Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #8 Kettlebells, Breathwork and Working In with Mike Salemi

Episode Date: November 20, 2017

KB sport practitioner and Bulgarian Bag master Mike Salemi stops by to talk about Kettlebells, Breathwork and Working out and inward.   Check out Mike Salemi on his Website , Facebook and Instagram ��Get on the waiting list for Mike’s upcoming book Kettlebell Performance            Connect with Kyle on Twitter and on Instagram               Get 10% off at Onnit by going to Onnit.com/Podcast                      Onnit Twitter         Onnit Instagram  

Here we go, On It Podcast with my brother, Mike Salemi. Very, very happy to have you here in town. You and your boy, Eli, the video man that makes it all happen, have been staying at my house, and it's been an absolute treat to have you guys getting into some weird shit, you know, busting out all the instruments and stuff like that last night. And very blessed to be, you know, to have you here with us, but also to be able to be on the receiving end of some of your wisdom. You had to put me through a brutal Aldoa stretch session yesterday that had me high as fuck for about 90 minutes.

We opened you up good. Yeah, in the best way. It's funny, in different practices like yoga and things like that, as you begin to open and stretch the body, how much you can feel the floodgates open, you know, not only with thought and intuition and things like that, but just like feelings fucking just start popping up. I mean, I was seeing purple with my eyes closed and just kind of levitated over into a meeting with Aubrey and our superfoods team and was not really prepped for that you know i'm sitting down trying to keep my shit together and started taking deep deep breathing and aubrey smirks at me like what's going on brother and i stand up behind

my chair i'm like oh i'm cool it's no big deal and then uh you know got a kombucha and i was like ah i think i need to lay down he's like are you all right and i was like i just did some some kind of a spinal stretching that opened me up, and I'm feeling all sorts of shit. My hands were buzzing. My feet were buzzing. It was incredible. But I feel great.

High in the best way. No hangover, no problems. Like a good drug, as I like to say. Yeah. Hell yeah, brother. So I'm very much appreciative of that. And then later on today, we're going to put our coaches through a little Bulgarian bag work, some nuances to the kettlebell game,

and then hopefully we'll have time for some more LDOA so the rest of these guys can experience what I'm trying to describe here. So Mike, you have a wealth of knowledge in so many things. I met you at Paleo FX with the Mind Pump crew. They introduced me to a number of excellent people, Dr. Michael Ruscio being one of them, yourself being one of them, and then, of course, the honored crew, largely why I have this job. So a lot of love to the Mind Pump crew. But let's just start with the basics. What got you started in weightlifting? So what got me started in weightlifting was when I was 15 years old, I was actually making the transition as a gymnast. So I was never really high level gymnast,

but I experienced a pinched nerve in my back. And in order to heal that injury, I went to a specific chiropractor. And fortunately, he was a drug free world champion powerlifter. He was, I think he was in the 220 division. He was benching close to 600. Damn. So he rehabbed me right. And, you know, I'd always been into conditioning training, especially having a very disciplined approach to it. And he goes, you know what? Why don't you, I think you might like this. Why don't you come train with me? I'll build you up and we'll see what you can do with it. So at that time he took me into what was a private basement powerlifting gym. I've always trained in kind of a garages, you know, cinder block rooms. I've never, it's usually only on vacation that I'll

train at a commercial gym, and it feels very foreign to me. But this gym was called the Palace Gym, and it was a very small, there was only about 20 of us, but they were all very high level, very disciplined guys. And we would get together usually at lunchtime or after work when these guys would get off. And this guy, Mike Ludovico, as well as the owner of the gym, really just took me under his wing. And that place really became my home. I mean, if I was going through tough stuff or anything, I would always go to that gym. And there was even a chill room upstairs, some just old school couches and a wine room. And the community there, they were actually all garbage men. Garbage men or officers so but you got and public service public service

and all these guys man i mean you got to think these guys were old school garbage men so the way these guys used to used to train especially they used to pack the can on their shoulder before all the automatic automatic stuff so these guys if it was one lift that these guys were badass at it was the deadlift these guys just had grown man strength on the deadlift because they just had built up all this awkward kind of conditioning strength and abilities from lifting garbage. So they took me under their wings and that's really where I started falling in love with it. And then there's where I started getting exposed to Louie Simmons's work. Okay. And the gym was very, very focused on starting with Westside programming. And once I was about 18 turning 19, I really wanted to take it to the next level.

So I was fortunate enough to go out to Westside Barbell, trained with Louie for about a month, got to meet guys like Chuck Vogelpole, and really just left a big, big lasting impression on me. So my kind of upbringing started in powerlifting, and then transitioned into Olympic weightlifting, and now kettlebell sport. Fuck yeah. That's an incredible lineage, especially when you think about the people that touch you and how that transforms your life. Louie's, you know, Rogan calls him a fucking maniac, just an insane guy.

But he's developed so many great tools. He really has. And just thinking of the conjugate method and how do we hit all the different forms in our training protocols to get maximum potential out of our bodies. There's a lot there. So what have you noticed as you started to make that change into more of the odd types of training,

utilizing kettlebells instead of traditional bench squat deadlift and snatch clean jerk, those kind of things? Well, I think the transition from more of just a pure barbell type of training, which I still love, to the more unconventional, whether it's, yes, Bulgarian bag, kettlebells, clubbells, anything like that, also kind of paralleled towards the gym environment, now as much as possible, I just want to get outside and use tools that I can take on a hike. You can go to the beach. Every time I travel, anyone who knows me well knows I always travel either with a kettlebell in my bag. That's why my suitcase is usually all banged up. On this trip, I brought two Bulgarian bags with me. So yeah, I just want to get outside. I want to touch the earth, go barefoot, and just have fun moving through.

Any type of free expression of movement is really what I love right now. So the unconventional tools, not only do they develop strength and a whole host of abilities, whether it's strength, flexibility, coordination, any of those abilities of what it takes to develop a well-rounded athlete in a way that's different from a barbell. There's a time and a place for sure, but when you're talking about especially making a transferable skill or transferable quality to, let's say, fighting, for example, it's like you're never really going to move in one plane. You need to be able to move in all directions, and you need to be able to handle. I mean, even just in life, when you pick up your kid, when you pick up Bear, like you're never picking him up like in a straight line.

You're always throwing him on your shoulder or playing with him on the ground. So the ability to go from different positions, to transition from standing to the ground has been really something that I've enjoyed and seen transfer in myself and also the other athletes I've worked with. Yeah, yeah, I think you touched on a great point. I think for a lot of people in sport, you know, there's definitely a big push for, for GPP, you know, your general physical preparedness, and you can achieve a lot of that through basic primal movement patterns, push, pull, squat, hinge, lunge, twist, those kinds of things. But at a certain point you need to get off balance. You need to train things that are going to, you know, be similar to when you're on a football field you know you're not you're not in a perfect squat you know half the time one leg's in four to the other you know you're pushing but it's not

you know with a bench behind you you're pushing with your own feet hooked into the ground those kind of things pulling doing the same stuff there's so much more transfer there as you begin to dive into these odd tools. And it doesn't mean that you take, you know, it's a replacement for these other things. But I think there's a tremendous benefit as we start to add in some of this stuff. So as we start talking about weird shit, my man and your man, the great teacher Paul Cech comes up. And, you know, it's a beautiful transition here because, you know, segueing from podcast to podcast, we recently had my buddy Dr. Andy Galpin on who wrote the book Unplugged. And he talked about the importance of getting back out into nature and a lot of the different, not only the science behind why that's important for our mind, body, and spirit, but

the benefits, you know, the benefits and how we can tackle, you know, getting outdoors more and incorporating these things. So one of the things that I'm always trying to do is kill two birds with one stone, right? And we talked a bit about that at dinner the other night. So yeah, you take a kettlebell to the beach, not only are you getting sunlight, you're getting grounding, you're getting negative ions from the ocean, but you're also getting a pretty awesome workout in on an unlevel surface right so there's there's many great things that are going to be causing physiological physiological adaptation as well as just priming your body and your emotional state from getting outdoors so head andy gulping on we

got you on next week our dude paul check's coming to town. That's going to be epic. Oh, yeah. So let's dive into that. You're one of Paul Cech's number one students. You've been through all of his training. You finished recently. Is that correct? No. So I'm still in the program. I mean, to be a Cech practitioner, it's a very involved practice. I mean, it takes years. If you're on the program and you're following it dedicatedly, I mean, it could take anywhere from five to seven years. There's four levels, like really five if you include exercise coach in the practitioner side, which is the more corrective performance side of things, assessment, stuff like that,

orthopedic side. Then you have the HLC side, which there's three levels. Now, to go through both those and also to do the work, because in order to graduate to each level in the Czech system, especially at the upper levels, you have to submit case studies and whatnot. You really have to put in your time and practice. So I've started going through the system, but I've worked very, very closely with Paul for two and a half years to rehab my own injuries from sport as well as to kind of build me back up. So my work really focused with Paul on the client side. Yeah, that's perfect. What got me into Paul Cech, actually, I mentioned this too at dinner, was I had a strength coach back in the day when I was first getting into fighting.

And I've told this story before on Rogan's, but thick New York accent. He was like, you fought a lot. And I was like, that's a fucking weird thing to say to a dude. We got protein shakes and shit like that. I fart about as normal as everybody else does, right? He's like, no, man, I think you got a food intolerance. And I was pretty resistant to it at first, but he put on the old Flatten Your Abs Forever video on VHS. And I was like, fuck, man, this guy knows exactly what he's talking about and uh you know did an elimination diet added back gluten in and it just blew my mind the difference i couldn't breathe out of my nose really felt bogged down had a ton of gas so i was like all right you were

right sorry and then uh you know that that started the path of me diving into how to eat move and be healthy the last four doctors you'll ever need, and really just branching out into Paul's wealth of knowledge. What made you want to do that? Did you want to, I mean, you said you wanted to work on yourself first, and that's kind of why I went to HLC, the Holistic Lifestyle Coach, not to be a coach in that, but because I knew I needed to work on meditation. I wanted to learn qigong. I wanted to learn breath work and just dive into that for myself. Is that really where

it started for you? Well, for me, I was first introduced to Paul's work when I was 18. So I was competitive in powerlifting at a decent level. And where I was a strength and conditioning coach at, fortunate for me, and I feel very blessed for this, the entire facility was really modeled after all of Paul's teachings. So we had high-level Czech practitioners there, HLCs, we had hypnotherapists, very good chiros. So it was... Where is this place? It's no longer, unfortunately, but it's in the Bay Area. Yeah. And the owner of the facility was one of the first Czech practitioners in the Bay Area, and he really took me under his wing. And at that time, I was doing the best I can with the

knowledge that I had. I was still very disciplined in my diet or what I knew at the time. I think it was the whole EAS approach. And I had a lot of gas too. But then he... Bioplex, isn't that good for the gut? That's strange. I was wondering why I was having all this gas. And later, as I...

I don't think it's cool today, but still before it was cool to look at your own poop and interpret what that's telling you about, essentially like the internal report card of what you have. Now, you know, lab testing is very popular, et cetera. But for me, what his name was Brian Sham introduced me to, not only was this holistic model of looking at high performance, but also really how to eat, move and be healthy, which still to this day, I think, is probably the

greatest contribution as a resource to not only just health in general, but to athletic performance, because I think it's very important, and this is something that I feel passionate about, that health should form the foundation for high performance. And I think people think that there are two completely different things. Health should always be the basis there. Because if you don't have enough life force to endure the rigors of training, then you're always going to be draining and you're always going to have some type of injury, or it's going to show up as some type of challenge, whether it's relationship wise, if you're not managing yourself, and that's really what you learn in how to eat, move and be healthy. And I think the beauty of the HLC program,

especially like level one, level one is all about healing you. It's all about you first. So getting yourself healthy, getting your mind right, managing the six foundation principles, which if people took care of the six foundation principles, so managing your thoughts, your breathing, your hydration, your nutrition,

your movement practice, balancing working in and working out, and then your sleep. If someone managed those six foundation principles well, that would take care of about 90%, if not more, of all the health-related dis-ease that we experience today. So just focusing on that, and it's something that I'm still reading at least yearly, and every time that I read it, I'm usually ready for something new to incorporate into my own life. So it's never something that gets old. And I think that was Paul's, I'm sorry, The Four Doctors was a great contribution, but that's really where it started. And that's still like a timeless classic for me. Yeah, 100%. That's actually, there's only one book

I've read more than How to Eat, Move, and Be Healthy,'s um a new earth by eckhart tolle and that's because i'll pick up from as with paul's books i'll pick up things and reintegrate them into my life and and you know just as with diet you know there's no one size fits all diet set it a thousand times i'll say it a thousand more but there's different points in your not in your life where you need different things you know and so you may eat a certain way for a period in your life where you need different things, you know, and so you may eat a certain way for a period in your life and then notice some changes as you listen to your body. And there may be some information that doesn't resonate with you right off the bat. And as you rehash and go back through the material, it resonates with you the second or third time that you read it. A hundred percent. Yeah, that definitely was a game changer. So I want to dive into a little bit, one of the four doctors. Let's talk about the four doctors here.

So we got Dr. Happy, Dr. Movement, Dr. Diet, and Dr. Quiet. Is that correct? Yep, that's correct. So of those four, there is one. If we talk about Dr. Happy, we've got to take care of us. We've got to play more. We've got to be happy. We've got to do the things that bring us joy in life and the things that bring us joy in life that don't come at a cost. You know, Paul used to say that you don't fucking

reward yourself. If your goal is weight loss, you don't reward yourself with shit food at the end of your 20 pounds of loss, right? You don't take two steps forward to take one step back. That's not a real reward, right? And I think people can understand that a bit. Doctor movement, yeah, you need to fucking move. You need to move properly. You need to take care of body mechanics, things like that. Doctor diet, you know, we've been diving into that quite a bit. Figuring out which foods you have an intolerance to can be a game changer. And that's cheap. You don't have to do a $2,000 blood test or some other nonsense. You know, you do an elimination diet for 30 days you add back in

some problematic foods and see where you sit with them but dr quiet dr quiet has been a massive one for myself and i think it is highly important for men in general especially high level performing athletes that you've worked with and I've worked with. It's just something in the West that we fucking leave out. You know, it's like, oh, that's, that's shit women do or that shit, you know, yogis in the East do. And what's the importance and why should I, why should I practice meditation? Why should I practice breath work? Why should I focus on sleep? Why should I take naps when my body needs it? So let's dive into some of that. What has really benefited you and the fighters that you've worked with, with Dr. Quiet? So I think you hit the nail

on the head. For me personally, it's the doctor that I need to focus on the most. I mean, I think any high level or high performing athlete, to get to any level, it's very rare that you'll find an elite level athlete who's, I mean, when have you ever met an elite level athlete that was under trained? It's very rare if ever to happen. So, but the benefit that, you know, Dr. Quiet is the doctor responsible for introspection, reflection time, rest, repair. It's synonymous with the parasympathetic nervous system. So as athletes, we're all, for the most part, we're all go, go, go, go, go. So the message for me, especially in my own not only movement practice, but my own reflection practice, is to incorporate any tool that I can with where I'm at in that moment that will help me kind of

rebuild the system. So for me right now, and we were talking about this a little earlier, like I just shot a, what'll be a small program with Paul on this concept of working in that to my knowledge, I was totally unfamiliar with before I was introduced to his work. And just a little bit about working in, in terms of how it can directly benefit performance and performance athletes. So there's this idea out there that, you know, working out, in order to get ahead, we have to work out. So a workout is any type of activity that is an energy expenditure, an activity that costs the body more in resources than it does to, than it brings in.

So working in exercise is the opposite. Working in exercise is an exercise that could be Tai Chi, could be any type of moving meditation that actually brings more energy into the system than it costs to produce. So if you think about athletes, when we're training every single day, we're pulling money out of the ATM,

but very few of us are actually putting it back in. So because working in is synonymous with the parasympathetic nervous system, it can activate the rest, repair, digest side. So there's specific criteria that Paul has created to let you know, let the athlete know, am I in fact working in or am I in fact working out in this moment? So briefly on the four criteria, which is pretty interesting. So the first criteria to know if you're working in or working out, whether it's a Tai Chi movement or something as simple as a breathing squat, number one,

the tongue should stay moist. If the tongue starts drying out, you know you're entering a more sympathetic state because the tongue is an extension of the visceral system, the digestive system. And so what happens when we get hungry, for example, or when we're about to eat? Our saliva increases. As soon as that starts drying out, we know we're moving into a more workout state. Yeah, if you ever had cotton mouth while you're running, you know you're huffing and puffing hard. I've noticed in breath work, especially in things like even breath of fire with my tongue pressed to my mouth, I have to swallow saliva often. That's how activated the parasympathetic becomes. Sorry to cut you off. No, no. Keep diving in. Well, I think just to piggyback on that note, I think it's really interesting. It probably should be mentioned that certain breath work can be very sympathetic,

just like certain forms of Tai Chi. Just because it's Tai Chi does not necessarily mean it's a parasympathetic activity. Certain forms of Tai Chi can very much send you into a sympathetic state. So there's kind of a distinguishment that should be made there. But in general, when the tongue starts drying out, you're moving into more of a flight or fight state. Then the second thing is digestion should improve. So anyone who's had a big Thanksgiving dinner and gone for a walk, I'm sure has had the experience that their digestion improved following that meal. Or if you go out to a restaurant and you just go for a walk to your car, usually you feel better. So the idea is that you can do a work-in exercise on a full stomach. It'll stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, increase your rest repair functions, and that's

one way you know you should be able to do the exercise on a full stomach then you'll take one of those nice big police cops the police police man yeah police paul has an excellent we'll we'll get that if not for this episode definitely for paul's but uh a little we might run it for fucking balls because people need to be comfortable with looking at their own shit but uh yeah he's got the poop lineup right so you've got you've got all your your bad guys up against the wall in a classic cartoon lineup and this perfect giant poop with a police hat on that looks like the model shit right that's that's what we're aiming for not the bodybuilder poop not the sludgy guy or the ghost poop but yeah you know there's the flasher not the flasher. Not the flasher. Yeah.

Yeah, getting comfortable with that. So what are the other benefits? Again, sorry to jump in there, but... No, no, please. So we have these reminders, right, that can put us in place on working in versus working out, you know, ways to tell if we're on the right track when we're actually trying to have it working in practice. Right. And so there's two more.

There's sweating, which is a common sign of someone working out. And then the last one is really a combination between heart rate and breath rate because they work interchange, they work together. So if your heart rate starts increasing, that's your signal to know, okay, this is a working out activity. And correlating this to performance, when I was working with Paul, one of the things that he did to really benefit my kettlebell training and my kettlebell competitions was we actually, my favorite work and exercise, and these are all in Paul's book, is a breathing squat. Very simple exercise, not threatening at all. You can do a squat even in a gym if you wanted and people wouldn't look at you funny. But just a breathing squat. And with the breathing squat, what we were working on was getting to the ability where I could go 20 minutes

consistently where I would stay and manage those four criteria. So my heart rate and breathing rate wouldn't increase. I would not sweat. My tongue would still stay moist. And if I was to eat, my digestion was improved. But once we got to that, then we started adding in a kettlebell. So then I started doing whether it was a combination of a very, very light load. We're talking like six to eight kilos, a clean and jerk and or swing into the overhead position. Now, as I was performing that activity, if I started noticing that my breath rate or any of those markers started increasing,

I would immediately set the weight down, go back into a breathing squat and then calm the heart rate down. And ultimately, I think it almost took about six months, but I was able to do at a light load, I think it was like with two eights or two twelve kilos about 20 minutes continuously where it was a work and exercise so you can imagine in whether it's competition or in a fight or anything like that the longer that you can stay in a parasympathetic state i mean when you go flight or fight the the window starts

starts really closing right you don't you not able to, your imagination starts closing. Now what you can foresee, and all these things start really narrowing the viewpoint. The aperture changes. But if you can stay calm, relaxed, repaired, you can stay in that state of relaxed readiness or the zone, however you want to call it, your ability to manage your external environment

will be incredibly more heightened. So that was one direct carryover that I noticed of just incorporating a working in activity and then how it related to being more physically fit as well as a more centered and more mindful athlete in sport. Hell yeah. So let's paint a picture of that. You know, one of the first things that caught me when I started going through Paul's working in breath work you know standing qigong things like that was it was reverse breathing so you exhale diving into the bottom of a squat and you inhale coming up right so it was almost a reverse like i'm used to taking my breath at the top dropping down on a full breath of air brace the spine and then fucking come out of the hole hard

you know that kind of thing and i was like I'm going to exhale down and inhale coming up. And along with, with, you know, as he goes through all the other six zones, but, um, it's interesting to me. So, I mean, I say that to illustrate for the people, like, if you want to try this for yourself, this was my first starter too, where I was like, holy shit, I feel better doing this. It's very calming to exhale down on a full exhale and then slowly come up. And the idea is to go slow, not to go fast. It's not a workout. And we're trying to build our faculties from the inside out using the breath and connecting it to the body.

But it's interesting to me that you would incorporate that with kettlebells. So did the breathing stay the same? Was it reverse? Like as the kettlebell came down, were you exhaling and then inhaling it up? So a few interesting points on that. So there's different schools of kettlebell thought. So the more, let's say,

foundational or hard style kind of system of training, it's very correlated to high speeds of movement. And anytime there's high, high speeds of movement, spinal stability is of paramount importance. So in that situation, you're going to use what we call a paradoxical breathing pattern. So in a hard style breath, let's say it's a swing, it's a very explosive swing, you would inhale on the lowering phase, then you would maintain compression, then exhale on the raising phase, right? But in sport, which is an endurance-based activity, the breathing switches to something called anatomical. So in that, it's actually correlated exactly like a work in sport, which is an endurance-based activity, the breathing switches to something called anatomical.

So in that, it's actually correlated exactly like a work in breath where we exhale on flexion and inhale on extension. So the way I was using it with the working in activities was exhaling on flexion, inhaling as you extend. Now, interestingly enough, the breath that we use in a work-in practice goes hand-in-hand with our anatomy and physiology. So anytime that the body moves into extension, external rotation, and abduction, or away from the midline, that is matched with inhalation because the ribcage is opening. Or we're coming, anytime we're, let's simplify, anytime we're coming out of the fetal position, anytime we're going into the fetal position, which is matched with flexion, internal rotation, and adduction, or moving towards the midline, when the rib cage closes down, that's naturally matched with exhalation breath. So we're working hand in hand with our physiology to, once again, increase our life force energy, or however you want to call it, we're working with that where this is another really key point that i really had to learn working in because in the gym

we're always taught you got to be super technical right like you got to align the spine make sure everything set the hips back all this stuff yeah you're always in that one fixed that's one thing that mind pump i love how they crush and go against you know the fucking the norm but like the idea that you always have to have this perfect spinal alignment it's like when does that happen on the fucking football field when does that happen in gymnastics never never never like they you know they took so much shit for this video they did on a rounded spine plank you know where you're just hollow back plank and how much how much more do you feel

the abs activate when you get into that position? And even just flowing from neutral spine into the rounded back hollow back, you know, plank, but that's a fucking static move. You're not under load. You're not going to get hurt doing that. And every chiropractor and sports phys guy and their mom chimed in about you're gonna fucking hurt somebody showing people how to do shit like that and it's like no this is the way we move this is the real world this is what happens in sports this is what happens in a fight you know and even looking into lifting like it's cool to have a perfect you know deadlift and we're under a lot of load but you look at strongmen doing the atlas stone and shit like that how would you pick up a fucking boulder in the real world there's no handles you're gonna reach over that

thing with the fucking rounded upper back you're gonna brace the thoracic take a deep breath in and pick it up that's that's how we move shit in the real world so this idea that breath has to be at a certain cadence and the spine has to be in perfect alignment it's just you know it's one of these dogmas like diet you know or you got to eat 500 grams of carbs to be loaded up and you got to have this you got to have that and people attach those things as a part of their identity right this is the way it is it's the way it's always been it's the only way and it's it's just not that way so i like i really appreciate you appreciate people that kind of go against the grain and say, hey, there is a different way. Yeah, because what happens if you get put in that situation?

I mean, me and you, I had a great time rolling with you on the mats yesterday. It's like we were doing throws. It's like there was no perfect posture in any of that. So if all you know is how to move in one plane or in one fixed pattern, you leave yourself wide open for a whole host of adverse things to happen. So with being taught especially that everything has to be perfect in the gym and being grown up in that mindset, when I came to transition into working in activities, one of the first things that Paul worked on me was being less technical. I was like, what?

He goes, allow your spine around. Go on the bottom of the squat. Just feel. Feel your body there. Don't be so rigid. Allow your neck to hang, and then just hang out, and when you're ready, you come back up. That whole concept might seem simple, but what you've been programmed is every single time you flex at the hip, you need to have perfect spine alignment. I was just like, this is amazing. And then all of a sudden I started, you know, oxygenating the body. And that's the purpose of working in is really to pump the body, right? So if we're too rigid in any of these movements, then we kind of, we don't defeat the purpose, but we're not nearly going to experience the magnitude of benefit we can. So I've noticed tremendous benefit from just also letting go to

that attachment of perfection as it's expressed in the gym, as well as as it manifests into other aspects of my life. 100%. There's so many parallels between what we learn in sport and in the weight room, and then how that extrapolates out into life. And a lot of people, you know, myself included, talk about how we manage stress and the things that build character and resiliency and make us a little tougher, a little more hard-nosed so that we can, you know, tackle life's challenges and things like that. But that's a very male, strong, oriented mindset. And there's still, you know, on the flip side of that this this feminine flexibility you know the yoga the fucking the difference between the mighty oak and in the weeping willow that blows within the wind you know right and uh you know i just i was just out at spirit ranch and prangi was saying that um this

beautiful quote we'll have him on the podcast soon so blam another fucking segue son but um uh when you're flexible you'll never be bent out of shape right and and there's so much that there's so much that extrapolates that not only from a physical standpoint which we're talking about but how that goes with life you know life is always fucking changing there's always new challenges and your ability to adapt and mold with those challenges and changes as they come can greatly enhance your perspective and your quality of life so you're not so rigid and this is the way that it's always been i've had this job for 20 years and now it's gone what the fuck am i gonna do or that was my wife for 15 years and now it's over she's leaving me for this young strapping buck that I can't compete with.

Whatever the case is. Yeah, that's phenomenal, man. And that's the feminine principle. I'm having a great time here at ON, and I was in the cafe earlier, and you guys got some really fit, pretty athletic guys here. And one guy looked like he was pretty badass on the mats, and his shoulders were literally up to his ears like i was waiting for him to breathe and exhale and just let it and i

wanted to go behind him be like bro like chill out a little bit but you can just see like just adding in a little and these are all feminine principle stuff the the cold wet darkness moisture relaxation being able to be flexible, these are all feminine qualities that if brought into the right and if used properly will enhance, you know, the more that you can come into it. This is one thing that Paul really worked on me with was, you know, when we're training, every single time you hop in the gym, the goal is to exceed your prior performance by one to three percent. If you can't honestly look at yourself and exceed the last performance by one to three percent, you don't belong in the gym. So that's a pretty scary notion, especially

if every single time you're in there, you're trying to train and bang. So what that does is it forces you to look at yourself and the choices that you're making and really say like, okay, am I training? Am I draining? And if I'm honest with myself, maybe today is a day where I might need to get to sleep earlier. Because if tomorrow, it really puts you in a position where you have to take responsibility for what you're creating moment to moment and day to day.

So whether that's going to sleep earlier or eating better food or possibly incorporating a work in practice or maybe a sauna night. So all these tools that we have, especially access today as in the modern world, we can use these things to our advantage so that we can hopefully use them to our benefit in the gym or on the mat or whatever it may be. But those are all recovery. Those are all yin-based activity, whereas today's society, we're very yang. We're very expressive.

That's how, at least in my experience, how we're congratulated is by all of the output we're doing. And I think the more that I've started working inward and want to continue doing that, because I know it's an area that will help me also produce more and from a place of authentic creation as opposed to doing it because I'm trying to meet someone else's expectations or whether it's society, family, or whatever it may be. be yeah everyone wants to know what your deadlift pr is not fucking how long you meditated in full lotus dude i meditated so fucking hard yesterday it was the best session i saw the full spectrum red light yellow orange green fucking finished with purple it was the best session ever say what what who

gives a fuck about all that color you saw in your third eye tell me about your fucking 555 pr i remember yesterday after your aldo session i forget what you said exactly like seven chakra boom yeah you put me through that and for for anybody that's fucking weirded out by the woo-woo chakra talk, I closed my eyes after our Eldoa session and saw a bright purple light in my mind. I mean, fucking back of my eyelids was bright purple for about five minutes before the phone rang and Aubrey pulled me back into reality to jump into a meeting. So those things are real. We can tap into those through yoga, through breath work, and through working in, but not to go too much off topic here. I know we have a more male audience that might be opposed to that, but you know, in bringing up talks and

things like that, as we dive a little deeper, it is important to be balanced. It is important to talk about what are good feminine qualities and it doesn't mean like you know you need to throw on a fucking dress on the weekends to to experience the feminine no you just have to have balance you have to understand what are great masculine qualities that women should embody and what are great feminine quality qualities that men should embody because to be a your best version of yourself to total human optimization right that requires having a little of both that requires having a little bit of give and take and to not forcefully fucking jam your fists through everything in the world you know to create that balance and it starts with within it

starts with you right sure and and one thing that and this is something that i incorporate a lot of times with my athlete and why i also love the unconventional training tools. Once again, we can go outside, we can get in nature, which it's much easier to tap into just a more restful, balanced kind of mindset and grounded mindset when you're outdoors, when you're barefoot. But one of the things you can do is you can use a totally simple exercise, like I said earlier, like a breathing squat. Everyone knows how to squat more or less or should. And you can combine that actually with working out. So you don't even have to do 20 minutes. A lot of times the athletes that I work or train are very, very wound up, right? They're all day, whether they're a combat

athlete or any other type of athlete, they tend to be typically wound up. And you don't have to do a 20, I mean, any therapeutic dose, even one minute done consistently of just a mindful practice of movement, whether even it's just going for a walk, just going for a walk is plenty, but you can combine working in with working out and not only get a tremendous training effect, like for, let's use the example of even just a kettlebell deadlift, lightweight kettlebell deadlift, say 20 reps at a breathing pace, so inhaling on extension, exhaling on flexion, then setting the weight down and going into a breathing squat like a superset, so back to back. Now the idea is as the heart rate rises during the working out activity, let's say, how quickly can

you calm down the respiratory rate? How quickly can you calm down the heart rate so you can clear lactic acid and recover that much faster? So you can oscillate between those two. And it's a fun way. I treat it as a challenge. Like I challenge my athletes, like how quickly can you reduce the heart rate? How quickly can we recover? Let's just do 10 breathing squats at a slow pace. And that's a way that you can get, again, knock out two birds with one stone. And if that's where you start, that's tremendous. And that can take someone's athletic abilities as well as their mental capabilities. I mean, some of the best mental expansion or the best tools that I've learned that I've taken into sports has all been coming from working in tight movements or when I've combined them with working out especially when you're in kind of that that high state almost yeah and there's i mean think of the benefit for a fighter i know you work with some fighters when would they need to calm themselves

down fucking all right you're on the mat you found a position where you can hang out for a second let's slow our heart rate back down in In between rounds, you got one minute, five minutes on, one minute off. You got to get your breath rate down pretty damn quickly to recover in between rounds. Football, it's a six second play. Maybe you get 30 seconds in between, you know, before the next play. There's time there.

And if you focus on using that time wisely, you can reset the system. Basketball team just scored. They got to inbound the ball. You're jogging back. That's a time to work in. There's so many of these things in sport, but also in life. For all the people that don't fucking play sports anymore, you're 35.

You played high school sports. Now you dick around in the gym a few hours a week. But how does this apply to me? Well, getting in an argument with the wife. Boss is yelling at you. How do you fucking reset the system? How do you calm yourself so your response is genuine and it's not out of anger and fear right this applies to fucking everyone on earth

and the more we tap into these things the easier it is to get back into that relaxed approach where we can see all things and we don't have our blinders on in the fucking tunnel vision of fight or flight totally and you know what too like we can even bring it back to the mechanical side of things. So, you know, I think the average person, don't quote me, the average person breathes, let's say above 25,000 times a day. And what do we know about repetition, right? Repetition is the mother of all skill, especially if there's, I'm sorry, repetition is the mother of all skill, provided there is a perfect repetition, something like that, right? There's skill in the repetition.

But we breathe so many times a day. So you can imagine if someone has a breathing dysfunction, it can magnify itself in so many other different ways of our life. But let's take a breathing squat, for example, because that's what we've been talking about. If you inhale towards the top of the squat and you start raising your arms up over your head, one of the things that you notice is, again, we're working with our anatomy and physiology. As the rib cage opens, we're inhaling and we're raising our arms. How many guys do you know in

the gym who have a problem with the overhead range of motion? This guy right here. Right. So we can ask ourselves, what is that? Is that a thoracic spine issue? Is the T-spine a challenge? Is it a shoulder issue? Is it a pec issue? Is it a subscat? Is it a lat issue? Or is it a rib issue?

One of the things that I was totally unaware of, and back at home I get regular body work, used to get it about once a week. And before I really started really incorporating a regular practice of working in, especially a breathing squat, was, you know, the ribs, the intercostal, you should be able to get your fingers in there. So anyone who's listening right now, I would encourage you to put your hand right in between your ribs. If it's very painful, that's one sign that you might want to do some work there. Or if you can't fit your hands deeply in between the ribs and they feel locked up, imagine when the arm goes overhead, the ribs need to open up. So by just incorporating a breathing exercise, you can pump and you can get an opening effect there that will directly translate into any of your overhead lifts.

And especially with men in general, I mean females not so much because they tend to be more along the lines of hypermobile or a little bit more mobile, especially in the overhead position, but guys just getting someone to breathe properly can open up the ribs and have a direct correlation to their lifting. So that can be a mechanical benefit that you can notice right away. Yeah, and that's big because where you're short in range

is where you get hurt right any any chronic tightness you have and myself included actually right right before i went to hlc1 in san francisco uh i had had a slap tear on my right shoulder from trying to do a max effort snatch but to begin with i shouldn't even have been fucking around with a max effort snatch because my overhead position was shit i was run down from over training and fighting those kind of things, right? So we have like a barrier to entry That we should be making sure we have our prerequisites in order before we start going towards something like that Right if our breathing mechanics are off if we don't have if we don't know how to get tight and activate the transverse abdominus

We don't really have any business trying to do a max effort deadlift, right? Because I don't know how to brace the spine. I don't know how to brace the core. You're just asking for an injury, right? So I think a lot of these things are base principles that whether you're a professional athlete or just somebody that wants to get into better shape, these are things we need to focus on. They're things that really can prevent us from having to take six months off, or in my case, over a year to get my biceps back to my ear overhead with the right arm, simply because I made that mistake of not listening to my body and not taking care of, you know, where my blinders were, where my blind spot was physically. I'm super happy to hear you say that. Pain teacher came in to bring a new level of

awareness around that. But that's sometimes how we need to learn. And that's how I, you know, it's interesting as I transitioned to every single sport, when I look back at the times, it was always around an injury. So in every single sport, what I thought was the end of the road really opened up. And it's really what sent me to Paul. You know, I went to Paul to heal an orthopedic injury that no one could figure out. I went to nine different practitioners over the course of two plus years. And he was the only person that actually could identify what was going on, which was a compartment syndrome in my arm. So the common medical advice was either get surgery or stop the sport that you love. And I refused both. But what I thought was just a devastating thing that was going to put me out forever really opened this whole new door into everything that I'm doing now and really why

I'm so passionate about getting this message about building the more balanced athlete that can hopefully incorporate both worlds so that they're not only going to enter a fight or be a champion one, two, three times, that they can really continue their sport for as long as they have the dream to do it. And they just won't be stopped in their natural evolution as an athlete because of an injury that could have been prevented or an overtraining state or something like that. Yeah, and then they don't move around like a fucking robot the rest of their life when they hang it up, right?

They have some use of their body still, so when you're 40, you can still play with your kids, still run around, can still get freaky in the bedroom, find some new positions other than missionary and standing at the edge of the bed, right? It's important. People, you don't, you know, fucking one of Paul's quotes that I absolutely love

is sooner or later, your health will be your number one concern. And we don't, we take shit for granted all the time. And I was just talking to Dr. Dan Engel about this. Oddly enough, that podcast will air after this one. But due to the powers that be in the podcasting world. But we take for granted those things until they're gone. And fucking people write songs about that shit. But you really don't know what you have until it's gone. And that comes

at a very high price when we talk about our physical health, right? Because it's so many people, especially, you know, there's so many baby boomers out there that they think to themselves, ah, you know, you know, I'll, I'll, I'll eat these good things. I'll add in the fish oil. I'll do that, but I'm not getting rid of this crap that I love because I've eaten this my whole fucking life. And guess what? I'm still here, you know, and even, even my old man, when I try to try to talk to him about, you know, like making sure my son is eating good food and, and, and he does a good job of of trying to trying to adhere to to some of our requests i would say he does an excellent job but you know the the old mindset well well

i raised you and look where you're at well yeah i had to undo some shit i had to unwind some stuff you know i grew up eating gluten like a lot of dudes in their 30s grew up on fucking cold cereal and non-fat milk and sandwiches for lunch. And it was fucking gluten 24 seven, you know? So yeah, I had some shit to unpack after that literally and figuratively, you know, and rewiring my system and putting healthy things in my body. But, um, you can't take your health for granted, you know, and really, I think being mindful of your body, paying attention to those things. And, you know, even with all that I've learned and continue to learn, there's so much more to learn, you know,

and that's the beauty of it is that if we pay attention and we try and we're disciplined in working on ourselves and, you know, as Aubrey says, there's mindfulness in our meditation practice and how we go about the day. And there's mindfulness. What do we take in? What do we have promoting ourselves for the future? What knowledge do we gain each day that makes us a better person? So now we have the tools necessary mentally to take ourselves to a different level so that we live each day better than the day we did before.

I love that. Hell yeah. So let's segue right into fucking teacher plants because we've been we've been playing with just the tip here for a minute so um you know uh i've i've uh i've mentioned before on on aubrey's podcast and joe rogan's that some of the things that have helped transform me in a way that nothing else has. You know, I've been, you know, plants like ayahuasca and psilocybin mushrooms and even cannabis to a degree when used properly. I've really recently pulled me out of my daily routine. They pull me out of my everyday thought pattern, the loop that fucking plays over and over

again. And they allow me to see things as Eckhart Tolle calls it, the loop that fucking plays over and over again. And they allow me to see things as Eckhart Tolle calls it, the observer. I can witness the mind speaking and know that I'm not that thing. I'm the thing witnessing it. Right. And from there, I can see things from all angles. It changes perspective and it's given me insight. And really, you know, as they say, you could get a decade worth of counseling done in a day working with a plant, you know, as they say, you could get a decade worth of counseling done in a day working with a plant, you know, one of these master plants. What has been some of your experience and some of the knowledge gained working with some of the teachers? It's been for me just

in the past few years, and always it's been done, you know, I'm very grateful, it's always been done very ceremoniously. So always with intention, always with a preparatory practice, diet before, harmonizing the body with the other people in the tribe around, and then also integrating it after. So it's always been done, in my experience, very beautifully. And so I've always had positive experiences with it. And my experience is, like you said, it's allowed me to develop a new perspective around life.

And also, even where I'm at right now, to be completely honest, as an athlete, a lot of times it's all about you. It's all about how can you get to that next level? How can you win that fight? How can I reach this number? Whereas now, as even I'm building my brand and whatnot, it's all about the message that I got in one of the most recent journeys was it has to be about the all. It has to be about everyone else.

If I'm really to grow to the next level of the person I want to be and the person I'm dreaming to be, it can't be about me anymore. And so just that whole concept has completely changed my interactions with people, completely changed my level of gratitude, the people even just being here

and how grateful I am to connect with you at a deeper level and spend time with you and your family. It's allowing, it's really been one of the best, most therapeutic and just most beautiful tools I've incorporated in my life. So I'm very grateful to the teacher plans and for all the people that have supported me in having a beautiful experience with those, because now I've realized like it

was very much not about me. Even just the people around me who were a part of the ceremony were all holding space or were all a part of that experience. And we were talking the other night about the importance of tribe and fear and how we can move through fear if we have a good tribe. If we, what did you say, like the buffalo? Yeah, we talked about the buffalo. Parangi talked about this at Spirit Ranch. And, you know, again, we're getting weird here with, you know, deal with it. He talked about the wisdom, the Native American wisdom that they take from animals and plants and one of the wisdoms that that is brought about from the buffalo is that when the storm comes the

buffalo does not try to outrun the storm because that makes the storm last longer they can't outrun it so they get shoulder to shoulder with their pack and they go fucking head first through the storm right yeah but that takes having that good tribe that takes having that look we're all going to stick together in this and we're going to tackle this thing head on and when you do that they come out of the storm much faster that's the fastest way through it is to go fucking right headfirst into it yeah you know yeah you touched on a really important piece there something that i've mentioned in the past. For people that are wondering, where do I start, things like that, there's an excellent book called The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide. Tim Ferriss did an episode on his show with Dr. Jim Fadiman.

And they really talk about the importance of having a guide or a shaman to walk you through these things, to guide you through the tough spots. Because you talk to anybody and they'll say, oh, I tried that when I was in high school drinking with my friends and it was the worst experience ever. Well, yeah, there's a right way and a wrong way to do anything in life. And I think having the right intention, the right mindset, having the right environment, you know, set in setting. Timothy O'Leary beat that drum until he put a hole through it. But it's important. That's why it keeps coming up, you know, and I think,

fortunately for you, you had all these working pieces where people took you by the hand and guided you through these wonderful experiences. And the difference between doing it right and doing it wrong is astronomical. I mean, you do it wrong, you can have some very lasting issues. You do it right, and it can open up your world into a whole new light where you see things differently, you're more receptive, and you can be a bit more like the weeping willow, a bit more flexible. Sure, and hopefully you're in a place where you've, you know, at least managed, again, going back to the foundation principles. It's like if you can manage yourself in just the most foundational way, you'll be able to handle much more than you think.

I mean, but if you're, you know, you're eating crap and you're not following the dietary regimen before or you're just not drinking any water, you're drinking poor quality water, you don't have a breathing practice. All those things are the tools that you have going into a ceremony to allow you to help manage and navigate that much better. So that's why I do think that putting an emphasis on managing the person can really, really help the experience. So, you know, obviously always you hopefully have a good guide with you, but in terms of your ability to to um successful i don't want to say successfully but manage it and navigate it that much better can be can be increased yeah 100 brother well what else you got you got uh you got some stuff coming up i know you're working on with a lot of cool shit with eli got some cool videos going yeah we got some really neat stuff we got um so right now i'm working on a book. It's essentially going to be, you know, one of my main inspirations is to get people out of the gym one of the most, if not the most comprehensive books out on anything and everything you can do if all you have

is one kettlebell. So if all you have is one, how can you train for power, expulsion of strength, and how can you train for the endurance qualities? And how can you also train in the, you know, I love one of the things I appreciate about the guys at Onnit and the kettlebell guys is they do a lot of flows. They do a lot of rotational rotational stuff which is kind of where in the most recent years where kettlebell training is going so juggling for example all all these kind of ways how these different methods you can use with the kettlebell if you just had one how can you get a phenomenal training effect so that's one of the big projects that i'm working on right now which probably will be available in the next about two-ish months oh awesome yeah fuck yeah You got a title?

Yes. Kettlebell Performance, The Comprehensive Guide, Volume 1. And right now I've got a waitlist online where people can sign up if they just go to mikesalemi.io slash waitlist. And if you put your email in there, you'll be notified as soon as it comes out. And I'll also have some free guides that are available as well that you'll get for signing up as well. Hell yeah. We'll link to that in the show notes. You might not have heard that because if you remember the movie The Waterboy with Adam Sandler, there's a fucking dude right outside this window on a drivable fucking lawnmower just wheeling it. I mean five yards from our microphone.

So apologies. uh being flexible we'll roll with the punches on that and uh again we'll link to that in the show notes in case you missed it but hell yeah man i'm really looking forward to that um and you're continuing to work with paul are you gonna do you know we talked a bit about how you've been so so much into competition with kettlebell stuff that um you you're going to do one more. Is that right? When is that coming up? I got one in beginning December, and I'm probably going to do, if not, that might be the last one for a little bit in February.

But I've really realized I just need a break from the sport. And I've been working with more and more fighters over the years, and I've just been really inspired. And yesterday, even just working with you on the match, just lit a whole inspiration, level of inspiration for me. And so I'd like to kind of move into that, see where it goes. If anything, it'll just give me a new, better appreciation. It'll humble me even more and teach me a lot that I can make any of the athletic programs that I come out with for fighters that much better. So I'm excited to get and spend more time on the mat and learn from from some great people that i that i have i'm fortunate enough to have around me 100 yeah jiu-jitsu has been one of the most humbling things in my life by far uh you know

if you get knocked out in a fight it's one you know that's one thing you can be like well i got clipped it happens to the best of us you know you get back into training you don't worry about it hopefully let your brain heal but um when i fought stephen bonner i was a blue belt he was a black belt it was my first fight in san jose at the shark tank at my home and he was t-bagging me in front of the crowd in north south position just mashing his cup into my fucking mouth uh for a large portion of that 15 minutes so you talk about humbling uh there's nothing like getting big brothered by another man where you're matched evenly uh for the most part you're the same weight there's no there's very they take try to take as many factors out of the equation

as possible for excuses and you just get fucking ragdolled like that i mean it's uh it's deeply humbling you know and he quite a you know a big reason why a lot of black belts that you see don't have a chip on their shoulders because they know they're a badass but they've tapped thousands of times already on the mat just to get to that position you know they've been put in shitty positions and hopefully and my recommendation to all people first starting out is tap often tap frequently do not you know they say trick your ego at the door but ego in a way is what makes you get better ego in a way is what keeps you going back ego in a way is what uh it gets you to try a move that you may not want to try like oh this looks like a badass move i'm

going to try it you know so there is some balance to that being, um, a benefit to us on the mat, but there's no place for ego when it comes to tapping, you know, because the difference can be, I tap quickly and we reset slap five pump knuckles and get back to it. Or I don't tap and I'm either getting woken up a minute later or I don't tap. And I now have to deal with an arm injury for the next nine months so a lot of stuff can can can go into that and then you know the same goes to life if you're if you're a little bit you know more receptive and not trying to fight everything as you go um you can gather a lot more from there but there's many lessons in jiu-jitsu that you'll you'll find extrapolate out into the modern world i'm looking

forward hell yeah brother well i think we're we're just under an hour uh we've got a fucking super packed schedule today so we will have you back on for sure and uh many times out to on it hopefully but um yeah we've got a stretching session and then uh i got kevin ross the bellator kickboxing world champion on a bit later muay thai expert so excellent having you brother where can people find you online on social media yes if they go to mike salemi.io that's the website that's the best ways to find me and right now on social media i'm kettlebell lifestyle but i'll also be updating that real soon so just stay tuned on the website there'll be a good announcement there and all the information on the programs we're coming up with, the working in program with Paul Cech, as well as the encyclopedia guide that'll be coming up as

well. So they can just look me up there and that'll be a great resource. Awesome, brother. Very much appreciated. Much love to you, brother. Thanks for coming out. If you're listening to this on the week of release that means that black friday is right around the corner and that means you should not be shopping at on it.com what you should be doing instead is planning your fucking attack because everything is on sale we're going to have exclusive products like our savory mct online which is badass and soups and stews doorbusters like 50 off our were Werewolf Kettlebells and Hatch Green Chili Warrior Bars. And actually everything is going to be on sale. 25% off supplements. It is by far the best time to shop at Onnit.com. Explore new products, try new things. So check it out, Onnit.com

slash Black Friday and make sure you wait until Thanksgiving night before you buy anything from Onnit. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Be sure to check us out for more detailed information and question and answers. Everybody's got questions. Hopefully, I have some answers to point you in the right direction. We do those Facebook Lives every Wednesday on the Onnit main page. So if you click like on Onnit, you can check me out doing some question and answers that really revolves around the show. Every podcast that we do, I'm going to try to grind out some Q&A specifically to that podcast. Podcast is launched on Monday, and then we do the Facebook Lives on Wednesday, 6 p.m. Central Time. If you don't make it, that's fine.

Just write your questions in to Onnit, and I'll be sure to answer those on the live, and then you can check those out at a later time when you need to.