Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #73 Cristian Plascencia

Episode Date: February 11, 2019

Cristian Plascencia is the senior durability coach at Onnit Gym in Austin TX. We dive into Animal Flow and reaching flow state, how breath-work and mindfulness has impacted his fitness and some of the techniques he implements. We also talk about his daily routine and the important role, movement, sleep, and how and why he maintains a parasympathetic state. Connect with Cristian: Instagram | https://bit.ly/2TGOhXv Facebook | https://bit.ly/2RKaxmV Twitter | https://bit.ly/2W1vA2y Show Notes: John Wolf | https://bit.ly/2BqEii7 Shane Heins | https://bit.ly/2RML6w6 Animal Flow | https://bit.ly/2HTyG5I Functional Anatomy Seminars | https://bit.ly/2zjBVdf Own The Day by Aubrey Marcus | https://bit.ly/2t6x4hu Sleep by Nick Littlehales | https://amzn.to/2TaXlUM Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker | https://amzn.to/2Drf1G5 Conscious Loving | https://adbl.co/2FInuXM Becoming A Supple Leopard by Kelly Starrett | https://amzn.to/2CzfUuI Stretch To Learn by Ann Frederick | https://amzn.to/2Dsh50v Oxygen Advantage by Patrick McKeown | https://amzn.to/2T2bQd7 Connect with Kyle Kingsbury on: Twitter | https://bit.ly/2DrhtKn Instagram | https://bit.ly/2DxeDrk Get 10% off at Onnit by going to https://www.onnit.com/podcast/ Connect with Onnit on: Twitter | https://twitter.com/Onnit        Instagram | https://bit.ly/2NUE7DW Subscribe to Human Optimization Hour   iTunes  | https://apple.co/2P0GEJu Stitcher  | https://bit.ly/2DzUSyp Spotify  | https://spoti.fi/2ybfVTY

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Kyle Kingsbury. And today we've got an awesome guy on the show, Christian Plasencia, who has been one of the coaches I've really gravitated towards here at Onnit. He has a wealth of knowledge on mobility and breathwork and how we tie those things into the body to make the most out of our training, out of our relaxation techniques, and all sorts of shit in between. I think you guys are going to dig this one. Let me know what you think. Thank you. Clap us in, baby. We're going. Christian Plasencia, why don't you pull that mic a few inches in front of your mouth for me, please? We got the mobility man himself in the your mouth for me, please? Oh, yeah. We got the mobility man himself in the house.

Hell yeah. I love it, brother. Glad to be here, bro. Happy to be here. Thank you, bro. Hell yeah. So let's wind it back to childhood, early days. What kind of sports did you play?

What got you into health and wellness? Yeah, I would say basketball has definitely had the biggest impact. That was definitely the sport I chose to kind of specialize in. But, you know, at a young age, it was baseball. It was soccer. It was, you know, all the above tennis. I think I got some golf lessons one time, like just a very diverse there, you know what I mean? But basketball has definitely been like the driving factor towards like getting into fitness and was kind of the, I guess, the foundation that kind of pushed me into like physical therapy, which then led into like mobility, which then led into longevity, which then led into like where I am now. So it's been a cool journey. That's awesome, brother.

So you grew up out in Salinas? Salinas, California, brother. Yes, sir. That's right. Right next to John. Okay. John Wolfe. Sick.

Yep, exactly. And John, you knew John from a young age, right? Yes, sir. So my mom was his second client or third client he ever had at a Gold's gym, just starting out as a trainer. So yeah, we go way back. And then I was a really overweight high school senior and thought I was a hooper at the same time. And John gave me some nutritional advice. And so that's when we kind of linked back up again. and thought I was a hooper at the same time. And John gave me some nutritional advice.

And so that's when we kind of linked back up again. And then it wasn't until after college that we then linked on a fitness level. We can kind of communicate like on the same terms. Then he realized like, oh, you've changed a little bit. You're growing up. Growing up a little bit. So what'd you study when you were in college? So I went to school for exercise science. That's kind of like the technical term. And then I had an emphasis in health professions because I thought physical therapy, again, was going to be like my route. And I thought that's what I wanted to do

was become a doctor of PT and kind of go down that route. I think a lot of people, when they get into, like the goal is still the same, right? Like you want to help people, you want to help with injuries or things that have impacted your life. So it becomes like, how do I treat people after the surgery or after the big injury? And then as you go further down the road, you're like, there's a step I can meet

people at before it's too late. And that's called prevention. So fucking how we maintain and open up the body prevents a lot of injuries and teaching people the skills how to listen to their body so they're not overdoing it 100 who's been some of the most because there's a lot of guys that have blown up in this field from dr kelly stirret to dr andrew spina like who's really influenced you and and how's that shaped the way you package everything definitely well i'll say you know just from early on, like John Wolf, you know, was a huge advocate and a huge mentor for me to kind of point me in the right direction. Obviously he has tons of knowledge, him and Shane Hines, who's the director of education here for

Onnit. Tons of education, you know, tons of knowledge. But then them even pointing me in the direction of Ospina, right? So Ospina was coming in here like two or three times a year, you know, for my first, what, like two years. So being able to see him like on a consistent basis and just hear him speak and hear his instructors speak were just phenomenal. Like they're next level. You've been to certification before?

I have not. No, I haven't. Yeah, I have a couple of close friends back home. Dr. Justin Brink, who runs a chiropractor. He's a chiropractor. He's a chiropractor. He has a premier spine and sport in San Jose. He swears by him. And I've done some of the techniques through him.

Okay, cool. Hell yeah. Well, I mean, you would geek out. You would love it. Because they get like, you know, they're breaking down to like the actual science, the actual research that shows that, hey, this hip circle that you might think is bogus

is actually not bogus. And let me give you all the technical reasons why, and then I'm going to make your ass suffer and go through it. So it's super cool. Spina has been huge. Animal flow, and that being a little bit more from a global perspective of movement, animal flow was really awesome because, again, my background was a little bit more of conventional, a little bit more conventional strength and conditioning. And I was never exposed to ground-based movements. You know what I mean? I was never exposed to a flow style of training. Maybe it's one that some might think is very similar to yoga. I didn't really put myself through that. You know what I mean? So then when first exposed to it, and again, Mike Fitch does

such a great job of making it... If you're a science guy, if you like to kind of geek out on the whys behind everything that you're doing, it was there. So the science and everything that was along those lines was there, but it was this free form of expression. You know what I mean? Yeah. Animal flow is, God, I'm trying to think of the thing. There's a term for it. Paul Cech studied with a guy, and I think Mike Fitch did as well, but I think it's like infant-child development.

But basically, you want to match and repattern a lot of the way that children learn how to crawl and then how to walk, right? So from those, like the reintegration of on your hands and knees, then the reintegration of toes and hands, right? And then you just go from there. But how, how important that is just from an athletic standpoint and opening up the body, but retraining this, these cross systems, right? How we cross pattern activating the transverse abdominus. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny because, you know, I teach classes here, right out on it. And, um, you know, some of the general population,

you know, clients who come in never been exposed to this type of stuff. I mean, because I teach classes here right out on it. And some of the general population, clients who come in, never been exposed to this type of stuff. I mean, they're seated like we are right now all day for the most part, if they're not driving back and forth somewhere. And so to see people first time kind of coming across that, they light up, you know what I mean?

And they don't really know what it is. I mean, they kind of attune it to, I believe it just being a new style and a new training technique. Like, oh, this is fresh. This is rejuvenating. But then they realize all the benefits of, oh, I've never like had to use that muscle. I've never felt this work before. I've never had to push from here or pull from here. And so like being able to open up variability for, for clients and people kind of coming in has been one of the best gifts that I've been able to kind of give to people.

So, yeah, I did a, I mean, I did a lot of animal flow when we were out in Peru doing watchuma. And we had one day where we were like, let's push it. And he's like,

right, we've got a hundred sit throughs is what we're finishing with. After like a hard TRX workout, a hundred sit throughs. I did five sets of 20. I was fried, but like that being on the ground the whole time and moving through that space is just, it just does wonders. Cause's hitting things that are not there's you're so

limited by like basic movement patterns that really bodybuildings develop to isolate certain things like a crunch, right? Like it's very rare. You flex your abs like that in sport or in competition or in life and movement, right? So like having different ways that you can activate the core through movement is a whole different way of looking at it. And even for someone like yourself, right? Like you're, I would consider you a pretty high level athlete, whether you still compete or not, you, you were, or still are right.

An elite level athlete. And so even for someone like yourself, being able to kind of, again, you, you know, you did UFC, you did football. So that's a little bit more, especially football. That's a lot more, you know, back squat, you know, let's get your squats in with the barbell. Let's get your bench presses in. Let's get these cleans. Let's get all these movements in. Right. But I mean, were you ever exposed to like those type of movements on the ground or that type of deal? And it's like, you know, and I guess that's kind of where the art of coaching to kind of comes in is like, well, where would you put that then? You know, we wouldn't do a phase of animal flow. Of course not. You know what I mean? But being able to expose that style,

right. And for all those benefits that you were just naming off to professional athletes and elite level athletes, dude. I mean, again, like for me, in my perspective, being able to open someone's library up, I believe gives them a lot more access. It gives them more tools and toolbox to diversify themselves in their own sport. That's my two cents on it. I like that a lot. And it keeps it fresh. If I don't do the same fucking thing every time I show up to the gym, that gets old. It gets a little daunting where you're like, all right, I'll just show up.

I got to run on the treadmill. Treadmills fucking suck. go outside, do something else. Or if you're going to be indoors on a treadmill, run sprints only, you know, so it's super high intensity. And then you have to be fully engaged in the exercise. But I think adding in things that are, I mean, animal flow is dope because it's like play. You think about like kids playing, you know, like you're just fucking doing it. They're having fun. So when you think about that play element to training, it's so much different than what we've been taught growing up. You know, like on how we should train for sport. 100%.

Which is funny too because I feel like, again, elite level athletes, athletes who have been doing it at least even just in college, like working out is almost sometimes dreaded. Right? It's almost like one of those things where, hey, if you effed up, you know, you got to go, you got to get on the field and do burpees. You got to go do this. You got to lift this many weights. You got to be in the weight room earlier. Like it's almost used as like a form of punishment.

But when you look at it through the lens of, hey, this is play, dude, guys don't care. I'm right now working with some of the combine athletes, right? So some collegiate football players going into the NFL combine and then their pro days. And we just got them to be able to go into like a five minute flow. If I would have told them that coming into like day one,

hey, we're going to do a, again, the way I'd label it, but we're going to do a yoga flow for five minutes at the end on our recovery days. Half of them would have laughed at me and probably not have gotten into it or put their, you know, a hundred percent into it. But we just did it for like five minutes and do the guys wanted to keep going. They're like, dude, I've never felt that good. Cause you know, you start pairing up the breath, you know how the breath could start pairing up the breath with the movement. And

again, they get into like this different zone. They're like this call it a flow state, call it a more parasympathetic state, call it whatever you want, but they get into like that different perspective, man. And it's, it's awesome. It's really, really cool to see. Yeah. There's a shift. How, speaking of like different perspectives, something that I've continually gotten like plant medicine ceremonies recently in the last two years has been to soften my body. And that doesn't mean to become like a fat turd. It just means more yoga, more flows, more opening of the body, more mobility. And in doing that, that would pretty much take away a lot of the stress that I have of being tight and constricted and anger and a lot of these emotions that are stored in the body. I think they can be released through movement, through opening of the body.

And if I open my body, I have an open heart and I have an open mind. So, I mean, have you noticed that as you work with people, people like have a general better sense of wellbeing once they start to open their body and kind of not be so fucking static and stiff. You know, one thing just to speak to that directly, I think more present, right? Like you're walking into the gym, you can tell they're right here right now. You know, I have a couple guys that are trained. They're like executives. They work kind of in the corporate realm. And they come in, dude, and they're like high strung.

They've slept like four or five hours if they slept, haven't eaten shit, or if they have, they ate McDonald's. You know what I mean? Like just kind of on the go with their whole life. And then you can tell when they get here, they're still like on the go. You know what I mean? They're not here.

But to kind of give like a personal account to that, I remember in college, again, I was going through like a very strict power lifting regimen, right? That one of my teachers had wrote for me, putting on a lot of mass, but on like 15 pounds of mass from like month one to like month eight. But I realized, because I used to lift right before class, I realized that sitting down,

I felt way more just like on edge. And even just with my relationships, I felt very like on edge. Right. And then maybe fast forward two years later, I meet, you know, I reintroduced with John, Shane, they're showing me all these movements. They're giving me all these like different types of, of, of movement techniques. And I just feel like something when I'm moving, why I kept gravitating towards it was because I think it was my body subconscious just trying to tell me, hey, like you're a little too, like you said, you're a little too tight. Like you're holding on to certain things, right? You need to be able to like learn how to just get into a state of, again, just being present,

right? Because maybe, and maybe another aspect of it is when we train with the weights and we train the conventional style, we're used to that. But then when we get into this different realm, we got to be a little bit more present to what we're doing, right? Because we may feel a little bit less stable, I guess, less secure. So yeah, I would 100% attest to that, man. Being able to see people be more present. And also like you said, you hit it right on the head like less constricted less less um oh there's a stiffness i mean you think about this way like there's been i usually don't time it this way anymore but there's been times in the past where i've had

like a heavy squat day and the next day we all went out and had a dance party somewhere like in the club right and if you ever try to dance the day after heavy squats or deadlifts like you're stiff as fuck you're over there in the corner doing the two-step and that's it. Like there's no flow. There's no looseness at all. Right. The same goes for how I react in the world, how I, how I feel about certain things, how I feel about circumstances, which are always going to come at me no matter what. Right. I like that. When did you, when did you get to on it? Um, I shoot, dude, I think I've been here for about a little bit over three and a half years. I think it's like three years and like eight months or something like that.

And that was originally why I even came to Texas or why I even considered it. I got into grad school at East Tennessee State. And then I also got into grad school at Texas. Okay. And John was like, dude, you got to come check out Austin before you make that decision. And so I came to Austin for like a week or week and a half to somewhat intern here. And then also kind of just check out the city. Yeah. And I fell in love with it. I just knew right away. And Tennessee, East Tennessee, no offense to like, I think it's Johnsonville City, Tennessee, but it

was, it was no, I wasn't in Austin. There is no offense because of all major cities, Austin's one of the best for sure. There's no doubt. And I'm coming from Cali beach cities. You know what I mean? Austin's up there for sure. The, the vibes, the, my biggest thing is the, the communication just between people, the, the, uh, hospitality. Yeah. I like that. Cause there's, there's Southern hospitality where people are genuinely nice to one another. People wave at you when you drive by, but it's still a major city that's actually pretty liberal. So you don't have to deal with the heavy racism that can sometimes accompany that hospitality. Yeah. That's true. That's very true. That's very true. I noticed

that when I was out in Kentucky and that's not the shit on the entire state, but I did notice in Paducah, there was still a lot of that for very good reasons. But it was different when you come from a place like California, especially if you're on the coast and you're not inland in the farming communities, because it's a totally different world. Totally different world. You just grow up. It's so diverse, and it's it's a totally different world totally different you just grew up like it's so diverse yep and it's different you know but it's nice to have the best of both worlds here in austin 100 gain different perspectives now going back home i'm sure you feel the same way right now like through your whole life you go out you explore you do all these things and you go back home and you come back with like this different perspective and certain people just haven't you know change or they they've kind of stayed in the same place

and it's so interesting to kind of just see that, you know, not to judge, but just to kind of simply observe that like, huh, like you chose this and you can kind of see like where it's taking you to this point. And so, yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. Interesting. You talked about, I mean, that's something that I've noticed too, with like the old homies from back home, you know, like who's still in the same spot and who's on the path of growth, who's trying to consistently better themselves. How have you arced your growth in what you're learning? Because you've really tackled so many different things that you're creating your own thing, you know, through mobility and durability and foundations and through breath work and really

the scope of these things. Talk about the arc of what you've learned over the years, obviously starting in bodybuilding or different types of basic movements and where you're at now. Yeah, definitely. You know, to be honest, I think there's just like this inner desire to want to just keep doing better, you know what I mean? And a lack of better terms, but yeah, just to keep like getting better every single day. And I think that really stems from my family. Both my grandparents from my mom and dad's side, originally from Mexico, they came from literally just working 16 hour shifts on the fields. That's where my family comes from. You know what I mean? My mom and my dad were basically the first in both their families, respective families to kind of,

I'm not going to say nobody else up until that point did anything great, because that's not true whatsoever, but they didn't step out of their comfort zone in the sense of, this is where we live in Salinas, and this is where we all stay. We all stay and take care of each other. You know what I mean? And if you almost kind of get out of that path or that routine, you're almost looked at in a bad way, in a negative way. It's like, what, are we not good enough for you?

Yeah, you had to leave? What's wrong with you? Dude. What's wrong with us? I want to say my cousin was like the first first one of my in my uh older cousin was the first one of my family to actually go to college from both sides um but i think he dropped out you know pretty soon after that so up until that point like i mean everybody's everybody's still at home and so for me my biggest driving force was having my mom and dad consistently telling me every single day. It's like,

Hey, you don't want to go to school. Cause it was always school, right? It was school work, school work. Like, Hey, you don't want to go to school. And they allowed me to go to private school all the way up. It's like, you don't want to go to school. Then you can go and do what your grandparents and what we did. You can go on the field. And dude, you see that you see people working out there for like 16 to 18 hour shifts, you know, for less than minimum wage sometimes. Often. Oftentimes, you know what I mean? Quite often. Dude, like, and I, again, I grew up in Salinas.

It's a huge agriculture city. That whole central coast, right? It's huge, like cabbage and lettuce and artichoke. Artichoke and garlic and Gilroy. Yeah, bro, Gilroy. So I grew up next to it. So I saw it. And you know what?

It's not that I thought that I was better than that, but I knew that my parents had sacrificed a lot. So it'd be ridiculous for me to not try and push this. And to be honest, even to this day, it's like, if somebody asked me, Hey, you know, what do you, like, what are you building up for? Like, you know, what are you working towards? Where are you going to get? It's like, you know, I'm 26 years old. I don't really know, to be honest. I just know that every single day I know what I'm passionate about. And I know I'm just going to keep fucking putting my head down and getting better. You know what I mean?

There'll be times I know my biggest downfall is I need to come up every now and then, come up out of the water and be like, okay, let me see how things are going. Let me see some things I set up. Like, am I biting off too much? You know, am I not doing enough? Like, where do I need to kind of come back and,

you know, reflect and, you know, I need to make sure to do that. Because again, I feel like, and this is not, and I'm a very humble person. I just feel like, you know, I got a different pace. You know what I mean? I'm not the smartest kid in the world, but I got a different pace. You know what I mean? I don't mind spending extra hours doing little tedious things, knowing that again, like, why would you want to read all these like four or five different books on breathwork? Like, aren't they saying the same shit? It's like, yeah, but each one's got its own perspective

and each one will lend its own thing to me so that I can go and empower others. You know what I'm saying? So yeah, I guess that's kind of where it comes from. And again, playing sports, I'm competitive as fuck, dude. I don't want to lose. You know what I mean? When that alarm clock goes off in the morning,

I'm sure you feel the same way. I see you in here at the same time every morning. You don't want to, you know, you're're for me, I feel like I'm competing against that imaginary person. That's just kind of like that, you know, when you're playing that video game, when you're racing, you got like, you know, the, the, the pace that you held before you got that invisible car that you're like trying to keep up with. That's what I feel like. I feel like a dude. I just, I just got to kind of keep pushing. Cause there's someone right there. There's somebody kind of just waiting right there for me to just fall off.

And you know what I mean? Yeah. I guess that's kind of where I come from. How do you find time to balance? You talked about reflection, which is critical, I think. And also another piece of that that goes with reflection is the ability to embody things by pausing, right? So like we have periods of learning and then we have implementation of those practices into our daily lives and rituals and routines.

And then we also have the reflection period in this time where we actually embody what we're learning. So we know the why. How do you scope that? How do you look through that? Is it on a daily where you look back on the day and review it? Or is it more like, hey, it's been a few months. It's been a fucking roller coaster and now I'm just going to take a week to deload

and think about things. Totally. You know, I think to be honest, I kind of cut it up into like different portions of my life. So if I had one for like physical, right, that would be kind of, hey, am I working out enough? Am I pushing it too much? Am I not listening to my physical body enough? And am I just chasing something else that I want? Maybe I want bigger arms or bigger chest, whatever. So I'm pushing things a little too much. That I'm pretty good about just because I work at a gym. My practice and how I help people is very much that intuitive thinking process of how is your body feeling today? How is it moving today? Are you ready to push or do you need to pull back a little? So I feel like there from a daily basis, I'm pretty consistent with that. I think where I lack is professionally and even just in my relationship with my

significant other. You know, I feel like with my significant other, it's always kind of been something for me where, hey, like I cherish a girlfriend, I cherish that person next to me, but I almost kind of put them secondary sometimes because I'm so focused at just like professionally getting ahead. You know what I'm saying? And so I, I now have made it a point over like the last six months that, Hey, like each, each day, you know, when I catch some time in between my schedule, I just kind of have to sit down for a second. I like now utilizing the walks outside, going on a walk and just kind of checking to sit down for a second. I like now utilizing the walks outside, going on a walk and just kind of checking in with her. You know what I mean? And even if

it's not with the text, it's just kind of like, Hey, well, how are my interactions with her this morning? Does she seem pretty positive when she left? You know what I mean? So that's, that's a pretty big one. And to be honest, if I said I was succeeding in that, you know, I'd be, I'd be lying to your face. You know what I mean? So that's something I got to work on for sure. But from a professional standpoint, that's where I like the most, to be honest. I sometimes don't necessarily reflect enough to see like all the accolades or all the projects that I kind of have going. And I'm sure you're the same way. I see your desk, like you got projects popping up. You got people you're talking to. You got network. Your desk looks like a storage closet. Dude. And like Toys R Us for like never there. Toys R Us too for some older people.

Adult Toys R Us. Adult Toys R Us for sure. But yeah, man, that's kind of how I do it. I mean, to be honest, like on an ideal world, I think every single day being able to kind of sit back and reflect on every single thing sounds like an easy, a pretty easy deal, right? It seems like something we should be able to do, but to be honest, like I'm not quite there yet, but from a professional relationship standpoint, that's where it's like one of the things every single day I'm forcing myself. It's not one of those things where I like wake up, it's like part of my schedule now. And it's slowly now becoming part of my routine. Cause again, for me, that's my biggest thing is sometimes I push too much and don't realize everything that I've, the foundations of everything I've laid underneath it, you know, because I'm just trying to push, you know.

You've learned so much about breath work. What are some of the ways that you will shift from sympathetic to parasympathetic so you can actually push pause, calm down? Yeah. And how do you implement those throughout the day? Well, it's funny you said that. That is for sure. I left that out in the day. Well, that's funny. You said that has for sure. I left that out in the beginning, breathing, breath work, just becoming a little bit more aware of how that works and how you can kind of shift. That has been my biggest vehicle for being able to be a little bit

more present and being able to kind of reflect, you know what I mean? Before that it was very tough to get quiet in here. It was so tough. You know what I mean? Um, but yeah, there's some of the, some of the mechanisms just to kind of keep it real, real simple. I mean, going nasal will kind of be number one. Right. And also number two, just kind of like slowly trying to slow the exhales. Right. That for me really helps my heart rate drop. Right. That for me really allows the mind to kind of start settling down a little bit. And then I know once I kind of get into a couple, maybe about 20 or 30 breath cycles like that, I know I'm in a place where I can kind of, I don't want to say let that go, but I can kind of put that at the side wall. And now my

first priority then becomes, what am I here to think about? What am I here to reflect about? Is it a phone call? Is it, you know, interaction with myself, with my significant other? But yeah, being able to basically sew the exhales down. Right. And you know, there's so many different techniques, right? There's so many different ways. It's a simple way to do it. It's so important. If you just think double the length, you know, four seconds in eight seconds out or 10 seconds in 20 seconds out, you're good at holding your breath, you know, you can go a little longer. But the point is like, when we do that, oftentimes that makes us so relaxed that it'll quiet the mind.

And then whatever we feel, that's the thing that's coming up. I just saw Paul Selig, who has been on Aubrey's podcast a couple of times, and he was saying, what is the work? What's the biggest challenge you have in life? It's the work of the day. It's the lesson of the day. It's whatever's right in front of you. Yeah. Right?

But if we don't push pause to feel what's going on inside, oftentimes we overlook those things. We overlook a fear or an anxiety or resentment or anger, any of these things, and that builds until it fucking explodes. If we can slow it down and do parasympathetic breathing and really relax and see what's coming up for us, it's pretty easy to navigate those waters because we're quiet enough to feel right. But would you, would you agree? It's a lot easier said than done. It's, it's all, it's like anything it's practice. Perfect practice makes perfect. Right. If I'm rushing around all day long and I'm like, Oh, I got to fit this meditation in for 15 minutes. Meditation is going to suck. You know, if I can actually

plan accordingly and maybe unplug before the meditation or go for a one mile walk outside here and then sit with myself and breathe and slow everything down, then I'll drop in because I'm actually creating space for that to work. Yeah. A hundred percent. I don't know about you too, but reading for me is a good way to talk about, okay, you got this 15 minute block of meditation when it's kind of sometimes looked at as like, okay, this is another part of my day. I got to go here. Then I got to do this. Like for me, when I can schedule my reading before like that time of reflection and before my walk, that's when I know like I'm potentiating myself kind of for that,

that next purpose type of deal. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Reading for me. And I know it's, it kind of works back and forth. I know some people, they read and they get stimulated and they have to write in their journal and they got to go on about things. But for me, that's kind of been a good way to kind of help facilitate a little bit more of the breath. Cause again, if I'm not present and you're reading that book, which my mind is constantly running, I'm not going to get anything out of it. And for me, education is so important to me. So when I'm reading something and I realize like after like a paragraph, I'm like, shit, I don't know what the hell I just read. That's a good indicator. Like, okay, fuck, I'm not here right now. I need to,

I need to chill the hell out. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. No. So, so how do you, I mean, I've done a couple of your, of your workouts and I absolutely love them because there's so many, there's so many different things that you layer in on top of each other, but what are some of the forms of breath work that you use in the workouts, pre-workout, post-workout? Like how do we, how do we start to implement that? Because a lot of people listening to this probably work out by themselves. They may not have access. They're not here in Austin. They can't come in and take one of your classes. What are some of the ways people can start to introduce breath work and more mindfulness to their day? To what they're doing. Right. Yeah. I would say, you know, just from a,

from a fitness perspective or even kind of just like throughout the day. Just in general, just to feel better, perform better. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, for me, I think it's all about, and obviously Aubrey brought a whole book on this. It's like, it's like owning the day really kind of starts with like the beginning, right in the beginning of having, having like a solid routine, you know, for me, I feel like that kind of took me like the beginning, right in the beginning, having, having like a solid routine, you know, for me, I feel like that kind of took me from like, uh, and like, this is like pretty cool, like working out on it. Like I like, you know, this mobility stuff, this durability stuff

is pretty unique. It's cool. It then took me into like, okay, like how can I really make the most of what I'm doing? Right. And, and for me, it was all started with, it's funny, it's a morning routine, but it's about going to bed, going to bed at that solid time. I know if I get eight to nine hours, I know some people are like bougie, you know, eight to nine hours, eight to nine hours. If I get that. If you're training hard, you need fucking eight to nine hours. I need that, bro. If I'm animal flowing all on the ground all day, I need my sleep, bro. People don't realize like if you train and you're pushing your body, you need more sleep than others. If you're sedentary, you shouldn't be that way.

And hopefully you're not if you're listening to this show. But the point is your requirements are higher. And you'll see that if you have a whoop watch or an aura ring, your requirements are higher to recover. People are chronically underslept you know if you read sleep by nick little hails which is my favorite how-to for sleep and then why we sleep by matthew walker which is my favorite fucking why yeah you need to sleep more all the science is there you know the issue is that we have guys like jocko willink that are like oh you know discipline equals freedom i'm up at fucking 2 a.m hitting my fucking three-hour workout before my kids ever get up, before the sun's up.

It's like a pile of fucking sweat that's across the entire gym. It's like, all right. That's one perspective, right? Yeah. That's one idea of resilience. And you can do, it's been my experience

and not only in my personal life, but in what I've seen in people that you can only get away with that for so long. Yeah. Everything fucking catches up to you. Yeah. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. That's good. So sleep being a big factor. Do you have a, what does your morning routine look like? What is your evening routine? Yeah, definitely. So my morning routine, it switches basically between either like a ground, a ground-based mobility series with paired up with breathing,

of course, or a standing mobility. That's again, paired up with a little bit of breathing. So first thing I always do is drink water. And to be honest, I used to measure it. It used to be like 35 ounces right when I woke up. Now I've kind of just gone along the lines of, hey, I'm going to fill this cup up and then drink a couple of them type of deal. But yeah, after a little hydration, I'll get straight to the ground. And what I really start to like to do, at least for me, is I know that, you know, psoas, QL, space in between the rib and the pelvic bone

get a little gunked up for me, get a little tight, whether it be sitting, whether it be programming, you know, we're not perfect. Even if someone like myself is like, oh, stop sitting down, it happens, right? And we sleep. I mean, duh, we're sleeping. We're not moving. We shouldn't be moving. So I'll do a lot of stuff like in child pose. I'll do a lot of stuff like in downward dog. I'll do a lot of just, again, I won't say flow style of movement, but very much just fluid movement.

That's just really about kind of finding sticky spots like in my spine. Exactly. I'll pause in those spots and then I'll just bring a lot of expansion. And then I just got to be, you know, you just got to be a little mindful. If you're just inhaling, inhaling, inhaling the whole time, you'll get a little, a little lightheaded and shit. You're like, what the hell? So again,

that's one of those times where I like to, for me, if I'm just waking up and you know, this probably better than I do, but when you're waking up, you get it, you get in a cortisol dump along with other things. Correct. So cortisol is one of the reasons we wake up in the morning. Okay, okay. So is it then safe to kind of assume that you're then going to go, not going to say you're going to go boom all the way into sympathetic, but you're shifting a little bit more from para to sympathetic? Yeah, you shift a little bit into sympathetic.

Brainwave would shift from more of the theta delta sleep to alpha if you're doing a flow or beta if you're grabbing coffee. But the second you start thinking and grinding or jumping on social media, you're automatically in a beta state. You're automatically up. So I don't want to be like that for my first at least 45 minutes to an hour. I love it. And so when I'm on the ground, to be honest, I am slowing the exhales down.

Kind of the same thing I would use in the middle of the day if I'm really just anxious and just uptight and I'm finding that I'm not present in the situation. Slowing the exhales, I'll do the same thing. So I'll use the inhales to expand certain areas of the body, but just making sure that as I'm going through, I'm still slowing my exhales down because I want to like slowly kind of shift and get up in my morning. I don't want to go from a zero to a hundred, which is something I used to do. I used to wake up and then within 30 minutes, I'm lifting a bunch of weights, which I've kind of gotten away from that a little bit. And I've realized like sleep's gotten better. I've realized just my, my energy throughout the day

just feels like I could, I could last a little bit longer. I don't have that crash. But yeah, sorry. So that's, that's kind of the movement aspect. And it'll be for about like 10 minutes. If I'm really sore, I'll do a little bit of standing cars. I'll do some of the FRC stuff just because it's one of the quickest ways, at least for me, to kind of just get straight into mobilizing like rotations around the joint. What's a standing car? So a standing car would be something like this. I'm pretty sure you've probably seen it where you would lift like your arm locked out up overhead. And then when you kind of get to like that sticky point where like your shoulder feels tight or, you know, a little junction there. Yeah. You just add that

little bit of rotation within the shoulder, the wrist and the forearm, right. Keeping everything somewhat stable and kind of just taking the rotation of the shoulder and then the rest of the shoulder as you work your way back. I see. Right. Yeah. So doing that at the shoulder, doing that at the hip, getting some, some primal patterns, like some squats, some hinges, some sumo squats. But again, for me, like my biggest thing is I've realized the movements are cool. You know, the movements are awesome and they're necessary, but if you're not building the tension in the areas and if you're not adding the breath with it, you're doing good, but you're not maximizing. You know what I mean? Which is kind of like why I'm all about, yeah, the movement stuff

is awesome. But like on Instagram, if I had to be super picky in all the content I put out, I would emphasize with each little thing where to put a little bit of emphasis with the breath. Because you know, it makes the world of a difference. It makes that experience for your central nervous system so much more enriched, right? With information, you know what I'm saying? And so that's kind of, again, so the water, the moving, becoming feeling really, really good at that point. And then from there, like my deal is go outside. Even if it's just like three minutes, you know, even if it's just to kind of just stay out the sun for a little bit, just get some sun, walk around a little bit more, move a little bit more. And then from there, if it's my perfect ideal time and I have enough time

after that, I'm reading. Cause again, it's like still on that parasympathetic, still something very like present. I'm here right now because once I get to the gym, dude, it's the music's blaring. Yep. I got client to client to client. Somebodyels. Somebody's trying to get in. There's a mix up on who's supposed to be coming in at what time. And you know, life, life happens, right? And so it's at that point where, again, if you ask me, what's like your midday routine? It's just going through the nose and getting in and slowing out the exhales and getting outside as much as I can.

When I get outside and I can breathe, I'm cool. I'll come back in for another four or five hours strong. But if I'm inside for way too long throughout the day, I'm feeling it. I'm feeling down. For sure. You know. For sure. You go to, I constantly see you outside with your shirt off, making everyone think about

going and working out a little bit harder. I hit 8.8 miles today walking and listening to the Audible. Jeez. Four and a half hours of Conscious Loving is the book that I'm listening to. It's fucking amazing. Best relationship book I've ever listened to. Really? Yeah. What's it called? I'm sorry. Conscious Loving. Conscious Loving is the book that I'm listening to. It's fucking amazing. Best relationship book I've ever listened to. Really?

Yeah. What's it called? I'm sorry. Conscious Loving. Conscious Loving. By a guy named Gay. Gay Hendricks and his wife,

Kathleen Hendricks. Interesting. Both PhDs. It's a fucking fire. Interesting. But yeah, you're like, what an easy way to combine.

I killed two birds with one stone. I get to listen to something new. I get to read constantly, but I'm doing that while I'm walking, while I'm getting sunlight. I got my shirt off with the solar panels getting hit. And yeah, it's nice when we can combine things like that. Jim Quick was on the podcast. He teaches people how to learn more effectively.

And one of the things he was saying, because your, your morning routine reminded me a lot of his. Oh really? Okay. He won't get on his phone. I think for the first three hours, he's awake. He does a cold shower. Then he hits breath work.

And then he'll read for, uh, in 20 minute blocks with a five minute break, whatever that, I think it's, uh, there's some type of principle. It's not pretty interesting.

There's some type of, uh, why you would want to take 20 minutes on five minutes off, but he'll re he'll get, you know, 40, 40 to 60 minutes in, in 20 minute chunks with five minute breaks. And he just does the movement in the five minutes. You might shake it out or do some toe touches, different things like that. But yeah, I was like, fuck man, that's definitely the way to go. Yeah. If I didn't have kids, that would be my morning. But yeah, fortunately not quite the case yet. That's changed a little bit, huh? Have a little bear.

That's right, man. But he'll be in school soon. And we're working on number two. So we'll be right back. Hey, okay. I see you, brother. So talk about the nighttime routine. How do you unpack from a day that's that busy

and that chocked full of stuff where you really, I mean, you've put a deposit into the Christian bank first thing in the morning. How do you put more deposits back in in the evening before bed so your mind isn't just fucking racing? Racing, right? Again, for me, the reading. And I don't know if that's just my infatuation with just education, because that's just something for me, I personally believe that's one thing no one could ever take from you. Right. No one could ever strip you of your, of what you've learned and your experiences. Um, but the reading and then the stretching, man, very, very similar to kind of what I would do in the morning. But to be honest,

actually a little bit more static, um, just getting deeper, a little bit deeper into certain positions. So like I'd sit in a pigeon stretch for maybe about a minute, 30 seconds. But again, every time I'm inhaling, I'm building up a little activation throughout the body with those tight tissues. And as I exhale, I release the tension. And I'm kind of just hitting that back and forth. And again, for me, it's the reading, it's the moving, and it's the breathing. Those are, for me, my big pillars. Obviously, nutrition is a big deal, right?

And I think that kind of fits in to just your whole day, right? If you eat like shit during the day, you're probably going to feel like shit at night, right? You're not going to sleep as well as you would like to. You mentally are not going to be able to perform at that level that you want to be at. So, you know, obviously that's kind of a huge deal for me in terms of depositing throughout the day. But again, yeah, if I had to kind of come back to like my pillars, it would probably be for sure. At least right now, at this point in my life, it's the breath, it's the reading, and then it's just being able to move. You know what I mean? Because my job is so much movement oriented, right? And so it's like, yeah, even though it sounds all good and down, you're like, oh, you're lucky you get to move all day. Like some days

where I'm like fucking sore. I'm like, dude, what the hell? Like I did a hundred hip circles today with like my eight clients. Like it makes sense. I'm so sore. Fuck man. I totally just lost my, my next question here. Little pillars. See if it'll come to me.

Oh. Not that cream that you put on before we were talking. No. Yeah. I got this nitro. I'll just say it. I got this nitroglycerin cream from Dr. Conover, who's been on the podcast. It's supposed to increase nitric oxide.

So I finished my sauna session and showered up and then rubbed it on my balls because the testicles are actually one of the most porous pieces of skin on the male body. Really? So they can absorb far more. So if you have like CBD cream, that's a good place for it. No way. Things like that, but it gets in through the skin there much more easily than other places. So upper inner thigh, chode, the gooch. Dude, the gooch. Yeah. All good spots for that. So we'll see if i'm wow if i'm packing my fullest punch tonight in the bedroom that's awesome while we try to make our daughter i don't know if uh i don't know if my girlfriend's gonna like that perspective anymore she's gonna be coming in

with me on the cbd cream like yeah i know my knee's hurting but i got another place to put it now he's already told me to put this elsewhere gotta listen you might get some on youtube tonight who knows you will go yeah exactly so evenings you you're winding down you get your reading you get into that space where it's no longer an issue and then you're in bed at the same time each night up at the same time each day for the most part for the most part i would say i kind of put that block my girlfriend's been a huge uh huge reason why i get to this point but i don don't like going anymore, staying up any more past that, 10 p.m. 10 p.m.

And even then, like most nights we're in bed, like in bed by like 8.15, probably falling asleep by like 8.30, 8.45, 9-ish. You know what I mean? So we're there because majority of mornings, even if we don't have to get up early, there's something to be said about just waking up at like 5.45, 6 o'clock and just feeling like ready you know what

i mean not needing three cups of coffee in three hours to finally get up and then be productive but it's like again easing into your day so that ultimately you can maximize the rest out of it you know what i'm saying yeah yeah fuck yeah i like it brother yeah you've quickly become just the guy the movement guy who is also the breath guy who's the guy who will fucking fix you if you get hurt you know like the guy will keep you from getting hurt i appreciate that you know and that's that's fuck man that's an amazing thing to have you know in a sea of talented awesome people that hear it on it yeah you're the guy for a lot of people you know and that's really cool who are some of the different people that you've been working with?

I remember you were, you were considering leaving to go to work with Taylor Swift. Yeah, it was, that was a, that was a possibility last year, uh, to work with like the dancers and to go and work with her and some of the staff that puts on the tour. Um, but yeah, it kind of just ended up working out where it just wasn't time, you know what I mean? Maybe not yet or whatever it may be, but yeah, man, I'm, I'm stoked that experiences in times like that, you know, opportunities like that come up because of the people who I have in my corner, because of the people I'm surrounded by, because of the environment I've been able to kind of build

my professional career in, you know what I mean? Like, you know, it's one thing you don't ever obviously want to take away from the individual, right? You don't ever want to take away from yourself and be like, oh, you know, it's not me. It's not what I have to provide, you know, and look down on yourself. Like you need that confidence. You want that confidence

because you know the preparation that you've put in for it. But at the same time, you got to be realistic. Like you're a product of your environment, right? And so if you got people next to you, right? Someone like yourself, dude, like I run into you in the cafe, you know, and I talk about all this slowly getting up. I mean, I'm still 75% awake, like in the cafe and I see you every morning and dude, you're on another level. I make a comment about one item, whether it be science related or movement related. And you're fucking going on a tangent for like 30 minutes

to the wise behind everything. And it's like, dude, when I leave that, like I feel as if, dude, like, fuck, I need to read today. Like, honestly, you know what I mean? And beside the fact of just a friendly conversation to be able to share some information back and forth, like that type of shit, like motivates the fuck out of me.

Yeah. You know what I mean? It's like self-fulfilling because we're surrounded by so many great people and people that are constantly learning and thinking of new ways to enhance our experience how do we optimize and live each day a little bit better than the past yeah and when you have that as a culture like it's a fucking dope thing to be a part of it's no doubt and we're in one spot you know what i mean all fucking chasing

similar dreams yeah yeah very cool what are your plans going forward you just said i know you said earlier that you're just trying to learn as much as you can and you don't know where it's going to Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. What are your plans going forward? Do you just said, I know you said earlier that you're just trying to learn as much as you can and you don't know where it's going to go. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I have, I have a couple ideas now. I think things are slowly starting to kind of become a little clearer. Basketball again, has always been like my driving force for everything that I've ever done. And so for me, I still have this deep passion of being around the game. This year, I've had the pleasure of being able to go into UT with the woman's side or more hands-on with the woman's side, and then being able to kind of talk and

consult with the men's straight, the conditioning coach for basketball about, hey, how would you throw some of this mobility flow bullshit into our programs? Yeah, yeah, like I've realized like that's my heart's there. You know what I mean? So it's like, how do I somehow bring basketball, like a basketball community or a basketball, you know, basketball players during the off season to Onnit sports, right? Like we do with the NFL guys. Same thing we do with the NFL guys. And that's one thing I really want to build up here is that, you know,

I've just got my, the first two professional guys just came in maybe like a couple months ago. And that was like the first time any basketball guys had ever come on it. So, you know what I mean? So that was pretty cool. That was a moment where I was like, you know what? Like this felt right. For like the whole week, I was just training them.

I had some of my other private training clients, but I was like, you know what? This is what I want to feel my day doing because I don't know if it's for me, just my passion. But after all this work, after all these weird things that we may be doing, I get to go watch them on the court. And if they're performing better, feeling better, and their stats are showing it, then dude, like I know I've won. Like I know they want, like we did a fucking amazing job. And so at that point, that just gives me all the confidence in the world, man. So anything with basketball, anything that's going to, you know, just help people just to continue becoming more aware of the breath, more aware of the movement, and just more in tune with how to take care of their body. What are some books you recommend for people to check out on mobility and breath work?

Yeah. Mobility. I've actually stood by this for like the last year. I mean, tons of great books like Supple Leopard, of course. Anatomy Train is just good principle-based stuff to kind of look at the body in a different lens to then apply some of these techniques. But Stretch to Win by Anne Frederick and Chris Frederick, the people who started fascia stretch therapy.

Okay. Dude, that book, it's, you know, it's not a huge, it's just not a huge book, but it just, it explained so much of what I've learned in other like fascia, like really heavy science-based research books. It put a lot of that stuff in just layman terms. And it just made it so simple to just understand, but it, it wasn't to the point where it was like, because, you know, like we're still learning about connective tissue. We're still learning about

fascia and its interactions with the rest of our body and our thoughts, our emotions, like where we hold, like you were saying, certain, certain mental things. Um, they don't dumb it down to the point where it's like, Oh, these guys like are now not telling the truth. They're getting there. They don't want to go that deep. So they're kind of just staying shallow and they're not really telling the truth. Like, no, they go down, they go down enough. You know what I mean? So I would say that would be a great one for like mobility and movement and like why mobility and why movement. Breathwork though, I love Oxygen Advantage, Patrick McCown. Yep.

Right? Great one. So many. And again, that one, just the techniques, right? Like he gave you like a whole list of, okay, well, these are the different things you can do. But for me, I would rather know the why, the techniques we can fill those in, right? It's a cool canvas to kind of like, cool, I can play off of that. But if I know the principles, I'm that type of guy that's like,

fuck, I know what you're doing, but I don't want to fucking do that. I want to kind of see if I can do something that's along the same principles, along the same lines, that's going to get them the same desired effect, but bring in a new little flair to it, a little Ric Flair to it.

Man, I fucking loved that book with Patrick McC patrick mccown oxygen advantage and one of the things that really stood out to me because you know just to go back to your point on techniques versus the why yeah you know the technique of taping your mouth shut when you sleep at night yeah that's a cool way to make sure you you breathe through your nose at night but why is that important right so like well if we're breathing through our mouth the whole fucking night, we're in sympathetic. Yeah. We're not getting fully full rest the way we normally would. And we probably have some fucked up breathing patterns. Maybe we snore, maybe we have sleep apnea where we stop breathing in the middle of the night. Like there's a lot of things that go into why you would be a mouth breather all fucking night

long while you're sleeping. Right. So like that type of training to be able to sleep the entire night with your mouth closed and just do nasal breathing and nasal breathing during the day and how to clear the nose. If your nose is clogged and you always bitch about, I can't breathe through my nose. It's always clogged. Like there's a way you can clear that. I think those were far more beneficial than, you know, just all the little itty bitty techniques. Yeah. Yeah. I know a hundred percent, man. Cause I even, you know, just all the little itty bitty techniques. Yeah. Yeah. I know a hundred percent, man. Cause I even, you know, there was a lot of cool techniques within that. And then, you know, teaching, I believe you took a couple of my 9am classes, right. Where we did a little

bit of the breath work, like during the workout. And so that was kind of just, again, taking some of the principles like halfway through that book, I was like, cool. I got like an easy foundation point. Let me just make them do what would usually be like an activity that they would blow past, like a ski, like a bike, right? Or like a shim box, like a leg through. And let me just challenge them. Let me not let them breathe through their mouth. Let's shrink that to just the nose. Now becoming a little bit more carbon dioxide tolerant. So like, let's start to throw that in maybe with their warmup laps. Cause that's where it started with the half the lap, we're going to go nose. Then it was a full lap with the nose. Then it was, Hey, the first portion

of your workout was with the nose. Then it was like, Hey, if you want to hit this main work set, we're going to go all nose. And then it was like, Hey, then we're going to do the whole thing. If you want to go nose and then it then obviously bled into the decompression and everything else that we do. So I think the through line was there. I think people kind of just started to see the theme of why are we doing this? You know what I mean? And I'm quick, man. I'm quick. Anytime people are like, what the fuck? Like, why? I'm like, cool, sit down. So I'm going to tell you like five reasons. I'm like you, but like many of you are to the point where it's like, all right, let me get on this 30 minute tangent. I'm going to tell your ass why. Whereas me, I'm like, okay, let me, let me give you these

quick reasons to maybe make it a little bit more tangible for you. And then hopefully you'll kind of see the value in it at that point. Fuck yeah, brother. Yeah. Well, that's awesome. Where, uh, where can people find you online? Yeah. Where can they find you to, uh, give them coaching and advice? Yeah. Hell yeah. Um, so Instagram right now is the main way. Um, the, the tag is Christian, right? Christian without an H and then underscore the durable athlete. I'm sure you guys could probably buy it. We're going to link to it all in the show notes. Yeah, perfect, perfect.

Then Facebook's just the same thing. Just my name, Christian Placentia. Website is in the making. Nice. Yeah. Even on my IG, you'll see a lot of resources there just for some training. If you're like, hey, I already lift. I already have my IG, you'll see a lot of resources there just for some training. So if you're like, hey, I already lift. I already have my routine.

But I'd be interested in maybe sprinkling in some of these mobility recovery style deals. I have a little app on there that you can kind of just do. It's only like my latest 10 workouts. And people can kind of just flow through some of the mobility stuff in the beginning. It's like $9.99 a month. So it's not like I'm trying to make an extreme amount of money, but just kind of slowly adding a little bit more value

and a different perspective into some of this stuff right here. I love it, brother. Yeah, man. It's been excellent having you on. Thank you, brother. I appreciate you. Hell yeah.

Thank you guys for listening to the podcast with Christian Plasencia. Hit us up with questions online if you got them. And as always, 10% off all supplements and food products at onnit.com slash podcast.