Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #46 Eric "Primal Swoledier" Leija

Episode Date: August 13, 2018

We sit down with one of Onnit's senior kettlebell instructors and discuss his path from being a chubby bookworm to becoming one of the biggest faces of Onnit. In addition we discuss Eric's stint as a DMT chemist. Primal Swoledier on Instagram Twitter Facebook Youtube and ErciLeija.com Kyle Kingsbury on Twitter and on Instagram Get 10% off at Onnit by going to Onnit.com/Podcast              Onnit Twitter        Onnit Instagram

And I'd also like to bring up a wonderful product that I take from Onnit called ShroomTech Sport. It has adaptogens and cordyceps sinensis, which is a mushroom that is an amazing product that helps the body with ATP production as well as oxygen utilization. That means you're going to be able to work out harder and longer. It also is caffeine-free. So even though I like to work out with a little bit of caffeine in my system, I can do that with a different product, like some good optimized coffee, and then throw the wonderful Shroom Tech Sport in on top of that. The fact that there's no caffeine in it also helps me if I'm going to have a late workout, and I don't want to be up all night after the workout. For people who are just pressed for time

and really need to get a good hard workout in, a lot of the best jujitsu classes I attend are late at night, and you want to have the best workout you possibly can, but you don't want to be up until midnight or 2 a.m. because of the fact that your pre-workout contains caffeine and other stimulants. Shroom Tech Sport is the one that's right for you. And if you go to onnit.com slash podcast, you'll get 10% off your entire order of supplements and foods. Welcome to the Human Optimization Hour with Kyle Kingsbury,

presented by Onnit. We have an amazing podcast today with the primal swolder, Eric Leija, who has quickly become one of the major faces of Onnit. If you've ever seen the videos of guys swinging kettlebells around, it's quite likely you're looking at primal swolder. He has an amazing story we go down deep down the rabbit hole on dmt consciousness and all sorts of things that i never thought i'd be talking to him about you know as with anything i think i think in the movie shrek they say that ogres are like onions they have many layers and not that uh the soldier is an ogre but he's got many layers and we we dive really deep in this podcast i mean he's in the on it six we dive really deep in this podcast. I mean, he's in

the On It 6 workout videos as one of the models, him and his girlfriend, Francesca. If you come to do a kettlebell certification on it, he's the guy you're going to see teaching you along with Marcus Martinez. And I did the kettlebell cert and it blew my freaking mind. We talked quite a bit about that in the show along with other things and really how he's traversed his path through health and wellness, strength and conditioning, fighting professionally, and then coming here to where now he's a major player as a movement specialist here at Onnit using the odd tools that we have to offer. I think you guys are going to love this episode. We got Primal Swolder in the house yo what up savages my man eric leja is that how we say it that's exactly right all right that's your real name person ever get it right the first time

most people know you as primal swolder online yeah i want to i want to i want to unpack how we've come to this point where you're now known as the Onnit kettlebell guy. You're basically the face of what Onnit training looks like, what it means to train with odd tools, and really just how to be functional and fucking jacked and tanned at the same time. Jacked and tanned. That's my boy Mark Bell's term. But a lot of people think once you go into this functional training that you're not going to be strong anymore you'll be able to do parlor tricks but you won't be able to deadlift or back squat and that's something you know when i did the kettlebell

cert here and you were one of the coaches in that a lot of people had questions like hey how do i do kettlebells for for mass if i want to gain a lot of weight or pure strength and you're like well you use the kettlebells but don't forget the fucking barbell yeah still bench squat and also you can do anything with the kettlebell and you know same movement same just got to change up the training protocols to make sure you're getting some you know some muscle building in there it's just a weight with a handle on it you know it's good for anything oh yeah so let's let's let's dive into that though i mean you're you're you're fairly young how old are you um 25 now i now. I just turned 25. Oh, yes. You can run a car.

Yeah. I feel like I'm getting pretty old now. I'm a man, damn it. I can run a car. I'm a man. But let's unpack that. When did you start training and what did you start with? What does your athletic career look like growing up?

I started working out when I was like 11 years old, 12. I remember I was a chubby kid growing up. I used to eat a lot of fast food. And I just liked playing video games all the time. And I remember I was transitioning from elementary school to middle school. My brother and my sister, my older brother and my older sister, would make fun of me all the time. They're like, man, you're so fat.

You're never going to have a girlfriend. You're about to go to middle school. You haven't even kissed a girl. It's like teasing me all the time, all summer. You need to lose weight. You're fat and chubby. And then so it got to my head. So I picked up this Arnold Schwarzenegger encyclopedia of bodybuilding.

Yes. The old fat ass book. I dug through it. Got some basic little workouts out of this and bodybuilding routines and started working out when I was like 11. Started running outside, you know, dropped all that baby fat. And then after that kind of jumped into middle school football. I did pretty good at that, but I didn't love it. You know, I had a lot of, I used to watch UFC and MMA growing up. My brother was super into that.

So he would make me watch it with him all the time. We would go over to our friends' houses who would order those Pride FCs that were on at random times during the day. We would go sit down and watch those. And I got super into MMA. And so I ended up dropping out of football and just kind of taking up some jiu-jitsu classes and kickboxing when I was like 13, 14 years old. And then, you know, when I got super into martial arts, I realized that the type of training that I was doing, you know, I was running, which is good. But bodybuilding type workouts weren't the best for developing functional strength that it took to kind of survive in a real like a real like match or fight so I ended up following in the footsteps of a lot of the the guys I was training with they always had access to like kettlebells and medicine balls and sledgehammers

tire slams just you know mixing up their techniques to where they were doing more functional stuff that kind of translated a little bit better to what they were doing so I kind of started incorporating that incorporating those type of techniques into my routines and that's when I kind of just started mixing it up from there all throughout high school you know I just kept training kept doing a jiu-jitsu did some jiu-jitsu matches and then kind of just stuck with that on and off training for martial arts which is dope hell yeah that is dope when did you get to on it and how did you get to on it so i ended up you know working really hard in high school got into a good school and you know i worked so hard in high school to where i wasn't having fun you know i never really liked to drink

uh i wasn't into drugs or partying. So I was kind of like a bookworm. Worked really hard to get into a good school. And by the time I got to college, my first semester sucked. I absolutely hated it. I couldn't make any friends. I didn't have any, I had really poor social skills and I just wasn't having a good time.

And so I started listening to a lot of cool motivational podcasts like the Joe Rogan podcast. And that guy was super motivational and still is to this day about not being a little bitch and just doing what you really want to do. And at the time, I was still into MMA. And I had a good friend who was an MMA fighter. He was a fighter for the UFC. This guy, Roger Huerta, he was a fighter. He was a fighter for the UFC. This guy,

Roger Huerta, he was a 155 pound fighter back in the day. First MMA fighter to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Yeah. And so he was really good friends with my brother and he ended up coming back into town to kind of reconnect with his family who lived in town. And then he found out I was unhappy going to school and he's like hey man how about you just drop out of school and come hang out with me let's go train in minnesota and so i ended up dropping out of school and i took off with roger we drove up to minnesota and i trained with like all those tough guys up there all those really tough wrestlers uh like sean shirk and yeah the muscles the muscle shark yeah it was it was dope man so i

got to experience that i got to see what it was like to be a fighter which is awesome and you know a lot of hard work but after that experience you know i came back to town you know i still wasn't an mma fighter i was i hadn't had any experience you know and but i had an experience what it felt like to you know really dive into something that I liked and I was more passionate about than you know going to school and I also learned how to you know make friends with people who were into the same kind of stuff and so I ended up um becoming good friends with uh Aubrey Marcus or Aubrey, through my brother. So my brother was friends with Roger and Aubrey. And Aubrey at the time was really into, or still is, like spiritual awakening type stuff. And he had this blog up, this warrior poet blog, and he ended up hiring me to like help him and like

assist him with that. And so I ended up helping him helping him out with that and from there i got involved with the company i actually got a job in the warehouse because you know i was helping him out on the side but i was like hey man you know you think you could hook me up with a job you know like so i could pay the bills and stuff he's like yeah man you know there's always room in the warehouse you want to work in the warehouse i was like yeah fuck yeah you got you got swole lifting boxes of brain for people yeah and at the time you know like i said i didn't like going to school because i couldn't make any friends well at the time on it was a little bit of a smaller company and a lot of the friends that

i grew up hanging out with through my brother uh they all worked for the company so it was a small company a lot of people that i knew so i was like yeah i work in the warehouse i get to hang out with my friends all the time you know so i grew yeah, I work in the warehouse. I get to hang out with my friends all the time. So I grew up in the warehouse basically, lifting kettlebells, packing supplements and stuff. And it was a lot of fun because I got to hang out with all my friends. I got to work for Aubrey, who was super cool and super enlightened. So I still got to learn from him even as I worked for the company. And eventually Aubrey saw the value in actually opening up a gym because we sold all these tools,

but we didn't really have an education system to teach people how to use them. So he's like, how about we open a gym and build an education system around these tools so we can not only sell people tools, but also show them how to use it so they can use them more effectively and, you know, try to build a stronger community around that. And he realized, you know, Eric, you've always been fit. You've always been into training. So how about you get some experience, start training some people out of our company gym and, you know, start teaching some group classes and be one of the trainers, one of the first trainers at the Onnit gym. I was like, hell yeah, sign me up. You know, so I basically, I guess I worked my way up, you know, from, you know, packing kettlebells to showing people how to use them.

And so that was, that was an awesome experience, you know know being able to uh kind of you know grow within the company and yeah find something for myself it's crazy to think about that like the because i didn't i remember talking to your brother juan juan was training people out of aubrey's garage yeah l garage yeah and it was like just alpha brain that was the only thing that was being sold and new mood and yeah and then that's new mood kit but new mood and shrimp tech all came along later you know what i'm saying like it all came along later it was all built on alpha brain and juan's training aubrey and different people out of aubrey's garage and then of course the company takes off and then

hey we want to have a gym and uh you know your brother teaches the unconventional barbell which is fucking amazing yeah and a lot of other things and obviously he coaches tim kennedy and a lot of the top level guys yeah here uh it's crazy to see like because i've been here for nine months you know and i feel pretty plugged in now but it's it's nuts to think of like how this thing came to be you know because it's only been around for seven years but it feels like we're on a rocket rocket ship yeah moving so fast yeah it's moving real quick um and now you're teaching kettlebell certs you're doing private training um you have so much going on and you're still putting everything all together you know like you have really good balanced approach to this uh we talked a bit about

you know just the how you train for mass and things like that still incorporating the barbell still incorporating the classic lifts like bench squat deadlift but you also do distance runs sprints yeah like you really have a complete package when i think of what it takes to be a really good athlete dive in and pack some of that you know yeah i try to mix it up man you know i feel like if i do the same thing over and over again or anybody does, you adapt, you stop growing, you stop seeing results, or you develop bad habits and possibly get injured. So I constantly switch up my routine. I make sure I do strength work with barbells to make sure I'm maintaining my maximal strength throughout the year. And I always incorporate kettlebells just because they're super accessible, super versatile. to make sure I'm maintaining my maximal strength throughout the year.

And I always incorporate kettlebells just because they're super accessible, super versatile. I can do anything I want with them. I can use them for conditioning to get a cardio calorie burning workout, or I can use them for strength. I just got to switch up, add some weight, do a little bit of heavier kettlebell for slower reps, higher reps. If know, if I'm trying to talk, like trying to build some muscle and, um, but for me, my daily routines, you know, I, I love running. Uh, I try to run as much as I can so I can eat as much as I can, you know, cause I work a lot, you know, I work from like usually from 6am to eight at night. So throughout the day i gotta stay stay fed i eat

all day drink coffee drink shakes and so to make sure i'm not you know putting on any extra fat i like to run hit the kettlebell flows to burn some calories and i like to mix in those barbell lifts to make sure i'm really breaking down those muscle tissues with some heavy load and create some adaptability and really have to put on some muscle. But for the most part, 80, 90% of my training is kettlebells just because they're so easy to use. Once you get your techniques down, you can pretty much do whatever you want with kettlebells. And honestly, I can be lazy sometimes, you know, re-racking weights, having to load a barbell up is going to be a pain in the ass. So for me, grabbing a couple kettlebells, swinging them around and doing some pull-ups, dips and going for a long run is pretty much all I need. You know, in addition to doing some sprint work, I love doing sprints, you know, really get me fucking juiced up, really get my nervous system activated.

Some box jumps and kettlebell swings man yeah that's something and i first got turned on a kettlebells uh listening to pavel totsulin on uh tim ferris's podcast yeah and something he was talking about that really struck a chord with me because i was aware a lot of guys in mma use kettlebells and for obvious reasons but i wasn't certain of what how that translated and pavel was talking about the kettlebell snatch and the kettlebell swing the hip hinge movement in that but also the spring that happens it's basically a plyometric movement oh yeah and it's you know like if you think of people think of plyometrics as like jumping up on top of a box or a bench and then walking back down but that's not true plyometrics

plyometrics are the rebound yeah like a depth reload yeah where you jump off of something down and then back up on top of something yeah or you jump down from something just tap the ground and jump as far as you can right it's that rebound and when you hike the kettlebell between your legs a lot of stretch you're're stretching the whole posterior chain and then snapping the hips back forward that's teaching you how to run faster it's teaching you how to jump higher it's it's loading the body in a way that is plyometric and you see incredible results incredibly quickly from that and it translates to pretty much all sports oh yeah it doesn't matter what you do tennis hockey football mma

like it's there so i mean i've i've gravitated towards that and it's amazing to see that it's also you know taking the kettlebell cert here at on it with you as one of the coaches was it was fucking mind-blowing like i knew i was going to learn things and i'd be able to fix some of the technical stuff but um the flow really surprised me like the flow like how you guys flow like unpack that a bit like how you guys break down a flow really changed my mind because when i watch you like you look like you move so smoothly and seamlessly it looks like it's almost planned you know and you're like no no you're not trying to go even stevens you're not trying to hit one you know two reps each side and make it all equal you definitely can you know you can do that if you

want to like balance your body or you're trying to build muscle you need to have kettlebell flows that are a little bit more uh planned that can kind of you know have like a sequence like yeah but we also we taught the free flow that's more of of a, it's like, it can be anything, man. If you really, if you go lightweight and you go for time, you know, you can challenge yourself not to put the weight down. It challenges your grip, challenges your endurance, you know, by having to keep going the whole time for the full, let's say 10 to 15 minute rounds. But it also helps you really explore your body and really assess where your body's at,

what moves you're really fluent with or what you're having a hard time with, any sticking points you might have, because in kettlebell flows and free flow, you're transitioning and you're just going for it. You're just not thinking, just kind of doing what your body does and just kind of doing whatever techniques

you're familiar with, or then you find what you're not familiar with. And from there, after the session, you can kind of work on those weaknesses that you found or those strengths. You're like, man, I was really good at that move, combine into that move. Maybe I should combine that and really drill that. It'll make me a lot stronger in that transition and help me be more prepared for the next

time I'm in that type of scenario yeah you find your weaknesses yeah through the movement super for me free flowing that's one of the biggest benefits like finding a transition where i'm not so smooth at and then going back to the drawing board and realize and you know thinking about like how can i make that transition better um why am i tight there maybe i should work a little bit more ability in that area you know so it's a great assessment tool but it's also a really good cardio tool or a conditioning tool yeah and kids do that too that's something that i that was mind-boggling for me watching my son at 18 months like always wants to do everything himself right but like going upstairs if he could if he if he ate shit on the stairs and got hurt,

I'd be like, hold daddy's hand, and then he'd jerk his hand away and fucking master the step. Yeah. Each time he wanted to figure it out, and he would just repeat it until he got it right. So that's not going to happen again. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's the kind of thing.

We figure out where this hole is in the game, and you work through that. That's greasing the groove. Exactly. Like you work through that movement's greasing the groove like you work through that movement pattern until you master it yep so many so it's so often though we're adults we forget that shit we're like i'm weak in that area i'm not gonna fucking do that exercise anymore it's all of us you know we do we're short on time we just want to knock out a

quick workout and we do the same shit we always do but you know i want to encourage people to to mix it up you know keep your training fun try some kettlebell flows try some steel club flows try some mace flows you know not it doesn't have to be just unconventional tools you can use barbells too you know just whatever it is you know try to have fun mix it up switch up your routine you know still incorporate all the basic stuff because you know it's tried and true and it's going to help you you know get maximally strong doing heavy squats heavy deadlifts heavy bench press just don't neglect uh the way your body wants to move or should move or all the other ways it can move you know mix it up it'll keep you a lot more durable and keep you more or better prepared for any chaotic situations like if you decide to go play a little game of football or decide to jump into a wrestling match or you know

whatever or play basketball you end up twisting in the direction you're not used to you're not adapted to then you know it's gonna end up bad but if you you mess around with your training and you play around with it obviously with some good mechanics and you know being mindful of not fucking yourself up in your training then you know you can really prepare your body for some more dangerous situations yeah you know people think push pull squat hinge but there's twist rotation lunge there's gate there's all these things that we need to train you know and i think the more we round that out the better adapted we are and the more bulletproof we are to injury yeah that you

know people fucking hurt their backs in a pickup softball game you know like a beer drinking softball league it's slow pitch you know and there's people that train to lift weights they're just not used to doing those things yeah you know or or you throw your back out picking your kid up or or you know pulling groceries out of the trunk you know like that's the kind of shit where it's funny too like there's so much when we were getting into it and obviously i've read the the arnold's uh encyclopedia modern day bodybuilding which is a great book but there's so much about flat back perfect spine all these things and now you see like with coach summers another guy that i learned about on tim ferris like hollow back like you're fucking you're doing this thing yeah we move in

space differently you know like if you're in a wrestling match no one's standing straight up with a fucking perfectly erect spine that shit doesn't exist you know it doesn't exist in jiu-jitsu no you know you sit on your ass and you're you're getting ready to roll with somebody you're fucking hunched forward with your arms in front of you t-rex arms you know and like how can we train that well you can do planks with a hollow back oh yeah you can if you're picking ups in a hollow position you pick up a um a medicine ball that's heavy and we've got some pretty heavy ones yeah you know you're completely rounded around that thing that's normal yeah and it's safe it's actually really good for your core you can brace the spine that way right yeah great i'd

love doing uh heavy uh atlas stone squats or we got this rogue bag in the gym that's like 140 pounds i'll hug the shit out of that and i feel so safe you know because i'm really wrapping my whole spine my whole core around it and i can really brace and hit yeah learning how to brace the core and get that locked in in that awkward position that's dangerous but you know there aren't any dangerous positions you know there's just uh kind of falling into something you're not ready for you know and that's why we got train, even if it's like in a smaller load, which I recommend, if you're going to do like an awkward, like hollow body, or if you're going to round your spine a little bit, maybe start light, you know, do just body weight movements, like, like spine waves, you know, some animal flow movements to really articulate that spine before you start doing some type of loaded movements with

that. For example, in my kettlebell flows, my spine is not always going to be super straight. There's times where I rotate into a twist press, into a side lunge where I kind of fall out of that neutral spine position, but that's perfectly fine because I'm not under a maximum load. The only time I recommend you be super mindful of maintaining a really straight back is if you're under like maximum blows like you're doing uh three to four hundred pounds squat and you gotta you gotta be mindful of that that butt wink you know but like in the kettlebell sir we told you guys you know it's perfectly fine to explore that range you know as long as you know you're mindful

of your tension you go down real slow and you just you work on that range you know it's actually going to help you strengthen yourself too so when you're under heavy load you're familiar with that and you don't fall into it and hurt yourself yeah that was another another thing you just mentioned that it really blew my mind too was how light we were going during the kettlebell certain obviously the volume was extraordinarily high for sure but like i was blasted i was so sore just from and i used like a fucking eight and a 12 kilo throughout the two days that was it yeah you know and um one of the things i was talking with you and um what's the other guy's name marcus marcus i was talking with marcus and i was like i would love at some point to be able to snatch the 48 and he was like all right just work on it single arm

swings with the 48 until like it's really comfortable and your grip solid right because it's just a technical thing yep and then fixing the snatch was like i know i'll be able to do that one day because the the uh the 20 kilo which is what i normally use just to mess around with that became so light it felt like a feather yeah but what was cool was was when john wolf got up and started fucking motoring that 48 kilo he was like bro i haven't even touched a 48 in like two months yeah all i do is fuck with the 24 i use the 24 consistently yep and that's where i get my reps my volume and then when i go back to the 48 i know that you know i know it's going to be a jump but i'm constantly greasing the groove with

the 24 i'm not worried about having to go heavy all the time yeah and that way you don't got to break yourself down all the time you know going super heavy is really hard on the body and you know you save those for those days where you really just want to test yourself and so it's good to be able to use the techniques that we teach to just be mindful and just create like mindful tension and you know mindful movement that you get a lot of juice out of hell yeah brother so let's talk a bit about what you're getting into now because you really have become the face of fucking on it training you've got over a hundred thousand followers on the gram yeah everybody knows who you are i mean i was following you probably a year and a half or two years before i got here oh yeah yeah like i had just friends in the fight game that were like dude you got to

follow this guy primal soldier oh that's dope you know you know just amazing to watch what you do online um and now you've got you've you've really picked up so much steam that you're doing your own thing as well as coaching here. You've got online programming. Talk a bit about that. So I just launched ericleha.com. It's also primalswalder.com, if you forget. But if you get on there, I just launched my kettlebell course.

So it's basically what we teach in the kettlebell certs with an, in addition to, I teach a lot of my go-to mobility warmups, you know, so you can get ready for your kettlebell training. So all the cut up, uh, kettlebell fundamental techniques from, uh, you know, push, pull, squat, hinge to the swing, the snatch, and, uh, all my go-to kettlebell techniques. but I also include a section on building complexes, like how I like to build my kettlebell workouts, and a section on my favorite kettlebell flows. So it gives people an idea of how to put flows together. There's no one and done way. It's just some of my favorite flows. So in addition to learning all the kettlebell techniques in my course, you also get some pretty cool examples of how to put them together into workouts. And so, you know, I'm just trying to, you know, spread the knowledge, you know, keep sharing with people.

You know, it's a super, super low price on the course right now for the amount of content that's on there. There's like 150 technique videos, warm ups, decompression, mobility, cool downs, all kinds of stuff on there. And I've gotten a lot of really good feedback. People are finding it super useful. You know, it's good for the beginner, intermediate and advanced trainer or a person who just wants to get into kettlebell training. You know, there's something for everybody and worked really hard on it. You know, it takes about a year to put it all together.

So there's a lot of content on there. Uh, so if you guys sign up, uh, it's also available for a lifetime, you know, pay once you can have it forever. Uh, it's a really great resource for coaches and anybody who just wants to make sure they got their, their sound kettlebell technique. Yeah. That's amazing, brother. Especially guys. I mean, we get, I get a lot of questions doing and anybody who just wants to make sure they got their sound kettlebell technique. Yeah, that's amazing, brother. Especially, I mean, I get a lot of questions doing Facebook Lives about kettlebells. I'm like, hey, there's some videos, there's some books, but truly it's nice to have a one-stop shop.

Because things are kind of scattered on the academy, and we're doing a better job of consolidating information there. Yeah, we're getting there. We're getting there. But it is really that that you've put that much time and effort into something that you're so passionate about and there is one place where people can go to figure that out yeah because a lot of people do want to get into this stuff but it is awkward it's like well fuck man i mean how many people were at least half the room who had used kettlebells before in the kettlebell cert we're still doing that like that kind of squat

to shoulder raise squat swing squat yeah lateral raise you know yeah you know like you're using all arms you know yeah it should be all ass yeah it should be all power yeah all stretch reflex yeah and those are people that have played with kettlebells before so like how long how long have they tried kettlebells incorrectly and now, like, how long have they tried kettlebells incorrectly? And now they've got to unpack that. Now they've got to rewire their brain to do it correctly. Yeah, and, you know, it might not be incorrect. You know, there's different ways to do a kettlebell swing.

You know, you see people doing the American swing, which requires a little bit more of a squat to get it overhead for, you know, like CrossFit purposes, for competition, for high reps. And, you know, we just we like to teach at the Online Academy to not be dogmatic. You know, we're not we're not a one way, but we're just trying to teach you the safe, not just the safest way, but the most effective way to get the best results out of our techniques so that's why we like to teach the kettlebell swing as a more of a hinge uh posterior dominant exercise just because you know if i want to hit my quads and want to hit my shoulders i'll fucking do some shoulder presses or i'll do some squats godless squats and yeah you know barbell if i want to fuck my back up i'll fucking go fucking jump off a really high building or

something. But if I want to, a lot of people, you know, their sedentary lifestyles, they drive all day, they sit down at the desk all day. So a lot of people are, you know, falling forward into flexion and we want to condition them to really engage their asses and their hamstrings a lot more. And we find the best way to do that is to use the kettlebell swing as a more hinge dominant pattern you know there's different ways to do it there's no wrong way to do it but we like to teach you to fucking use your ass i appreciated that because they're you know just going back to the plyometrics version of that you know the way you can use that to feel that load and stretch the deeper i got into that really

hiking it between the legs yeah i felt incredible power and stretch the deeper i got into that really hiking it between the legs yeah i felt incredible power and then the weight feels lighter yeah the same thing followed with the stach which is a similar movement but like really pulling that down and and driving the hips back yeah like the ass to grab what was that goes for the three superman superman is where you pull the shoulders back and down instagram back pelvis like you're pushing that ass out of the ig press that ham and then you press that ham yeah pushing their ass back like you're pressing your butt cheeks up against the window to moon somebody yeah hell yeah that's what it is it was dope you know it was really incredible to have not only fun language

like that that's easy to remember but um how much that translated through all these different movements oh yeah and then in that experience knowing like damn if the weight's moving that much quicker and feeling that much lighter i've already become stronger through the technique you know it's not like my body adapted in a fucking 24 hour span and i'm that much stronger from one day's training yeah i know it's a technical thing yeah yeah we like to teach uh one thing we like to say a lot is you want to make uh a lightweight feel heavy or you want to move a lightweight like it's a heavy weight so that eventually a heavy weight will seem light you know so if you use mindful technique with lighter weights then eventually heavier weight it's gonna seem not as heavy as

it was before just because you know you got your mechanics down you're able to radiate tension properly and you're really using you know your full body to to get the those weights up with uh and those powerful movements yeah that translated to safety too i noticed you know a lot of people when they have a lighter weight they're just gonna lean down on one fucking foot and pick it up with a rounded back like yeah it's an eight kilo whatever yeah you know it's like no that's that's how you get hurt like always respect the weight no matter how light it is you know use good form to pick it up brace the spine tight waist that kind of stuff and i thought that was uh incredibly

powerful to yeah super valuable make sure people aren't getting hurt outside of training you know even when they're just picking up their kids or picking up the groceries like you said um just you know we'd like to teach people to be aware of their bodies and you know make sure you're you're not just fucking dicking around especially in the gym where it can be dangerous if you're not using proper form we've talked a bit about how you got here physically but i want to take a deeper dive into how you changed mentally emotionally spiritually over the years and i and i you know what i'm leading to here yeah for sure yeah man um so like i said growing up in in school i kind of zeroed in on um on like academics um i wanted to do really good in school, get into a good college.

And I neglected the social part. And so for the longest time, I didn't drink. I didn't do any drugs. I was completely sober. And then right out of school, you know, I started listening to Joe Rogan talk about how awesome, you know, smoking weed is and how to open your mind. And I was like, fuck, man. I'm such a little

bitch. I'm scared to talk to girls. I'm scared to fucking talk to people and make friends. Maybe I should fucking start smoking weed and trying something different because I'm fucking socially fucking dumb and I can't make any friends. And so I had a friend in high school who had been trying to pressure me for a long time to smoke weed. I finally took him up on the offer and we smoked weed. And for the first time, it felt like a super psychedelic experience to me. I felt like I was like flying through an Egyptian portal. And that was just weed.

All right. And so then I kept listening to the Joe Rogan podcast and he was talking about DMT, the most powerful psychedelic he's ever tried and i ended up actually uh two months after i smoked weed for the first time uh i go to go to go buy some weed from a friend right and he's like hey man i actually got that uh some dmt you ever heard of that i'm like yeah man i actually just heard about that the other day fuck it's crazy what a coincidence you know no coincidence the universe provided right and then so i fucking ended up getting some of that took it over to my friend who introduced me to weed and i was like hey man look at that guy he's like damn i always wanted to try that and so we ended up trying it and i was blown away you know i ended up it wasn't i remember

going into it expecting to see like machine elves and like alien entities you know all the terence mckenna talk yeah all the terence mckenna the gnomes yeah but i just fucking ended up flying through this like foreign subconscious that i had been in but felt so familiar you know i felt like i had i was traveling through like a primordial space that i had like i was super familiar with but also alien at the same time so it felt super comforting and that was my first experience you know I saw like like I felt like archetypes like weird like Egyptian like goddesses and like Indian goddesses ate like medusas and all kinds of weird shit so that's when I kind of broke through for the first time, and I was sold on it.

So I ended up realizing, man, this stuff is super expensive, but I want to keep trying it. Man, I wonder how easy it is to make. So I actually ended up learning how to make DMT, and I made my own DMT, had my own supply, and was smoking on it for a long time. I had a lot of really deep visions and kind of I stopped being afraid of stuff. I ended up realizing it helped me kind of like dig deep into myself

and kind of pulled out a lot of skeletons in my closet that I was kind of holding on to, a lot of anxiety. And it helped me kind of conquer pretty much like my inner bitch. I stopped being afraid of this world because the world inside, inside myself, was a lot more powerful but also intimidating. And there was just so much going on in my subconscious that made me realize that I didn't need to be afraid of the world around me. It was all kind of just like one thing. I just needed to be better connected with myself because it felt like super alien being that deep inside my head.

But it also felt super familiar. And then there were times where I kind of like broke through and kind of felt like i died you know there was a time where i flew through all the the you know crazy psychedelic stuff the portals all the colors the pretty psychedelic yeah sacred geometry and i kind of broke through into like nothingness i felt like like i was just like a dot of light that could see in all directions. Like I had no perspective, no thoughts, no language. And like I felt like, fuck, I'm dead. I just fucking blew it. I smoked way too much.

I just died. Like, fuck. I was about to freak out because I couldn't talk. I felt like inanimate. And then I broke back through. I came back. back i realized you know even if that's not what death is like it just felt like a really vapid like cold place and i was like man i gotta fucking just live it now like enjoy life right now just because man if that's what

i have to look forward to it wasn't like it was scary but it was also very uh it felt very comfortable you know like being nothing like it was also like you were i was like just energy just flow like i was like that dot just connected part of everything i was just a part of that sacred geometry and i didn't have a thought and have language i didn't have anything to be conscious about. It was just existing. And then so then it made me realize, you know, coming back into this conscious world, I should enjoy every moment and, you know, have as many experiences as I can. Really try to take it all in because, you know, what's next might not be anything like this. So I should try to enjoy my human experience as much as I can you know I try to enjoy all the flavors enjoy all the sights enjoy all

the moments and relationships with people just because there's nobody else like those people and there's never gonna be another experience like this and so after going through all those psychedelic experiences it really kind of forced me to stop being afraid to meet people and to do new things and try new things. And that's actually after years of training in MMA, I finally had the guts to finally take an MMA fight. I had an MMA fight and it was the most brutal thing I'd ever done. But if I hadn't had that psychedelic experience, I wouldn't have conquered my fear of not being afraid to step in the cage in front of my whole family, in front of

all my friends and be in danger of fucking getting beat up or embarrassing myself. And I owe it a lot to those psychedelic experiences. And so I think that's something everybody should do, even if it's not ingesting drugs you know doing some type of meditation or some type of you know digging deep into your head to really help you help you conquer your inner self yeah i think i mean i don't put holotropic breath work or shamanjelic breath work in the par of dmt yeah but i think it is it is one of the deepest ways to meditate. And it is visionary, you know, without substance. Like I've, I was talking to John Wolf about that before going out to Spirit

Ranch. And I was kind of a breathwork snob in a sense where I'm like, I've done Wim Hof, you know, I've done this. I felt my hands charged. I've never seen shit, you know, and I had like full blown visions and just from the breathwork. From like all that, you know, I don't know. There is a DMT release, you know all that you know there is a dmt release you know that's what science is starting to back up is that yeah obviously we produce this in our own brains but that is possibly why we see things when we dream why we feel things when we dream and you can shift the chemistry in your brain through breath work and and yogis have known this for thousands of years but that practice you know Stanislav Grav, the guy who created this,

was around in the psychedelic 60s with Timothy Leary and Ram Dass. I think he was a professor at Harvard as well. When LSD got shut down by the government, he still wanted a tool for everyone to use. And I find it incredibly important because not everyone wants to go down the rabbit hole. Not everybody's willing to risk the legality depending on where you live. Obviously, if you're in Peru or you head to Peru,

you're good to go. But there's not a lot of places on earth where that's accessible or cool to do. So I think having tools like that, flotation, different forms of meditation, they're really important. And even if you do go down the rabbit hole with some of the the stronger substances yeah it's still nice to have those practices in place to bridge the gap to help ground the experience so that way you can

you can walk the walk and live and also test the waters too you know like see how far you've come and like through meditation and through like you said floating um for me man it got to a point to you know i was making my own supply so i had like a shitload of this stuff and i was just smoking it every night for like maybe a year maybe two years i don't really remember but i was smoking it every night before bed you know it was like my my like nightcap my night some guys have a glass of whiskey on the rocks vape it have a vision and pass out so it was awesome you know i got to see a bunch of cool all the time have this euphoric feeling where i felt super connected with the universe and the world around me but then i felt like i got to a point to where I stopped seeing visions. And I was seeing the same thing, feeling the same stuff. And when before it was so new and fresh every time.

And I was seeing new things and new things about myself that I needed to work on. And I felt like I was abusing it. After a while, the medicine stopped teaching me new things. And I felt like I was being punished because I stopped seeing visual stuff. I still felt the euphoric feeling, but I stopped seeing things. Even though I would load up the bowl with a shill and a DMT, I still wouldn't see anything. I felt like I had like, at one point, I felt like I burnt out my fucking pineal gland or whatever processes and stuff. And I was like, man, I fucked my stuff up.

What if I die one day or when I die, I'm not going to see anything because I burnt myself out. So I ended up, I realized, man, you know what? I need to stop doing this and I need to set out and conquer the goals and work on the stuff that I learned when I first started doing it. And, you know, I put it down for maybe like two or three years, and I ended up succeeding at work, you know, doing really well with Onnit, and, you know, finally got to a point to where I realized, man, you know, I'm not stuck.

You know, I've accomplished some things, and maybe it's time to try it again, and I tried it again i try it again and i felt great you know i finally saw something new and i felt like the medicine was kind of rewarding me with uh a more welcoming message yeah new new new stuff to work through yeah exactly yeah brother that's beautiful i had a similar similar experience with ayahuasca and i was talking about my personal experience and doing it three months in a row getting the same message three months in a row yeah on the third time being like why the fuck do you keep telling me to do yoga meditation it's like oh you haven't fucking done it yet dummy yeah you're not gonna get anything new you don't

get to graduate until you start doing whatever the work is for you for me you know like i had that was my message that's something I needed to work on. And once I started doing that, then ayahuasca continued to teach me. But it wasn't until that point. I didn't get to graduate on to the new knowledge until I started to embody and live what it was asking me to do. That's definitely what it was. I hadn't graduated.

I hadn't paid attention to the medicine, to what it was telling me. And what it was telling me was before was to stop worrying about my body image and the way I looked and how swole I was and shredded. Because at one point I realized, man, I smoke this stuff all the time. And I started getting really shredded. My nails would grow really fast. My hair, my facial hair would grow really fast. And I ended up looking it up. I was like, man, I wonder whatever this stuff makes my growth hormone like increases my growth hormone production and then it actually did i ended up finding some study some random study that said that the test subjects growth hormone increased so then i was like damn this stuff is making me shredded and then so at the tail end of it dmt the ultimate performance enhancing drug i was fucking trying to smoke

all the time so i can you know get really shredded and then that was totally trying to smoke all the time so I can get really shredded. And then that was totally the opposite of what the medicine was trying to tell me. It was telling me that I need to just be more connected with the people around me and with myself and be just happy with who I am and what I have. And so then that's why it fucking punished me. It was rewarding me with these cool shit, getting shredded, seeing cool shit. But then it was also ended up fucking turning around on me and making me realize I'm like a fucking junkie or some shit, smoking this shit all the time. And that's when I realized, fuck, I'm going down a fucking shitty rabbit hole and I need to fucking stop doing it and really

just focus on being me and doing stuff not to you know to look better to be cooler but just to fucking be happy and that's when I fucking I stopped doing DMT um well it wasn't bad I'm not saying it's bad I was just I was abusing it i was using it the way it's an important caveat to make you know a lot of people and i i've certainly have looked back on podcasts that i've done where i'm like maybe i shouldn't put paint it in that pretty of a way right because it it is challenging and certainly you know with ayahuasca if you ever heard gabra mate talk about it's like there's zero chance of addiction it tastes horrible you have la purga where you're purging you're shitting your brains out yeah it's not a fun experience and then there's euphoria and then there's knowledge right but you've got to work through that with other things like lsd and dmt in particular i mean they

can be scary at times but for the most part it is fucking beautiful yeah and it is something that you can do more often and yeah and that there is that there's the ability to be drawn into that that's something that we all have to be mindful of you know because it's important to take that knowledge and then bring it back to earth yeah put it into existence. Apply it to our real life. Yeah. And I was stuck in this, I was stuck in this, you know, this fucking psychedelic world, you know, I was seeing a bunch of really dope visions and, you know, encountering these entities. And because as I started smoking more,

I did start encountering these weird entities, which I believe were, you know, my subconscious being, you know, just really you know just really um it's really powerful visions and because they felt really familiar i had felt these when i was a kid you know like scary like you know that that heavy chest feeling you get it felt like that a lot of the times and so you know i was living in this this world and i wasn't really applying the knowledge I was getting to my real life. And then when I finally took that step to listen to it, put it down and really just focus on, for me, my kettlebell training and my work, my personal training and group training and working

on it, that I finally felt happy. I wasn't just taking all this stuff from this, you know, this subconscious realm for myself. I was actually giving back to the world and helping people get better at working out and their kettlebell techniques and helping people better themselves, which has been the most rewarding thing ever, man. Like, I can't imagine having to... I used to work in medical billing for a while while I wasn't going to college.

That was horrible because I was at a desk all day billing people for their fucking ailments and shit. I'm like, man, these guys are sick and fucked up and all I'm doing is trying to fucking charge them for what they're doing and I'm not helping them. I'm not making them any better. So when I finally got is trying to fucking charge them for what they're doing. And I'm not helping them. I'm not making them any better. So when I finally got the chance to help people with their fitness and their health, it was a good transition for me to really make a difference instead of just fucking sit at a desk all day. Now I get to actually make a difference. And so that's why it's been super rewarding to be able to launch my stuff online because I've had people for years, you know, from all over the world who

want to come to, to on it and train with me or take a kettlebell serve, but it's just too expensive. You know, a lot of people can't afford to, uh, lights, hotels, hotels. Yeah. And so, uh, that's why it's been a great, uh, you you know i've been grateful to be able to give back to those people who have been following me for so long and i've been super supportive so now it's um i'm fortunate enough to be able to launch my site and uh give people access to that information yeah brother what a what a fucking polarizing view too to be on that side of health yeah man and then to shift to what you're doing now which i'm not saying is wrong you know people you know doctors have to make money and they have

to you know well we got a lot that's fucked up with our health care the way stuff works truthfully seeing that firsthand was like fuck this is what we got to do to get these people to pay and like we got to make them like keep coming back to these appointments and you got to give them these drugs. And I'm just like, fuck. And I felt like shit, man. And that's actually after I left that job to start working on it. And I was like, man, even if I work in the warehouse, at least I'm with a company that's more in line with my beliefs. And so I took that leap and now I'm here.

You know, I just got to keep trucking, keep grinding and just keep giving back. Cause I think I've been successful just cause I'm always just trying to give more than I'm receiving. Just cause it's like the law of reciprocity that Aubrey likes to talk about, just give, give, give, and eventually,

you're going to get it back and if you can give 51 you know take 49 yep right so you always give a little bit more than for me that's enough that's more than enough you know when before i wasn't getting anything out of what i was doing now you know i can give whatever as long as i get some good energy back because that's going to keep me going, keep me working hard. Hell yeah, brother. Well, fuck, dude. It's been excellent having you on. We'll have to run it back.

Hell yeah, man. I'm down anytime. Where can people follow you online? You can follow me at Eric Leja on Facebook or Primal Swolder on Instagram. And check out my website, ericleja.com. I got tons of workouts and a kettlebell course that'll help you get your kettlebell game right. Fuck yeah, brother.

Thanks for joining us. Thanks, man. Thanks for tuning in, guys. You can find out more about the Onnit 6 going to Onnit.com, as well as checking out the Onnit certifications at certs. We have a wealth of certifications you can do here from the steel mace to kettlebells to battle ropes to all sorts of fun stuff. Durability is an absolute favorite of mine. So many cool things to check out. Of course, check out ericleha.com and follow links to follow him online with the primal swolder on Instagram. He's blowing up the gram over

100,000 followers. Definitely worth clicking follow. Thanks for tuning in.