uh you know assess assess their situation. Yeah. If it's a good fit to work together. I think that type of stuff with what we're talking about is very important because you can watch someone do it in real time.

And then just because it's a greater depth of relationship and you're sharing personal information, it is important to have that rapport. So I like that the way you guys kind of do it there. I, you know, obviously we're friends, like I'm a little biased to the stuff that you guys do, but you know, there are other good people in the industry. I just, just using you guys as an example, I like that there's some videos you can see. I like that there's this bank of content with, I'm a big podcast guy too, building that know, like, and trust of, I can go listen to these people talk shop about this

and understand how they might apply it to me. I think that's really important. And whether that's you guys, or maybe one of our other mutual friends, you know, there's good, good people out there. So I would say one is what is their content saying? And do I resonate with the content that they share? Two is, is there an ability for me to explore this further? Can I sample it? And if you can sample it and you like the sample, okay, cool. That's like your taste test. Let's move to the next thing. Then can I connect with them about my individual situation and learn more to see if it's a good fit for me? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. If it is, then I can invest in and go from there. If it's not, then maybe I need to go with a different program. Those would be

my first three steps. I don't like the, for lack of a better term, when you go to a single page, like, oh, I'm going to check out with this bundle of these labs and supplements and a lot of tailored customers. they use words like optimization, but it's not individualized to you. And in order for something to truly be optimized, it has to have, they need the testing background in order to determine what you need. There are people in more of that integrative health space right now where it's like, everybody goes through the same protocol and it's like, but that's like putting everyone on the same macros, right? It's not custom.

That's very cookie cutter. So that would be a red flag to me. So I obviously can't make the choice for people. I can't determine what they do, where they spend their time, how they give their attention or their money. But I would say I would look for the opportunity to learn more via free content, explore a bit further through sampling, whether that's a workshop or connecting on a call of some kind, and then taking it from there. And that's similar to how I did things when I was doing more on the consumer side before really being busy on helping coaches with this on the business to business side. But I think, you know, that's why when we initially connected on it, Anders, it's one of the reasons that I think you guys are in

a good spot with it as you do showcase some different ways that things could be interpreted. And you're kind of staying on top of it. And you've reached out to different experts in the field to continue to build that knowledge. So I think that's super important. And I think I would shop for it too. Yeah. And I think a lot of people need to find coaches that have gone through programs like yours. And that I think, I think a lot of times the answer is not getting a PDF saying, go take these supplements. Like that, that doesn't, that does, that may tell you exactly what you need to do. And that may meet some people where they're at. But finding somebody and I think that, you know, coming from the fitness, health,

nutrition space, like, we like to think that we're really important. But I think that we actually do have the power in this place, or in this this time in this space to be very important when it comes to overall health, because we have this separate skillset that a lot of the people that are kicking PDFs to people, or a lot of people in the medical industry just actually don't have the softer skill of coaching. It's sure you may be able to read the lab and say, go take this. But what happens three months down the road when someone loses their job, or they've got a ton of travel coming up? Those skills of coaching and building flexibility into principles of a program, all of those pieces are developed by coaching and being around people and understanding the softer those, those specific skills. And I think that really there is a time and that time is, is if not now it's coming where the coach has a real ability to be able to read labs in the same way or provide, um, um, like a, a protocol specific to someone's issues in the same way that a doctor might be able to not on

the medical side, but on the supplementation side, and then also be able to fill in all the gaps through having a relationship with somebody that you're never going to get in, in a more medical facility where they've got 10 minutes to hand you a PDF and say, go home. Yeah, I agree with that. I would say we went from a point as health and fitness professionals where we used to think we were more important than we were, but we had the potential to be more effective and impactful than we were. And now we're at a crossroads where we can really drive a lot of change because of how the healthcare system has developed and what's needed in the current

marketplace. So I think now we can be even more powerful than we ever thought we could be. But there was definitely a time period, whether it was the heyday of whether it was CrossFit or macros or paleo, like pick whatever trend you want to identify. Those were just scratching the surface in terms of depth of impact. When you look at someone's life in terms of decades, instead of when you extend the time horizon, things that seem to matter a lot in the moment don't matter as much. And so when you're changing someone's macros each week and maybe they get a scale weight victory, it can seem pretty significant. But I use the example of when I've had clients where, you know, not only did they prepare

for their wedding from a body composition perspective, but they were working to improve fertility, had irregular cycles, got that back, were able to have their first child. The person who worked in that coaching experience that had their first child because of the health coaching relationship is going to remember that person. You know, I get to go to events now and like, you know, people talk about shaking hands and like holding babies or whatever, kissing babies, whatever. It's like, you literally get to do that versus when you're just only partaking in like just the surface level physical transformation. That's cool. Right. But that's like, it's not as impactful and most people want to be significant. They want to feel significant and they get into coaching because they do ideally want to make a difference, right? Because there's

other careers where you can make money. I think people do, most people, over 80% of professionals really would like to make a difference. They would like to be viewed in that higher esteem and feel significant. And I think there's a lack of fulfillment that happens when they are just only in macro coaching and the saying hi to Doug's little one. They are less likely, I think, to remember that person that just did some basic manipulation versus the person that had some significant impact on their life and changed their health for the better. So I totally, totally agree with you there. I think there's an ability to fill a really large gap. And previously we probably overestimated our importance. Whereas now I think in 2023, as we record this, I think a lot of

coaches underestimate our importance, not only within our industry, but the world and metabolic health of society as a whole. Absolutely. Where can people find you a man? So I'm at similar science.com similar science on every major platform, including the podcast. And if you're interested in what we talked about today, which is largely learning some of this health optimization stuff, learning about metabolism, hormones, all that, um, you can learn more at metabolism school.com and that's our functional nutrition and metabolism specialization program. Um, and you know, start with the free content, just how, you know, Anders and Doug do that here at Barbell Shrugged. I'm a big believer in sharing a lot of free stuff.

So there's lots of no cost things to get you started. And if you need that deeper support, then definitely reach out and we'll get you set up. I love it, man. Doug Larson. Right on. Sam, always good to talk to you, brother. Thanks for coming on the show.

Appreciate it, Doug. It was good to have the little visitor too. Say hi to the little man. You bet. He came over to show off because he just lost his front tooth. That's why he was over here. Hockey fight. Hockey fight. What are you talking about? He had the tooth in his hand. He was showing it to me.

You can find me on Instagram, Douglas E. Larson. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We are Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. First off, go buy the book. I'm super stoked about at Anders Varner. We are Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. First off, go buy the book. I'm super stoked about the book, man. I didn't even talk about the book at the end. Metabolism Made Simple. There you go.

MetabolismMadeSimple.com. You can find it on the website too. And make sure you head over to RapidHealthReport.com. That is where Dr. Andy Galpin and Dan Garner are doing a lab lifestyle and performance analysis that you can watch. And also schedule a call with me so we can essentially see if you're a good fit for rapid health optimization friends. We'll see you guys next week.