Mark Bell's Power Project - David Thurin - YOU Can EASILY Become More FLEXIBLE, Here’s how || MBPP Ep. 846

Episode Date: December 5, 2022

In this Podcast Episode, David Thurin, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about how to become more flexible and the amazing benefits. Follow David on IG: https://www.instagram.com/movementbydavid/ New Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://hostagetape.com/powerproject Free shipping and free bedside tin! ➢https://www.naboso.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 15% off! ➢https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!! ➢Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject Code: POWERVIVO20 for 20% off Vivo Barefoot shoes! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://eatlegendary.com Use Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori! ➢https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep! ➢https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject  ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok  FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en  Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

Pat Project family, shut your f***ing mouth, please. Now, I don't really mean that, but what I mean is you need to shut your mouth when you're asleep. A lot of you guys and gals snore, and that's why we've been talking about mouth tape literally for years now. We used to use 3M micropore tape because it's super duper cheap, but the problem with this type of tape is when you're sleeping, it comes off your mouth. It doesn't stay on. You have to use multiple strips. If you have facial hair, it doesn't stick. That's why we have partnered with hostage tape. Now with hostage tape, the really cool thing about it is that it stays on your mouth when you're asleep. It stretches.

There's no residue that's left. It's super comfortable. And when you wake up, you take it off, throw it in the trash and use a new one the next day. Andrew, how can they get their hands on some hostage tape? Yes, you guys got to head over to hostage tape dot com slash power project. And when you go there, you guys are going to receive free shipping plus a free bedside tin that Encima was just playing with you. Oh, look, now he's putting on more mouth tape. How are we going to finish this ad? Anyways,

links to them down in the description. Again, that's at hostage tape dot com slash power project. Perfecto mundo. Yeah, I don't think that's a real word. I think it is. Perfecto mundo? Sure. I say it all the time. Really? Perfecto Mundo. Yeah. I don't think that's a real word. I think it is. Perfecto Mundo? Sure. I say it all the time. Really?

Perfecto Mundo. Okay, sick. Maybe it is a real word. Probably is. Yeah, he's legit. Hey, thanks for showing us some of that stuff in the gym today. Yeah, for sure. How did you get yourself into this mess?

All this stretching and flexibility stuff. Yeah, so, yeah, I thought I was going to be an actor. So, all of my focus was in acting and getting better at that so i ended up in dance classes just to getting a better control of my body and um basically what happened with that was um do you have good dance moves i wouldn't say that um i would say i'm pretty coordinated, but not the best dancer. No. But basically I ended up in Pilates and I showed up to a teacher trainer program and didn't even know what a Pilat was. And if you know what Pilates is, that's kind of a funny joke

there. But I just stayed in and it was like a two year program. I outlasted like a lot of the people that I went in there for. Pause, rewind. Does Pilat have a definition or is that just a Pilates joke? Okay. Well, Pilates is a last name. So Joseph Pilates is the guy who made Pilates. I didn't know that. Yeah, he was a prisoner of war.

He fled Germany from the Third Reich. So yeah yeah pretty intense he basically made Pilates he was basically a prisoner of war and he was rehabilitating soldiers so you'll see some of those equipment like reformers, Cadillacs, Wanda chairs all this sort of stuff

the original stuff, the Cadillac and the reformer were literally a hospital bed that he just attached springs to. And he used that to, um, rehabilitate soldiers. So, um,

cause the original Pilates system of movement was just on the floor with your body. Um, so yeah, that's basically what that is. Cool. Yeah. And so you're doing Pilates for a while and you got pretty proficient at

that. I'd imagine. Yeah. So I, I stayed the whole while and you got pretty proficient at that, I'd imagine? Yeah. So I stayed the whole way. I got comprehensively certified, but I didn't like being boxed in by a philosophy that's just so specific. That's why my username is Movement by David. It's not Pilates by David because I don't want to be just contained by one specific philosophy. And the biggest thing that interested me was the flexibility that I was gaining and I wasn't even really training flexibility per se. And I was gaining flexibility.

So after leaving Pilates, I just got really, really into flexibility and I was researching it and I ended up reading probably most of the studies out there on flexibility. I've probably read them. I got really, really into it.

So from then on, I started mostly micro dosing flexibility. So Corey Schlesinger, that's his term. Love that guy. But I was really into just doing it whenever I could, however I could, and in the smallest amounts that I possibly could. So that's how I started with flexibility. And I got really flexible doing that. So I was like, okay, what's going to happen if I actually train flexibility? So I started actually training flexibility.

And what do you know? Doing all the splits and all that fun stuff. Was it solving problems for you? Like were you in pain and it helped you get out of pain uh were you unhealthy in any other way or or was this just like something that you explored and then you just really enjoyed the actual movement so in high school i couldn't even really touch my toes somebody asked me to like tie my shoes without bending my knees as a prank and I couldn't even do it so I was like kind of embarrassed over that so I was like okay well I might as well start stretching a little bit and that's kind of what sparked that and obviously through my journey and Pilates and all that that's I was like how far can I take this

how far can my body go and it just kept getting more and more and more and I achieved the middle splits and then I was like wow wow, okay, this is crazy. How long did that take? Yeah, so for me, with inconsistent stretching, it took me probably a year and a half. But that was with really, really inconsistent stretching. Like months were taken off. And then I was back into it, like really, really hardcore.

And then maybe I'd stretch like once a week. And then I'd get back into it like really, really hardcore. And then maybe I'd stretch like once a week and then I'd get back into it. So I think it's reasonable that you could probably achieve your middle splits within six months for the average person. I think that's possible. Yeah. Wow. Do you think Pilates is a good place for a lot of people to start, especially maybe there might be listeners that are similar to me

that I don't really like love to take time to stretch even though it does feel great and even though it does benefit me. I'm too stupid to recognize how great it is. Do you think Pilates would be a good place for a lot of people to start? Yeah, I think maybe not the group classes because you're going to get a lot of like core strength and abdominal work, which is great. It's fantastic stuff and you're going to learn to control your body. domino work, which is great. It's fantastic stuff. And you're going to learn to control your body. But, um, if you get one-on-one with a really good Pilates instructor, um, and you, you say that your goal is mostly mobility, your, your classes are going to be all just focused on that. And that's a really, really good way to start. And a lot of it is going to have to do with spinal

mobility and flexibility. And that's going to really unlock even just the hamstrings because all of that's like neuromuscular it's not even just the muscles that are tight it's the nerves it's all of that stuff how is pilates different than yoga yeah that's probably the main question people ask so yoga um if you were to look at it abstractly yoga um at least in the western world there's a lot of just movement a lot of flow and you're finding those deep ranges of motion, and you're going through it, and you're flowing and all that. But Pilates is a really structured class where you're probably going to start with a little bit of mobility work, but it's going to be, let's do some ab curls. Now, next, we're going to do our spine stretch. Now, next, we're going to do our this.

So it's a little more structured. Most classes are, and not all of it is mobility. Like there's a lot of specific abdominal work, then lower back work, then shoulders, then legs. So I would say the main difference is in the structure and Pilates is less mobility than I would say yoga is. So. Okay. Mark, Andrew and David, cause you probably have people that message you about this all the time. I got to ask you, man, because you said, I've heard you say this before,

that you don't like stretching, right? We were just talking to the gym. That shit feels good. It does, right? Absolutely. So why don't you guys like it? Well, I don't know if you don't like it. I think you might.

But why don't you like it, Mark? And David, if people message you, because you probably get DMs about this all the time, what kind of complaints about stretching do people message you well i do i do like it i guess um because as david pointed out every movement is stretching in some way bicep curls like a stretch is a stretch you know squatting yeah squatting um i am obsessed with movement you know i've been moving for a long time so i just i guess in the traditional sense of stretching i don't necessarily like the traditional way that i was brought into stretching years ago when we would line up as

a football team and then we would you know put your hands towards your feet and then you do one leg over the other and then you would you know and And all of it was like it wasn't the coach's fault or anything. Like we all just half-assed it. Like no one's really, and as David also pointed out, it's like not really progressive. Like it wasn't like, hey, guys, like week one should look like this. Maybe week three or four for some of the rest of the group should start to look like this.

Some of you might be a little tighter than others, and we're going to kind of work through it. And wasn't like an exploration and it wasn't anything uh that was like deemed as being like fun it was actually you hated that time because you were like i know we're just fucking running after this man like we're gonna fucking warm up and today is gonna suck this stretching sucks this running's gonna fucking suck and then maybe we'll get to hit each other a little bit here yeah um when when you say stretching the the image that comes to mind for most people is static passive stretching yeah which is only one little piece of stretching because static means not moving and passive means you're relaxing so your muscles are not activated so if you're gonna be doing that all the time, every time you want to stretch, that's pretty boring.

And that answers your question. Most people don't want to stretch because it's boring. It's really, really boring to sit there in a hamstring stretch for 90 seconds, then sit there in your adductor stretch for 90 seconds. It's just – it's a draw. It's terrible. So there's actually four different types of flexibility, it's, it's a draw. It's terrible. Yeah. So there's actually four different types of flexibility. Um, and they're under two different categories. So there's dynamic and there's static. I already talked about one of the static ones and then, um,

so dynamic just means moving. So static is still, um, there's static passive, which means that you're not moving and you're relaxing. And then there's static active, which means you're not moving again. But this time the muscles are activated. So you can think of like the middle splits across the chairs. Jujimufu, he does that all the time. That's a static active stretch because the muscles are activated. And then you can go to the dynamic side of things, which is where a lot more fun starts to happen.

There's dynamic active. So your muscles are moving and they're activating. You can think of something like a squat. Just a squat is a dynamic active stretch. And if you put weight on it, it's a loaded dynamic active stretch. And then there's also dynamic passive. You can think of that as kind of like partner stretching, where you're laying down on your back and somebody's lifting up your hamstring to a stretch and then bringing it back

down. That would be a dynamic passive stretch. So you can actually utilize all four of those forms of training in your flexibility training. And it also goes back to like, for instance, 90 seconds. Who said that 90 seconds is the magic number to gain flexibility. It's, I don't know why it's, it's 90 seconds. I stretch for literally just 30 seconds and that's one set. And, um, Huberman talked about this study, but, um, if basically the goal, the minimum level for flexibility is to get five minutes in one stretch a week. So that's 10 sets

of 30 seconds. And if you do those 10 seconds, it doesn't matter when, like you could do 30 seconds in the morning, 30 seconds in the evening, you just did a minute of stretching that day. And if you do five minutes in a week, you're going to gain flexibility. That's what the studies show. So the way I do it is i hit at least those 10 sets but i usually do them um like back to back between three days so it would be uh three sets three sets four sets um and i i don't do it all just static passive because again that's boring so some of those stretches i'll do like 30 reps of a dynamic active stretch that hits that same muscle so it's it's all just

how you play with it. Cause you can, you can change it up to however you want. And then it's more fun, much more fun that way. How have you implemented that? Cause like, I think that actually seems more digestible to people. For example, if someone's working at a nine to five or somebody's at a job, right. While they're standing, they could probably figure out something to do while they're standing at their desk. Um're doing things all the time while we're standing here. So for you right now, how have you, what are ways that you've seen people just easily add that into their day where it's not something where, okay, I have to go stretch now? Yeah. Well, like I said, getting to my middle splits was mostly micro-dosed. I just did it

whenever I wanted. Most of my routine is basically micro-dosed whenever I want to do it. So, um, the way it works is like, and I've worked office jobs, so I've, I've, I've done all the office jobs and stuff. Um, this is, this is a really good stretch right here. Um, where you can just micro-dose this whenever you want and you utilize a goal. So you like reach towards something just like that. Um, for people listening, I'm just doing a pancake stretch and I'm reaching forward trying to pick something up. But as far as like working in an office job and you're sitting on a chair, there's so many passive options. Like you could just stick your ankle up on your knee and you're going to feel a stretch in your glute. That's a figure four stretch.

I used to do that all the time. I used to just move my spine side to side. That's a dynamic active stretch because you're flexing the muscles and you're moving your spine. You can eat all the PE stretches you did for your arms. You can do that while sitting down, just whenever you think of it. There's, there's just so many different ways of doing it. Um, it's just, you don't, you don't have to confine yourself to one little session. You can microdose it. Or a location.

Exactly, or a location, yeah. I mean you look at my videos. They're all done in a kitchen. Ninety percent of them I'm in a kitchen stretching. And I mostly do that to show that, number one, you don't need a lot of space or a designated space. It's the kitchen for heaven's sake. I just clean the floors and then I'm good to go. And then, um, number two, you don't need a lot of

space because I live in a one bedroom apartment. That kitchen is small. It's probably, I I'm probably being generous saying it's five feet across. It's probably like four feet across and I'm doing the splits in there. I'm doing all sorts of fun stuff. So yeah, there's no need to have a specific place. Is there a lot of thought that goes into your stretches or are you just kind of doing like whatever calls to you? Like are you thinking like, oh, I need to do stuff for my shoulders today

or I need to hip hinge today? So it totally depends on like the season I'm in. Like right now it's mostly just microdose for me where I film a video and that was my stretching routine. And then I'll like it, let's say I do, um, a split squat on one side off camera, I do it on the other side. And then my hip mobility is good for the day.

Um, cause that's all I need to keep maintain my flexibility. You need shockingly little. Um, but that being said, um, I'm in a phase in my life where I'm going to be transitioning out of working my, my job that I've worked for so long and I'll be full-time content creator, hopefully real soon. Um, do they know that you're leaving? No, shit. If you're, uh, at FedEx, I'm not leaving yet. Um, yeah, so you basically can – okay, so once I have that time in my hands where I'm not divided so many directions, I will actually have a consistent routine where I'll be probably three days a week. I'll have like this is my shoulder day. This is like – or I'll probably combine it all together into just specific sessions.

But it doesn't have to be structured to make gains. It's just easier to make gains if it is structured. Do you have some programs for people? Because what I'm envisioning like being a problem, especially for maybe some people that are listening that maybe haven't dedicated a lot of time to exercise. You know, when you say, hey, like you can do kind of whatever you want, you can microdose it and you can do it.

It's like they might need structure, you know, so do you kind of recommend or have opportunities for people that want structure to maybe purchase it from you or to get it from you in some other way on a YouTube channel or something like that? I have like, um, I don't, I think it's like four or five completely free eBooks there. Um, you can, there's a shoulder one, a spinal mobility and posture one, and then there's a hip mobility one. I don't remember if there's another one, but, um, yeah, so it's basically three days a week and I, it's four exercises a day, super, super simple. And I did it in a way that if you're, if you're doing it right, you're going to hit that five minutes per muscle group. It's just

the way I structured it. Um, cause some of it's active and dynamic and some of it is passive, but, um, yeah, those are totally totally free they're just in my bio so you know what i mean i know that you kind of you started in pilates and then you didn't want to be boxed in by pilates but what really drew you towards like focusing on flexibility for people because it's like you know you do a lot of stuff on your page but it you do a really amazing job at teaching people just easy aspects of getting flexible. So what drew you towards that as like the thing you want to focus on currently? Yeah, flexibility always fascinated me.

And I grew up watching Jujimufu, big, massive bodybuilder looking guy, but he does the splits across chairs. And I thought that was like the pinnacle of masculinity, being big buff and doing the splits. He came into here and he ate chalk. There you go. That's like the first thing he did. He took a bite out of our chalk. What a man. I was like, what the heck? That's so funny.

But yeah, I grew up watching his videos and he was so flexible. So I was like, that's what I want to be. And of course, the big muscles are great. I'd like to get there one day, maybe not as big, but I'm definitely going to have a period of my life focused on building muscle. That's just going to be, there he is. There he is. Look at that.

That Cossack switch. He did a split on this podcast table. That's crazy. That's awesome. But yeah, that right there, the pinnacle of masculinity, the chair splits. So that's what most people focus on the big muscles and go, wow, that right there, the pinnacle of masculinity, the chair splits. Most people focus on the big muscles and go, wow, that's awesome. But I saw the splits and I was like, that's going to be me.

The fucking lightning coming out of my eyes. Can you do that move with the chairs? Yeah, I can do that. There's actually a couple of videos. They're really old. I don't know if you'd be able to find them. But I've done the splits like across the counters in my kitchen. There's like funny videos of me getting stuck there because like it's really hard to get out of the middle splits when you're

elevated in the air like that so it's kind of funny so you wanted to be an actor right there's a lot of cool things that come along with being an actor um that's something that you you uh shifted and you changed changed, I guess. But you have like 1 million followers on Instagram, like 2 million followers. So you're getting to like, I guess, maybe act out some of the stuff that you maybe was in your heart in the first place. You feel that way?

Yeah. So, I mean, right out of high school, I always was in musicals and plays and I loved that stuff. I was always in, I was a big theater nerd and the reason why I went to community college is where I went was literally for acting I was like I am going to be the next hot shot actor so that's where where my energy was going so I immediately started auditioning and I was getting um I was getting roles I was like wow this is this is so cool

and um I just kind of had a falling out with people there i didn't really like it that much so i just kind of left and then ventured my way into pilates but um that was my first love though being being on stage i'm an attention whore so you know all the followers feels good but um everything that i learned in acting has served me so much in being just a content creator because, um, that, that was my first love, but it's not that I love the acting per se, which I do love. It's like I said, I like the attention number one, but, um, I really, really like teaching things to people. And if I can combine all those talents into one little thing, that's my ikigai, which is like Japanese for the job that fulfills your life the most.

Yeah, I've seen the chart before. It's a pie chart, right? Maybe you can find it, Andrew, and it's got like a crossing over of the things that you love to do, the things that you can monetize, and I don't know, a bunch of things intersecting with each other. the things that you can monetize and I don't know, a bunch of things intersecting with each other. Yeah. I, I went through like a really like depressed stage, like when I was first starting social media and it was because I, I was like working like a sales job. I hated that. It was a desk job. I was making phone calls all day and left that job, worked at the airport, worked in another warehouse. And I was just, oh, it was terrible. None of these are obviously my icky guy.

None of them are the things that I really, really enjoyed. I was getting a little bit of money, enough to pay the bills, but not much more than that. So my icky guy, I basically took all of my passions. I wrote out all the categories of the icky guy, and I put like 10 things in each category, and I circled them all together, And I look like a crazy guy. There was like notes on my wall. Like I had a whole wall. I look like the crazy guy in that meme pointing at the wall like this.

It's always funny. Exactly. Yeah. So that's, um, yeah, that's the icky guy right there. So I basically put, I wrote out every possible thing I could think of in each category. And then I connected them all together. And there was only two possible careers that I came out with. And it was either a physician assistant, which I was really, I was like, all right, this is what I'm going to do because content YouTuber, how is that even possible? I didn't think it was possible. So I wasn't even going to try, but, um, I, I ended up doing a challenge where, um, uh, it's called March madness for Pilates where every single day of March, they post one of like the fundamental Pilates exercises.

And so there's 30 days of posting and I posted back to back for the full 30 days, even though I was working the night shift at the airport, it was 10 PM till 6 AM. And I was still finding a way to make all these videos. And I was like, huh, okay, this is possible. None of those did well at all. I had 400 followers on Instagram and all of them were just from me, like researching hashtags and like commenting on every single video, like getting pity follows. That's basically what it was. But, um, basically my wife told me I should make Tik TOKs and another guy at my job also said you should make Tik TOKs. So I was like, Oh, I guess I'll do that. So kind of looked at Tik TOK and I was like, okay, I'll make a Tik TOK style video. Yeah. Did that posted it. And the third video I posted got, um, 7.9 million views. And I was like, Whoa,

what that video is about. Yeah. It was hamstring flexibility. I literally just laid down on the floor, put my feet up on the wall to show a hamstring flexibility exercise. And then I showed that you can also get the adductors involved by spreading your legs a little bit. And then I did, you can go here to here to here and eventually, and then I dropped into the middle splits. And of course you over deliver at the end, people's minds are blown. So that went really, really viral. So ever since that point, I was like, this is possible.

Like people can pay attention to me. So I literally studied viral video after viral video I studied Mr. Beast hybrid calisthenics all these creators who have any type of following I've studied them and I've got their videos in front of me with a pen and a paper and I literally how long did it take for them to cut to the next shot three seconds this time two seconds this time okay let's do shortcuts so basically i've dissected it down to the very very bare bones of every single video and huge nerd about content so you could say those are my two passions is content and flexibility and i just combine them together you know we recently were doing a show what was the title that we were talking when we were talking about how you can

it was recent anyway we were like not growing up or yeah okay not growing up don't know what we called it something something like that but when you mentioned that you know you were working your job from 10 to 6 and then you'd create content afterwards there's a lot of people that probably have something that reaches within and this is pretty cool i've never heard of ikigai so they probably have something that's within, and this is pretty cool. I've never heard of Ikigai. So they probably have something that's within here. Right. Um, but what I'm curious about is for you, when you started creating that TikTok content, when you saw your first video kind of hit off, did you have immediate success afterwards? Or were you just like constantly figuring out ways to increase the ability of like, or increase the quality of your content and just making more

and more and more because most people, things don't hit immediately, you know? So how did that work for you? Yeah. So the first video was full stop. It was luck because I didn't do any research. I didn't do any of that stuff. So it was luck getting 7.9 million views. And then the view, the video right after that got like 200,000 views. And I was like, wow, this is awesome. And then the next video after that got 100,000, then like 60,000, then 40,000. And it dwindled all the way down to nothing. And I was like, how do I replicate it? So it started with that first video going off.

And then what I ended up doing is I dissected that video and I made it way over complicated. I had a five-step process. I was like, this is the way to go viral. So I wased that video and I made it way over complicated. I had a five-step process. I was like, this is the way to go viral. So I was following that process and it was working a little bit, not like a lot, but it was getting some views on TikTok. But generally people don't have that first video that goes off because that's just luck. So if you really do want to make good content do the research find a viral video and dissect it take notes find out why it went

viral why did it go viral why why are people commenting my socks are mismatched on every single video it's probably because i'm wearing mismatched socks to piss people off so they leave comments you know what i mean there's all sorts of stuff that you can do. There's a little secret. Why was there an emoji in the upper right that only 10 people in the comments found but they commented because they found it? There's all sorts of things. So what would you say are maybe the top three things

that new content creators should try to pay attention to? Obviously, go through and do kind of the work you did. Go through viral content and people who are making quality content like yourself and see what are the things that they're doing that are working consistently. But what would you say are the top three things that people can think about when making content and they're new to content creation? Yeah. So there's a three-step process and you can, I'm going to give you this as like a, a, a bare bones. This is the model. There's a million, million, billion different ways to follow this model. And if you see any viral video, like just try and send me a viral video that doesn't follow that three-step

process. And I will be absolutely shocked. So first you capture attention. That's the big thing. And it has to happen insanely quick. If you're on Tik TOK, it's the first half a second, even sooner. It's because those people are ADD brain fried. Nothing's working in their head anymore. You got to capture their attention. These people love you, brother. Be careful. Well, you know, I love you guys too. But the reason why I make the videos like that is because i am that person i'm the guy who used to stay up on tiktok till 3 a.m like with my brain my bloodshot eyes good save no love you guys he says stay flexi but yeah so you capture attention it has to be really really quickly

if you're on tiktok because that's the best place to start if you're a content creator because TikTok doesn't care how many followers you have. It's just going to show it to 250 people, and depending on how those 250 people react, they're going to give you more views or they'll just stop because you'll notice you'll make a brand new account and you'll make a video. Even if it's a viral-level video, it'll get 250 views and then it'll stop.

And it's because you had luck of the draw. It was bad. You had a bad 250 people who were probably a little brain fried at that point and they couldn't watch your video. So you capture attention. The second step is to maintain attention. If you have a 60 second long video and people are clicking away at even 40 seconds down, you didn't do your job well enough because they didn't want to watch the last 20 seconds. So you need to capture

attention, maintain attention. And then the last step is to over deliver. And I found that out with my, with my hamstring video. I literally, it was the easiest hamstring stretch in the world. So I was literally just being a real person like, Hey, this is how you stretch in the world. So I was literally just being a real person like, Hey, this is how you stretch your hamstrings. If you're a beginner and you can do the middle splits, like eventually, and that blows people's mind because you know, not nobody, almost nobody can do the middle splits, but you know, people can lay on their back and put their, their feet up on the wall. So there's a million different ways to over deliver. I did a video on the deep squat on how to squat with your heels on the ground the whole time, all the way down. And I explained it

really well. I followed all the steps. I'm captured attention. I maintained attention. And I generally do that with captions, with editing, with there's a million different ways to maintain attention. You just talk fast and maintain attention if you want. But, um, I maintained attention and then I over delivered because in the last five seconds of the video, I had two baby ducklings

walk into the video and they're cheeping, cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep and this blows people's minds because they're like, why is there ducks in this deep squat? There's ducks.

And then like, I end off the video saying, stay flexing and I'm holding them up to my face and then I leave and then it's just the two ducks saying, no you, like with a caption or whatever and off the video saying, stay flexing. I'm holding them up to my face and then I leave. And then it's just the two ducks saying, no, you like with a caption or whatever. And then the video is done.

So you don't have to over deliver with like, it just has to be more than what they expect. So if you're doing a hamstring stretch, maybe show them how to get out of low back pain at the end of the video or another way of doing it. But this is teased endlessly. So it doesn't work as well on TikTok anymore, but you could tease a part two. I used to do that all the time where I'd go great. So I did this whole,

let's say it's a shoulder mobility video. And then at the very end of the video, I'm like, and tomorrow I'm going to talk about how we can unlock that lower back. And then the video is done. Stay flexy. And then people are like, no, it's not posted yet. I have to follow him.

I got to share this video. And it's all just numbers. They clicked. They did all this stuff. Yeah. Yeah. What about also just, I guess, teaching your audience maybe certain expectations? Do you think that plays into it as well?

Maybe not necessarily with going viral, but with kind of slow and steady and being able to build up a following? Yeah, well, here's the thing. This blows people's minds as well. Not every video of mine, especially, is meant to go viral. A lot of it is just me teaching people things that I think are really cool

because a lot of the times, I will capture attention. I will maintain attention, but I'm not going to bring little baby ducks into every video. I'm not going to drop into the middle split because I don't want to do that. So a lot of my videos are not designed to go viral. Then you've got to find like a baby pig and you've got to find – Exactly.

It gets out of control after a while. Well, it happened with Mr. Beast where now he has to give out a million dollars for people to even blink. So that's basically what it is. There's a million different ways to over-deliver and you can do that every single time. But that's just exhausting. I'm in here for the long run. I'm not in here for the short, quick views and then be done with it. So a lot of it is just audience building where – because there's, like your viral videos. And then there's like super fans.

There's people who want to be as flexible as I am. They want to, they want to like meet me. Like those are the people that I'm making these videos for. It's not, not every video is meant to go viral. Yeah. I think this is really awesome though, because it's like, if you can just get very good at something and then for you, you're an amazing communicator and teacher because of your theater background.

Not everyone immediately is great behind camera, right? But if you have something like that, you can create something where there's an audience that's interested in your expert opinion and your advice, and you can do something really cool, which is what you've done. That's now allowing you to leave your job at 24 yeah exactly and it's like any kind of video can go viral so it's like i i see them all the time where there's people painting and it's just a voiceover and those can go like mega viral and it's because they follow the three-step process but they do it their way there's millions and millions of ways to go viral you don't have to do it where you're like me like super overexcited in front of the camera, dancing and stretching and video's done, stay flexy.

Like you don't have to do that. You could do so many different ways, yeah. A voiceover is a great way for people that might be nervous because then they can still demonstrate the thing that they love to do, whatever the heck it is that they're filming. Such a good way to get stuff. And then they can later on do a voiceover and you have as many cracks at it as you want.

Yeah, I'm super proud of my mom. She's getting started doing that now. What? And that's kind of why I said the paint thing is because she's an artist. So she's going to start making content. I'm going to help her out. I'm going to teach her how to edit hopefully and hopefully we'll get her going. So that's really cool.

How old is your mom if I could ask? I don't know know she's probably 35 35 i'm like uh no she's i think she's like 51 yeah yeah my mom's in her 60s and she's like i want to start doing tiktoks because she wants as long as you've had a lady but yeah she wants to like create shit so it's just it's pretty cool i get that spicy soup you have a recipe channel again yeah what about um like would would uh the wrong hashtags ruin a good video like our hashtags a thing still a lot of people think that but all hashtags are is you're just telling the algorithm what people do i show this video to first? And if like, let's say you have the

perfect hashtags and your video reaches the right audience, but it's a bad video, like you didn't capture attention and you couldn't maintain attention. It's still not going to get any views. Even if like, even if it gets shown to the person, like let's say you're doing a painting video and it gets shown to the most obsessed painter in the world they're going to swipe right on by because they've already curated their for you page to be all of the best videos in the world about painting anyway and um another thing is um your video is going to get shown right next to every other video on the planet so if you think about it my flexibility videos are going right next to Mr. Beast videos. So I have to find a way to make somebody go like, no way, I need to know that rather than the Mr. Beast content.

So that's another thing. But hashtags can help in the beginning, but you can look at my posts and you'll see I have maybe six, five, four hashtags. The two main ones are hashtag movement by David and hashtag stay flexy. And the only reason why is because in the beginning, I was like, I have to monetize this. And I thought a cool way of showing brands

that I'm popular is like to show the total amount of views on a hashtag. Like, look at, this is hashtag movement by David and it has 76 million views or billion views. And you can see that on TikTok. Like, you can look up hashtags, and it'll show how many views are on there. And that's why I started that. You probably do have, like, over a billion views on that hashtag at this point, right?

It's like 70-something billion. It's ridiculous. Holy fuck. I don't know. That's fucking crazy. It's ridiculous. People just watching you stretch in your kitchen. Yeah, that's all it is.

What a bunch of weirdos. You know? How's your wife feel about that how does she feel about that that's a good question at first she was um at first she was a little um kind of a little mad about it like she wasn't like upset but like i i vividly remember like wow this video is getting views on on tiktok and she, wow, that's so cool. And then like I go to my parents' house because I'm driving in my car and she's in the passenger seat. Yeah. And I park and I stop and I'm looking at my phone and I'm like, wow, I have 100,000 followers. And it's right after I posted that first video that went viral.

Yeah. And she was like, oh. Because, you know, like she was the person that was on TikTok, not me. I literally downloaded the app and started posting. So she was a little mad at first, but she's all for it now. She's the most- And Seema has a similar story.

The video game story where you totally annihilated your girlfriend in video game because you were playing it back and forth a bit and then you just decided to, I guess, learn the game more and then you annihilated yeah how's my ex how's my ex girl that was the last draw you started learning chess together oh we started learning chess and we were playing it on the the chess i love that story that's great yeah and then yeah she she she beat me in one game and i was like all right so i really started learning chess and i just fucked her up and she was like i don't want to play chess with you anymore i've never gotten into chess inviscerated or tick tock yeah i felt kind of bad at first but it is what it is it worked out

you know are you before i ask this are you comfortable talking about family stuff yeah i'm comfortable yeah all right you're about to be a new father yes that's wild how does that like how do you like what's going through your head, man? Cause that's close. Yeah. Well, my wife is nine months pregnant. She's due December 17th. So it's around the corner there. We're right there. So it'll be a baby girl. I'm super, super excited about that. Yeah. So this will be my first, I'm 24. Um, but yeah. Um, at first, cause I, I wanted to wait like a little bit because I got married last November. So I'm a little over a year into marriage.

And obviously we got pregnant like three months or whatever it was after getting married. So it was like, wow, okay, this is real soon. Like maybe should have been a little more careful, but we weren't. So, but no, I am so stoked i'm super excited about it yeah i'm yeah endlessly excited yeah we had my son pretty much exactly nine months after we got married so yeah same thing no time no how do people monetize their social media like what are a couple different ways that they can make money? It's a good question. You got any tips?

I give my guides away for free and I get paid for views. Like I basically where I'm at with monetization is like I'm on the Instagram bonuses thing, obviously. So I get paid for that. TikTok pays me like $2,000 a year, give or take. So it's like, that's, that's not sustainable. That's like a month of expense. They pay a little similar to YouTube, but maybe they pay less per view or something. The way TikTok works is they have something called the creator fund, which is a huge, like just think of it like a big ball of cash and they divide it up according to the views on the platform so let's say this guy gets 70 million views and i get 1

million views he gets 70 dollars and i get one dollar or whatever it is um and i don't know the exact percentages but it's like 0.0001 pennies per 10,000 or 1,000 views or whatever. So it's really, really small, but, um, they're, they're gonna, I already know that number's going to increase because YouTube is coming out with their monetization thing with, for the shorts. So that's going to be different. But, um, yeah, I don't really have any advice for, for monetization. What I got going on right now, though, I have something in the works. I'm not allowed to talk about it yet, but I'm going to be releasing a product,

and I think people will like it. So once I have that, I shouldn't need to be in FedEx. What about YouTube, obviously, right? You have a YouTube channel as well? Yeah, and that's built off of Shorts, and they don't pay for Shorts just yet, but 400,000 subscribers like if you see those numbers with those other like and like people

make a living with 50 000 subscribers on youtube so it's like wow what i have is really unique right now i just need to make longer videos and then i'll get paid um the only problem is is i need to like have time to make longer videos so i need to get out of my job first but um i'd rather be a little bit more stable before i quit a job with you know the kid coming along so yeah that's a good problem to have you just have to simply figure out what you want to attach yourself to and and whether you want to just continue to drive pretty much and stay in your lane of building your brand or whether you want to try to be inclusive with some other brands as well maybe yeah and i i thought about that a lot um i i

want to partner with other brands um but i definitely want to be my own business like that's that's the goal is to i want to have like slingshot I want to have my company that does my products and my things. Because everybody who's an influencer, hate the term, but it is what it is. I'm an influencer. They have brand equity. And every time you partner with Fuji Water, you're basically giving away a little bit of your equity.

They're like, oh, that's the Fuji Water guy. It's not like that's that's the guy so i i want to remove myself from as much of that as possible and only be with brands that i would literally use on a daily basis yeah like those are the guys that like yes i will partner with you because i use your product every single day native deodorant by the way for reals can you check underneath do you see can you pass it to me because i wanted to i'm kind of smelly right now here's our commercial product placement yeah we're not sponsored by native but i smell so i'm about to be sponsored by native after this podcast yes fucking go help us with that you guys should be too.

What about like posting frequency? Because like you hear a lot of people that are freaked out if something doesn't hit or something does hit, then they're like on the hook and they want to post again to kind of capture that same audience. Does it work that way? Yeah. So posting frequency is there's two different philosophies. There's the one that you hear from everybody and it's the wrong one, but we'll say that one first. It's post every single day, post 10 times a day, like the Gary Vaynerchuk's way of doing it, where you literally just make

a million pieces of content and you throw it out into the world and you're going to find something that hits eventually, right? Which, yeah, with every video you post, you're increasing your chance of getting lucky. But I don't want to be lucky. I want to post a video that goes viral. And every video that goes viral that I've had was designed to go viral. Now, not every video that I've designed to go viral goes viral, and there's a couple different reasons why. But for the most part, if I design a video to go viral, it goes viral. So it's quality over quantity every time. Because if you don't have that much time and you just want to post videos that don't capture and don't maintain attention, there's no reason to do that if your goal is to get views.

your goal is to get views. I'd rather you spend one month making a video that gets 5 million views than one video in one day that gets 5,000 views. So, um, and the, the, the amount of effort that goes into make a viral video versus a video that doesn't go viral is so minuscule too. It's so minuscule. Like it's funny because i've had videos where they have done like really really really bad and then all i did was edit it a little bit more repost it and then it's like wow that was my viral video so it's just a little bit more effort goes a long way a really long way is there anything that you can think of it's kind of a weird question um that people kind of they they take it a little bit too serious so i'm thinking like oh i can't post you know at at 11 a.m because people are in school or they're at work they're not going to see my shit so i'm going to wait till later and then maybe that ruined the opportunity for it to

go viral is there stuff like that where people are just taking it way too serious when it's really like just put the content out there? Yeah, there's two things that people take too seriously. The hashtags, they take a little too seriously. And then the posting time they take too seriously because if you have a video that's a good video, even if it's posted at 1 a.m. and the people who watch your stuff are all in your neighborhood, someone's bound to be up at 1 a.m. and they're going to watch every single second of the video. They're going to share the video. They're going to like it and they're going to comment on it. And if they do all of those things, the algorithm is going to go,

whoa, let's show it to somebody that's maybe not in his neighborhood. So if you just post a really good video, it doesn't matter what time of day or time of night, it will do well. Actually, with one caveat probably, because if everybody is posting at 11 a.m. and you post at 11 a.m., your video is going to put up against the most viral videos on the internet. So actually maybe throwing that schedule out the door and posting in the middle of the night might be a good idea, but that's just speculation. I haven't really done any thoughts on that. So yeah, I noticed that Ben Patrick, his posts are usually later on in the day. I don't know if there's anything strategic behind that, if that's just the time

that he has or, or if he specifically schedules it, but it kind of makes sense to me because a lot of people aren't getting around to their phones and having the time with their phones until probably after like 8 p.m. or something like that. Yeah, exactly. But if you look at the analytics of almost any viral video, you're going to be like, wow, 20% of these people that watch this video are in India.

So it's like, wow, what time did they see the video? Who knows? Who cares? And what time was it here? Exactly. So if your goal is to only ever get local people in your state, in your country, then maybe having a specific time frame is a good idea. But if your goal is to go mega viral worldwide, it doesn't matter. It just needs to be a really, really good video.

Are the words important? Is it important to have words on the screen type of thing, you think? worldwide, it doesn't matter. It just needs to be a really, really good video. Are the words important? It's important to have words on the screen type of thing, you think? For TikTok, if let's say I make a viral level video and I post one without captions and one with captions, the one with captions will always outperform the one without captions. And I think that has to do with just getting your brain more involved. And by the way, when you say captions, do you mean like the captions you put on screen and the ones on Tik TOK that's automatically generated or just the ones you put on screen? I'm talking about the ones that you put on screen. Okay. Um, cause the ones you put on screen, um, basically they're, they're located in a way, if you do it right, that they can read it and they can see the focus of the video

at the same time. So most people just slap the captions right in the center of the video, which is okay. That works if the attention of the video is always in the center, but you'll notice I'm running around my kitchen, jumping up and down. You'll see my captions go boop, boop, boop. They're everywhere, all over the place. And why am I doing that? It's because I watch my video after I finish editing it. And I notice where my eyes are going while I'm watching the video. I have to remove myself from my video because I know what's happening next. I have to like take a break and rewatch it and pretend I don't know what's happening. And then I'll know where my eyes are and I'm like, okay, cool. I'll put my captions right below that. So there's all sorts

of tricks, but, um, that makes people probably watch it multiple times because you can't look in two places at once. If I'm trying to read what you said and it's going by fairly fast because we only got a couple seconds, I'll have to read the thing and try to look at what you're doing. And to absorb it,

I'm going to want to watch it more than once. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, if you do that right, that can happen. Power Project family, how's it going? Now we know that strength starts from the floor, which is why we want you guys to build strong feet. That's why we've partnered with Vivo Barefoot Shoes, and we've been wearing these shoes for over a year now. Not only are they flexible, zero drop meaning they're flat, they have a wide toe box so your feet can do what they need to do inside of the shoe.

They also look great. If you go on their website, they have a lot of amazing options from casual wear to in gym wear to running. With the gold Vivo Barefoot, you can't go wrong and your feet will get stronger as you wear the shoes. So if you're interested in checking them out, head to vivobarefoot.com slash power project and at checkout, use the code power Vivo 20 to save yourself 20% off your entire purchase. Enjoy the episode. That was a video I got stuck across the counter. Cracking up over here. How do I get down? You're like, fuck, you know, a cool thing, just rewinding real quick to what you're mentioning as far as like monetizing stuff. The cool thing that you've been able to do is you, you start on Tik TOK and you probably,

it seems that you repurpose some of that Tik TOK content on YouTube shorts. And since next year, YouTube shorts is coming up with an ad revenue split. If anybody were to, I think that like if anybody were to start making short type of content on TikTok, reuse that on Instagram and YouTube, they could build something and then they could get paid pretty well when YouTube does that ad split. So it's a great way for anybody in the audience who's interested again in making something. There's just a way to repurpose content everywhere. Yeah. And even the money that I'm making with what I'm doing, it's a lot of money, but my expenses are high, but it's a lot of money. So that's why I'm broke is just my expenses are high. But I can imagine somebody my age who's

maybe not married, doesn't have a kid on the way, maybe lives in their parents' house. Oh my goodness. Like by the end of the year, maybe I could put a down payment on a house. Like that's, wow. That's, that's possible if you, if you just do it like that, but like repurposing content, um, you'll, you'll actually, you'll like this a lot. Most of my videos, I actually have one, sometimes two, even three versions of the same video. So I make one video and however long it is, that's how long it is. If it's a good video, it's a good video. So if it's two minutes long, that video goes on TikTok and it goes on, then I'll have to like, okay, I have to edit it down a little bit. So I edit it down to one minute and 30 seconds. That one goes on Instagram because that's the max on Instagram. Then I have to really, oh, it kills me, but I have to edit it

down to 60 seconds. So it goes on YouTube Shorts. And that version, the 60-second version, I also post on Snapchat, Pinterest, all the other apps out there. So I post to probably seven different apps every time I make one video. Wow. Yeah, and Pinterest right now,

last I checked, I had like 6,000 followers, and that's just happened in like the past month or so. It's just because people are finding the videos and they like them and it's not people that follow me on these other platforms there's just they use Pinterest a lot and they like my videos so now they're followers of me on Pinterest so do you still do Pilates I I use Pilates exercises but I wouldn't say I practice Pilates, no. So you're doing some kind of resistance training. You said you have some weights. You just don't have a barbell yet.

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, exactly. I need a barbell. But yeah, most of my stuff that I do is calisthenics, but I love playing with weights and throwing them around and doing all sorts of stuff. So I have a lot of fun with it. doing all sorts of stuff. So I have a lot of fun with it. But I would say the main workouts I do would be some sort of squat variation,

usually pistol squats, because that's how I get enough weight to progressively overload. I like to play around with dragon squats, but that's kind of a little harder to progressively overload because it involves a lot of balance. But I also do a lot of pull-ups when I can.

I play around with push-up variations. I like archer push-ups where you're doing like one arm out to the side and all sorts of stuff. So I just play with a lot of different movements mostly. You got a wide ass back. Yeah, there you go. My lat spread is a little funny. I have videos on the lat spread, by the way. You know, I was going to ask you this because within the strength community and you have quite a few i mean you still see it quite a bit where strength coaches kind of tell

individuals don't don't you don't need to do stretching you shouldn't because it's going to limit the amount of weight that you're going to be to move on your squat your deadlift your bench press etc and they'll reference quite a bit of flexibility research saying oh they did this movement and they did their one armarm squat and it was lower. But as we were talking about in the gym, flexibility research seems to be kind of shit. So I'm curious. Where do you see the flaws in flexibility research that's referenced quite a bit? And where has it been beneficial in terms of the way that you program flexibility?

Yeah. So I already spoke about the four different types of flexibility. That comes from like really good papers. So if you see a paper talking about dynamic active stretching, like you already know it's probably a really good paper. But if you see a paper that's like PNF stretching versus stretching,

and you're going to be like, okay, so it's static stretching versus dynamic active stretching or passive, or sorry, static active stretching. And that's a problem. So nothing is really defined in the literature. There are some really good studies, but a lot of it is just not good. Or they – literally yoga and stretching is synonymous in a lot of studies, which is a huge problem. And then the other thing is a lot of these studies are reactionary. So basically what they'll do is they'll,

they'll say, okay, your one rep squat max is whatever it is. Um, we'll test it. Let's say it's 500 pounds, something big. Um, then we're going to stretch your quadriceps to the point of pain, not crying, but to the point of pain. And we're going to hold it for five full minutes without rest. And then now let's try your one rep Mac. Oh, it was 200 pounds. Wow. Stretching is bad for lifting. And it's like, Oh, okay. So first of all, the first caveat is static. Passive stretching is bad for lifting. That would be a much better title there. Number one, number two, it was a reactionary study. When I stretch, I stretch for 30 seconds. And I generally do two sets because I stretch a little bit more often than most people.

So if you do two sets of 30 seconds, it's going to have either negligible or zero effect on your lifting. Because there are studies that show if you're stretching under 60 seconds, there's no effect on your lifting. And I because there's studies that show if you're stretching under 60 seconds, there's no effect on your lifting. And I stretch for two sets of 30 seconds. So it's like, whatever, but either way I stretch after I do my strength work anyway. So in any world, it doesn't matter. Cause I just stretch after, because once the muscles are warm, that's the most effective time to stretch anyway. that's when i stretch when after my workout when my muscles are warm so yeah yeah do you also at this point like do you tend to feel pain anywhere you know because like you can move in a lot of different ranges you're not you're not restricted as far as movement is concerned it seems do you feel discomfort of

pain anywhere currently yeah so i when I first started working at FedEx, I was lifting couches by myself, not team lifting. I was twisting my back and throwing this stuff. I thought I was a big old macho guy. I'm just going to do this stuff. And I ended up hurting my lower back really, really bad. I can picture the guys that have been there for a while just watching you being like,

this kid's going he's gonna get fried and that's what happened i got fried i man i hurt my lower back real bad i have a suspicion that it was a herniation but i didn't get it checked out or anything but either way studies show that a lot of that reabsorbs usually and a lot of people can get out of that so i was like okay well here's here's fixing myself. So I rehabilitated that. It took me about six months before I could really start moving my back again. But I still have restriction going, like backbends. My backbends are terrible.

And that's why there's no videos on my channel about backbends. But I'm finally working on it, and I've gotten to a point where I'm like, wow, I can actually increase my backbend flexibility. This is awesome. I thought it was something I wouldn't be able to do. So I've gotten to a point where I'm like, wow, like I can actually increase my backbend flexibility. This is awesome. I thought it was like something I wouldn't be able to do. So, um, I've conquered that. And then the other thing that I'm dealing with, I just telling you about before the podcast is I have a little bit of plantar fasciitis on my right foot, but it's like lateral plantar fasciitis. So like you can't really find any, any ways to deal with that. It's on the side. There's no really videos on that that I've looked into. But it's funny though, because I've helped a lot of people in my Pilates practice when I used to

have one-on-one clients, I've helped a lot of people get out of plantar fasciitis with a lot of like rolling and then a lot of exercises and a lot of just movement in general and increasing the range. And generally it goes goes away but i've had this for like six months so i'm working on it but i'll definitely make a video about it when when i conquer that which i will but i just don't know when or how so i think we found a little spot we found a little spot near the near the ankle there yeah i'm working on it right now with that little ball down there there you go it hurts but it feels good yeah one really cool thing though i think is that you know when people some people when they look at your content, they might think that he's

always been able to be flexible and do this, but you know, you talking about how you were before, you know, you couldn't touch your toes. You couldn't, at least you could, but you have to bend your knees and go down to be able to do that. And through work through a little bit every day, you know, you talk about doing 30 second sets. You're not even moved the way you are now, but you just made it a consistent practice. It's not necessarily a workout. Yeah. Well, I, from a little kid, I grew up with asthma, with allergies. I was the asthmatic. So I couldn't even play tag with the other kids because I had really, really bad asthma. So you were the kid that came to the playground with like a list of notes, like from the parent, like, yeah, that would be me. Yeah. don't let him be out in the sun too long and just it's funny

because i'm practically allergic to the sun because i five minutes i'll get sunburned it's bad it's hilarious yeah it's it's really funny but yeah um so that was me i didn't have a lot of movement not a lot of activity then i I got into basketball, which was really, really difficult for me as an asthmatic. But, you know, that was a whole journey of me conquering my asthma. And I feel like I've conquered it. Like, I'll still get asthma attacks all the time. the way how strong my lungs are with the way like the breathing techniques that I use with all that and I can lower my heart rate and then there's less need for oxygen in the first place so I don't need to breathe as much

anyway so there's so many different things that you can work on as an asthmatic but going into high school for basketball somebody asked me to try and touch my toes they asked me to tie my shoes with my knees straight. Couldn't do it. I couldn't even – that's my ankles, not my toes.

I couldn't do it. So that was like, wow, that was kind of an ego blow for me. So I kind of – from that point, I was able to touch my toes by the end of high school, and that was just because I was stretching my hamstrings, doing whatever, microdosing it whenever I wanted to. And that works. So I definitely have not always been flexible. I think if you're like a child gymnast, you definitely have a huge advantage, but I don't think that's an advantage I would want because a lot of that's just connective tissue. And it's, it's not, I don't think it's great to, to take kids to their physical limit and keep them there like for years of their life. I don't think it's great to take kids to their physical limit and keep them there for years of their life. I don't think that's a good idea. I think when you're older is maybe the time to explore that sort of thing.

But it's – I don't know. So I was not always flexible is the point. How's your diet? Yeah, so my mom has celiac disease so she she almost died like like 10 years or 15 years ago or whatever it was it was really really bad everything got bad she was morbidly obese all that um all she did was uh i shouldn't say all she did because i i don't fully know every all the steps she took but um she she got rid of gluten cleaned up her diet and lost 80 pounds like that like just instantly almost it was crazy and um yeah so ever since then

she she's been like really paying attention to her diet so um and i've kind of just followed her diet because i've always had autoimmune disorders. Like I said, the asthma, the allergies. I'm allergic to mammals, so dogs, cats, gerbils, horses. I haven't found a mammal that I'm not allergic to. It's crazy. I thought you had ducks. Well, I was allergic to those too, but it was good for the video. It was good for the video. But those are birds and I'm allergic to birds too. It's bad. It's bad. Just a skin breaks out kind of thing. Asthma is the main thing and then my nose will get stuffy but i'll get rashes um you know those scratch tests they do for allergies i had like 50 of those done on my back and all of them reacted and then um my mom was like wait he had a reaction to

horses we got to do that and they were like look we're okay we'll do it so they got like the horse thing they scratched my arm and even where the serum dribbled down my arm, all of that puffed up and swelled up. So I've had all of that all the time. But, um, so I've kind of followed my mom a lot diet wise. So I've, I've been for most of my life, gluten-free, dairy-free, um, mostly grain-free. So that's So that was no rice, corn, oats, anything. So it was basically just meat and veggies and whatever gluten-free processed gunk that's out there, I would eat that too, which I don't think is healthy for you at all. But I'm at a point in my life where I'm kind of just microdosing things like bread, for instance, every time I go to a restaurant and the bread is out there in the front, I can afford it. So, you know, I'll eat the bread a little bit and I won't have like five loaves of bread, but you know, I'll have, I'll have a bread

stick and I'll enjoy it. And it's really good. And wow. Okay. The first time I did it, my stomach kind of like, but I think that's just my microbiome wasn't used to it. So I gave it some time. It's still microdosing. I'm fine now. So it's like there's things I can bring back in, but I've tried bringing dairy back in, and that's always an issue. So dairy, bad. Eggs, really bad all the time. Every time I have eggs, that's bad.

But – oh, and soy. I avoid soy like the plague. but oh and soy I avoid soy like the plague if I have soy I'll literally eat like a chocolate bar with soy in it and then I can feel it seeping into my veins like I feel it in my bloodstream going down to my

fingertips and my toes and I'm like this is not good and then like I have brain fog for the next two weeks and then my skin breaks out for the next six months it's bad yeah reactions are bad I also have psoriasis so I have skin issues up the wazoo two weeks and then my skin breaks out for the next six months it's bad yeah whoa yeah reactions are bad i also have psoriasis so i have skin issues up the wazoo everywhere that's a lot to manage have you ever tried like a particular style of diet other than just uh kind of a gluten-free

diet yeah so the main thing was the paleo one uh the aip paleo autoimmune protocol that was the one my mom did but i took it a step further because Jordan and Michaela Peterson. So I was like, okay, I'm going to try the carnivore diet. So there was a moment in my life where I was like, I'm going to just do it. I'm going to do it. So I did it. And I wasn't very educated at the time. So like it was, I was so strict.

So I did for three full months where I did nothing but meat. And I tried a little bit of liver, a little bit of beef, whatever, everything. But I was so strict that halfway through, at the halfway point, I was like, I'm going to reintroduce salt back into my diet. And salt is an electrolyte. That's not good to go without. So there was a lot of problems I had with that. But I felt like even the whole time,

but there was, I wasn't very good at staying in ketosis cause I would just eat too much protein and not enough fat. And were you getting in a lot of red meat with your meat? Like, yeah, it was all red meat. Yeah.

I mean, I, yeah, I maybe had chicken like on the last day and then I was like, yeah, I'm gonna break this. But your body does something called gluconeogenesis, which is your protein being broken down into sugar. And, oh, it is the worst feeling in the world if you're on a carnivore diet and you're in gluconeogenesis.

And that's because your body can't break down the protein fast enough to give you enough sugar to give you energy. So you just feel drained. You feel gross and, oh, it was so bad. My body odor started to smell sweet and my urine smelled sweet. So it was bad. And those are signs of like diabetes. So I knew I wasn't healthy at that point. So I was like adding tallow to my ground beef.

And it was working, but it just wasn't sustainable for me. So I got off of the carnivore diet, thankfully, but, um, I think a lot of people could have success with it. Um, I, I didn't get the results that I wanted, so I pivoted. So, cause I gave it a fair shot. Three months is a fair shot. Um, my psoriasis was still there, asthma, all that stuff. So I figured I should probably eat some more nutrients and see what happens. Curious about this because, you know, you mentioned breathing techniques and asthma. Quite a few people do have asthmas and they haven't been able to figure out things to deal with it. So what do you mean specifically? What

are you doing that helps you manage that? Yeah. So there's so many different ways to breathe. A lot of people laugh when I say this, but I've never done yoga. I know a fair bit about yoga, a lot, not maybe not a lot, but a fair bit. Um, but in, in yoga and in these other movement practices and singing, and I was an actor. So in singing, they teach you to do this too, where you stomach breathe, you basically keep everything locked in place and you expand your stomach when you inhale and then you let it rest down and you can like lay on your back and put a kettlebell there and breathe it up and breathe it down that's one way of breathing

that's that's a great method um i personally don't like that method so in in pilates they have something called costal breathing um and which is a great tool everybody should learn it because you can do it while you exercise. It teaches you to brace your core and breathe at the same time. Because instead of having your stomach doing the moving, you're basically expanding your rib cage and you expand it to the sides. So that's why it's costal. It's lateral breathing. So I do a lot of that. But the coolest thing is you can actually combine these methods. You can like stomach breathe and then you only get as far as you can go. And then you can costally breathe

and then you get as far as you can go. And then you can shoulder breathe and go even higher. So that's the deepest possible breath that you can do. And everybody says not to shoulder breathe, but Hey, when you need it, you need it. Has that been helpful when you like have an attack? Like if you're having an asthma attack, where does your brain go as far as your breathing? So when I have an asthma attack, I hold my breath and that surprises a lot of people. So basically I'll do a series of maybe five

of the deepest possible breaths I can and then I'll just hold my breath. And this makes people laugh. When I have an asthma attack, that's the longest I can actually hold my breath. So when, this makes people laugh when I have an asthma attack, that's the longest I can actually hold my breath. So I can, when I'm having an asthma attack, I can hold my breath for like two minutes and be totally fine. And then just keep breathing after that, which is not impressive compared to a lot of divers out there. But for me as a normal average everyday asthmatic,

that's pretty impressive. So, um, yeah. So when you hold you hold your breath um you're forcing your body to lower your heart rate and that's the main goal with holding your breath is to lower your heart rate because when your heart rate drops down you need less oxygen in the first place so when there's all this inflammation and mucus and swelling in your bronchial tubes and in your lungs, it's a good idea to need less oxygen. So go down to the source. So I hold my breath for as long as I can tolerate. And then I exhale slowly all that air. I let it all the way out and then I just try and breathe normally. And also I have a theory about it that when you hold your breath, I also kind of bear down on myself and kind of put as

much pressure in my lungs as possible. And I kind of feel like it pushes back against the swelling a little bit. There's no evidence behind that. It feels good for me. And then I let that out. Be careful. You might pass out if you try that though. But it helps me. And then I've also tried a little bit of Wim Hof breathing. I've never taken that seriously, but, um, it feels good to, to take your body to the point of like tingling all over your entire body just through breathing. Like it's crazy that you can do that. So, um, I've played along with that as well. And sometimes that helps with asthma attacks, but holding my breath and calming down and literally lowering my heart rate is the

biggest thing that has helped me with my asthma. That's awesome. Now, also when it comes to, we were talking about this in the gym with Graham, but maintaining flexibility, right? I've been doing some flexibility stuff for years now, but I've found that I don't need to do as much as I was to be able to get into those ranges of motion or even maintain those ranges of motion. And the reason why I'm asking you this is because one thing that I've heard quite a few, again, fitness professional strength coaches say is like, yeah, you know, if you stretch that, uh, the adaptations that you get from that session will only stay with you for maybe that session or a few days and you'll revert back to normal. That doesn't seem to be how it is in

practice. So what do you think they're trying to normal. That doesn't seem to be how it is in practice. So what do you think they're trying to communicate that may be correct and that may be actually incorrect? Yeah. So somebody who's, um, like let's say, say a power lifter, somebody who's really, like really wound up tight in their nervous system is like on 11 because they're just, they, they need that stiffness to like be like, to do what they're doing. A type of person like that probably is going to take a long time to get any sort of flexibility. So I would say it might even take three months of intense stretching to even get to the point that you're stretching your hamstrings, because it's all just neuromuscular.

Yeah. And there's no papers that I can point to on this, but I think probably the first portion of your flexibility journey is all just neuromuscular. You're all just basically telling your brain that, hey, it's safe to be in this deep of a range of motion. It's okay. And you're actually getting your nerves to slide in the nerves,

the nerve, the nerve sheaths, man, that's a hard word. So you're literally lubricating it because your nerves, um, if you're to Google this, um, your nerves can stretch about 6% further than their actual length. Whereas your muscles can stretch around 30% further of their resting length. Um, and that's obviously probably different for me because I've, I've been practicing flexibility. So who knows? But, um, that, that, that I find interesting. I think you might be able to change that with practice number one, but the biggest thing is you're getting your nerves to actually slide in and through and in their nerve sheaths. So, um, once you get to that point, your brain is like, wow, this is safe.

Then that's where the real flexibility starts because I think you can lose that neuromuscular flexibility probably pretty quickly because maybe within three months if you stop stretching, you probably can't touch your toes anymore if you've only done it to that point

and you've never gone to the point of actually doing tissue adaptation. Particularly with eccentric stretching, that's where you see studies that actually like your, um, so your sarcomere is basically the smallest part of your muscle, the actual contractile unit of the muscle. When, when you do an eccentric stretch, basically what happens if you do that over time, your average sarcomere gets longer. So that's hypertrophy. Your muscle grows, but it just gets longer. Whereas if you're bodybuilding, typically what happens is you get more sarcomeres and that's muscle hypertrophy, that's muscle thickness. But if you do eccentric exercise to a full stretch,

then you're getting longer sarcomeres. So, um, I don't know how that relates to strength, but that's an actual tissue, a tissue adaptation that you can point to in the literature. Um, if I were to take it a step further, I think even with static passive stretching, you can get, um, muscle adaptation. It's just, you have to be past the point that your nerves are holding you back at that point. I think you brought up one of the reasons why a lot of people may not like stretching. And that is the fact that for some people, it may take them a couple of weeks or months to even get the right feel. And I think that's the same thing that can happen with your exposure to lifting. That's the same thing that can happen with your exposure to lifting that's the same thing it can happen to your exposure with jujitsu same thing with running like you have to run for a

long time to like running like it takes a while normally i mean i guess everyone's a little different yeah but i found the same thing with lifting like you know you're somebody might talk about like a pump like man i love getting a pump feels great And then somebody who maybe has already been lifting for a year, maybe even two years, maybe they never even really, they don't understand what everyone's talking about when they hear about a pump. So I think that's been my experience sometimes with stretching. I'll try something and I'm like, I know that that's supposed to stretch this,

but I don't feel that. I feel these other muscles because I haven't done it long enough, explored it long enough, explored it long enough. And then on the other side of all this is, I think the worst thing you can do with mobility and flexibility is just to try to compare yourself to anybody else. And it's just a matter of like where you're at right now. So you may not feel mobile or flexible, but mobile or flexible compared to who and mobile and flexible for what? You're obviously mobile and flexible enough to do the stuff you currently do, so that's not bad. Can you expand upon that a little bit and not worry about someone else that's doing a split?

You're not ready for that yet. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's all about like how much – like I've heard you guys talk about this, how much of a stimulus you're giving your body because you have to give yourself a stimulus for your body to adapt. And for stretching, a lot of people go, put your arm across your chest, hold it for 10 seconds, 10, 9.

That's not going to do anything. You need to stretch for at least 30 seconds, 10 sets a week. That's what the literature says. Huberman, he cited that study where five minutes is the minimum. And if you do it for five minutes a week that's what the literature says huberman um he he cited that study where five minutes is the minimum and if you do it for five minutes a week spread throughout the week your your body is forced to add adapt it's forced to gain some range of motion and a lot of people when they when they do stretching um they do it after every single workout and they do it

religiously and they stretch like a lot and they're they're just not going to make flexibility gains because they're only stretching three days a week and they're getting three minutes of stretching a week i don't even think people view it that way i don't even think they view that there should be gains i think they just you know i see runners all the time they're like bend down to try to touch their toes and then they pull on their foot and they do this guy with the arm and i just go like and run because i'm like i don't yeah that i don't think there's any progression in that yeah well there's also studies that show that stiffness helps your running economy which means if you are stiffer

you literally run more effectively because you're basically just bounding with your fascia at that point it takes no muscle strength whatsoever. So for somebody like me, I don't know what that means. Maybe running is going to be harder for me than the average person, but that's not going to stop me from doing it because I really want to get into running. But it's just – I like to approach stretching like a bodybuilder. So a bodybuilder, they're going to program their sets. They're going to go, they're going to do 10 sets of bicep curls a week, and they're going to do it to failure. And I'm going to do it on my Monday and Wednesday, five sets on those two days.

And like, that's one way of doing it. Great. That's how, that's exactly the way that I approach stretching. And I don't think there's a single person out there that does stretching like that because it's always about – well, there's obviously exceptions. But it's mostly like I'm going to do my 50-minute yoga session and, wow, my hamstrings are flexible. So you have to do yoga to get flexible hamstrings. It's like, no, that's one way of getting flexible hamstrings. It's not the way. So, yeah. Yoga is really interesting too because because, and studies on yoga on, uh, studies on

stretching, but yoga in particular, like each person is going through a totally different experience, even though they might be led through the exact same workout. And that's what makes the studies so hard. Yeah. When you go to stretch your hamstring, it's gotta be different than me. It's gotta be different than everybody else here at the table. It's a little different for each one of us due to our height, due to the way the hip inserts, due to the way our muscles are, due to your history, due to how often you mess around with your mobility and flexibility, right? that is but there's so many different types of yoga and there's different types of pilates there's different types of all these different movement mode modalities and like again we're talking about like how the the literature with with stretching and flexibility is so bad because yoga is pretty much synonymous with stretching so like a person who practices yoga for 10 years

which is stretching does well and with their flexibility. And it's like, okay, that's, you told us a lot. Thanks. So, yeah, it's weird. Yeah. But, you know, a cool thing too is, you know, when you're doing, for example, you showed us the, it was like a half split today or something. The long lunge. The long lunge, right?

Yeah. But, you know, when you're doing that movement, you are activating certain muscles as you're going into that deep range right and it makes that makes a big difference and also like when we're using the cable machine um for stretching different muscle groups now we're working against load and it does seem that when you do that you make a lot of these gains a lot faster it seems more like a workout which might be something that would allow stretching flexibility to be more enjoyable for people. Yeah. I, the biggest, the long lunge is probably one of my favorite stretches. Um, basically you just go to the furthest split possible. And in order to stay in that position, your hamstrings are forced to flex.

Your hip flexors are forced to flex. you don't fall over yeah so and especially when you're you have to balance there's stabilization going on there's there's a million different things going on there's strength being built there exactly there's strength being built there and it's the same thing with um for instance yeah exactly noodley legs this video is great so that right there is a very active stretch where you're flexing those muscles. You're holding yourself up. So there's more than one way of just stretching. A lot of edits and cuts and stuff, do you feel those are effective?

Like jump cuts and zooming in and out? Or is that just mainly just to keep interest? They can be effective. The way I do it is effective. You'll notice that the focus of the video, the reason why it's so easy to watch my video is because in between every cut, like look, you saw my head was in the same place.

Like watch this next cut. My head is right there in level. And now the focus is on the leg right there. So it's going to cut to the next one. And boom, my face is where my leg was because your eyes were looking at my leg. So I am guiding where the viewer's eyes go. So if you were to just do a bunch of quick cuts randomly, it doesn't work.

It's too all over the place and your eyes have to pop around too much. Yeah, I get lazy. I don't want to do that. I'm going to just swipe away. So for this one, I'm literally guiding people's eyes and their gaze. That's why I finish editing the video and then I try to remove myself from it and then I rewatch it and then I see where my eyes are moving. And then you probably almost always purposely wear a shirt that's contrasty to your color of your text, right? Yeah, that's kind of why I use the yellow text because it pretty much contrasts with everything.

Everything got it yeah and um going up to the camera and speaking to it that way like in that first video that you had that went viral uh where you're stretching your hamstring i think you were turning your head backward to kind of talk there's probably uh something that's attractive about that piece of the puzzle as well right yeah? Yeah. I like to think of it as A-roll and B-roll. So the reason why your shorts do really well is because there's usually B-roll in there. So you're giving things for people to look at. If you look at my video, it may not seem like there's B-roll, but there is B-roll because I am showing the exercise and I'm talking while I'm showing the exercise. So my only goal is to get people to stop focusing on my face for a second and focus on the exercise. And I can do that by cropping in and cropping my head out.

Or I can just look away from the camera. So now there's no longer eye contact and people are going to like their eye contact is broken. So now they're free to look around. So there's a million different ways of doing it but um a roll and b roll that's all it is it's just i'm doing it all in one take that's all dude you gotta make a book like he said andrew do you have some uh warnings for him you know he's about to be a new dad over here yeah oh man sheesh that's a whole nother podcast no um there's nowhere to hide buddy yeah dude um i don't it's tough because like everything all right so this is gonna sound really mean but

like everything for the first i don't know maybe mark you can help correct me on this but like maybe the first three four years is just gonna be slightly a little more pain in the ass. So like right now my son, he is, he's learning how to climb up the like the drawers and stuff. So like when I'm in the kitchen, I'm trying to cook and it's just like, fuck dude, like, ah, like my eggs are just about to be burnt. Like, but I got to go catch this little guy. So it's like, it's just a little pain in the ass. Okay.

But all of these things as much of a kind of like a pain that it can be it's fucking cool because like it's all for something so like i mentioned a long time ago that you know like something as simple as taking out the trash okay like nobody loves taking out the trash but i know if i take the trash out it's gonna help my wife like chill out a little bit more it's gonna help her take care of the baby a little bit better the baby's going to relax a little bit better so then he can maybe get catch a nap here or there whatever so um i know this isn't really like a warning thing but it's like it's such a cool thing that you're going to gain like an extra gear like you're already very motivated but like having a lot more purpose in doing the stupid little things like

throwing out the trash or whatever like it has a little bit more meaning to it you don't throw out the trash you're not getting a blow job so that's where it starts right and then dishes blow job yeah noted yeah that that and then uh here's an awesome tip to usually like the first diaper change in the morning it's usually just a pee diaper so like volunteer for that one okay okay the next couple ones are we going to be a little keep that in mind yeah the next ones will be a little bit more uh beefy i guess i'll say there you go and then so those are the ones that you want to be like all right hey i got the first one so i'll just i'll just run point on this one and you help guide that sort of thing that's actually a huge tip right there there you go

did stephanie know that they were p diapers um i mean she knew before me like you know shit yeah now that little guy he is dropping bombs it is not cool potty training time yeah and then the other cool thing like i think we were going through uh through text on this but like you're already on the floor you're you're rolling around so like the bond that you guys are going to build just because a lot of parents can't necessarily do that right so like yeah you're gonna full knee bend that's so hard for so adult so many adults yeah so you'll be down at her level and you guys are just going to connect like better than most parents can and you'll just be right yeah dude i'm excited for you that's that's really cool yeah Our buddy Kador, he was really big

on getting on the floor and we've had a bunch of other guests here. Is that something that you sometimes recommend to people? Hey, just try to figure out some ways to spend some more time just actually on the floor rather than maybe sitting on your couch. How about try and get up? Just going down to the floor and getting up

for a lot of people is either impossible or a really good workout. Maybe you should start there. floor and getting up for a lot of people is either impossible or a really good workout. So maybe you should start there. Try and get up maybe three times and see how you feel after that. You can play with it. The more advanced you get, try and get up without hands, like from a crisscross position. Try and do it with your legs straight out in front of you. Try and do it with only one leg.

I think getting up is so fundamental to being a human that you should practice that all the time. Start on your back. Start on your stomach. Start on your side. Exactly. All of that. Yeah. I love, I love, love, love, love getting down to the floor and just playing around.

Like I'll just mess around with movements, like even just rolling. Like how many adults can roll? Like just put their head forward and then roll over their back. Like how many adults can do that? Not very many. No, most people can't. And what happens is your spine, when your spine becomes stiff, it's very hard to actually roll. And so what you end up with is like you'll try to roll, but you just kind of –

Yeah, you'll kind of splat on the ground. And there's also like the segment rolling, like where you try to roll each little segment of your spine, stuff like that. Did a lot of that in Pilates. It's very underrated. Yeah. But you're starting to see more people talk about it now. And it can be something that can be restorative. And it's easy over a period of time to learn.

Not easy to do right away, but it's easy over time to learn. Yeah. I love that stuff. The spinal articulation particularly, really, really valuable stuff. Because most people, especially if they have a desk job, they can't mobilize their lower back. If they've been powerlifting for umpteen years, probably can't mobilize their lower back. It might be worth trying that, like trying some different exercises for it. Tell us about some of this nerve flossing and things being nervy. What does some of that mean? Yeah, so if you're trying to do a hamstring stretch and you feel it behind your knees, you don't even feel it in your hamstring or you feel it in your calves, you think your calves are stretching, your calves aren't stretching because if you're bending over, you're sticking your butt out behind you,

your calves are under less of a stretch. And if you're feeling it there, huh, I wonder what that is. It's your nerves. So if, if that's, what's holding you back, it might be worth looking, doing the Google search, finding some nerve floss exercises to do. One of my favorite ones is, um, elephant walks, knees over toe guy does that all the time. Um, I like to do that one as a warmup. I, I show that one to people who have really locked up hamstrings. So I'll literally just be talking to them. They're like, I can't touch my toes. So how do I do that?

And then I'll take them through like 30 elephant walks. And then I'll have them try to touch their toes. And like, wow, that's the first time I touched my toes in 10 years. And it's just because your nerves are holding your back. You just need to tell your brain that, hey, it's okay to be in this range of motion. I wonder what that does for you too. Like when you can move, when you can move better, you know, somebody might be like, oh, it's just temporary. But again, if you microdose it, like, okay, it's temporary, but what if through the whole day, my body can be a little more mobile?

And what if I can move a little bit better? What if every step that you take is a little bit better for the day? Exactly, yeah. And sometimes I'll be like in the grocery store and I'll stick one leg out behind me and I'll do that hip flexor stretch that I showed you earlier where you're just standing up and you're just splitting your legs a little bit and you tuck your pelvis under and you feel that hip flexor stretch. So like you can do it really just anywhere. Where there's a will, there's a way.

But this nerve flossing stuff is really, really interesting. I think it's highly underrated. And I think it's because a lot of people think really negatively about it because they think loaded nerve stretching where you get weights involved is really, really bad. And yeah, it can be bad. But with proper load management and you're not going to the point of pain, how is that bad for you?

How is it bad for you at all? So I think nerve flossing is something that's really underutilized. And you just mentioned the lower back. So what are some, because a lot of people within lifting and powerlifting have very tight lower back. I think it's still the greatest place where people spend money in our medical community is for lower back pain. Yeah, lower back pain, lower back injuries. I mean, you had one of those, right? So what have

you found, you know, even after your lower back injury, just things to bring some movement and not just movement, but also strength to the area, because although you want to be able to move your lower back, you still don't want it to be weak. Yeah. Yeah. So any, any hamstring stretch that you could ever do, you're probably also going to feel it in your lower back because it's so interconnected. The nerves for your legs that go through your hamstring stem from that lower back or your sacral area, or some, some of it comes from your lumbar area. So, um, any type of nerve floss is going to help. But spinal articulation exercises for the whole back are just very, very helpful. There's one Pilates exercise called spine stretch where you're sitting on the ground. You're sitting straight up.

So you're at a 90-degree angle. Your legs are straight out in front of you and your arms are out. And then you just start with your head. You nod your chin. You start to reach your head forward and just through your cervical spine first then you go through one bone at a time through your upper back just one bone at a time reaching forward you really push your ribs out back behind you because then you start to round even further and then you think about your belly button going back toward your spine as you start to round forward through the lumbar spine and then you're

reaching all the way forward pretty soon you're in a hamstring stretch but you feel it in your lower back because you're flexing so much so any type of way that you can mobilize that lower back um through articulation which means one bone at a time is going to be a good thing and you can even do that while in the office, sitting in your chair. Just tuck your tailbone under and then push your low back into the chair. Okay, and now try and get as tall as possible. Start to get as tall as you possibly can. You'll notice your pelvis slightly anteriorly tilts a little bit.

And if you play with those moves, it really tends to help as long as you're doing it often enough to give your body the stimulus to adapt. So all it is, is just time and consistency. That's all it is. And one thing I've noticed is like adding load to that somehow, like, well, there's the Jefferson curl obviously, but there's a lot of stuff you can do with the cable machines to still allow yourself to articulate and then bend at the lower back. A lot of that is at least for my progress. And I'm feeling for your progress to spend things up a lot. Yeah. Again, people admonish that. They hate it. Loaded stretching

for the lower back, that's Satan himself. It's not bad for you. It's actually probably one of the healthiest things you can do for your low back if you have a back that's not completely and totally shattered and injured. There are some things that you need to take care of, but if your back is healthy, you need to round it. And why not do it under load? If you have proper load management and it's a light enough weight and you feel comfortable doing it, please do it. Jefferson curls, highly, highly recommend them.

Cable stack, you're doing the Pilates spine stretch, but now you're just holding a cable in front of you and it's pulling you forward. And then you have to like stack your spine back up so good but instead of pulling directly back it also helps to um either sit up against a wall and then bring one bone to the wall at a time oh my god the tactile feedback with that feels so good or you can just do it against an imaginary wall but it's really hard if you don't like see yourself or but getting that tactile feedback somebody can stand behind you with a pole hold it straight up i've done that before there's so many different ways you can do

it you could also use a band if you had something to hold a band down and you're pulling against a band and you like let's say you had a kettlebell that you put on top of a band yeah and then you were using the band to pull you forward and pull back you can do that with the band too i've done that with loaded pancake stretching as well which also involves a lot of spinal flexion because in order to reach forward you have to flex your spine yeah so oh another thing um if you have a goal in mind for your exercise it helps a lot so if you're just focusing on doing my spine stretch right now, you're going to do your spine stretch. But if you have a goal, like I am going to reach this water bottle, oh, I'm an inch away in five more reps. Oh, I can reach it now. If you didn't

have that goal, you never would have gotten that far because you're just in the mode of I'm doing reps right now. But if you have a goal to reach for oh my god it changes the game it really does okay and you want to take a side out of here buddy yeah i did want to ask um because like you're 24 years old and as we build our friendship and stuff i think you'll probably make your way back onto the podcast a couple times um we might point to you and be like dude he's one of the smarter guys we've ever had on the podcast um Um, you're very intelligent. Um, you're, you're very smart. You know, a lot about a lot of things. So how, how do you learn like yourself? How do you learn? Cause a lot of the topics that we talked about got pretty complex and got, you were able to get fairly deep into each category. So I'm curious, how do you learn? so I'm curious how do you learn? Yeah so back back in 2020 I made a challenge for myself I wanted to read 50 books that year and so I was like okay I'm just do I'm gonna commit to it so I did and I read a book a week for the whole year and that's a great way to get just a shotgun blast

of knowledge but the thing is it when you're reading so fast you're not really gonna actually retain that but being a well-read person I feel like helps a lot because i've read a lot of books and i can relate to a lot of different topics but um when when it comes to flexibility specifically i literally just go and anybody can do this scholar.google.com and then boom it's like it looks like google if it was still like 10 years old like it just looks like an old search engine and then you just search whatever you want hypertrophy muscle growth and then you can you can literally do this you can filter 2022 hypertrophy and then you can read the latest scientific research on muscle growth. How cool is that? That is the most,

that is the most amazing thing in the world. So when it comes to learning about flexibility for me, I literally just go in there and I type in whatever I want, static active stretching, and then I'll just read a study on it. And the whole, not just the abstract, you go in there, you read the whole study you find out how they did that stuff and then you're gonna see words come up that are like cytoplasm i don't know what that is and then you're gonna google it and then okay now reread that section oh now it's talking about something else and then you have to google that and pretty soon you're like super super smart So eventually I hope that works.

And that's all it takes to be super smart. Yeah. Cause I don't have a degree or anything like that. I'm just a Pilates instructor. That's a nerd about flexibility. So I'd rather have that anyways. All right. Well, thank you everybody for checking out today's episode for everything podcast related, head over to powerproject.live. Make sure you guys like today's episode and subscribe. If you guys are not subscribed, drop a comment down below. Let us know what you guys think about today's conversation.

Follow the podcast at mbpowerproject on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. My Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter is at IamAndrewZ. And Seema, where you at? Discord. Discord. Down below.

Devilpussymugs. Powerproject.live. Hey now. Along with other shit. Other shit. And Seema Eni on Instagram and YouTube. Antima Yenay on Twitter. David, where can people find you? Yeah, I'm just Movement by David. You could literally Google that and find me.

Just anywhere. Movement by David. So yeah, stay flexy. I'm at Mark Smiley Bell and today's tip of the day is when you're doing mobility stuff, I'm just kind of going to comment a little further on how he was talking about reaching for the water bottle. We had a guest here that was showing us to go along and trace the fingertip.

And you can do that with your eyes. But if you're doing something like a twisting motion and you are trying to follow your hand back behind you, if you take your other hand and actually just push it forward, you'll find that you'll twist more. So as you're doing some of these mobility drills and some of these exercises that you heard David talk about today, when you're stretching and maybe leaning to one side, think about how you can incorporate the other side. Because when putting, you know, so let's say your right hand up over your head, if you think about lowering the left shoulder, you'll be able to reach a lot higher. So there's a lot more at play than just the muscles that we're working and just the muscles that we're stretching. Strength is never weakness.

Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.