Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #86 Mike Salemi

Episode Date: May 6, 2019

Mike Salemi is back for his second appearance on the podcast to talk about everything that’s been going on since his last visit. We get into the pain teacher, what his new kettlebell program offers, some of the work he’s been doing with college students and Firefighters. We also dive into plant medicine and mike shares a message he got from a recent journey.   Connect with Mike Salemi Website | https://www.mikesalemi.io/ Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/mike.salemi/ Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/mike.salemi.583 Youtube | https://bit.ly/2IYJbVe   Discount Code at checkout: KINGMTK25   Show Notes: Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker | https://amzn.to/2l0emUV Kambo | https://bit.ly/2DzWO8Z   Farmers Juice Promo: Get $10 off your first box order by visiting  thefarmersjuice.com/king    Dry Farm Wines Promo: Get a penny bottle of wine on your order by visiting  dryfarmwines.com/kyle     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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that multivitamins don't work. That's also why Total Human was created, to be a rich collection of high-quality nutrients, each purpose-driven, to provide a tide of benefits to support your body, mind, joint health, immune system, energy, mood, and other aspects of your well-being. It's not a multivitamin, but rather a collection of megavitamins, also containing the clinically studied formulas direct from our most popular supplements. Go to onnit.com slash total dash human to learn more and try it today. Hello, hello. We've got Mike Salami. Nope, that's Mike Salemi, but he's been called Salami in the past, so I can give him a little grief. He is the Bulgarian bag man. If you've seen me on my Instagram with my wife slanging Bulgarian bags around my head, it's because of this dude. He is not the originator

of it, but he's worked very closely with a guy named Ivan something off. I say something off because I can't remember his last name. But anywho, the original Bulgarian bag man who is a great wrestler wanted to work on unique tools um mike salemi also comes from a kettlebell background he has a new program coming out online and just a fantastic dude so make sure you check this one out let me know what you think and then visit his website because there's a ton of good info there. Thank you guys for tuning in. Hope you enjoy the show. We're clapped in. We'll get our, what is that? That's our Carl Weathers and Arnold handshake.

It's a little predator handshake. Has to be done that way. When you're this strong, Mike Salemi, it's the only way it can be done. Well, it's so good having you back, brother. Thank you, man. We're out here. We got Paleo FX Week going on.

I think you, like everyone else that comes into town for this, just fucking runs around frantically, bounces from one thing to the next. But these are my favorite moments during the Paleo FX Week is just being able to sit down, take a deep breath, and have a nice conversation with one of my favorite people. So this is dope. Thank you, brother. Thank you for having me. How you been, brother? What you been up to? Dude, I've been on the go, on the go. I think

the last time I was at least on the podcast was well over a year ago. And at that point, I remember I was just making the transition. I had one more kettlebell competition that I wanted to do before I took a little bit of a break. And so since then, it's just been almost two out of sometimes three weeks a month just on the road, traveling, teaching. So much so that definitely a pain teacher showed up recently to tell me to slow the F down. But I've been doing really good, man. Just traveling, teaching, meeting a lot of people, and enjoying it a lot, for sure. Let's talk about that. Obviously, you finished damn near all of the education through Paul Cech and quite a bit more outside of that on your own.

But let's talk about the concept of the pain teacher because I think it's so important. And I think we've all experienced that. We just don't know the cause and effect of that. Not listening, not paying attention, but dive into that a little bit. Unpack that. Yeah, I'll share exactly what I'm going through right now. And so I don't even think we shared on the last podcast, but I've been a strength and condition coach in this industry for well over 15 years, but it's only been in the last two years that I've really been full force doing this 100%. For eight years, I was in a family business in the marble and granite industry.

And so that, when the economy crashed, I entered in that business to support the family and really build up the company that supported me my whole life. And as good as the job was, it was not where my heart was. Like I remember showing up every single day to work, just being emotionally, you know, sitting in front of a computer for eight, 10, 12 hours a

day is not what humans were meant to do. A lot of people right now are looking down at their keywords like, fuck you. Well, it was, I mean, I can totally relate. You know, that was a big, that was a long experience of the pain teacher. And there was a lot of great things about it. But what I really realized is like like that definitely was not my dream. There was an absolute purpose for it. It actually gave me the financial security and means to pay for coaching with Paul. But in this last two years, transitioning out of that job, which was a huge, huge transition for me, and it came with a lot of difficulty as well in my family dynamics.

The last two years has been almost like a resurgence, like a reinvigoration, finally doing what I really love. And so over the last two years, it's been like every single fucking opportunity that's come up, I've wanted to go and do it 100% because I remember sitting in front of that computer and essentially I told myself that if I ever had the opportunity to truly, truly go full in

on what I feel like I was meant here to do, placed on this earth to do, I would not take one second for granted. And so that's been a beautiful experience to travel and to teach in all these different places. But at some time, I've had the harsh realization that like everyone, we're all human and traveling is really tough. Like traveling is really tough on the body, different time zones,

lack of sleep. I try and do as best I can with my nutrition, but essentially I've been, you know, working so much and traveling so much that it kind of bit me in the ass a little bit. And actually was in a medicine ceremony that They got this pretty strong teacher that... What was the medicine? We can talk about this now. Oh, boy. Yeah. So that one was actually a combined ceremony.

It was psilocybin in the evening, and then we did bufo in the morning. Okay. And that's the Sonoran Desert Toad. The Sonoran Desert Toad, which that was my first time doing bufo. Oh, man, was that a profound and a deep experience. But I had a, the mushrooms gave me a big lesson at the end of the evening, which was like, there were certain things in my life that I just have not been looking at. Like I've just been, I think as I've been reflecting, cause that was maybe a month ago or so,

I've been reflecting and, you know, I think there's a, what I've realized in my own life, the travel is when I look at my own father, my father traveled most of his life, even now, sometimes six to nine months out of the year to provide for the family. And in my life, I've realized that a lot of the travel before has been to run away from not enjoying whether it was the family business or other things in life. And I realized that, am I traveling this much because I'm running away from something because I'm not happy in my situation? Or am I truly traveling because it's the job and the work and there's an opportunity somewhere? So I've really tried to get clear in

terms of, why am I traveling this much? Is it because, again, I'm running or is it because, yes, this is what the opportunity is? And going from place to place and teaching and now I'm doing some really cool stuff, you know, I haven't allowed myself any time or any space to reflect and enjoy and celebrate some of the lessons along the way. It's been like one trip and And then right away, honestly, I'll pack in as many stuff as I can and I'll see just like this weekend almost. One podcast to the next and teaching four workshops.

And it's like, I haven't allowed myself the space to breathe and enjoy and be with myself. And certain things have come up. So a physical pain teacher, I broke my toe. And that was actually like three days after that ceremony. I was like, okay, I got the message. I need to slow down. Um, and then two, three days later, I was doing some, uh, some training with, uh, we were talking about him last time, Marinovich. That's right. Yeah. Okay. Training with him. Great. Amazing. Santa Cruz, right? Santa Cruz. Okay. Yeah. So I was training with him. Great, amazing. That's in Santa Cruz, right? Santa Cruz. Okay. Yeah. So I was training with him and we were doing some agility drills and all of his training is fascinating. All reaction drills, partner drills. And it's very, very highly demanding on the

nervous system. And so requires so much concentration. And so I was doing reaction agility type drills with him and I was cutting in a different direction. And then there was a slit in the mat and my second toe. So thankfully not my big toe. Yeah. Cause it was my big toe. Then like, it'd be a problem. It's a year long recovery. Big toe is like huge, huge, but second toe got kind of caught in the mat, changed directions. And then toe just broke and I thought it was dislocated. So I reached down. I was like, I'm still training, pulled it. And then I just moved. Oh, shoot. And I was just like, and he's like, okay, hop back in. I was like, I'm done. I'm done. And, uh, you know, I've really been reflecting on that in terms of, you know, was I fully, fully present in that training session? Or was I just going from one thing to the next and had a flight right after? And that weekend, I had to teach two days full

certifications. Certifications, the next week I was in New York, and every step I took was a reminder. Every step I took. There was no way I was canceling the courses. People had signed up, I would not do that. But I was like, man, this is such a reminder in terms of how fast I've been going and a lesson to slow down, enjoy the process, and reflect on the lessons all along the way. And so it's been kind of like a neat transition for sure out of the family business and really being happier than I've ever been, but knowing that I really do need to slow down and enjoy the process. Yeah, there's so much, so much to that. And it's cool to hear, you know, a master such as yourself, and I fucking hold you in the highest regard, brother. But we all go through this. It doesn't matter how much we know, right? We get our own lessons.

And if we're not paying attention to those lessons, they get a little bit more visceral, right? I remember the first time I was introduced to the concept of the pain teacher was at Czech's HLC Level 1 in San Francisco. And I forget, who's the guy you're friends with? He's a coach. Jator. Jator, yeah. Jator, yeah. Jator, yeah. So Jator was there. And I think I was in a sling.

So I had this slap tear that I just had surgery on from trying a max effort barbell snatch. And it's funny when you talk about prioritizing things and recovery and all that. I still have very much had that old school fighter mentality of just go, push through it, pussy. Just go. Don't listen to your body. You can go harder. And so even with a lack of sleep and not sure if I was going to fight again and all these things, it was like, I just got to get back in shape and I got to get really strong. And then I'll see from there. And so really kind of negating and not listening to any of the signaling. I mean, when I look back on it now, I couldn't even get in the overhead position proper. So barbell snatching with just the barbell would have been a stupid idea, let alone with two and a quarter. You know what I'm saying?

Like that would have been a dumbass move even without that. If I'm not opening up the subscap and actually paying my dues to be able to get in that position properly, that's an issue. So that was a pretty gnarly one. It took me about a year and a half to recover from that. But all along that way, anytime I would cough or sneeze, I would feel it. I'd feel the pain of that. And it took me so long. Shoulders are a fucking weird one, man. I mean, it takes that just reminded me, that was a very long lesson to learn that, you know, and sometimes it's just getting sick. I mean, the pain teacher showed up in my life many times throughout my fight career. Um, but it, but it really showed up then, you know, that was the one where it was like, Hey, you haven't been listening for a long enough time. So we're really gonna, we're really gonna settle in on this and you'll have a long time to reflect. So, you know, it's funny too. And I want to dive

into, I want to dive into what you're doing. And then I definitely want to take a deeper dive into the psychedelics. But we were just out in Sedona and had the chance to work with onguitos, as Perongi calls it. Those are the mushrooms. They're the niños, they're the babies. So ayahuasca, you have the grandmother medicine, mushrooms are the babies. And so much of the medicine was what they talk about in the Native American spirit wheel in the South, in the Lakota tradition, that's the coyote medicine. And the coyote is the trickster. So he kind of goes against the grain of what's supposed to be, right? And certainly can break up any, it just goes against the grain on everything. So respect for the medicine, all this shit.

But the beautiful lessons from the coyote are to play, to celebrate, to laugh. And that really was the experience for all of us. So it was an incredible thing to go through because the fact that it didn't matter what our intention was going into it. We all needed that, you know, and you can have a want or a desire, but the need to play, to celebrate, to relax, to enjoy, and to really every single day, celebrate the small stuff too, you know, just to take a little moment for yourself, whatever that is, whether that's loading some good organic tobacco into a pipe and having a puff out in nature, or just hanging out with your family, your friends, watching something on Netflix, like a comedy special and getting a good hard laugh.

All those things are wins, right? And they all accumulate. But let's dive into what you're doing now because I've been getting emails from you. Last time you were in town, you put us through some fucking awesome new exercises and you're putting together some pretty fascinating, cool stuff online. So let's chat about that. Yeah, yeah. So it's funny what you mentioned earlier about just that overhead position, and you didn't pay your dues to get in that overhead position. And it just brought up a few things for me.

And so for approximately 12, 13 months, I've been creating my first online kettlebell program. Now it's a kettlebell program, but it's like, and as I'll share, it's like so, so, so much more than that. Because one of the things that I've seen traveling all over the world is like, there's kettlebells obviously in every, pretty much every single gym around the world. And so like today in my viewpoint, it's the kettlebell specifically is, you know, it's almost if a personal trainer gets a personal training cert and doesn't know how to use a kettlebell, at least at a basic level, in my opinion, they're usually at like a disadvantage when it comes to differentiating themselves from other trainers or providing more value for their clients. I mean, I would say like name a personal trainer doesn't at least know how to use a

dumbbell at a basic level or some body weight stuff. It's like, they're going to be pretty, you know, at a tougher place helping their clients. And so for me, like I love the kettlebell for its portability, its versatility. But what I really see still teaching is there's still quite a few trainers and people don't know how to use it to its full potential. And more importantly, it's like, and I see this all the time, people typically don't have a thought process, a thought process before they even pick up the kettlebell in terms to assess and pre-qualify. Should I even be grabbing a kettlebell right now? Should I be slanging snatches because someone told me snatches are the best goddamn exercise

in the world? It's like, what are my shoulder mechanics like? What are my hip mechanics? What's my level of flexibility? Am I pre-qualified for these movements? And so what I really wanted to put together, and it took me quite a long time, was a whole system of my thought process that's taken me through so many injuries and so many different coaches to learn from pain teachers and wisdom from people like Paul, who has a huge influence on the program, to put together this kind of pre-qualification sequence.

And then when it comes to the kettlebell side, still to this day, it's interesting because most people usually are familiar, especially new personal trainers, if they are with kettlebells, one system or one school of thought, whether it was more of a hard style background or maybe they saw kettlebell sport. And while each system or each kind of technique path has its own values and its own merits, what I really love seeing is the trainer, the coach, the therapist that doesn't pick sides on one or the other, but knows how to think through things and say, okay, hey, this specific path is right for this person or this specific goal or objective, and this path is maybe right for someone else, but we should know and hopefully have some level

of mastery of both. And so in the program, it covers both systems. You get that thought process. Last time I was listening to our podcast and we talked a lot about working in. And so I mentioned like Paul had such a huge influence on this program. And so what I did too is we talked a lot about working in. And so Paul was kind enough to do about eight lectures, eight mini lectures on working in. When to work in, time, surface, clothing, what are some of the benefits, how he kind of created his criteria. So that's in there too, because it's, too, because if we just look at it from the working out component, we miss so many of the lessons that we're meant to learn in the gym. So there's that as well. It is, in my opinion,

the most comprehensive online program out. There's over 500 videos, all with in-depth instructions, written instructions. And it's something I'm really excited because it's so, so tied to my evolution and my struggles. And that's really what I wanted to support. I want to support the person who truly wants to learn this stuff, wants to put in the work, is willing to pay their dues. It's not a workout program. It's also really hard for me now that I'm trying to post more on social media. It's really hard for me. I know workouts, for example, are like what a lot of people in the industry do to get views and stuff. It's very hard for me to post workouts. And when I do, there's always a little check that I got to do internally because

you don't know who's in front of you. I think working out for fitness, it's good. Movement's great, movement's great. But training someone like you train yourself is usually a dangerous recipe unless you know what their limitations are, what's their goal, their objective. So in general, workouts can be good, but it's hard for me.

I want to know, what are you training for? What do you really want? For me, just to give an arbitrary workout, it's hard to sit with me. And so I feel a lot better now posting more workouts if I've got somewhere to send people to. Yeah. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, they got a home base where there is the educational piece because in a one minute video on the gram, you can't give them all the how-to. You know, like we posted that, you had the Bulgarian bag or what's it called? The, we did the spin challenge. Yeah. So the spin challenge, we did the spin challenge and I don't have, I mean, I have a decent amount of followers on,

on Instagram, but it's nothing compared to like Aubrey or, or Rogan for that matter, or fucking Logan Paulie, like 20 million. Um, but you know 40 000 followers on instagram and the video had like 120 000 views yeah something ridiculous it was like i don't even have that many followers you know but people were sharing it they were tagging their friends and for sure that's that's almost like the male equipment equivalent of the female ass shot in the thong right like you know that's gonna get views there's no doubt about it. Well, you had Tosh in there too. Yeah, I had Tosh in there too. There was some beautiful feminine energy. There was balance there. But yeah, that's a funny one too, because

I don't really pay much attention to what I post. I just post shit that's going on. I'm not a businessman when it comes to that. I'm not like, you know, this would be really cool. And a lot of, I understand the value in using it for that. But yeah, there is that balance of like, you know, if I post that something, something like that, it's going to get a lot of attention, you know, for the most part. But, you know, certainly coming from your background where you are a coach and you are mindful of these things and you've trained so many different people and you've been a victim of the pain teacher yourself. Yeah. Right. Um, there, there, I think there is a responsibility and a fire lit under your ass to make sure people know what the fuck they're doing. So they don't just order something online and start banging it out and get hurt and be like, Hey, you fucking showed me this workout. No, you know, no, I can't walk or whatever.

Right. And I think that's really nice to have the full thing. What else do you go through in the series? Is there mobility? Is there ways that you can prep and get into position better? Hell yeah. Hell yeah. In the beginning, you go through... Essentially, I created a step-by-step process that you don't necessarily need a coach or anyone. You can self-assess yourself in general to pre-qualify for every single kettlebell primary movement. And with that comes, if like, for example, you didn't pass the movement, let's say a movement screen or like a general assessment, then you have kind of two routes that you can go to in discovering, is it more of a mobility problem slash flexibility, or do we need more fine-tuned

strength and control around specific areas? Or simply developing a deeper level of awareness? So it's almost honestly like there's enough content in there for like three certifications, pretty much. Like one on, okay, pre-qualifying yourself. How do I determine if it is more of a flexibility issue? Do I need strength and control? And then with that knowledge, when am I ready and how far am I ready to go into the kettlebell movements? So based off of that information, you can help guide yourself into making better program design decisions. So for example, we'll use the overhead lift, right? So if you weren't able to pass kind of the overhead movement qualifying test, then how can

you still train? Because it's still important to train. I still want the athletes and I want anyone who takes it or coaches to start working right away because that's important. There's plenty you can do. But how, let's just take the Turkish getup. How can we modify the Turkish getup via specific ranges

that's not going to put the shoulder joint in that vulnerable position, but you can still work so many of the developmental steps up to certain stages or use different awareness drills as well. So you've got like, the beginning is all about kind of checking yourself, healing yourself, preparing. Then when it comes into the kettlebell side, I go over. So this whole program,

all you need is one bell. Perfect. One bell. And imagine like 500 videos on one bell, but that's how like the education piece is so, so, so important is so, so important to me because I want people to know why, you know, even if like I want trainers or I want people, even if you're not a trainer, I've got people, general pop who just really don't want to get hurt. G pop, G pop don't want to get hurt and just want to do things the right way, but really want to be educated in terms of why are they doing what they're doing. I think there's a big misconception that people just interested in general fitness don't want to know. Certainly there's people out there, but honestly, even like the Aldoas, the Aldoas are highly detailed. And so when I teach

an Aldoa class, you know, people, you know, I don't know if I've gotten criticized or people get criticized when they teach classes like, wow, you're not lecturing, but you're giving like what's going on in the joint. You're essentially teaching the functional anatomy during the session. And I get so many people afterwards that thank me like, well, I had no idea the shoulder joint worked like that or I had no idea. It's like we know more about how to be a car mechanic or how to change our oil, but we don't necessarily know the internal systems of the body. And so I've gotten a lot of people really enjoying that aspect.

So there's that. I break down 10 primary kettlebell movements. I explain in terms of those two branches, whether you're training for speed and power or you're training for more endurance, what route to go to, what questions do you ask yourself? Tons of common errors and fixes so you can figure out and identify that coach's

eye in terms of, okay, not even just on YouTube. There is, to be honest, in the kettlebell world, there is a lot of good stuff on YouTube. There's a lot of good coaches out there. But what's missing in my experience and my observation is a system. A system of how do you step-by-step methodically take someone through this process and what happens when they can't successfully perform a movement? Or it's like, what if a cue, if I say, hinge your hips back or drop your rib cage down, what if the cue doesn't work? When you're in that position as a coach, you've got one of two decisions. You're going to keep grinding them through the movement and something's going to happen, an injury or whatever it may be, or you're going to stop, think, reflect. What other skills,

what other tools do I have in my toolbox beyond just a cue and an awareness cue to help remedy the situation? Maybe if I get the spine to work like a spine or the shoulder to work like a shoulder, it don't matter what kettlebell movement or Bulgarian bag movement I do. I set them up for success in the long term. So there's that. There's the working in component. There's programming lectures, not only in general for each movement. I write like four to eight week programs for every single movement in the program, but also how do you holistically create a program, for example, for a wrestler and for a mom of three kids and consider all the factors that me and you know and believe in, in Paul's teachings. So kind of going through my thought process of physiological

load, mom's high, wrestler's low because of this things. What are some classic orthopedic issues? Like mom's probably got extreme forward head posture, very much kyphosis. Maybe she's wearing heels all day. So that's going to adjust her mechanics. How do we look at some of these situations and walk through, what are the questions you need to ask yourself to create a truly, truly balanced program? So those are just some of them. And then again, Paul's lectures were just so, so, so valuable and rad. And I think for the long-term longevity of someone, incorporating that working in component to balance out both sides is like, it feels so good for me because I feel like I'm not,

again, I feel like I'm educating, I'm empowering someone to like, I would love to support people, but I want you to figure it out yourself so you don't need know, need me only if you really can't figure something out, but you got the tools to take it into your own hands and run with it. Yeah. That's the best. That's the, I mean, the best coaches teach that way. They give you everything they know, you know, and obviously this isn't all that Mike Salemi knows, but it's a fair amount of what you know around this particular thing, but there's balance included with the working in practices. And as you layer that out, the idea is that you create masters that know how to do this on their own. So they don't need to hit you up. I mean, it always,

there's an old school mentality around trainers and, you know, Mind Pump is buddies of ours. And they've talked about this with me before when they were training people at 24 Hour Fitness, they had bosses that would say like, hey, your client's losing weight too fast. You know, we need to slow that down. You want them to come back. You don't want them to have a six pack and not need you anymore. You want them to, you know, you got to stretch this out. You got to milk it longer, right? And that's a very, it's an old school mentality, but it still is a fucking a large portion of the fitness industry, right? Whereas, you know, in other avenues where you're competitive, I'm sure this happens in kettlebell sport or in fighting and things like that. Like you want,

your coach wants to give you everything they fucking know. They're not stringing you along like, well, I want him to keep me till his 10th fight in his career. And, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to save this special move for him from when he fights for the title. That way he still keeps me around after that. It's like, no, that's fucking bullshit. Like teach them at their pace, but give them everything. So that's really fucking cool. Talk about what you're doing now in education with college students. Oh, dude. So that same kind of thought process is carried over into some of these university curriculums I'm starting to create. So I just started working with, this is my second semester back at Northwest Vista College

here in San Antonio, Texas. And what they created, which is so rad, is they've got essentially, it's a combined project between the kinesiology students and the personal training department, where they're bringing in some of the thought leaders in the industry and educating the students with real-world practical experience with what they're going to expect when they leave. Because most, I'm not saying all of them, but a lot of times, the university curriculum is a little bit further behind or it's got influences from larger corporations, et cetera. So that can skew the education, right? But they're actually bringing in the people who are in the trenches, in the trenches, seeing not only what's happening now, what went wrong in the past and where potentially

people can go in the future to really set themselves up. So with these people, with these students, I've created like an eight part curriculum, two sessions each time. So I'm teaching them the mastering the kettlebell system, how to essentially develop this thought process so that when you leave, you don't just read in a book or read somewhere that the Russian kettlebell swing or the hardstyle swing is the best thing for someone. It's like, what if they're inflamed? What if their gut's inflamed and you throw them right into a high powered movement? What if they don't meet those prerequisites that we were talking about earlier? So these students are getting my thought process

in terms of that. I'm also getting to teach them on rotational training with tools like the Bulgarian bag, Hertz bands, LDOAs, holistic nutrition. And so really when these dudes leave, obviously there's only so much you can teach them in that limited amount of time. But man, if I had that when I was starting off and actually got a scope when someone was really out there visiting these gyms and visiting these physical therapy clinics, like

whatever route they want to go, it's like, I really want to support the new personal trainer. And so we started it there and they've got some other great speakers as well. But it's something that I want to get in like University of Texas and some of these other places. But, you know, it feels, it's so cool when you like, you know, you ask the question in the beginning, you know, how many, how many students have. And those three people have no formal experience. And I'm like, yes, I'm so fired up. That means potentially less dogma, less pattern. And it does, don't get me wrong, it can take much more skill to work with a beginner. Higher level athletes, as you're very well familiar, programming is, I think, more important. Beginners are hard because you really got to coach. You really got to be a good coach and help them. And I just love that these kids are coming in fresh and hungry and motivated. And it's like, that is the kid that I really want to support.

And so to plant those seeds just feels so, so good to share that education piece with them. Yeah. And you know what? The one positive there, aside from having a hungry young person person is that you don't have to untrain all the shitty movements and mechanics that they had been doing for a long time. Right. That's, that's, I think that's, that's huge. Cause anytime I take somebody that I was coaching somebody in, in mixed martial arts or some form of striking or jujitsu, if they've been kicking incorrectly, you know, for a very long time, that takes a long time to unmap that, to unglue that and to teach a different kicking style. So no doubt that's, that's the same with anything in life from golf to whatever. Um, so that's cool. That's really cool that you get some young hungry folks in there. What are you guys doing with firefighters

now? Oh dude. So you're, I don't know if you're familiar with the California Center for Functional Medicine. No. So it's, so Chris Kresser is a partner and kind of co-founder with Dr. Sanja. And essentially what they're doing is, so Dr. Sanja put together this program where he's, it's a six month pilot study and we're running it with the Santa Clara County Fire Department. And essentially what it is, is the whole goal and the whole mission is to completely reformulate the way that firefighters take care of themselves to reduce the risk of injury, increase longevity, to reduce cancer risk, to reduce heart disease risks. And so over the course of six months, the California Center for Functional Medicine created a one-time a month, like a different module or different focus each month.

So the first month is like diet intervention. So putting these guys on a reset diet. We got 18 volunteer firefighters involved, all different ages, all different. Some guys have two years in, some guys have been doing it for almost 20 plus years. We got a fire chief in there, the fire chief of the county. And so with those 18 firefighters, we look at diet intervention, stress, sleep, cancer prevention. And these guys are getting lectures. They're getting, like, it's so cool because we also have sponsors. So I see you're wearing the aura ring. Aura's involved. So these guys are checking their daily readiness.

I get to see all their data. They're doing blood testing. Also, they've got continuous glucose monitors before and during the diet reset. So we're getting a tremendous amount of data to prove why a lot of the principles that me and you live each day are so valuable, especially with shift workers. Right? each day are so valuable, especially with shift workers, right? So in the program, the complexity of it is pretty wild because you've got, they're doing 48 hours on, so two days on and four days off, but we've also got three or four 40 hour a week people. And so different ages, I think, so I conducted assessments on everyone because I'm running the fitness side and Jator is also a consultant on that side. Oh, that's awesome.

And so he's in Denmark, but he consults when we're creating new programs. But the cool thing is I ran 18 assessments on everyone. So I've got data from the structural side. And then from that side, I created a program where every single month it changes. And kind of like the kettlebell program, it's more important to me. Yes, the programming is important. We go over corrective exercise, base conditioning, primal movement patterns, getting them ready for firefighter specific movements. But what's more important to me is that these guys are empowered and know how to interpret their body signals and signs. And so based off of their aura ring, as well as I created a sheet for them to record how many, for example, how many calls did they go on a day? How many naps did they take a day? What was the severity of the call? If they want

to put some notes in, they can put some notes in. And essentially teaching them how to modify their program in terms of how hard should I push it based off of these measurements? And maybe should I reduce training volume? Should I do a working in exercise? I think if I recall, like 46% or 45% of firefighters, according to a study, die on duty due to cardiac incidents, like heart attacks and stuff like that, right? And what's interesting is like, normally we would think it's diet and stuff like that. What was so fascinating is another study showed that 46% of also firefighters had an increase in cardiac events just due to sleep deprivation, irregardless of diet or fitness levels. And when you look at the impact of sleep on these guys, like I can see it. Like when I'm looking at these dudes scores, like I'm talking to one of the firefighters and I'm like, dude, what happened last night? Like

what shot the scores up through the roof at 2am? He's like, oh, Mike, I was cutting down a tree at 2am for two hours with a big ass saw. And I was like, oh, okay. Like maybe we don't train tomorrow or maybe you just get some rest and some sleep. So it's got all these things built into it to teach them based off of what their stress level is like, what their sleep level is like, how am I going to take these lessons and then carry them moving forward? Yeah, sleep is so damn important. Matthew Walker, who is the PhD out of Berkeley, well, he's from the UK, but he did the book, Why We Sleep. He talked about this on Rogan's and I've been meaning to listen to this. I'm certainly by the time this podcast comes out, I'm going to listen to all three of these, but Peter Attia just had him on and they did three, like two, two hour plus

episodes. It's a fuck ton of information, but you know, Dr. Peter Attia is like one of the smartest people I've ever met. And you know, he definitely knows the right questions to ask. But Matthew Walker talked about on Rogan's that the time where heart attacks go up the most every year, there's a day. Do you know which day it is? Daylight savings? Yep. It's daylight savings. It's daylight savings. Because everyone is guaranteed to lose an hour of sleep, right? So that's pretty fucking remarkable because it's only an hour. So when you were talking about that with the firefighters,

like it makes perfect sense to me, especially reading the book. I mean, there's so much valuable information. It's like, it reminds me of like scared straight or something like that, you know, where you're just like, okay, okay. Sleep is very important. I'm sorry.

I submit. I go to bed on time. Yep, yep, yep. I know now. Well, shit, bed on time. Yep. Yep. Yep. I know now. Well, shit, let's dive back into the medicines here. You have been working with something called combo for some time now and developing your skills. And I want to dive into that because it's not one that's talked about often. I think I first heard Amber Lyon on the Joe Rogan Experience maybe in 2014 talking about her. And she was, of course, the CNN reporter, was able to kind of heal immune issues and make her bulletproof to life in a lot of ways. So let's talk about this one because it's on the spectrum

of difficulty close to anything that's out there, like a boga or ayahuasca. But also, from what I understand of it, it's more for, you know, you go through the physical hard to have the physical gain, not necessarily. I mean, obviously there's a mental component to anything you do, mental, emotional, spiritual. But at the same time, you know, it would be less visual than say a DMT trip or a Bufo trip. Talk a bit about Cambo and what you're doing with it and why you think it's really something that should be a part of everyone's arsenal. Oh, dude. So Cambo, I've been been using combo for maybe three years. And now it's almost a part of like a monthly practice. So combo, it's nothing psychoactive. And essentially what it is, is

so in the Amazon, it's called hunter's medicine or warrior's medicine, because essentially what the tribes would do is before a hunt, they would apply this medicine through their skin and go through this ceremony. And like you're saying, it would hyperactivate the immune system, but they also believe that it would make them run faster, have more energy, have more stamina. And essentially what it is is there's a huge physical cleansing component. And essentially, so sapo is the frog and the secretion from this particular tree frog in the Amazon. It's a large, large tree frog. And the way they cultivate this secretion or cultivate the frog is the Indians sing to it. So they sing to this frog. And actually, if I recall correctly, the story is that the vision

of how to cultivate this medicine and the healing powers of it came via shamans who are using ayahuasca. And so that's also why it doesn't necessarily need to be used with any of the plant medicines, but it can be, like it works so, so well to help prepare the body and cleanse negative energy especially. And so they call out these frogs from the trees. Frogs come down, they sing them, it comes down. They allow them to, essentially, it doesn't harm the frogs in any way, but they kind of like pull their arms apart and their feet apart. And then they essentially kind of like tickle. Usually, I didn't think they

even like tickled the toes of the frog. And then that helps the frogs secrete this secretion, the sapo. And so, then they release the frogs, they go back up to the tree, and then they call them back every two to three months. And so it's super, super ethical, but they take the medicine and then they dry the secretion onto this stick and it forms like a resin compound. And then in ceremony, what you do is, so typically, traditionally men will start getting it on the left shoulder, females on the inside of, I think it's the right leg. So a little bit further from the heart. And what you do is you take like an incense or some type of implement to burn little holes in the skin. And so the, the diameter of the holes are pretty small. It's like maybe like an eighth inch. So not very much. And essentially you would burn these little dots on the skin. And what you're trying to do is

you're trying to get below the outer layer of skin down to the epidermis so you can open what we call the gates. And so, the gates open up and then you apply with some water, you create these little balls of the secretion. You apply it on the skin into those open areas of those little open wounds. And essentially, what's so fascinating about the medicine is it goes direct, enters directly into the lymphatic system. And so when it enters a lymphatic system, it passes through circulation. And what it does is essentially, well, it does a few things. The experience of combo more or less across the board is pretty uniform in most people in ayahuasca or in some of the plant medicines, it can be so varied. But with combo, it's pretty normal what the stages are. It doesn't last long. It's like 20, max 40 minutes. So it's pretty short. That's not bad. I was picturing puking and

sweating profusely for hours. No, no, no. Okay. Under an hour. I think I can manage that. Now you could, you are potentially doing multiple, like depending on the person, like you could do multiple ceremonies in one day. A few different rounds. A few different rounds. I mean, it's being used to heal so many different things. Parasite infections, bacteria infections, Alzheimer's. There's a study right now,

or a few studies that are using for cancer prevention. Like, and you can do, so the treatment can vary and can also work with the meridians of the body. You can do auricular combo. So they start on the shoulder and the inside of the leg. But essentially, what happens is you start feeling almost like a warming sensation in the body. You might start feeling flushed. Your heart rate's going to start elevating. There might experience a little bit of swelling. And you usually drink a good amount of water before. And then what you're doing, it's a strong, strong purgative, which can cause a lot of the discomfort with it.

So that's why, I mean, it's warrior medicine. It's hard. It does not feel good when you're on it. But it brings out this purging. And what's really interesting is what you're purging is typically like a deep, deep bile-like substance. Like I've seen people purge brown, orange, green, like the whole gamut of colors. And so you're purging this old toxic shit and you're cleansing the body at a very, very, very deep level. You're cleansing the cells themselves. And what was interesting too is, so a lot of the research around combo came from the

same guy who discovered serotonin. So it was an Italian pharmacologist who kind of really started studying it. And what he found is combo has dozens of peptides, bioactive peptides. So short chains of amino acids, and then the bioactive component is essentially the fact that combo has an affinity and a selectivity for specific receptors in the body, in the human body. And what it can do is it can help heal neurotransmitters, reset that. It can be used to reduce inflammation. Thinking back to the firefighters, on the testing, a hundred percent of those firefighters with their markers had high levels of inflammation. So it's like for someone

like everyone has today has like higher levels of inflammation. You're looking at like C-reactive protein, things like that. Exactly. Exactly. So it can reduce inflammation, reduce pain. It can cleanse the body. And usually you'll start feeling better maybe about an hour after, but I feel like the next day, like you feel like Superman. And I think not only from a cleansing perspective, but from the spiritual side of things and from the emotional side of things, if you do kind of what's called like conscious purging. So as you're purging, you're putting that intention into what you're letting go of. It can be also very helpful in terms of if you feel stuck,

if you feel blocked, or a fighter before a camp, you want to set the tone and really start something in a clean slate. So it can be great for physical healing, mental, emotional healing. It resets the body, and the effects are just super powerful. You can do it by itself or even just to prepare before a plant medicine ceremony. Yeah, and I hear that it's fairly long-acting in terms of the benefits. You go through a ceremony like this, and from what Amber Lyon was saying, so many antibodies, it's almost, it's like the God's greatest hormetic stressor. Like every antibody is raised to the roof. Your immune system's on blast for six months to a year. It's very hard to catch the common cold. Obviously, you know, I had J.P. Sears on the show and he had done some combo and then got sick like maybe a few

weeks later. And I was like, well, what were you doing wrong? Because you must have fucking put your body through the ringer. Can I ask what was stressing you out? And I think it was travel, a lack of sleep, and some of the mental, emotional stuff around work. So, I mean, he got hit with multiple avenues of stress, and that's what brought him down. But for the most part, it's pretty hard to actually catch something. You and I know this, that if I'm healthy and I'm in a good spot in life, physically, mentally, emotionally, and my stress levels are low, I'm not going to get sick because I shared a water bottle with some kid with a

snotty nose. I don't catch a cold from someone else. But those colds are always around us. All these germs are always around us. It's when my body is weakened through any avenue of stress, whether that's lack of sleep, shitty diet, mental, emotional stress, any of this stuff, overtraining. That's when I'm susceptible to that cold. So I think that's an important thing to realize too. But I'm super down to try combo. So I want to do it with you and I definitely want to report back on it. I think that'd be a cool thing to do. That'd be awesome. I'm actually going to go. So I've been just using it for my own healing for the last few years and just trying to understand the medicine, not in the Western sense, but the medicine in the natural sense like this.

But I've been really trying to understand it, connect with it. And what I've really come through in the visions as well in some of the medicine ceremonies is this is something that I do want to support others in, especially those who really want to do the work. And so in October, I'm going for like a kind of an intense two week immersion to become a practitioner. And so it's something that I really, really would love to share. So I would be so down and so excited. I'm in brother. Yeah.

Yeah. You can guide me anytime. I'd love to support. Fuck yeah. Well, it's been excellent having you back on. We won't wait a whole nother year to get you back on again because life is moving quickly and you're gaining so much, so much wisdom in between. It's been excellent having you back on. Where can people find you? And I definitely want to link to your programming in the show notes.

That way people have an easy one click to get to the page and see your new programs. Yeah, that would be awesome. I'll create a special discount code too for anyone who's listening, anyone from Onnit. So you can find me on Instagram at mike.selemy. And then the program, if you go to programs.MikeSolemy.io slash on it, that'll be a landing page, set you guys up with a discount. I'll also create like a little free gift for you guys as well. So that's the best place to find me. And my website is MikeSolemy.io. Awesome. Fuck yeah, brother. Dude, thank you so much. This was awesome. Thank you, brother.