Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #24 EXOS Vice President of Nutrition and Research, Amanda Carlson-Phillips

Episode Date: March 12, 2018

This week we sit down with Exos Vice President of Nutrition and Research, Amanda Carlson-Phillips to discuss the new partnership with Onnit. Exos on Facebook Instagram Twitter Email Amanda at [e-mail] Connect with Kyle Kingsbury on Twitter and on Instagram Get 10% off at Onnit by going to Onnit.com/Podcast              Onnit Twitter        Onnit Instagram

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it needs. Get 10% off the protein bars and bites or any other product at onnit.com slash podcast. Welcome to the Onnit podcast. We've got an amazing guest, Amanda Carlson Phillips, and she is the vice president over at Exos, an incredible company who has partnered with us, with Onnit, and we're going to bring to you many great products, many great supplements, and a host of other cool shit. So we take a deep dive into what Exos is, how she got there, what our partnership means,

and what we're going to be bringing to you in the future. I think you guys are really going to appreciate this one. Check it out. And if you've got time, make the time, leave us a five-star review. It really helps us out. Thank you for listening. On It podcast with a very special guest, Amanda Carlson Phillips. And you are VP at Exos, is that correct? That's right. So Vice President of Nutrition and Research. Very, very cool. And we recently partnered on it with Exos.

We have a lovely marriage. Yes, I mean, and it was after a fast dating cycle too. So it's like we knew about each other for a long time and then we quickly dated and then got married. So yeah, I think it's been awesome so far and we couldn't be more excited about the partnership. Yeah, I'm super pumped. I want to dive into some of the future plans and things like that. But first, for everyone listening who might be like, what the fuck is Exos? What does this mean? Why is it cool? Can you break down like what what is Exos? Yeah. So Exos was founded in 1999. And our founder is Mark Verstegen. And he had this vision and

mission to bring together the specialties that he felt could really enhance an athlete's performance and and put them under one roof. So it was a one stop shop for the athletes. So mindset, nutrition, movement, recovery, bringing together the specialists, the facilities, seamlessly integrating them to enhance the athlete's performance. And that was his goal and his mission. And so you fast forward from 1999 to today, and we're continuing to do that with the elite athlete. But thinking about performance well beyond the field of play and thinking about it in everyday life for the employee of a corporation to the military operator was putting us through, I think, 100 yards for time at the end of a workout. And I was like, what's that big place over there? And he's like, Kingsbury, that's where you go when you're good at football. That's where you go when you're good at football that's where you go when you're good at your sport it was like a half burn but it was true like the more I found I think you guys were API at the time yeah so it's athletes performance and you know the institute

had come because Mark was down Bradenton before that and so I got coined athletes performance institute and so API carried on even though it was just athletes performance. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I had heard that that you guys took like anybody who was going to go pro and got them to that next level, you know, when they're as they're prepping for combines and things like that. And really, we're able to take people to the next level. And you guys have quite a few people with military contracts, right? You guys work with a lot of, uh, I don't know if we can talk about this. Maybe it's secret, but, but special forces. We do. We, um, we've worked with the military in a lot of different ways. And, um, from the tip of the spear and, um, providing, uh, services, dietitians, performance coaches, uh, and other support services to be embedded

with those groups that are very tip of the spear, but all the way into broad-based military as well. So we worked with the Navy and developed what was called the Naval Operational Fitness and Fueling System, which was a total redo of their training manual. So it was the first time the Navy had thought about reworking that and actually including nutrition in their training components. So we've worked with broad-based military like that, but then focusing in on very targeted solutions for that tip of the spear military. Very cool. And what brought you to EXOS? Well, first, I mean, I'm sorry to hear that you went to ASU because...

Don't tell me you're from U of A. Because I went to University of Arizona, So we could argue for the next 20 minutes about the superior school. But But no, I you know, I went to University of Arizona for my undergrad, I grew up in Indiana, but was I was called out to the west when I was small. And so went to undergrad there went to Florida State for my master's and did one in sports nutrition and another in ex-phys. And I wanted to do the non-research option for the ex-phys. So I'm like, I'll do an internship. You know, where can I find an internship?

And I Googled it. And so athletes performance popped up. I'm like, that sounds good. You know, I was an athlete. I loved sports nutrition. And I'm like, I'll go be a strength and conditioning intern at Athletes Performance. So I got in that way and was a strength and conditioning intern. And in the midst of washing windows and picking up plates and taking baseball groups for college

athletes, they found out that I was a dietitian. And so Mark asked me to join the team in 2003. But the reason why I came out there other than just being lucky and loving sport, when you when I walked into the facility, I can still remember it to this day, that Mecca that you know, you would look at to hopefully go to when you got good playing football. It was, it was an incredible culture and a feeling. And, and I think that that's continued on over the last 15 years that I've been there. And it's absolutely the similar feeling that I got when I first came to Onnit. And so there was

just something special about the mission, the purpose, bringing together really smart people to try to achieve a goal together. Yeah. It seems like a lot of people from the, from the stories that I've heard start as interns, right? I remember talking to Dr. Andy Galpin, who's a friend of ours has been a guest on the show. And I think he had been an intern there as well. And everybody seems like Mark has this aura about him, you know, as, as, you know, not only a man on a mission with a purpose, but a very clear cut plan and what he wants to accomplish. And he's, you know, looked at kind of like the way we look at Aubrey Marcus is like our fearless leader who knows what he wants and knows how to employ those

things. Have you seen a lot of people in your company come up through as interns? Yeah, for sure. I mean, the internship program has been, and as we've expanded and grown, it's our best recruiting tool. The second, I'd say, best recruiting tool is our mentorship program, where people from the industry are coming in to learn the methodology. Very similar to how you guys are running your education. Between internships and the mentorship program, people come in and you either love it or you don't. If you love it and you really work hard, then there's a place for you in that space. And as we've grown and expanded, I think now we have around 4,000 employees, you know, there's different verticals or there's different things that you can do in this realm of human performance. So having both

of those avenues has been a great asset in, in growing the business, but also maintaining the culture and what that feels like to be a part of now Exos, making sure that if you're at a satellite site somewhere up at an employer site in Oregon, that it feels relatively the same. But it's an incredible tool to find great talent. I mean, you guys have expanded quite a bit. How many facilities do you have now? Roughly? Well, you know, when you think about, when you think about the business, which still gets me so excited, I mean, you can love sport. I mean, I still love sport, but there's a long continuum of the lifespan, you know, before sport, you know, during sport and after sport. So you think about our elite athlete facilities, you know, we have five of our own where we're running that tight integrated model focused on the elite athlete.

We have another model of that that we call our power buys where we're working with some of our leading, some of the leading hospital groups out there that are really thinking about, gosh, how can we get more proactive into the community and not just think about fixing people, but think about, gosh, how can we get more proactive into the community and not just think about fixing people, but think about, you know, extending orthopedics into proactive health and performance. So we have that part of the business. And then obviously the corporations and the military, and you add all that up and it's about 400 sites that is, that is Exos. And that is pushing this mission of, you know, how do we help to, you know,

upgrade lives and improve human performance? Wow. That's a lot more than I thought. Um, what made you guys want to partner with on it? Gosh, um, you know, we've had different, we've had different nutrition partners over the years. And, um, part of what I love about nutrition and, you know, clearly being an RD and just being passionate about the space is that it's always evolving and it's changing. And, you know, what's different about, I think, training than nutrition is that the end of the evidence-based recommendation for training is you pick up a weight. You know, you go and you do some type of glute activation. The end of the evidence-based recommendation for nutrition is consuming something.

And the growth of that consumable space has taken great strides. It's taken curves and turns. But back to the original question, why did you partner with Onnit? It just encompassed so much more than just a great product. You can make great products, but great products that aren't communicated effectively don't get consumed. And so it was a combination of great people, great mission, great brand, awesome products, and this commitment to pushing and really pushing hard and to redefining what is it that people need to be at their best. And it was that approach and that thoughtfulness and really the purpose-driven culture of what is on it that felt so natural to us.

Great answer. Okay, yeah, for sure. I mean, like I said, you can check off all the boxes on a lot of things, but it comes down to the people that you work with every day and the relationships that you build and really coming together at a table and thinking about, well, what's the next thing we can solve? You know, the tactics become simple and the ways you can activate a partnership can be fairly straightforward. But getting people around the table trying to solve a bigger problem or create clarity

for a different population as it relates to nutrition and training is something that we felt we could really do together better than with anyone else. I love it. Well, let's break down what goes on inside Exos. So there's a number of things that I want to ask you like A, B, C, and D. And one of the things that I've learned from being a guest on shows is that it really sucks trying to answer a loaded question. So let me just piece this loaded up. I'll piece it slowly. But you know, you talked about it being a one stop shop. And we let's just focus on the elite athlete for

right now. So we can keep it simple, or at least try to simplify it. When an elite athlete shows up, you take them through various training, food, supplementation, recovery mindset, we want to break each one of those down. So talk a bit about the training. And obviously that's going to change from a football player to a baseball player to you name it. But what are some of the things that you guys focus on that really differentiates you from the rest of the competition when it comes to training and bringing people up to the next level? Yeah. So, you know, it all starts with assessment. So, um, there's there, you could think about different, different modalities of training or different programming per sport,

but it really is the individual. So, we're thinking about people as an N of 1. And so, you're coming through an assessment process where we're thinking about nutritional assessment, that's body composition, blood work, looking at deficiencies, intolerances, et cetera, movement quality assessment where we're launching some really awesome new functionality with it's a high end biomechanical capture, but not having to, you know, put yourself in a unitard and a bunch of balls on your joints to make it easy. Yeah, I know, right? I mean, who doesn't want to get in a unitard? But most of our guys do not. But you know, trying to really understand movement quality patterns.

So first step is assessment across, you know, mindset, nutrition, movement, recovery. And then that's really what, that's what drives the programming. And, and, you know, our coaches and our the way that we're programming from a fitness standpoint, we have a methodology. And they're going to program based on who that individual athlete is and what their needs are to help them create more capacity to move, improve their movement quality, improve their strength, performance, endurance, and do that on the training floor. And then everything else, nutrition, recovery, is to promote that adaptation. So I think those are the key parts of the formula,

really thinking about assessment, driving that into the recommendation and the prescription, and creating an environment where it's fun to come in there and train as a group and get everything that you need to support you on that journey. So it would still be something similar to group training, but with a more prescriptive emphasis put on exactly what that person's individual needs are. That's exactly right.

I mean, I think one of the misconceptions about Exos is that we have, I think we'll have just over 100 combine athletes that will go and actually perform at the combine this year, that they're all having one on one training with our trainers. And, and that's absolutely not true. You know, they're training in groups of 10. And, and we think that group community element is really important. So it is group training, but group training with an individual focus, everybody's in there working on things that are applicable to them and, you know, improving functionality and movement quality. That's really individual. I love it. Yeah, it's definitely, uh, it,

it has to be personal. It has to be things because no, nobody's the same and the same can be said. I mean, it's been said a thousand times on this show already and many others, but there's no one right diet for everybody. So talk about how do you assess diet? Cause it's obviously, I think people can picture in their mind, we'll assess squat, we'll assess hinge, we'll assess, you know, rotational things, where are your limitations? And then we can move past that. What are some of the tools that you guys use to assess food intolerances and what's right for one person? Yeah. I think one of the biggest things to consider, you know, when we think about nutrition assessment and making recommendations for nutrition programming is the athlete's got to feel good.

So, you know, the way you fuel should make you feel great in everything that you're doing over the course of the day. And that's highly individual. And so we understand the physiology of, okay, like these are, you know, this is the amount of protein about that you're going to need to maintain muscle strength and adaptation. You know, thinking about your carbohydrate metabolism, carbohydrate tolerance, this would be the level of carbohydrate, you know, that we think that you are going to need. And, you know, then thinking about preferences and starting to really adjust and flex and adapt with that athlete and the nutrition recommendations that we're giving to them.

So we're thinking about those functional components of what we know can fuel performance. We're staying in touch with how the athlete feels as a result of that and then making adjustments from there. Now, with that said, you know, the more advanced the diagnostics get, the more exact the nutrition prescription can get. So if we do food intolerance testing with, you know, through blood work and IgG type testing, you know, then we're able to, you know, start to identify things that we might want to take out. And we wouldn't have that unless that person was really in touch with the way, you know, their GI felt. As we get more into blood markers, not, you know, health markers, but actual functional nutrient markers, B vitamins,

like looking at markers of inflammation, homocysteine, omegas, vitamin D, magnesium, we can give a blanket recommendation to about how much you should need overall. And that's great. That's a great way to start. But now with that additional data, we can make it even more refined. So to your point about macros, I think there's going to be some interesting stuff coming in the next, I mean, it's here, but to really apply it and, you know, creating a so what now what out of genetic data as it relates to nutrition prescription, I think we'll refine it even one step further. So how does your body metabolize fructose? You know, what would be the macronutrient kind of based on your genetic profile? How does your body metabolize vitamin D? So I think those are the elements that will

continue to refine our ability to make recommendations, but also all of our conceptual understanding of what is right. Because what is right is really what makes you feel great. Yeah. Yeah. And just to give like a little piggyback on that from genetic data that I've had broken down for me, I don't produce a lot of vitamin D and when I'm out in the sun, I'll still produce a little bit, but not as much as most people. And I clear it very rapidly. So not only do I need a supplement with vitamin D, but I need to supplement with quite a bit, like 30 to 40,000 I use a day. And in doing that for months on end, taking it with fats because it's a fat-soluble vitamin, I still only got to the 60s, which is just in range, but it's not high, which might put a lot of people over 100. It might put a lot of people in overload. So I think having those things is not only the way of the future, but it's the way of the future for everyone, not just elite-level athletes. It's incredibly important to be able to fine-tune exactly what's right for you and to know,

like, this is how I'll not only optimize my health, but my cognitive function, my emotional state, how I feel and move about the world each day. That's right. I mean, I think we all have to start thinking about things differently as it relates to, you know, this kind of world of nutrition and, and, um, and training, but I mean, but definitely nutrition and aspect, you know, what is right for one person may not be right at all for the other and understanding, you know, that foundational code of how your body is going to operate, you know, your example of a vitamin D, but then pairing that with, well,

what are your vitamin D levels? And then imagine thinking about, gosh, well, what's my biome? Like, you know, we're starting to get ready to be able to profile the gut. So like, where does it start and where does it end? But it is changing that perception of nutrition intervention away from, God, I just want to lose a few pounds to, shit, how do I make the most out of my day? Not today, but every day for the next five years. And we have to look at it as a way to optimize performance in an additive effect versus just all these things

that I have to take away to look a certain way. Yeah. It becomes much more aesthetic might be the first goal, but ultimately it's health. It's how you feel. It's how you operate each day, right? That has to be the main picture. It does. And even for our NFL combine guys, we did some data collection a couple years ago. And we were looking at the micronutrient and hormonal status of those athletes. These are the top athletes coming out of great college programs. They are superb, right?

And they're coming in to, to cross that next chasm into being even more efficient and more awesome. And on the outside, they look like specimens, right? I mean, they're, they're out there running their forties with their shirts off. They, you know, are hopping on the scale, they're lean, mean machines. Well, our blood data, you know, showed us that not one, so a hundred percent of those athletes had not one, not two, but at least three abnormalities within their blood work that were related to nutrient and inflammatory status. And so it's just, you got to, we just, I think we have an opportunity to say, okay, it's not necessarily what's on the outside. It's what's on the inside to maximize function

and just think of what we could be capable of doing on any field of play or within our lives if we truly were optimizing from the inside out. Yeah, yeah. And you think about those things downstream, like maybe they've been okay as a 22-year-old man or woman up until this point, but two to three years into their career, that stuff starts to catch up with them. And then they, they see the end of their career

through injury because systemic inflammation has been on overdrive, or maybe their body is being robbed of minerals from the bone because they're deficient in certain things. The body's always trying to create homeostasis. And if you don't address those things early on, it can lead to real problems later. Same thing with, with just everyday people listening to this podcast, you know, like everyone hears a story about, I don't know how I threw out my back. I just picked up my kid or I just grabbed the groceries from out of the trunk. And it's like, well, you probably neglected something for some period of time. And, and maybe the transverse abdominus was disengaged or whatever the case may be. But if we're not being mindful of those things and paying attention to that, it can come

back to kick us in the ass pretty hard. For sure. And I mean, you're exactly right. This applies to those high-level athletes, but it applies to all of us. The information is there. The solutions are there. But I think it can be difficult for people to connect in because it is a world of science that is confusing to people and, you know,

paralyzes sometimes with too much information, but it applies to everybody. And, you know, this shift of, you know, really thinking about optimizing the way you fuel throughout the day, from the time you wake up until the time you go to bed will have a significant impact on the way you feel tomorrow and the way you feel in 10 to 15 years. Without a doubt. So let's talk supplements. Yeah. Beautiful, wonderful supplements. Obviously this, there's some, some correlation here with food and training and the things we've just talked about. Not every supplement is going to be right for everyone you work with. But you guys have, you know, and we can't, we can't dive too much unfortunately into these wonderful

products that we have on the way I get a chance to work with product development and it's been amazing you know getting some of the questions on different things that you guys are looking for because now we get to create a whole new suite of supplements upon your demand and liking and on it will obviously make quite a few of those available to the public as well. But let's talk like bare base minimums, you know, something that we really haven't done it on it, we usually create products that have a multitude of different things in there that come out of necessity. And so you know, you look at alpha brain, Aubrey obviously had quite a bit of partying going on his parents wanted to look at his brain and the guy said, Hey, the hardware is fine. It's the software we got to work on. And you know, not long after that,

we had the birth of alpha brain out of necessity. Um, we generally have not stuck to, Hey, this thing works and we're just going to pump out this one thing. But now in our partnership, we're able to do that. And we've created, uh, I think it's okay to say we've created an electrolyte drink, uh, creatine monohydrate, as well as glutamine. Why were those three? And I think it's okay to say, we've created an electrolyte drink, creatine, monohydrate, as well as glutamine. Why were those three, and I think we have beta-alanine coming as well, but why were those four so critical for baseline stuff with what you guys do with athletes? Well, when we think about the world of supplementation, I mean, it's a critical part of your nutritional

strategy. You know, we think about it as filling the gaps or helping to provide your body with enough of the ammunition necessary that just can't be gotten through food and really optimizing those physiological systems that are going to be taxed in training or are going to be taxed and tried on field of play. And so that was the approach that we took. And where do you start with a product development cycle is looking at the Onnit suite of products and thinking, all right, if we added a couple of things here, that would immediately upgrade an athlete or an individual's ability to stay within the Onnit brand and fulfill their needs throughout the training cycle and the performance cycle. So the electrolyte beverage, we know people need to maintain hydration status

in hot environments like Phoenix or Austin or any environment. You're going to be sweating more, losing more sodium. That's individualized, but the sodium needs to replenish and replace are more than what's available, you know, commercially at your local Circle K. So we needed to create something smarter from an electrolyte drink. And we're super excited about that. The athletes love it. It's fantastic.

And we even, during the meeting today with Aubrey, we blended it up with some coconut water and made a little slushy. So yeah, so it's, it's fantastic, but it's functional. And the glutamine and the creatine, those are things that you can dose up and dose down and at different times in your training cycle. So you might be taking strength and performance, or, you know, another product, but you might need more creatine at certain phases. And the standalone creatine allows you to dose up and dose down without, you know,

having to adapt or adjust any of the other nutrients that the core products are giving. Same thing with the glutamine. You know, we talked about gut and understanding microbiome as we understand that more, you know, more athletes in times of stress, more individuals in times of stress need a little support for the gut.

And glutamine can really support that. But it's at a higher level of dosing than what you would put in a combination product. So we're really excited about collaborating on different solutions and thinking about how we can really round out the day through foods and supplements for individuals to not have to go outside of the brand that they love and trust to optimize their performance. Yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited to have these because obviously we don't make everything. I still buy some stuff that's not on the brand. And yeah, it's nice to know now that we have an excuse, a great excuse to be able to provide those things for people and then we can keep

everything all under one label. So let's talk a little bit about recovery because recovery sets, you know, it sets the top tier apart from the very close to top tier. And it seems to be the case in all, all elite level sport. I was talking to Curtis Rayfield, who was a strength coach for the Golden State Warriors as they were winning all their championships. And I was like, tell me about recovery, man. Give me, give me the juice, you know? And he said, well, the thing that we use the most is the Norma Tech boots. And I've recently been put in contact with Norma Tech and they said that, oh yeah, yeah, we work with XLS. We've got some Norma tech out there, those kinds of things. What are some of the tools that you guys do for recovery to really set yourself apart and make sure that people are getting the most out of their training and are

able to get back to it quickly because that anybody can bust your ass and get sore, but how fast you recover really returns that or determines the completion of that cycle and the funneling of it moving on to the next phase. Sure. So the things that we think about functionally from a recovery standpoint is how do we optimize hormones? How do we get the body back into that homeostasis-type state? So utilizing compression, utilizing cold,

and utilizing nutrition in a way that really jumpstarts that process, but also making it a system that people can do, at least in our environments and hopefully outside of those environments, consistently. So recovery once or twice is great, but really making it a part of your daily training regime is a critical piece of that. You can't just recover once or twice and hope for the best. It needs to be just as important as your strength and power phase or your cardiovascular phase. So compression, cold, you know, we've got a great physical therapy team that's, you know,

thinking about, you know, things, elements like dry needling. There's a number of different modalities that come in. On the nutrition side of things, we've got really three things that we're trying to do. We want to make sure the body's rehydrated. We want to make sure that the body's getting the protein and amino acids needed, specifically enough leucine to turn on mTOR and tell the muscle, hey, like, let's start rebuilding now. And then the right amount of carbohydrate to replenish glycogen and get the athlete in their individual nutrition program back to where they need to be.

So, you know, those are the things of how we're looking about looking at recovery from a physiological and metabolic standpoint. Yep. As dolled in as I've heard, and I've definitely been, even though I retired three years ago, I'm still obsessed with this. So yeah, it is. And you got to set up the, you got to set up the systems as well. I mean, I think as much as we love the science and making sure that you have the right ingredients in there. I mean, talking about beta alanine, I think we, we talked about this the last time when I was here in October, it's like, you're always trying something different, right? I mean, talking about beta alanine, I think we talked about this the last time when I was here in October.

It's like you're always trying something different, right? I mean, we were in the back measuring out beta alanine, and I was the one, like, shooting it with some, you know, grape juice about 11 years ago when the research was coming out. So it really is about trying new things and creating systems for all of those athletes to be able to easily do that. Like, they're not necessarily going to measure things out. But from a recovery standpoint, it reminds me, we were working with a soccer team over in Monaco, so it was AS Monaco, and we were going to their training camp in Spain

and trying to figure out how we were going to get these guys who were on the pitch two or three times a day to make sure they were recovering appropriately. So there I was behind the bar, you know, not making margaritas at this hotel, but making making sure that they had their, you know, their post workout recovery. So when they came off the pitch, they were able to come up to the bar, get the protein and carbs that they needed, and then carry on their way. So as, uh, as we think about the science, uh, making sure that you set up the systems to easily implement it into your day, uh, is equally as important because if it's too hard or too complex or taste awful,

you're not going to do it. Yeah. You got to have compliance. Yeah. Or adoption. I'd like to think, I like to think adoption. I like adoption. Paul check. Uh, I was just spent a weekend with Paul check. Who's an absolute wizard has been a guest on the show. And I asked him, what's the greatest form of meditation? You know, he has this famous quote. The greatest form of meditation is the one that you'll do every day. It's not Tai Chi. It's not Qigong.

It's not sitting quietly in a room. It's the one that you'll do every day. And I think that can be said for any type of recovery aspect. You know, everyone says work hard, rest hard, if they're in the know you know you have to know that but what does that look like it doesn't mean sitting on my ass watching reality tv or playing video games it means active recovery it means pushing stuff back into my bloodstream so i can properly process metabolic waste and enhance how fast i speed my recovery working with cold and different things like that and i think the more available you make it and the simpler you dumb it down, the easier it is to gravitate towards that

and be consistent, right? Yeah, you have to come up with the systems. I, you know, I think when you think about developing your training program or, or how you're going to go through different cycles of training, you're very systematic about that. And what's going to be the load, what's going to be the recovery? How is this going to build over the course and periodize over the course of a year. And the nutrition element is oftentimes like a little, a little willy nilly, like a little softer and that people don't have the same type of approach or systems around that. And by just putting that little bit of strategic focus around what is going to be the nutritional complement to that training program that you've worked so hard on, that's when people really

start to see the additional gains, but you have to be able to do it and adopt on a regular basis. Adopt it. Adopt it. Let's talk a little bit about mindset. So obviously it's incredibly important whether you're a golfer or mixed martial artist or one of the people on the front lines defending our country mindset is incredibly important and not just mindset in competition but mindset outside of training how what are some of the techniques and ways that you guys help enhance that for the people that come through exos so you know when we when the four pillars were created and uh and mindset is is the first, I think Mark, myself, Craig Friedman, who is another leader on our performance innovation team, would say, should we have called it more brain performance? But mindset takes on two, it's like a two-headed monster in our environment.

The first is just from a behavioral standpoint. So we've been talking a lot about behavioral components and it really is understanding behavioral psychology and with all the people that, different types of people that we're working with, how do we get them to adopt that behavior? How do we get them to upgrade their lives? So a lot of mindset for us is, you know, really understanding our behavioral model, the stages, our kind of interpretation of the stages of change to allow us to meet people where they're at, to give them solutions that they're ready for so that they can continue on this journey. And so we have spent a lot of time, a lot of effort, and a lot of time refining what is

our behavioral approach to upgrading performance to get people to take action. But then there's, you know, the other component, which is, you know, how do we, how do we really help to focus and reset the brain? And, you know, what do we do to help enhance when we need to be hyper-focused? What do we do to help balance things out from a parasympathetic standpoint? So, you know, we think about brain and mindset from a physiological standpoint as what is the nutrition that impacts the brain? What is the recovery that impacts the brain? What's the right type of movement that impacts the brain to the type of function that we want. So, you know, that's how we think about the world of

mindset for athletes and for really any, any individual out there behaviorally, and then the rest of the human system to optimize what is above the neck. So do you guys have meditation practices that you go through, or is it more based on heart rate variability? And you spoke about the parasympathetic obviously that has a huge role in the nervous system it is the fucking one half of the nervous system but but it has a huge role and impact on our heart rate variability and inevitably our recovery and our mindset what are some of the tools that you guys use do you use visualization what are the different techniques absolutely so i you know it depends on on what the, you know, the athlete or the individual is really striving for.

But we do have meditation protocols. We have deep breathing cadences and protocols to either excite or relax that are implemented into the training. We've utilized heart rate variability in varying capacities. It's hard to make that, you know, accurate. And sometimes it's challenging to use that type of data um but we're looking we have integrated that into uh into the methodology and you know have it for the coaches to be able to to counteract but it's a it's also looking at the other side around how um how are the athletes performing overall on the field of play and and how are they feeling and then being more cognizant of other

modalities and tools that they might need to integrate back into their training, back into their day to ensure better recovery so that things become more in balance. So there are definitely those specific modalities, meditation, breathing, you know, looking at a hot cold contrast other components but you know those things really fit under the the recovery bucket that optimize brain performance yeah so what do you guys have what are your goals really going forward because you guys have taken this company when i was at asu shit ago. Yeah. You should have come over. I would have been there. You could have come in the back.

We could have mixed up some beta alanine shooters. That would have been awesome. You guys would have been like, you can mop the floors. No way. We would have set the timers up out on the turf that we shared with you guys. You could have run out there. Very cool. What are you guys thinking as far as where you see the company going in the future?

Because you've come so far already. You've accomplished so much. And obviously, with our partnership, the sky's the limit, in my opinion. But what do you guys have envisioned? Well, at this point, it is our main strive and where we're pointed toward is how many lives can we reach? And we want to do that out of the purest place of wanting to help people be at their best and help to streamline the information that is out there and provide systems and solutions to as many people as possible. And if you've looked at the history, it started with the elite athlete, moved into the elite operator,

got into the corporate wellness space, you know, broader military. But a new avenue for us now is, and one of the things that we'll be working on with Onnit is thinking about the physical therapy space. So is there an opportunity to reinvent what is physical therapy and optimizing not only the clinical component of physical therapy, but, you know, what happens after the fixing and the physical therapy is done and that transition back into performance. So that's an area that we'll be focusing on pretty heavily for the next year and, you know, foreseeable future to come. But thinking about the Onnit partnership with Exos, it's that same vein of how many people can we reach together, meet them where they are, provide them with solutions across mindset, nutrition, movement, and recovery,

and help them reach what they're looking for and reach their goals and do that together. So I know that's not a very direct answer, like we're going after this market or this demographic. But we just want to help as many people as possible and play that small role in having them be at their best. No, I think I think it's, it's, it's the answer. Really, if we think about a big, a big thing that I've spoken about with Aubrey is, you know, you look at the world today and there's a lot of chaos. There's a lot of people that are in pain mentally, physically

and emotionally. And what is the low hanging fruit physical, right? If we, if we, and we now know just looking into the microbiome, I've said this before, but how, you know, 80 to 90% of our neurotransmitters are created by the bacteria in our gut. So it's not like that cheat meal is just going to put five pounds on me. It's going to fuck up my cognition. It's going to fuck up how I feel, how I operate in the world, my perception. Right. And so the largest group out there is the general population. And these are the ones that perhaps need the most work. These are the vast majority of people listening to the show are not elite level athletes. So how do we communicate to them? How do we work on the things that are necessary for everyone to start improving their lives

so we get more out of life, so we increase our quality of life? Yeah, I mean, that's why we're all in this. And when I think about it from a science and a nutrition perspective, it is about the systems you set up and also how you communicate it. Back in the day we had five nutrition principles and they were very they're very authoritarian it's like eat clean eat often hydrate recover and mindset which was confusing because you know we have the other pillar but after some work and a couple years ago we're like god we're missing the emotive

part of that and to your point about the the meal, you know, like totally fucking up your biome and setting you back and what you're really trying to achieve. It's not about good or bad, but it's about that that's going to set you back. But we had to think about, well, how do you communicate to someone where they want to make the right choice? And we needed to make principles that were more emotive. And that was, you know, eat with purpose, fuel for impact, aim to sustain, devour life, which is like get excited about flavors and fabulous food. And then lastly is make it about you. And, you know, back to earlier, really understanding what is your makeup and what does your body need to be at its best. And so trying to communicate and inspire people through a different nutritional

message, uh, will hopefully get them at that point of decision-making of, well, what is it exactly that I'm going to stick into my mouth to make the better decision at that point in time, which creates more capacity in the future. Hmm. And so was the plan then to have, you know, obviously you guys have a number of locations, but will you branch out into locations that are more geared towards general population or will it be more online based? Yeah. You know, our, I would say like thinking about our distribution in a way, I mean, it's, it's through the employer.

So we reached a general population at, you know, 200 employer sites, but it's through, you know through employers. And so we're not planning on going direct to consumer and opening up gyms, nor are we thinking about online platforms that are going to be available to the masses. But that being said, we want to kind of embed and help to empower other types of technology. So, you know, whether it's the bridge platform or the DARI technology that we're integrating some of our

IP in to really make sense out of movement quality, that's where we can see helping to reach more of the masses through the experts that are working with them. So through the trainers and physical therapists that are applying those solutions. Can you break, I'm not familiar with Bridge or DARI, can you break that down? Yeah, so the DARI system is technology that, it was back to the unitard. So it's, you walk into a room and you can imagine a camera set up, you know, think about your bedroom and you've got cameras set up at various points on the ceiling. And yeah, that sounds terrible. Sounds like Aubrey's bedroom. Yeah, I could imagine. So

not those type of cameras, but if you imagine that, so you have those cameras up there, you walk in and what we've done've done is we have a movement screen, which is what we call our movement quotient. And we used to do the functional movement screen. It served a lot of purpose, but it's a good screen. But through the biomechanical analysis, your understanding of movement patterns can be that much better. So you walk into this room, you stand, the technology ultimately gets like a virtual skeleton on your body,

and you do these series of five to ten movements. And by doing that, we've worked within the system to create a scoring and then corrective exercise mechanism to help correct those issues with your movement patterns. So if you think about that and your ability to quickly assess and create a so what now what out of movement quality can solve so many problems. I mean, when we look at our book of business and we did a meta-analysis last year at different risk factors, 48.5% of the people that we were working with within the corporation and the retired athlete markets

said that they were in pain at a level that was high enough that it impacted their activities of daily living. And so you think about the opioid epidemic, you think about how we think about pain is to treat the pain when so much of it is actually coming from a biomechanical route. And so this type of partnership with DARI and thinking about our IP and their technology to rethink how we consider movement and improving movement quality to reduce the pain that our population is in. Yeah. Everyone's in pain. Yeah. It's, it's, uh, it's funny because we only have these two avenues. It's, it's either get surgery or take this pill the rest of your life. And that's often the case for, for much of what ails us. And it not a prescriptive, on the front lines, this is how we'll fix you,

and you won't need surgery from it. Or if you do, we can rehab you and then you won't need it again, right? But if it's a movement pattern, ultimately you might need to get multiple surgeries because you're still gonna be impacting that joint in a way that you're not supposed to. It makes so much more sense

that if we think of health preventatively and we work towards the goal of ultimate health, that we'll see far less issues with our current health insurance crisis and the baby boomers all getting sick at the same time and everything that we have to deal with as a country and a civilization. Yeah, I mean, it comes back to just having better tools to assess and then making people aware that that information is available and making that accessible and understandable and relatable and real to people. And so, you know, many times people come to us because they are in pain, you know, and

they need that to be fixed. And I think about even like diabetes diabetes which isn't pain related but we think about people that are struggling with metabolic syndrome or diabetes and then we ask them to be more active and and but they're in pain and they they can't even start moving yet so anyways if we can think about how do we better assess movement quality uh think about pain and movement quality at the root which which is fundamental movement patterns. Improve that. I think we solve a lot of problems.

Yeah, I do too. So is that available to the public, this DARI? Is it somewhere people can go? Is there a place for a general population or people that are a little bit obsessed like myself still that would love to get screened? Not yet. It is not completely commercially available, but we're in the development cycle and that partnership of creating, like I said, that so what now, what the scoring and the movements. And our hope is that we'll be able to go out and set up those, uh, set up those, those bedrooms,

you know, those cameras in any room, uh, in different, in different places to be able to get the assessments done. So I would say that it's coming. Very cool. Yeah. Cool. Well, where can people, uh, where can people follow up with you? You have a social media, things like that. We do. I, you know, it you know it's uh yeah i mean being the you know nutrition lady and the researcher but yeah you know um our website is uh www.teamexos.com and you can follow team exos on any of the social handles very cool and personally do you have anything people can contact you? Yeah, just write you an email through the website. Yeah, you know, the No, personally, absolutely.

If there was a follow up needed, you know, my email address is is a Carlson at team exos.com. So I always love to hear from people and answer questions. So don't be shy. Quite a few questions. And I'm sure from from a podcast as detailed, we'll get some more questions from people. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate it. Yeah, thanks a lot. It was a lot of fun.

Yeah, we'll have you back on. All right, thanks. Thank you guys for tuning in to the On It podcast. Hope you guys enjoyed this deep dive into what Exos is and our partnership together. We have a lovely marriage and a sister company we can work with now. Lots of cool shit to come. I can promise you that working with product development and a lot of the stuff that we're going to develop from a supplement side,

that alone will be a pretty groundbreaking. So definitely excited for the future and what that holds. Thank you guys for listening. Please leave us a five-star review. It helps to get the word out. And if not tell your mom, tell your dad, tell your sister,

tell your cousin, tell your mother, tell your teacher, tell everyone you know to listen to the On It podcast. Thanks for tuning in.