Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #99 Garrett Salpeter
Episode Date: August 5, 2019Engineer, Neuroscientist, and founder of Neufit, Garret Salpeter is always pushing the limits of performance and recovery. We discuss how the body naturally has the resources to repair itself and how ...Neufit is using technology to tap into that. We also get into the many applications of Neufit and how it can help improve speed, strength, endurance, and recovery by helping people build Neuromuscular control.  Connect with Neufit: Website | https://www.neu.fit/ Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/neufitrfp/ Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/neufitRFP/ Youtube | https://bit.ly/2JaUyIT  Show Notes: Pavel Tsatsouline | https://www.strongfirst.com/ Insulin Growth Factor 1 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin-like_growth_factor_1 Dr. Peter Attia | https://peterattiamd.com/  Waayb CBD www.waayb.com (Get 10% off using code word Kyle at checkout)   Felix Gray Blue Blocker Sunglasses (Free Shipping/ 30 days risk-free, returns and exchanges) felixgrayglasses.com/kyle https://bit.ly/2J0BhJA     Whoop 3.0 www.whoop.com (code Kyle at checkout to save $30 off new subscriptions)  Onnit /Black Rifle F*ck Yeah Coffee Get 10% off all foods and supplements at Onnit by going to https://www.onnit.com/kyle/  Connect with Kyle Kingsbury on: Twitter | https://bit.ly/2DrhtKn Instagram | https://bit.ly/2DxeDrk   Subscribe to the Kyle Kingsbury Podcast Itunes | https://apple.co/2P0GEJu Stitcher | https://bit.ly/2DzUSyp Spotify | https://spoti.fi/2ybfVTY IHeartRadio | https://ihr.fm/2Ib3HCg Google Play Music | https://bit.ly/2HPdhKY
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Thank you guys for tuning into the show today. We have Garrett from NuFit. Garrett is an awesome
guy who's become a buddy of mine. The company he started makes some really cool cutting edge
technology for training, and it helps with all sorts of things from rehabbing injuries. I've
worked on my busted knee after jujitsu with him to get healed up. And it doesn't take a long time
training with him, but the way the product works is pretty novel. It can help the nervous system
connect the mind muscle connection and train your body how to move properly. You can also crush your
ass in the gym with it. And that's something that I've done most recently with him when we had him
out here for Paleo FX. Hope you guys enjoy the show. And if you check it out on YouTube, there's
going to be some cool video overlay that's included with it. Thanks for tuning in.
All right. We're clapped in. Garrett Salpeter. Is that how you say your last name?
Salpeter.
Salpeter.
Yeah.
I like it. All right. The man, the myth, the legend behind NuFit. You like that intro?
I love it. I love it.
Yeah. Well, I want to get your background. What got you into all this stuff? Because you are the guy who created this device.
Is that correct?
Yeah.
Yeah.
What led you to that point?
What led you to electricity and how you changed that from what the typical thing is we're all accustomed to, a TENS unit, Russian STEM, things like that, and absolutely flipping it on the script and creating something totally new?
So it's definitely the case of standing on the shoulders of giants. There is a rich history of
electrical stimulation. And I was fortunate enough to be able to make some meaningful steps forward
in the technology and combine it with some things I had learned in functional neurology and in
physical therapy and so many of the techniques
that we use for actually applying the technology.
And I came at this originally, I actually was an athlete.
I grew up playing ice hockey and I had a real passion for strength and conditioning because
I wasn't a very good athlete.
And I just became enamored with the idea that through training, I could
improve myself and change my circumstances and that I was malleable and adaptable and could
improve. And I had a real passion for the human body. And then I had some experiences with
traditional strength and conditioning and traditional physical therapy, traditional orthopedic, where my experiences were very
underwhelming, I'll say. And at one point I considered going pre-med, but just thought that
there's nothing but dead ends for me in those directions. And so I decided to become an
engineer. And I ended up playing as a practice squad, mostly ice hockey player in college,
which even that was an accomplishment. But my last year in college, I had this amazing experience where I had some torn ligaments in my wrist.
I was supposed to have surgery and be out for three months.
And I met a chiropractic neurologist, functional neurologist, and working with him and focusing more, you know, instead of just repairing the ligament, focusing more on some of the techniques that we now use to activate the muscles around it.
Using earlier versions of electrical stimulation technology to accelerate blood flow, doing this combination of
things that we did. I was able to heal the ligaments on their own, avoid surgery. I was
back in three weeks instead of three months. And it was just a big light bulb going off,
a eureka moment for me where I realized, oh my gosh, there is a better way. And that kind of lit this fire
for me to take. I had enthusiasm and passion for this field inside of me, but didn't really
have a place to apply it until that experience. And so my first summer, I came down here to
engineering school at the University of Texas. Hook them horns. That's right, hook them.
And instead of staying in the lab and doing research like I probably
should have the first summer, you know, I went and apprenticed with this doctor. And in that
experience, I finally saw, okay, there is a way for me to take, you know, kind of bridge this,
all this stuff that I'm really passionate about and make, you know, some sort of career or do
something professionally with it. And so I opened up, square feet in the back of a chiropractor's office here in Austin,
started working with him, and that was over 10 years ago.
And then I was using earlier versions of electrical stimulation technology with different neurological
techniques, kept learning from other people.
I went back to graduate school for more education in neuroscience.
And eventually,
the limiting factor became some of the things that we wanted to do with the technology and having access to it. And I did in the last, you know, about, so the facility we've had as of now,
you know, a little over 10 years, about six to seven years in the, you know, became clear that
the next step was actually to make some meaningful improvements
in the technology.
The methods we were using had evolved
and things were moving forward.
That was kind of the next piece.
And so, you know, a lot of time and effort
and money, of course, developing it.
And now we've had that out
and we've been, for the last year,
I've been focused a lot
and our team has been focused a lot
on a new direction of teaching and training other professionals around the country to use this technology incorporated into their businesses.
And it's been just very exciting and very gratifying to see that other people are able to get the same types of incredible outcomes in their practices that we're seeing at ours here in Austin.
Hell yeah.
We'll talk about the difference between some of this older technology that probably most people are familiar with and with what your technology is doing with direct current instead
of alternating current, some of the differences between the two.
Yeah, for sure.
So you touched on definitely one of the biggest differences, the fact that it's DC as opposed
to AC.
And what that allows us to do is a couple of things. One is, it's been known
for a long time that, you know, decades that direct current can have benefits in terms of
accelerating healing and tissue regeneration and, you know, different healing processes within the
body. But historically there was an issue with getting higher levels of direct current, getting
therapeutic levels of direct current into the body because it would burn the skin. So that's one of the things that we've been able to do. You know, we're not
the only direct current device out there, but we have been able to further refine and smooth out
the waveform so you can get even higher levels of current in with even less of that skin or surface
discomfort. So that is, you know, one of the steps forward. And then the biggest difference that really allows us to do some of the things that we do with this device and within our system is the effect on the nervous system.
So typically, particularly alternating current devices, most of the Russian stem, tens, interferential units out there, they're always going to be causing muscles to contract. That alternating current, as the signal volleys back and forth, typically it's going to cause co-contraction,
where muscles on both sides of the joint are going to be contracting
and fighting against each other.
And so you actually end up training the body to resist its own movements.
And my favorite metaphor to describe this,
imagine you're driving your car,
hitting the throttle and the brake pedal at the same time.
And it's inefficient.
At best, you're just wasting some energy.
At worst, you're actually causing the body to stiffen putting in a state where it's going to be you know at greater risk of injury and so with ours at the same or even higher levels of current
you actually have less of those protective contractions and so we're able to focus more
on the the sensory and afferent or input side of the nervous system, giving signals into the nervous
system so that we can create changes in neurological patterns. In my strong belief,
it's really the most powerful type of neuromuscular re-education. That's a term that gets thrown
around a lot, particularly in physical therapy in that world. And that's something that we're
actually able to do
in a much more powerful and more efficient way than virtually anything else out there.
Yeah. And I want to dive a little deeper into that because I think the issue people run into
with technology is like, oh, it's just doing the work for me, right? So I'm going to sit here and
everybody's seen these late night ab things on TV that shake your abs and they're supposed to give you cut up abs and get rid of your fucking tire.
Obviously, those things are bullshit.
But one of the things that first stood out to me was how you guys are doing primal movement patterns through this stuff, whether that's push, press, pull, squat, hinge.
It's something we actually do in the real world.
You're not just sitting there
while the machine does the work for you. You're actually moving through these motions and causing
this mind-muscle connection from the brain through the nervous system to interact with the muscle
tissue. Also, at the same time, because of the amount of current you can send through there,
you're getting about, as far as I know maximum absolute maximum muscle recruitment and that's
one of the reasons we we warm up people think you warm up to prevent injury sure that's it but
you're stronger later on in your sets if you've warmed up properly because you have more muscle
recruitment because the brain has turned itself on and can draw more from the muscle one of the
things that i noticed is we worked out i think think 10 days ago, I'm still sore from the fucking workout. I'm a guy who, you know, I do yoga. I could typically go
palms to floor right when I get out of bed, hamstring stretch, put my palms right on the
floor, stretch my hamstrings, posterior chain, glutes. And it's been very hard even in the last
two days for me to do that. I have to take deep breaths and slowly relax into it until I can get my palms down.
I'm just fingertips right now.
So there's no doubt.
And that's not the only application of this system.
And I want to get into rehab
and how you guys work the different avenues with it.
But talk a bit about the importance of that
like maximal side of things
where you really can recruit on a different level.
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So I think you brought up one of the most important points of all of this
in that there. I love your description of that too. But one of the biggest distinctions
is that a lot of times we rely on technology
to do things for us
and we become somewhat dependent on that technology.
With this, I'm starting from the perspective
that the body has the resources,
the energy, the life force, if you will.
We all have that inside of us.
It's part of our birthright as humans. And we're trying to use technology to help people tap into that. So ultimately, we want to use our technology to help people access the power that's inside of them and not become dependent on the technology, but use the technology to access more of themselves so that people are better when they get off the machine. And it allows them to go off and perform better
in the octagon or on the ice rink or in the boardroom
if we're talking about cognitive function.
And so I think that's an important distinction
is that we're trying to use this to help people
quote unquote hack into their nervous systems
and get more out of themselves.
So I think that's an important distinction.
In terms of this muscle recruitment
dynamic, I think the biggest thing that I like to communicate to people is to say, you can go and
obviously people have been successful lifting heavy weights. The issue is that it takes a long
time to build up to be able to do that effectively. And most people, particularly just starting out in
training, have movement
dysfunctions and different things that make it very unsafe for them to lift up heavy weights.
But you need that in order to get the muscle recruitment and the hormonal benefits, hypertrophy,
changes in connective tissues and other structures of the body. And what this approach that we're
sharing with you here, the workout that we did, that allows us to get the benefits of heavy lifting, get that muscle recruitment,
get those extreme outputs in the body and the subsequent extreme responses where the, you know,
all these, all these things are going to be happening, but to do that with a lot less
external load, a lot less risk of injury. And it's, it's a much safer way to, yeah,
to get all the benefits of heavy lifting.
Yeah, I certainly felt those benefits. Let's take a deeper dive into recovery. I mentioned on the intro to this podcast how I had battled a knee injury from jujitsu for about 12 to 18 months.
And I came in, I wanted to come in more often, but I have a very busy schedule, as you know.
I was able to get in for one session and we did the recovery protocol for my knee and
it didn't necessarily happen overnight, but in about a week I could jog again.
And I was really, really impressed because I was coming from a point where,
and it's been, I've talked about this before on the podcast, but it's pretty
shitty to tell your three-year-old, sorry, daddy can't run. Daddy's hurt. Daddy has to walk. And
your son's running laps around you. You know, like I've never wanted to be the dad who had to sit on the sidelines
and not be able to be active with my children. So the fact that this was able to shift something
in me, and I'm not saying everybody's going to have the same response, but certainly it was like
a re-education of my muscles and my nervous system to what my knee could do.
Yes. I think that's a beautiful way to describe it. And you had one session, you had that response
within about a week. Some people have that response within a few minutes. And sometimes
it can be shorter, it can be longer. But in most of these cases, the responses that we're seeing, it's an impossibly
short period of time for a tremendous amount of healing to happen or for any real structural
changes. So we know that the changes that we're seeing really are functional. And that speaks to
this desire to tap into the innate abilities and the potential that's lying dormant within
all of us. Because in the case of your knee
and the case of dozens or hundreds of other similar examples that we've seen, the issue is
it's both what happens to us, what damage there is, and it's also sometimes even more about how
we respond to it. And so even if that knee had been healing or was healed up, you still have
these patterns around it where the body's protecting against that trauma.
So in some areas, you're holding on with excessive tension.
In other areas, the muscles are inhibited or shut down because you're trying to stay
away from or unload those areas.
And what we're able to do is go through that scanning process with you, tell you exactly
where those underlying dysfunctions are.
And then once we find them, because again, because of some of the benefits
of this particular type of waveform,
the effects on the nervous system,
we're able to repattern those muscle firing patterns
in sometimes in as little as a few minutes.
And so by hitting the reset button there,
the muscles are working again,
they're supporting the joint.
And again, it was impossibly short period of time to heal.
It's just restoring proper function. And many times that helps people reduce pain,
have much better range of motion because we're just getting out of the way, getting those
impediments out of the way that were blocking the healing process or keeping you stuck in that
cycle of pain and dysfunction and disuse. And it's just, I think a quick way to hit the reset button is
probably the best way to describe it. Yeah, no doubt. And I really do wonder,
like when it comes to injuries, if I roll my ankle, it's going to swell, it's going to hurt
a little bit bad, but there's certain people who roll an ankle and it just looks like their leg
needs to be amputated, right? So systemic inflammation can play a huge role in our
body's natural response to something where it wants to limit range of motion and movement.
We're chronically inflamed as a culture.
So I think if we sustain a decent injury, if you're in an auto accident or you fall off a horse or something happens in sport, it can take longer to heal from that than say where we were at 500 years ago,
just due to our environment. So I think that can be a critical piece, critical hack to how we can
get back to whatever we're doing, whether that's being able to run with our children or getting on
the jujitsu mats. I think it can be a great hack through that. And that's one of my favorite things about this is that even
though we're using modern technology, it really is kind of an old school approach. Because if,
you know, 500 years ago or a thousand years ago, 1500 years ago, if, you know, or if you're a
caveman and you roll your ankle, you can't just sit around because you're going to get eaten.
And, or if you have to, if you're hobbling around and your tribe has to carry you, you ankle, you can't just sit around because you're going to get eaten. Or if you're
hobbling around and your tribe has to carry you, you're a real burden to the tribe and you could
reduce everyone's ability to survive. And you're going to be forced by circumstances to start
moving again, to start working through these protective patterns faster and faster and faster.
And in many ways today, we're so emphatic about wanting to keep people comfortable during their recovery processes.
You know, in physical therapy, that's one of the biggest things.
They don't want to push anyone, you know, for the most part, don't want to push anyone through the discomfort.
But that's necessary for adaptation.
You know, it's like many things in life, you know, nothing really good or meaningful comes from being inside of our comfort zones. And so we don't necessarily want to take the caveman approach and say, okay, you just sprained
your ankle, go run on it until it feels better.
But we do, by using technology, by going through the approach that we're talking about here,
we do have a way to help people break through those patterns much more quickly.
There's a little bit of discomfort associated with it.
It's not just the machine doesn't just do it for you.
You have to participate emotionally, psychologically,
and physically. But when you go through that process, it gets rid of all those protective
patterns and the body's able to heal at its natural rate. So instead of all the swelling
and inflammation and the excessive tension, like the example of rolling your ankle, the excessive
tension that your muscles generate around that area, it's good if someone tries to attack that tissue again, but it's counterproductive for
healing, for movement. The extra pressure there just literally blocks the flow of blood and
nutrients and raw materials that you need to heal, blocks the removal of the waste products.
So by breaking through those patterns, by hitting the reset button on the neuromuscular level,
that then opens the floodgates for the body to send blood, nutrients, raw materials to heal. And so there's still a healing process that has to happen. You
just get, you're just getting, you know, again, getting out of the way, all of the shit that
would be standing in the way of, of, of a real meaningful, quick and efficient healing process.
Hell yeah, brother. Well, let's dive into performance because, um, one of the things
I noticed, and I think when I went in
for the session, the first one that I did, it was the recovery aspect, the healing aspect for my
left knee. And so lower body was based on physical therapy. And then the upper body, because I had
an exhibition for charity boxing match with my buddy, Jason Ellis, I was like, I want to work
on hand speed. And typically,
you know, one of the greatest myths in strength and conditioning is that if I lift weights,
I'll become slower. And that's true if you're lifting in properly for the sport that you're
doing, right? Everything's sport specific. But one of the things we were doing, he was, you know,
he's talking about, well, which muscles do you use when you punch? And he started punching and
he's like, okay, pec minors involved, lats involved, rotator cuffs are involved. So we did a pull-up protocol. Again, I was super slow coming
down and then yanking up as fast as I could. And we did some pushups and some, and then, you know,
the ab exercise where you're on your back and you lift your legs up and then your partner throws
them back down to the ground. So incredible stuff there.
But I felt faster, you know, and I certainly had great hand speed and I didn't train much for that fight.
I think I had put my gloves on eight times in the last four years leading up to it
just because I had retired from fighting, never thought I'd lace them up again.
And then, of course, you know, 10 days ago, we did this very slow.
And like I said, my ass and hamstrings are still sore. We had two
electrodes on each quadricep, one on each glute, one on each hamstring. And we went through like
10 seconds down on a hack squat. And then you took your weight and you were pressing on the
weight to make it harder. And then you took your hands off and I came back up and it might only
been like three sets of five, but it was slow and I was destroyed.
Exactly what I was asking for, right?
So talk a little bit about how the different training applications, what are the different things you guys can do with this?
Because I've seen only three different ways it can be used and I'm blown away by each
application.
So this is a very exciting area and I'm glad you shared some of those. Ultimately, we have strategies where we
can help people work on speed, on strength speed or speed strength, on pure strength, on hypertrophy,
on endurance. And there's many different traits that go into athleticism. And like you said,
you want to be sports specific and have the right balance of the right traits for mixed martial arts or for basketball or whatever the sport is,
or powerlifting, obviously, is going to be a lot different.
And so there's strategies.
The nervous system plays a role in the body's ability to successfully display all of those traits.
And so we have strategies to help people with all of those.
One of the interesting things when you're talking about hand speed,
and we're talking about speed of movement in sport,
for example,
one of the most interesting findings on this
that I've ever heard
and that informs a lot of my thinking on this
is a Russian study that showed
that they were trying to figure out
what separates their best athletes,
the ones that are internationally competitive
and win Olympic medals
from the ones that are just good and win Olympic medals from the ones
that are just good in their region, but can't make the jump to that next level. And they wanted to
look at what it was and they thought it was going to be strength that was the determining factor.
By that, there's a lot of people think that strength is the answer and it's an answer.
It's just not the answer to every single question. And so they found that strength is the answer and it's an answer. It's just not the answer to every single question.
And so they found that strength was actually number two. It was up there. But number one on
that list, seven times more important than strength, the number one quality that determined
an athlete's ability to be the best was actually the speed at which they could fully relax their
muscles, go from full contraction to full relaxation.
And this makes sense in terms of speed of movement.
You're talking about hand speed for boxing because if you're trying to throw a punch,
but your bicep is resisting that,
instead of being smooth, it's going to be like this.
You're going to be fighting against that.
Just picture your local barroom ball
where somebody's punching with all the muscle they have, like, that's not that's not muhammad ali popping a jab no no no that is but
that is the type of movement that you would expect in like powerlifting if you're trying to get 700
pounds up and it doesn't matter whether it's in three quarters of a second or eight seconds yeah
so it's that type of that type of thing so you can have the So you can have the wrong balance of some of those qualities.
And so part of the difference here between traditional electrical stimulation and the type of waveform and the effects that we're able to have on the nervous system is that
we can preferentially teach muscles to relax and lengthen as opposed to always contract
and shorten.
And so that plays in big time to speed of movement and athletic
performance. And so sometimes just these same basics that we were talking about on the rehab,
recovery, optimization side, sometimes those, even if they're more in the realm of recovery,
actually have a profound benefit on performance as well, because you're reducing that excessive
tension that would be blocking or limiting someone's ability to move quickly and powerfully.
And then we have other things like what we're doing there with those eccentric pull-ups and those eccentric squats that we were doing.
We're, again, trying to train your ability to lengthen your muscles.
We're doing it there slow and under control, but we're doing it at a very high load, part
because of I was adding more resistance on the way down, and load, part because of, you know, I was resisting you adding more resistance on the
way down. And in large part, because of the signal from the machine, we're training you to be able to
lengthen your muscles under load. And when you can do that under extreme levels of challenge,
it becomes a lot easier to lengthen your muscles if you need to relax them to throw a punch,
or if you need to relax them, so you relax your hip flexors so you can get good hip extension
in a sprint on the
track or whatever that whatever the example might be so if you're able when you're able to do it
under these extreme levels of challenge both with external resistance and with all that signal coming
in from the machine it becomes so much easier to do it when you're just you know it's just you
on the field of play hell yeah you know this is reminding me of a couple of things one uh i think
paul totzlin talked about that study in russia because he's a russian guy he's the kettlebell play. Hell yeah. You know, this is reminding me of a couple of things. One, I think Pavel Tatsulin
talked about that study in Russia because he's a Russian guy. He's the kettlebell expert.
He talked about that, like what translates to speed and athletic performance are when you're
turned on and you're turned off. And so just as you were talking about when you sprint,
it's the same thing as that punch from the bar brawler. We're not sitting there gritting our
teeth and flexing every muscle in our legs. It it's a quick pop and relax quick pop and relax
over and over again and the less time you have your feet on the ground the faster you are right
same thing goes for the kettlebell swing kettlebell snatch you're hiking it down relaxing
popping with the hips to get it back up and most of that movement you're only flexing and going hard for a very short
period of the movement as the kettlebell goes through um so yeah lots lots of translation there
i was thinking about um
damn it i lost my track of the second thing i was going to talk about here
there's actually uh one other one thing that you mentioned there is that, that ability, you know, to quickly relax and turn on, turn off, turn on, turn off. That, I love the way you described that. And I think that speaks to exactly one of the things that we're trying to promote with our patients and clients is that the, you know, so many of us with the modern lifestyle, we're turned on all the time.
We're always in fight or flight.
We're on alert for what's going to come at us, whether it be an email or an argument with a coworker or a spouse.
There's so many times we're turned on. And it's a response.
Again, it's how we respond to what's happening in our environment internally or externally. And one of the things that I like most about this technology at the most simple foundational level is that we train people
to better handle stress. Because you can turn the machine up to where it's uncomfortable and
you can track exactly the level to which you're pushing somebody. And when you learn to breathe
through that and stay calm, even in the face of adversity and immense
challenge, I think that translates not only to a better kettlebell swing or sprinting stride,
but to so many other areas in life too. 100%. Yep. And that goes right in with what we talk
about often on this podcast, from the cold tub to the hot sauna, all that stuff matters. It
bleeds and leaks into every application you have in life. But I do remember what I was going to
bring up. I forget where I read it.
It might have been in, well, I know Arnold covers it in the modern day encyclopedia of
bodybuilding.
And I've read it in other places too, more recently, where there's a lot of science around
IGF-1 activation.
And what they were saying is that anything that lengthens the muscle under tension opens
up way more IGF-1 receptors in the body.
And for people that don't know, IGF-1 is insulin-like growth factor one.
It's basically what growth hormone would have been named had they found that first
before growth hormone.
Growth hormone, you can think of as a parent hormone, helps you grow when you're a child.
It's great for fat loss and recovery.
But some of that converts into IGF-1 with insulin in the liver, and then that becomes the thing.
And there's been a lot of talk in longevity circles around IGF-1 being an issue because I
think there's a tribe of little people in Ecuador who have a genetic imbalance where they don't
produce any IGF-1 and these people are not
healthy. They smoke cigarettes, they eat poorly, and that none of them have cancer, right? So,
okay, as we do in Western medicine, that's the answer. Lower your IGF-1, right? But, you know,
good guys like my friend, Dr. Peter Attia, who I'm going to have on the podcast here,
have really started to debunk that as with anything in life you have extreme
ends whether it's extremely low or extremely high can be very poor for your health and somewhere in
the middle is going to be very good but from a local standpoint if i'm doing an exercise like
chest flies think of the old peck deck or something like that it's your cold gym and i haven't done
this in years but if it's opening up my body under tension, that's going to create more receptivity
for my IGF-1 receptors. And that's one of the first things I thought about when I was doing those
highly eccentric pull-ups. And then of course, with the assisted squats there, a lot of negatives
can really hack that system. And from a hormonal standpoint, that's it. People think about this
shit. It's either A, you're not paying attention to your hormones, or B, you are,
and you say there's an issue, which doctor will fix it for me?
Or C, you say, okay, there's some actual things that I can do to change that, whether that's
red light therapy or cold baths or lifting really heavy.
All those things have an impact on my hormonal expression and can help me stave off low testosterone
long into my 40s and 50s.
Talk a bit about that. You know, I think, you know, you touched on it obviously, but
where do you guys see hormonal effects from something that's activating this much muscle
tissue? I think that's an awesome question. And that speaks to definitely the benefits. And one
of the reasons, or more of the reasons why we emphasize eccentric contraction,
and that's the part of the movement
during which muscle fibers break down,
the body, some of the proteins and enzymes
will spill out into the bloodstream,
and those metabolic byproducts
and breakdown byproducts
then become very powerful signals
for hormonal releases,
for the recovery process to happen. Local inflammation, not systemic, but local
inflammation is going to be part of that as well, hormonal releases. And so you need to have
these molecules there to chemically signal all these processes to happen.
And we've seen some really cool, just anecdotally, where going through our workouts,
numerous patients and
clients have brought blood tests back in and said, hey, did you expect my testosterone to double or
this or that? I'm like, well, stimulus and response. If you're finding a way to get in a
very safe way again, that benefit of heavy lifting, like you mentioned, that intense stimulus
is one of the possible ways to create that intense response.
And so in many ways, I think it's as simple as you get a lot of that stimulation, of course,
because some of the breakdown byproducts, that's going to signal it.
Because of the amount of neurological stimulation that you're getting, I think this is another
key because so many times we can train and it's not stimulating enough.
Like if we go out for a jog, you know, it can actually be, you know, healthy or not,
depending on how we breathe and the position.
We're in a different topic.
But we can go out for that jog and, you know, we can get a lot of breakdown within the body,
but it's never actually stimulating enough for the brain to get the point that,
oh shit, we did something. And oh yeah,
now it's time to shift into recovery mode and actually release all those hormones and do all
the things that we want to do to prepare the body to better handle that next time.
And so being able to cross that threshold, being able to get enough signal into the nervous system,
into the brain, so it realizes, ah yes, we did lot, and now it's time to make that shift. I think that's a
big deal. And so that's part of, in terms of hormonal releases, is part of the nervous system's,
the brain's strategy for recovery and super compensation. And some of the things that we see,
even if we don't have a blood test and can't prove changes in hormones, we see changes in appetite. For example, people have a greater appetite, which
is another underlying neurological shift or sleep better that night. Like we have a woman down this
week, it came down from Minnesota to see us here in Austin. She has MS. She's down here for five
days. Hasn't been able to sleep more than one or two hours consecutively for several years. And this is the first week while she's here, even in a hotel room,
she slept seven hours through the night and she was just blown away. So because of those
neurological changes, the body shifts and hormones are a huge part of that. So it's something that
I'd like to see some further study. And we have a few in the works where we should be able to get
some more data on that. But even those more immediate observations like shifts in appetite, shifts in the ability to sleep, that speaks to the profound
effect on the brain for shifting into that parasympathetic dominant mode for full-on recovery.
And even if without a blood test, based on what we're seeing, we can infer there's some hormonal
changes as well. Yeah, I really like that. You such a key a key point then it's one of the reasons why because i a lot of people tell me you know i have my ice bath
between 35 and 45 degrees typically but people will be like well you know can't don't can't you
get benefit from 50 or 55 and i'm like yeah but you got to stay in it longer and the truth is is
i don't think it's going to have the same response you You know, like Wim Hof is going in freezing water and they're studying his brain and seeing huge spikes in dopamine and adrenaline and different
things. And obviously the breath works a part of that, but you know, his body is fearful of dying
when he's in freezing water. His body thinks if we're here long enough, we're going to fucking
die. Right? So the response to that is much greater than,
oh, this pool's a little chilly. You know, I'm taking a, if you try to take a cold shower in
Austin in the summertime, I got news for you. There's no response happening there. It might
be cool. It might cool you down, but there's no physiological adaptation taking place.
And the same can be said for weightlifting. You know, we go into the gym and, you know,
I can squat a bar till I'm blue in the face and I'll probably be sore from it.
But it's not going to have the same effect as working my way up to a really heavy five by five or working my way up to a max set doubles.
You know, all those things have different applications and reasons to be done.
But certainly pushing yourself to that outer edge is what's going to create the most adaptation. And that's something that I noticed is like when we did that full go squat workout, I didn't feel a ton of pressure on my back.
I didn't feel at any point like I was going to get hurt.
And, you know, I mean, I've been an avid lifter for a very long time, but it was cool to see that like, here's a way if I didn't have that experience
with powerlifting and didn't have that experience with strength and conditioning and football and
all these other things, I could still find a way to activate my body to maximum effort without the
risk of injury. And I think that's a really special component to what you guys are doing.
Amen.
Well, what else? You got anything else for us, brother?
So the range of things that we've been able to see with this, I think, is one of the most
compelling.
I came at this as an athlete myself and really enjoyed helping athletes get back faster from
injuries and be able to improve their performance and all of those things that you're
just as or more familiar with. And because we were taking such a neurological approach to things,
we started working with people who have more of these, like I mentioned, the woman who's down here right now from Minnesota who has MS, started working with more people who have these neurological
challenges. And this is something that I mentioned just because it's very near and dear to my heart, seeing some of the
times where we've been able to help people with MS or spinal cord injuries, get out of wheelchairs,
help people with brain injuries, return to activities of daily living. The way that this
has been able to help some of the people for whom there just isn't much of an answer in the
traditional system, that's been something that is just very inspiring
and brings a lot of hope
and something that I feel very strongly about.
So that's one of the things that I just wanted to mention
is some of the more neurological cases
that we've worked with.
And if anyone out there is listening
and is dealing with those,
we've started to work with more and more people
who have some of these neurological challenges.
And I hope to put this on your radar as a potential, if not solution, at least part
of the solution and something that can allow for progress.
Awesome, brother.
And you guys have, obviously, headquarters is here.
Highly recommend people come out to Austin and do it.
And you can come out for fun as well.
Like Paleo FX is here each year.
We just had that going on, which is a great health conference.
Highly recommend people come out for that.
But also South by Southwest, pretty damn fun.
ACL is pretty damn fun.
And then you can jump in, grab a shake it on it and head over to New Fit.
Heck yeah.
Get some really good work in.
You guys also have machines that are out in other cities.
Is that correct? Yeah. So as of today, there's about 60 or 70 locations around the country
that have our technology, mostly private practice, physical therapy clinics, some chiropractic
offices, some gyms will have it, someone offering this in there, and then the different sports teams
and universities. But there's a listing on our website, www.new.fit, W-W-W dot new, N-E-U,
like neurological, dot fit, no.com, just dot fit.
There's a locations tab at the top right,
so people can click there.
And we're adding more and more constantly,
so be on the lookout.
If there's no one near you yet,
hopefully there will be soon.
Awesome.
Thank you so much, Garrett.
We're about to jump into one more awesome workout here. We're going to record it. If you're watching this
on YouTube, you'll be able to see some of the stuff as we do a little audio overlay to the
workout and grind through another good one. We're going to have some fun. Awesome, brother.
Thank you. It was a pleasure to be here. Hell yeah. Thank you so much.
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