Mark Bell's Power Project - INCREASE Learning SPEED and Efficiency, Andy Triana || MBPP Ep. 916

Starting point is 00:00:00 The thing that always stops people from getting better at anything is when it comes to like performance enhancement, what are some of the things you suggested to me and maybe why it's actually probably the best supplement you can get your hands on for inhibiting fat storage. Would LSD block them from being able to handle that to continue to lose and make the same mistake over again? I'm ready to go.

Starting point is 00:00:25 Did you drop your new pepped mark? Mm-hmm. I'm about to drop mine. You guys got new pepped? From Jake Benson, yeah. Oh, shit. I'll go steal some. Jake's got to share some with Andrew.

Starting point is 00:00:34 It's an emergency. Yeah, some new pepped. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Can you guys create an image that says new pepped emergency? Beep, beep, beep, beep. At the bottom of the screen. What's going on, Superbrain?

Starting point is 00:00:48 A lot of traveling, a lot of fun stuff. Life's changing, kind of how we talked about off the podcast. But we also talked about how it's an integral part of, you know, the everlasting human journey. So maybe my personal training and like my athletic endeavors are a little bit of a side dish at the moment. But there's a lot of cool stuff going on. Hypothetically speaking, of course, if you were to help somebody with some marathon training, what are some things that might help with marathon training? Because I feel like you're an expert when it comes to the biology of the body and also

Starting point is 00:01:22 some chemistry. So the best piece of advice I can give anyone when they start to dissect a sport is start with subtraction. So look at like what's the ideal human organism you can envision for the sport and then subtract the things that you do and don't have related to that organism. And the reason I say that is because you almost never end up with what you think you're going to end up. So like, well, maybe you're going to get jacked.

Starting point is 00:01:44 You're like, well, the first thing I need to do is obviously get jacked or, and then I'll just go from there, you know, or maybe I need to just get faster and I'll just keep getting faster and faster and faster. And that's just not how biology works. They're like these kind of Tetris block, like compounding adaptations you make. And one plus one tends to equal three a lot more times in biology than it tends to equal two, if you will. So when it comes to marathon running, the first thing I would talk about is your running economy and pace, you know, what is actually feasible for you to complete the task? And then that will end up giving you a lot of other answers. So let's say you notice like, maybe you're kind of a euphoric

Starting point is 00:02:19 hothead guy, and around mile 10, you're like, Oh my god my god this is amazing and all of a sudden you're running one minute faster than you thought suddenly then maybe an hour or so later you gas out you don't finish what you intended to do you sit down and you look at yourself like a failure and i need to do all these maybe supplemental tricks to avoid that failure when in reality you just didn't approach it correctly so i think when it comes to marathon running specifically, it's inhibiting failure, not driving success from a philosophy standpoint. That makes a lot of sense. I know you work with a lot of different sports and stuff like that. And some sports, they're just like on their feet for a long time.

Starting point is 00:02:58 So a sport like golf or something like that, someone's on their feet for a long time. How do you equate for that? Because a lot of times when we're talking about sports um we're talking about like contact sports we're talking about like football or mma you know a lot of times we're talking about things like that but how do you equate for you know a sport like golf where somebody might be on their feet for four or five hours uh we gotta look at things that have to do with what you need to do to play the golf. Like let's say we're talking about a golfer and how can you keep that going with this weird walk in the middle?

Starting point is 00:03:30 So it's funny in golf. If you hit a short shot, you're actually only walking a short distance, but if you hit a long shot, maybe it's a par five. Now you're walking a couple hundred yards just to get to the next shot. And then you do this over three or four days. I mean, uh, this past week i was at a golf tournament helping people out i was averaging over the course of seven days 26 000 steps whoa yeah so i'm doing a couple more steps than the golfer because i work with a couple guys so

Starting point is 00:03:54 i'm running here and there and seeing people but it's almost a totally different sport when you look at it that way versus someone who's at their home course on a golf cart swinging so we have to first before we even talk about golf, we have to talk about things like your feet and your ribs and your neck and if they're even ready to participate in sport for that long. So we see a lot of guys in golf who when they practice, they have these amazing numbers, they hit the perfect shot, but it's like can you do that in the heat with 20,000 steps

Starting point is 00:04:19 and all this respiration stuff comes into play too as we've talked about like nasal breathing versus mouth breathing in the past. There's a tool for every job. You actually need quite a few tools in your toolbox to play golf or even marathon running. I kind of delineate between fine motor skill sports and gross motor skill sports. It's like the first tree I make in my umbrella and like grappling too. When it's fine motor skill, you actually need far bigger of a capacity to participate than if it's gross. You can get away in a sport like football or baseball being ever so slightly deconditioned because you have like that one or two explosive moments and you can catch some air.

Starting point is 00:04:54 Maybe if in football you get replaced for a couple of plays. Maybe it's baseball. You were up to bat last inning, but you don't have to bat again for two or three innings depending on how things go. that again for two or three innings, depending on how things go. So understanding that a lot of fine motor skill sports like golf and marathon running involve a lot of other stuff is actually the best way to bolster your performance. You know, we're going to go back and forth between quite a few things, but when it does come to running, right, we've talked to a few people that are runners on the podcast and they don't really care about the way they breathe. They don't care if it's nasal, they don't care if it's through the mouth. And I know we've talked about nasal breathing before, but just so that some people

Starting point is 00:05:26 can understand, what would you have people pay attention to when it comes to their breathing, nasal versus mouth? So they're both useful tools. And the thing you need to understand to kind of decode this, because I've seen on social media recently, you guys know I'm not huge into it, but I see all the time people are saying, you have to do this. You have to do that. This is bad. This is wrong. So on and so forth. That's not the case. The body is always going to do its best to prioritize oxygen saturation. So whether you nasal breathe or mouth breathe, you can still attain those two goals.

Starting point is 00:05:54 That's the first thing you need to keep in mind. But we're getting them or getting to there in a different mechanism. When you nasal breathe, we're biasing elasticity of your vessels to kind of open up and to get more oxygen utilization from the blood because you're actually taking in less, obviously, it's a smaller breath. Whereas if you're mouth breathing, those vessels aren't opening up to the same degree, but you're taking in a lot more oxygen. So it's almost like selecting, are we looking for efficiency or a quick change? And then that's just right now, but we can also talk about training adaptation. So maybe if you're a marathon runner, your shorter runs should maybe be nasal breathing based. So you

Starting point is 00:06:31 can train that blood vessel change. And maybe you're doing one of your longer distance runs. You should probably incorporate a good amount of mouth cyclic breathing that goes with your cadence. So if you're running fast, you should have a faster breathing cadence. You're running slow, you should have a slower breathing cadence. And when running slow, you should have a slower breathing cadence. And when you talk about that cadence, do you mean like, is that what you like? Exactly. So maybe like, you know, let's say we're sprinting, it's gonna be, I'm sorry if that was too loud, but you know, it's going to be very, very quick and rhythmic like that. And you're timing that exhale with the forceful ground contact time of your foot.

Starting point is 00:07:03 But let's say now you're running a marathon, you're halfway through second, third, maybe one of your slower pace miles. It might just be a couple of steps actually per breath. So it might be, and in that time, based on your speed and cadence, you might've gotten in three to six steps. Gotcha. Yeah. I found that the breathing and just being able to calm myself down to be really important. And then also something that people might want to know is that I think if I think that sometimes it's it's not a bad idea to like force things here and there just so you can kind of make progress and so you can get used to certain things. through the process of working on nasal breathing, if it's too forced, you end up over-breathing anyway. So it just happens to be through your nose rather than through your mouth. It's harder to over-breathe through your nose.

Starting point is 00:07:53 Somebody might even say it's kind of like impossible. But if you start to try to like open up the nasal passages more and you use like nasal strips or you pinch your nose and you are able to take in more air, I don't think that's the point of nasal breathing. I think the point of nasal breathing is to try to put a little bit of a governor on your training and to allow you to train in maybe a different heart rate zone and so forth. Pretty much bang on, yeah. So like for example, it's not just heart rate that matters.

Starting point is 00:08:19 It's also blood pressure. So if you've ever done something and like you feel like your heart's pounding but you took the number and it was only like 86, it's not, you don't have sensations for your heart rate. People love to think that they can just breathe their heart rate down and it's indirect that you can do that, but it's not automatic. You don't just get to do that. So most sensations that have to do with your heart pounding are actually blood pressure. So we can realistically say that you're actually getting more blood pressure, like adaptations through that nasal breathing. And now if you can run with the same heart rate but a slightly lower blood pressure or maybe a slightly higher blood pressure, you can manage that through running or through breathing and running rather.

Starting point is 00:08:56 I'm curious about this. Do you care – because we talk about sleep all the time. We actually just talked about it with Jake and Joe. But with the amount of professional athletes you work with, do you care if they're snoring or breathing through their mouth when they sleep? Is that something that you try to have them do or how do you deal with that? I actually have it as a criterion marker. If you snore just because of positioning, maybe you just pass out in a weird spot. I don't hate it.

Starting point is 00:09:25 your anterior neck or maybe some of the nerves in your face are so tight that you can't have actual mechanics and locomotion like properties of your mouth, jaw, neck, lungs, then I have a problem with that. Okay. And how do you have them, like, how do you have people work on that or fix that? So really simple. You can just release these anterior neck muscles, your sternocleidomastoid. A lot of times I'll do supraoccipital and trochlear nerve releases of the eyes and near the scalp. And that takes care of all that for them. Okay. Yeah. And you were showing me some of that stuff, just basically putting pressure kind of around the eyebrows, pressure around the neck. And you can actually like grab some of these, these like cords around the neck and you can, you can kind of pull on them a little bit and you can get a ton of relief,

Starting point is 00:10:04 especially for people that are, I think people are a lot tighter in some of these areas than they might think. And when they first do like a little massage therapy on there, I think they'll be shocked at the results they'll get. Yeah. So I don't even, uh, for example, when I work with the golfers, a lot of times I'm with them all day. Like we'll start at seven 30 in the morning. We'll do a little priming session for their brain and nervous system. They go out and play. We do some restoration work and then put them to bed at night just like a little baby. I do these little rib releases, face releases and stuff, take their heart and oxygen rates before and after. Now, I've seen people's heart rates drop like 14 beats in like two to four minutes of just doing this stuff.

Starting point is 00:10:39 And then boom, they pass out and go to sleep. Damn. What are some things to think about uh when you think about a sport like golf like what are some uh obviously it's going to be individual you know depending on but are these guys like lifting heavy like uh what are some of the protocols so the thing about a fine motor skill sport is like realistically if you love to do something it's hard to tell someone it's making them worse i don't have any guys that lift really heavy and do that type of stuff. We might do a lot of high force, med ball throws, maybe some jumps, but you got to realize in a fine motor skill sport, just like marathon running and MMA and grappling, anything like that,

Starting point is 00:11:15 there's so much individual difference that goes into how you play your game that really is going to dictate what you do in the gym. So I have an athlete who's incredibly powerful, but his swing is very rhythmic, very cadence-based. So we do all rhythm, cadence, metronome-style work in the gym that is almost more dance-like in nature than weightlifting in nature because I literally don't care if it's a 5-pound or 50-pound dumbbell, but we have an exact metronome with certain eccentric, concentric speeds across the set we're looking to hit

Starting point is 00:11:45 where another golfer who could benefit from some more strength so he's going to be doing stuff that's a lot more strength oriented in the gym so whenever it's these fine motor skill sports it's like well maybe in grappling are you someone who's just going to squeeze the shit out of this guy and really knock him out that way or are you going to wait for that one moment where he's going to make a mistake snap on him and honestly waste minimal energy getting a takedown or getting a tap out you know you are someone who looks at things from a lot of new angles and different angles because you do a lot of reading you do a lot of figuring things out is there anything that you see within like maybe the coaches or the people that are working within golf that are maybe somewhat archaic and useless

Starting point is 00:12:23 but are common practice 100 it's the one size fits all approach that's really the big thing in golf so the question i get asked from other coaches involved all the time is like you're doing rotational stuff right you know and so i mean yeah sort of but isn't everybody like you know you're a rotational human being we're not just doing rotational stuff because it's golf like your marathon running you should be doing rotational work you should also be doing sagittal plane work. We're human beings. You should train to a degree everything.

Starting point is 00:12:48 But a lot of times people have this one-size-fits-all approach. And this is across pro sports as well. It's your name and who you are also dictates your training. It's like, oh, you're so-and-so. They don't need to do this stuff. And that's absolutely the biggest detriment to coaching in all pro sports I've seen, which is different. It's ironic. absolutely the biggest detriment to coaching in all pro sports I've seen, which is different. It's ironic.

Starting point is 00:13:09 You know, when you coach general population, intermediate level athletes, maybe sports that just don't get paid to be professional, you tend to see a lot more individualization because it's begetted by that style of coaching. You can't get any further without individualization. But you see some of these professional athletes in any sports who are some of the most talented humans on the planet at what they're doing. But you see some of these professional athletes in any sports who are some of the most talented humans on the planet at what they're doing. They can get away with like doing almost nothing sometimes and get some results, maybe not optimal. In fact, certainly not optimal.

Starting point is 00:13:36 But they won't turn to sedentary at the same rate we might over here. So that ends up being the safeguard for them and they're good enough at their sport. They've been doing it for long enough. They get by and then that coach ends up getting paid for doing essentially nothing. How do you get people to buy in? You know, when you start talking to a client, obviously they're probably recommended from somebody else. So there's probably already a little bit of a buy-in, but how do you get them to buy in on concepts that are foreign to them? Like, Hey, you know, we're going to have you take your shoes off and we're going to work on your feet. And it that's like weird and then you just like rub my ribs like come on bro like hook me up with some steroids or something um i always start with talking so i don't i won't charge any professional

Starting point is 00:14:15 athlete a single dollar until we've talked every three days for at least a month i was like if you can't introspect to this degree answer the questions I'm looking to ask you, and then do the little homeworks I want you to do. It's just never going to work out. And it's funny because I am lucky. I work with a management group who is a close friend of mine. So we always have like referrals in between us that end up helping out a ton like you said. I'm also not big on social media. So word of mouth is how I work.

Starting point is 00:14:40 So that does help me a lot with buy-in. But it's just conversations. It sounds kind of cliche, but it's communication relationships, just like anything else, you know, waltz into like a business executive's office and like slap down a contractor. This is what I want. 3%. You know, that's just not how the world works. You know, what you mentioned about the homework thing is kind of interesting because sometimes when an athlete works with somebody, they expect that coach, like you're doing all the work for me. Like, I need you to just give me the things that, like,

Starting point is 00:15:09 the easy things I need to do. But it seems like you're making your athletes truly work and change their habits. So I'm curious, like, what are some of the low-hanging fruit as far as lifestyle habits that you've seen have some of the biggest change on what these athletes do and how they perform? I got two things rushed to mind one is just lack of consistency a lot of times because they're all professional athletes obviously have elite level mindfulness whether they know it or not and maybe whether they express it or not you'll

Starting point is 00:15:35 see it in their sport practice they're like oh this felt wrong i gotta go back and do this and you can watch a video and you're like dude that looked fine i can't tell so their mindfulness sometimes that's so sport specific it actually leads to poor decisions in their life right they just won't eat breakfast because i woke up feeling good today i'm just going to go practice and it's like well that's kind of a major issue because it's 11 o'clock in the morning yeah you know that's probably one of the low-hanging fruit the other one is ironically the complete opposite in a lot of ends is lack of variability. A lot of times professional athletes get so caught up and this is how I got here. So this is what I'll continue to do.

Starting point is 00:16:11 And it's like, well, realistically, you're just not the same human you were six years ago. So these are no longer serving you. And those two pieces of low hanging fruit are how I got into that question and homework type deal. Because it's like, well, first you're going to get results just by changing these things. I shouldn't charge you for that because i'm just asking you some questions if you get better because we had a phone call good for you bro you don't owe me any money yeah but when you answer those questions and look within yourself and do these little things you start to realize things so it's funny mark said rubbing the ribs the other day i had this athlete come up to me i've been working with for barely any time like three months he's like andy i can't

Starting point is 00:16:44 believe that i can feel when I need a rib tack now. He's like, it feels unbelievable. He's like, it doesn't feel bad when my ribs are out of line, but I have an appreciation for when they're in line now. And it was one of these things where it's just a small nuance. Can you explain a rib tack, by the way? No, no, no. But it was just a small nuance. But we approached it in a manner where I was like, hey, do you feel like kind of out of whack?

Starting point is 00:17:07 It's like 7 p.m. You're still really hyped up. You still feel like you're in your golf swing. Do you feel like you're stuck? He's like, yeah, I do feel like I'm stuck. I'm like, well, let's take your heart rate. Let's do this rib drill. We'll chat for another 45 seconds.

Starting point is 00:17:18 Take it again. You tell me how you feel. And it was the same thing. He's like, wow, the heart rate did go down. He's like, actually, you know, I do feel more relaxed. And all of a sudden, after two weeks, he's like, wow, I didn't sleep as well those two nights when I didn't do those rib drills. And then it just becomes a thing where now he looks for it, you know. And I'm not trying to get people to eat out of my hands.

Starting point is 00:17:34 But when I'm doing a funky little rib technique, you know, if you're not even aware of what could change, you're going to think it's useless, right? So a rib tack comes from the czech republic late 90s um pretty small research group actually but it's probably the most profound um manual therapy technique i've discovered in my career so essentially we're just applying some light manual force to the ribs and it's a manual reset for your diaphragm so essentially you know tightness in all muscles is length tension relationship is what we call them maybe if like i couldn't get my arm out all the way i'd have what's called a length tension relationship between my bicep and tricep this is probably too tight this is probably not tight enough to straighten it out boom boom boom you know we've seen like the vladimir yanda thing

Starting point is 00:18:18 i don't know if you guys remember that name but it's like that cross upper lower cross syndrome like you see the anterior pelvic tilt weak hamstrings tight hip flexors that's what this concept comes from vladimir yanda from russia was the guy or one of those countries uh that coined this concept in anatomy and physiology so when we see these length tension changes in the ribs and diaphragm what we end up seeing is that the primary impact is on the vagus nerve the vagus nerve is probably the longest nerve in your body it controls blood flow to your heart lungs and stomach and i started to realize well not only is that happening it's also your ribs are obviously connected to your hips and shoulders so now i can change all these little things at once

Starting point is 00:18:58 and then over the years it grew into now it's part of my assessment process so it's like you think you have a shoulder mobility issue maybe maybe it's a breathing and rib cage issue so i'll measure your shoulder mobility i'll do some rib and breathing techniques and then remeasure it and then find out if you actually have a problem or you just couldn't get into that position because you didn't have enough air your collarbone didn't move and then your brain thought it was unsafe do you know um if you're an rpr reflex performance reset yep huge is it some of like the same type of concepts and thought it was unsafe. Do you know, have you heard of RPR, Reflex Performance Reset? Yep, huge. Is it some of like the same type of concepts

Starting point is 00:19:28 where they're like? Anatomy region-wise, yes. We're not using the same mechanism though. Okay. So theirs is more on the excitement. You know, they always talk about the excitation, especially in the sternum one. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:19:39 There's a little more on the excitement part of things. It doesn't mean it can't be relaxing, but through agitation of the muscle that's how they attend uh attain a golgi tendon organ response gto's for short are essentially the managers and supervisors for a lot of these length tension relationships so they're approaching just that in a different mechanism than i am but the validity to the ribs and all that stuff is still 100% there. It seems like a lot of the things you suggest are like on par with things that like regular people should be doing here and there as well, right?

Starting point is 00:20:13 Like just to like stress mitigators, ways to deal with everyday life. So what are some reasons why, you know, just somebody listening to this should maybe practice some of the things that you're mentioning that maybe some of your pro athletes are doing. It's funny. I want to start off with the joke. I always make the joke, but the only difference between a pro athlete and a regular person is their sensory motor cortex.

Starting point is 00:20:32 Yeah, sure. It's like the nerdiest joke ever. But it's like the only motor cortex gets them every time, every time, but it's like, uh, they just have to practice the delivery a little bit more. Yeah. Is that what But it's like they just have a skill.

Starting point is 00:20:45 You got to practice the delivery a little bit more. Is that what it is? The timing. Yeah. Oops. Emphasis on the nerd portion then, right? Yeah. But they just have a skill they're nasty at and that's it.

Starting point is 00:20:57 You know what I mean? That's it. It's not difficult. But at the end of the day, they still use oxygen and calcium and all this stuff the same way we do. So the difference is maybe they're excellent at something, and like all this stuff the same way we do. So the difference is maybe they're excellent at something, very specific, and maybe it's a physical sport. But that doesn't mean that if they have a high heart rate to start their sport practice that they're not going to be kind of screwed. You know what I mean? You can be the best ex-athlete in the world, but if your resting heart rate to start practice is 104, guess who's not going to make it through practice?

Starting point is 00:21:23 It's just impossible. start practice is 104. Guess who's not going to make it through practice? It's just impossible. So I think the same concept of low hanging fruit that I mentioned with having an actual routine and also understanding that there's a need for variability within yourself when you look into introspection as well as your schedule, those are the low hanging pieces of fruit. So all the time, I want to lose fat, right? Well, the first thing to lose fat is actually not losing fat. The first thing to losing fat is inhibiting the storage of fat. Then you can lose body fat because let's say you just took like, we'll do something extreme, right? Let's say you took like 700 mg of caffeine, some clenbuterol and thyroid, right? Like, you know, the most extreme thing you could think of, all that fatty acids that you liberated into your blood will by the end of the day be

Starting point is 00:22:05 restored into the adipocyte. Whereas if you inhibit fat storage through whatever mechanism, there's typically coming from parasympathetic responses to the liver, then you can have a lot more fat in your blood, but you're going to block it from returning to adipocytes. And that's the difference between fat loss. And I hate all these terms like fat burning you know um yeah when we talk about the liver going through beta oxidation you cleave a very specific carbon portion of a fatty chain and it can go through the krebs cycle and all that crap to get atp that doesn't have to mean that that fat's gone forever so let's say you took a fat molecule and you did it to that and end of the day comes and these adipocytes were drained.

Starting point is 00:22:47 They can still call into room service and get a new fat cell come in or a new fat molecule come in and refill that cell. So when we're really talking about fat loss, it's can you stop the failure aspect of what's going to get in the way before you hit the gas and try to make a big change. What are some of those failures? In fat loss? Yeah. So it's the inhibition of fat storage is like the term I like to use is essentially what we just said. And the reason that's the biggest failure is because everyone starts out too hot.

Starting point is 00:23:18 So we actually learned about the inhibition of fat storage through looking at growth hormone research. It's actually probably the best supplement you can get your hands on for inhibiting fat storage. Now that doesn't mean it's going to increase fat loss, but it's the same bank account concept. Did you spend more money or did you just save more money? You know, all these small nuanced differences add up to the same number. So fat storage is going to be inhibited by having low resting heart rates when you need to recycle energy. So let's say you leave the gym and three hours later you check your heart rate and your oxygen rates with a pulse oximeter. It's like 20 bucks on Amazon. And you see numbers that are similar to what they were in the gym.

Starting point is 00:24:03 And you see numbers that are similar to what they were in the gym. You're not going to be able to inhibit fat storage because we've had such a high energy expenditure for so long that the only way to make it safe again to your hypothalamus is to restore all the things or at least most of the things that you liberated during your intense exercise. So that's why it's such an easy little thing to harp on to talk about your resting heart rate and stuff like that because it's less than $20 to measure. It's probably even free if you have an iPhone, and you're actually going to get a lot out of it. So because we've talked about this before, but we're probably going to get into certain supplementation that can help with this,

Starting point is 00:24:41 but what are some practices that people should try to, again, low hanging fruit to have a lower resting heart rate on a daily basis? Practicing meditation is easily the biggest one. And I understand that meditation is an umbrella term. Like it's not just like sitting like a monk in like an orange jumpsuit and like going home. It can be that if you want it, but meditation can be anywhere from a moving thing to something that's like a float tank when like you're almost asleep and really everywhere in between so

Starting point is 00:25:11 practicing some acute mindfulness meaning that you're not just mindful because you're happy you're doing a skill that forces that to be triggered is one of the easiest ways to make that change to your resting heart rate because most people we just live in such a stimulatory society you know everything that you see on social media praises more more money faster higher heart rate more caffeine get more work done but no one talks about well it's like how are you going to recover from these things how are you going to be able to try to do this for seven days you'll never be able to do enough work in one day that justifies not being responsible for seven. That makes a lot of sense. When it comes to like performance enhancement, you know, you and I have been going back and forth a little bit on some of my marathon training. So I think it'd be great to share with some of the people, some of the things

Starting point is 00:26:00 that we've talked about. What are some of the things, if you don't mind sharing, what are some of the things you've suggested to me and maybe why? So I guess I'll start with, I definitely pegged you as a guy. It's going to be too excited. That would probably be your failure. It's not going to be that you didn't do the training, not going to be that you didn't learn enough about your running cadence and economy. It's not going to be motivation. It's just going to be, you know, when we originally got on the call with Dan, I pictured, you know, how is Mark going to potentially screw this up? And I pictured Mark at mile 19 with his eyes like this big. I'm like, oh my God, this is the best.

Starting point is 00:26:36 You know what I mean? Like I'm having a blast. And then all of a sudden he gets to like mile 24. He's like, oh no. You know, that's what I pictured going wrong potentially. So the first thing I looked at was telmasartan because we also talked about a little bit of that water retention on the longer runs. That happens – it's happened to Joe before with his world records. When you have an extreme expenditure, obviously the only thing being expended is not just like glucose and sugar and fats and all this stuff, ions.

Starting point is 00:27:04 There's water attached to it in fact it's going to be a lot of water liberated that water needs to be moderated and managed so it doesn't end up in your hands and you look like mickey mouse and the kidneys are obviously the job or the employers for the job when it comes to managing water telmosartan is great in that scenario because you can take it before bed. It's going to enhance what we call like the PPAR receptor family, which I'll talk about in a second. But it's going to do that as a perk in relation to the kidney changes it can give you. So then Mark can quote unquote train his kidneys at night, continue to do these meditation moonlight things that trigger that heart rate to be a little bit lower. And then when he goes to do his runs,

Starting point is 00:27:44 his kidneys are actually making adaptations along the way outside of running to manage water better while he runs. Kind of a crazy concept, but people think training is only going to the gym. You can train all day. Excuse me. It doesn't mean it'll be like high heart rate training, but you train your ability to bring your heart rate down

Starting point is 00:28:04 after something exciting. You train your ability to bring your heart rate down after something exciting. You train your gut to digest more carbs so you can ultimately build more muscle eventually. People like have certain areas where they accept that it's training. Let's say you want to build muscle for the first time. You're going to have protein farts for a little bit, but then you'll develop more pepsin and pepsinogen

Starting point is 00:28:20 and you'll be fine later on, right? And people are aware of that training, but they don't understand the concept of training other things. So the Telmasartan was a huge one. LSD is a huge one for marathon running. I've used it successfully in many, many people doing, whether it's trail running, mentorships, people that train trail runners, marathons, Ironmans, triathlons. Do you think it's pretty common? Even aside from your recommendation, do you think it's pretty rampant? I would say if you didn't take it, you'd be in the 50%

Starting point is 00:28:49 or less half that isn't taking it and running. Really? One million percent. Wow. Especially trail running. If you go to trail running, you'll literally be the only guy there not dosed in SEMA, I promise. So yeah, what is the thing with LSDd and like running the massive thing

Starting point is 00:29:07 is that so obviously and maybe not obvious is obvious to me you have you have a fatty acid in your blood right it's not just going to be like boom boom done right there are intermediaries along everything along the way so a fatty acid is kind of like this pen it's it's maybe too big to do anything at the moment and beta oxidation the cleaving of that first carbon is just the cost of admission it's just getting you into the concert you don't get to get to the drinks yet you don't get to like the special seating just the cost of admission we have other pk proteins protein kinases and they have a b c subunits and all this stuff that are going to trim it in like different areas and shapes and sizes.

Starting point is 00:29:45 So it has different, like not half-life isn't the right word, but period of time to be used in your blood, if you will. So protein kinase C and protein kinase A are the ones we're talking about with acid. Protein kinase C is going to make the fatty acid cleaved in a manner where there's going to be a longer time for it to turn into ATP. It's essentially going to make it like cutting in half. And now when we talk about protein kinase A, it's going to cut it in half in the exact opposite manner. And now you're going to have a faster usage of fatty acids acutely. We have all these protein kinases in natural ratios.

Starting point is 00:30:24 When you take even as little as 20 micrograms of LSD, you are automatically going to favor protein kinase A. The cool thing is it's actually going to do this in a relatively non-cardiac stimulatory environment. And off the top of my head, it's probably the only compound I can think of that does that combination. So you add that plus a little bit of euphoria and it's pretty much the perfect long distance running drug. Question about that. Is there any drawbacks to like maybe an individual's ability to feel pain or if something goes wrong while they're running, would LSD block them from being able to handle that? Because you already have all the endorphins

Starting point is 00:31:00 from running for long distances. On top of that lsd could that lead to even worse injury it could especially if you take so user error is always the issue here like people think it's like oh i need i need to be a trip and balls for this to work it's actually the exact exact opposite this protein kinase effect happens at what are called like sub-therapeutic doses so you could have it in your system and not even know it's technically happening to get the effect you want for it. But let's say maybe you're a little bit soft and you're not Mark Bell and you're like, oh, my feet hurt. They're going to hurt. You signed up for this. No one said like your shoulders and low back are going to feel good lifting heavy. It's the same concept, right? So there is potential for danger there. But that's the same potential with all sports.

Starting point is 00:31:47 There's a compound called data that I'm a huge fan of. I was part of bringing it into the industry recently in the last couple of years. And it works the same way as far as changing your work capacity in the heavy breathing world. It essentially – there we go. That's Jake's company, disapropylamine dichloroacetate. there we go. That's Jake's company. Dicloracetate. So what it's going to do, it's going to take the, essentially the brakes off your force production in your glycolytic or heavy breathing system. So it's called PDH, pyruvate dehydrogenase. By altering that, you can continue to be really strong when you're breathing really heavy. And, you know, it sounds awesome, but then the same

Starting point is 00:32:23 safety question comes up. It's like, well, what if i'm doing something dangerous that's in the heat and all this stuff like can i die it's like well yeah you know because we're going to stop you from being safe brain wise by decreasing force production when you lose oxygen yeah um but it ends up being all in user error you know whenever you come to make a change in biology, you always want to start with the lowest and smallest controllable change possible because we all know that, you know, epigenetics is how we live. It's the term for like the little protein day-to-day changes after genetics. Yeah. Those are going to be compounding and they have way better hearing than any other cell or if you will or organ system, whatever you want to call it. These cascades have

Starting point is 00:33:05 to do with epigenetics are very sensitive and they take really good notes that's how we adapt over time that's how you could do something submaximal for four weeks and on the fifth week do something super maximal you know so people just tend to be too short-sighted when they take stuff and like well i want this all now and then don't realize well if i do this three consecutive days, how is that going to impact me and how is that different? So not to jump around, but whenever I mentor people, I talk about the 48-hour law. You want to look at things and I'd say shotgun shell-like approaches, 24 to 72 hours. So if you do something in a 48-hour period, just because you went to sleep in the middle doesn't mean they're separate days. hour period just because you went to sleep in the middle doesn't mean they're separate days you know so doing something today can directly improve or negate what you're going to do tomorrow

Starting point is 00:33:50 then you have to summate what happened over the last two days not take them as days one through seven damn what are some of the other things you advise there's uh ittp and yep inositol tris pyrophosphate, ITPP. So this is actually relatively simple even though the name sounds really crazy. We have three binding sites for oxygen on hemoglobin. It's essentially going to effectively bind one to two, closer to two of them. So now you have more free usable oxygen for muscles and for all this other stuff. So there's a priority list for everything in the body, right? So it's not like if I ate 100 grams of protein, why does that not build muscle compared to

Starting point is 00:34:31 maybe 200 or 250 because of this priority list? It's not like, oh, here's a protein shake. This is going straight to my biceps. It's like, well, did we pay off everything else first? It doesn't work that way? Unfortunately. I don't know. Damn.

Starting point is 00:34:43 That's for me. I was going to say. It looks like work that way? Unfortunately. I don't know. Damn. That's for me. It looks like it's working out pretty good for you. But it's just like finances. You have priority lists. If you spend all your money on hookers and blow, guess who's not paying their rent this month? That rent has to be higher on the priority

Starting point is 00:35:00 list. So it's the same thing with whether it's supplements or food or anything else. Like if you're going to make a change, like see where it is in the priority list and then think more than one day in advance. You know, going back to sport you were mentioning that's user error but because it's not necessarily a controlled substance and they don't know how to use it correctly could that be a situation where they maybe push themselves deep into like a heart attack or something because they don't realize how much work they're doing and they they'd usually

Starting point is 00:35:39 have the signals to slow down right or am i totally off no so it wouldn't you'd have to really mess up to get that far okay it's more likely that you'll run into like overheating cramps something like that first you know like you're not going to randomly have an mi a myocardial infarction that's the heart rate like okay it's uh you're going to run into a lot of other signs first so that's what actually kind of makes it a little safer than LSD because not that either of them are unsafe, to be honest. You know, I'm not saying that everyone should take them either because also like what's the average person going to gain from some of these things? You know, like if you can't run four miles in the first place, LSD is not the drug for you. You can't even run

Starting point is 00:36:19 four miles, you know? So it's that type of stuff. So you'll just run into other safety signals. And then the biggest one in sports is actually sport technique degradation. I'm giving you the opportunity to do something. I'm giving you the energy. I'm putting your brain in a position to do something. But if you start sucking, that's going to stop you way before anything else. So maybe you took like Jakes' I believe 200 milligrams per milliliter. Let's say you're like nuts and you do three cc's, right, which is more than you need by a long shot. But all of a sudden you started doing terrible.

Starting point is 00:36:47 You wouldn't, as a logical athlete, continue down that vector because maybe it's a grappler. You're like, man, I keep looking for this armbar, this kimura, but it's just not there. I got to pick something else. I don't want to get too far away from it because then I'll end up forgetting to ask later. But I like where you're going with that 48 hour rule. So in the context of somebody trying to get better at jujitsu, would you recommend like, like I went this morning, so should I go tomorrow morning or maybe later tonight or whatever it may be? And then what would the like protocol be for keeping that 48 hour rule in mind? So it's more looking at, you can only make so much change, right? So like, you know, if you could just go to jujitsu twice a day for seven days a week and get better, obviously you would do that.

Starting point is 00:37:29 But that's also not feasible either. So it's more looking at, again, like what Mark said earlier about the marathons. I'm going to start the subtraction method. Maybe it's like, look, you have awesome technique, but you just don't have enough creatine phosphate in your biceps to keep this choke hold long enough to actually submit someone so maybe the day before you could do some creatine phosphate bicep work and then supplement with creatine and eat a little extra protein and take you know some specific amalgam of like methylfolate and p5p which will acutely decrease homocysteine and increase how much creatine phosphate you could store in a cell and And then tomorrow, you'll be able to sustain that chokehold maybe six seconds longer.

Starting point is 00:38:08 And then you do that over a couple of months and you've had maybe six sessions where you were six seconds longer and now you've made the epigenetic change to have that creatine phosphate capacity you need. And even drugs and supplements aside, you can also look at the 48 hours as sleep, food, right? Like, how am I going to recover from this? What do you have access to? Maybe you don't want to get involved in taking a bunch of different supplements, or maybe you don't want to take the time to learn about them. Do you have access to, you know, a shower, you know, like a cold shower, hot shower, different types of therapy like that. It's interesting that you

Starting point is 00:38:48 mentioned that because that's the way I've always looked at the body in terms of dieting and all kinds of different things. I've always felt the body works on this two or three day delayed response. Okay, that was cool that I did that on Monday, but what's Wednesday and Thursday going to look like? Yeah, one of the best caddies I work with says that he won't play golf more than one day in a row. He's like, if I have a great day, I'm taking two or three days off. I'm going to go lift weights and do something else. And he's a caddy. And it's funny cause he doesn't know these things, but he's just been intuitive enough to realize that like, I can't perform that optimally for

Starting point is 00:39:20 two straight days doing the same exact thing. So I'm going to have this three-day rotating schedule and that maybe works best for him. It's funny. That's – as I've mentored Jake over the years, that's how I have him approaching based on how he naturally does things through his methods and systems and me mentoring a little bit. That's how he ends up doing a lot of his bodybuilding work especially for females now are mini two to four-day cycles that you just run again and again and again. So we kind of – we were talking about this before,

Starting point is 00:39:47 but when it comes to like maybe a skill acquisition stack, you know, Andrew's trying to get better at jujitsu and learn new technique. People are trying to learn new form for different movements and have things click. What would you have maybe from the supplementation side? And then, you know, applying that skill, how can somebody go about it so they can acquire certain skills, physical skills faster? So I will kind of run you maybe like a two or three hour routine. So it's like, maybe it's jujitsu, like maybe an hour before jujitsu,

Starting point is 00:40:15 especially if you want to, you know, get the whole gamut, like maybe improve body comp a little bit along the way, you know, all that stuff. I would expose yourself to a cold temperature before you eat. And I'll talk about like the stuff it does after, but I'll expose yourself to a cold temperature before you eat and I'll talk about the stuff it does after but I'll expose yourself to a cold temperature then eat your meal then Mindfully and I don't mean when I say the word meditate. I don't mean again sit there like home We're gonna do a spatial drill while you meditate So maybe you're gonna see yourself hitting this Kimura and then it's like now I want you to see it happen really really fast and then slow it down and then change speeds seeing it correctly in your spatial visualization drill then when we go to participate maybe we'll go a little bit of new pepped maybe we can use a

Starting point is 00:40:55 little bit of amoxypeen which is something i think i talked about last time or a whole different gamut of supplements we can talk about in a second but now you're going to have, you know, the specific epigenetic cascade happening in the liver is called lipin one. When you go from cold to eating and changing body temperatures and getting hot, this is going to give you the acute work capacity you need to maintain the skill. The thing that always stops people from getting better at anything is their capacity for excellence. And this is something I talked about quite in depth in my nootropics book coming out, but your capacity for excellence is what's stopping you from making skill

Starting point is 00:41:30 change. So maybe we talked about Andrew's like bicep creatine phosphate thing and the chokehold before. And he's like, you know, I have the technique. I see it in my head, but I just can't get it right for long enough.

Starting point is 00:41:40 So his skill acquisition actually has to do with keeping that motor pattern in his brain that has to do with the specific chokehold hot long enough. So his skill acquisition actually has to do with keeping that motor pattern in his brain that has to do with the specific chokehold hot long enough, and then actually getting it cooled after the gym. So maybe in that scenario where it's like, I know it in my head, but I can't maintain it long enough, you're learning stuff might come after your sport practice. Whereas if you're just dumb as bricks and you can't figure shit out we're gonna have you take the new pep before you know so that goes along with all that stuff as well interesting that's dope okay how's that new pep did it hit you guys yet yeah i feel a little bit yeah yeah when he said uh like you can see the kimura in your head just like an explosion of like happy feelings came over me and i'm like imagining hitting a kimura now so yeah if i had to pick

Starting point is 00:42:24 us like so i said meditations that like umbrella term there's so many little aspects of it that are still called meditation spatial visualization drills in the last eight months is probably my by far my new favorite tool just the amount of things i've been able to see change and the opportunities and doors i see open up for athletes who can start to master these skills is just outrageous. I'm learning new stuff all the time just by working, reading and seeing stuff actually come together in that real world scenario. So a spatial drill, one of the golfers I'm working with, I have him at the tee box and he's like a 360 degree camera and he has to rotate around himself

Starting point is 00:43:07 and see himself in 3d from every single angle at the t-box so he's visualizing this yes okay so spatial ability when we look at it from like the actual definition of it's your ability to manipulate things in your head so like the rubik's cube in your head concept right can you tell me how to get home like driving through the streets in your head without you having to go there? You know, these are tangible skills. This isn't a gift. It's funny.

Starting point is 00:43:30 I work with so many pro athletes. I hear them tell me what they think their gifts are all the time. I'm like, you're wrong, bro. And I'll tell them, look, it's not a gift. You just worked harder than everybody. Most of the time. You're like, you're six, nine. I think that's where we're going to start.

Starting point is 00:43:44 Exactly. So like, you know, the gifts I see are like people's immune system, how quickly they can learn a new skill, their ability to maintain a skill under crappy biological conditions. I believe nowadays those are your genetic gifts where they're not skills that you could train. I can only – if I give you glutathione and it takes you two days to get the immune response, I can't really do much to make it hit you in six hours. You know, I have some athletes where I've seen athletes lose six pounds of inflammation in one day with the glutathione intervention, but I promise I don't have the genetics he has, but I've seen it happen. And that's the stuff where like, wow, it's genetics. You know, I've had athletes drop their resting heart rate, like 30 beats over the course of a month and i i remember with this athlete it was after a surgery and he's like

Starting point is 00:44:28 you know andy i'm just gifted in that sense i was like to be honest no i was like you didn't met your meditation every day you followed it up with your nasal breathing walk you did the proper stuff after your heavy breathing gym lifts and you did that every day for a month you got 28 good reps in with that it's's not genetics. You just did the work. Power Project family, quality sleep can make everything with your health and fitness easier, which is why we've partnered with Hostage Tape. Now, we've been talking about mouth tape for years and nasal breathing for years. But one of the problems that we've had with tape is we all like to rock facial hair. And a lot of the mouth tapes we would use would fall off of our face at night.

Starting point is 00:45:03 Hostage Tape doesn't fall off your face if you have a beard or if you're not a man and you don't. I'm joking. I'm joking. You don't need a beard, right? But either way, hostage tape makes sense. It'll stick to your face when you're asleep. You'll have better quality sleep because you're breathing through your nose all night long. It is a no-brainer.

Starting point is 00:45:24 a no-brainer. And if you head to hostage tape.com slash power project, you'll be able to get the power project annual deal, which is a year's supply of hostage shape for 55 cents a day. You'll be saving $150 on the typical yearly deal. You're going to get two free tins and a blindfold. It's a no-brainer. So head there right now and get yourself some hostage tape links in the description along with a podcast show notes. Shut your mouth when you sleep. Enjoy the show. With glutathione, I had a cold recently and it lasted about a day and a half because I thought I was fucked. My daughter was sick. A bunch of people in the house were sick.

Starting point is 00:46:01 I started getting like a weird throat thing and just was just tons of snot and the whole thing, pretty bad cold. And I think you might've recommended a couple other things, but I remember I took glutathione and you know, it could have been coincidental. I mean, I also got extra sleep and things like that, but I mean, it seemed like it blasted it right out of there for me. By the way. And I know you're about to say something about that, but Joe said that like he, uh, I think Jake – his parents got – and Jake told him to give his parents glutathione. And he said within a day, they were over it. So what the fuck is going on with glutathione, Andy?

Starting point is 00:46:34 The reason I love it is because like it's the foundation of the immune system. If you go online, you're like, oh, I'm going to eat blueberries. And they'll tell you all this stuff about antioxidants, the miracles of antioxidants. And you're like, all right, I actually started smoking cigarettes. They'll tell you all this stuff about antioxidants, the miracles of antioxidants. You're like, all right. I actually started smoking cigarettes last week. Let's see how bad this is for me. You Google that. It's like these free radicals are going to kill you and your parents next week.

Starting point is 00:46:53 You know what I mean? These terms, antioxidant and free radical, actually come from glutathione. So glutathione is your parent immune system like currency, if you will. Same way different countries have different currencies. Glutathione in its reduced form is going to be its pre-usage form. And then when it gets oxidized, it's been used. The balance of reduced to oxidized glutathione in your body is how we determine like vague immune system strength, what you're dealing with immune system stress-wise and all that

Starting point is 00:47:23 stuff. So the reason it's so effective in so many different ways is because you're giving your body the currency to pay these debts. Now, the novel thing about glutathione, which makes it different than maybe an antibiotic, is that you're going to run through the whole sickness process still. An antibiotic is blunting the process. So Mark's cold may have originally been meant to last three days he went through the whole process of i'm still have a lot of snot yeah blowing my nose a

Starting point is 00:47:52 lot but i don't feel sick at all yeah so you might have gone through the process of getting over the inflammatory markers the pro-inflammatory cytokines all this crap but you still are going to have the things that come along with it right like the snot for example you know you still are going to have the things that come along with it, right? Like the snot, for example. You still have to get all that snot out eventually. Maybe your body handled the little DNA things that have to do with getting sick, but you might still have this. Whereas an antibiotic is stopping your body from being able to process the inflammatory cytokine sickness-based response.

Starting point is 00:48:20 I want to go back to the visual stuff real briefly. When I was powerlifting, whenever I did my assistance exercises, whether it was the reverse hyper, the glute ham raise, the tricep push down, I'll land on the glute ham raise. For example, the glute ham raise, I would think about like where I'd get stuck in a deadlift. And I would think about like finishing that deadlift because typically I would round over like in a squat or in a deadlift. And then most of the weight would be dumped right into my hamstrings. So I would visualize that as I was doing those exercises when I would do tricep pushdowns or close grip work or any sort of assistance work for the bench press, I would think about where I tend to get stuck. And I would think about pushing through those ranges of motion. So I found that to be insanely helpful. And then on top of that, as I, as that yielded some results, I started to think

Starting point is 00:49:16 about where am I competing? Like, what's the venue? What's it going to look like? Who, who am I, who am I kind of up against? Like who else is going to be there? You know, what's it going to look like? Who, who am I, who am I kind of up against? Like who else is going to be there? Um, you know, what's it going to feel like when I on rack the bar? Like, is there a big crowd as a small crowd? Like, what am I dealing with? What are the, what are the lights look like? I would think about everything and run through every single, uh, scenario. And I would try to play that out, uh, the best I could. And that, that ended up being really effective for me. Uh, on. On another note, I heard Tiger Woods with this three picture idea. Have you ever heard of that? Yeah. Tiger Woods would look down at the ball and this is something his dad taught him. You can look it up, Andrew. Maybe it'd be

Starting point is 00:49:55 better actually, if you hear the commentary from him. But anyway, I'll just briefly describe it. He looked down at the ball and he would, you know, kind of blink and take a picture of that. He'd look at the hole, he'd blink, take a picture of that. He'd look at the hole. He'd blink, take a picture of that. And he'd look back at the ball again, take a picture of that. And then he would hit the ball. And obviously it seemed to be something that worked out pretty well for him, that visualization. So it's cool.

Starting point is 00:50:17 I'm going to talk about two really world-famous studies that describe the basic physiology you need to understand as to why that actually works and happens the first has to do with the stigma of like science being awful to monkeys and look we haven't been great to these animals over time uh but uh i think it was in the 50s or 60s i got this from the norman doidge book the brain's way of healing um the exact story obviously so the norman if you haven't heard the norman doidge series the brains the brain that changes itself and the sequels the brain's way of healing legitimately life-changing books like i'll never forget i was in college i printed out the first one uh one page at a time in the college printer and everyone hated me for it and i was walking around with a stack of single sided pages like this reading it but it was free because i downloaded it illegally. Sorry, Norman. Tough times.

Starting point is 00:51:08 But what they said was so they cut off these monkeys' arms. Then they had them do like one random exercise with the other arm. Then they opened up the monkeys' brains ethically, of course. And they realized that even though they had severed an arm roughly 80 percent of the changes made to the other arm still happened to those neurons and the severed arm but the important part was this before the brain was fully adapted to not having an arm so it's like wow like the concept of like oh i only did seven on my right and six on my left i'm gonna be asymmetrical it's like it's gone like imagine like i like to play the game with people whenever they bring up an idea to me let's play the if it's true game so like

Starting point is 00:51:48 run with the concept of if it's true that one rep on one side made a difference imagine how weird we would all look everyone stands on one leg like it's funny like can you wipe your ass with both hands probably impossible i haven't tried my left'd probably get my watch dirty. We're all probably going to hurt ourselves trying. I think I could. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. But that's the first piece of information you need to understand. The body is excellent at managing symmetry when it comes to sports and the reciprocal sides of things happening.

Starting point is 00:52:21 The second thing we now need to understand is that there was a really famous uh period of time where they were doing studies on memory and the two things that mattered the most where they had people well the study they had people memorize cell phone numbers that were outside of your country because obviously like the metronome and rhythm the things helps you remember so if you give someone their number it's like da da da da da da da da da you know what i mean boom easy to remember because they're usa numbers but also when you talk to someone in aussie and they're like my number is plus four four and then we give you 11 digits and it's like oh okay dude i'll definitely call you on that number oh god right so we have all these things that are really important variables as to not just how we create the memory but how the brain interprets

Starting point is 00:53:07 these things right so now when we get back to the concept of well how can visualization actually help me at something they were starting to we can start to realize that your brain is anticipatory obviously right you know the same way we know your heart's anticipatory if you just like went walked up to your 600 pound deadlift and your heart rate didn't go up a little bit before you got to the deadlift it literally just explode you know like you'd be you'd be a bruise right here right um we need these like segues biologically and everyone accepts that but the same thing happens in the brain the reason you can't just walk up to your pr on any lift without having some type of little routine is because you need

Starting point is 00:53:45 this anticipatory action that goes along with the world around you, what you've done in the past, certain muscles that are going to help get those parts of your brain red hot so that they're ready to participate by the time you get to the bar. So maybe you're doing a tricep extension. It was like a really difficult drop set and you went up there and you were like flexing your quads before. It probably wouldn't help the same if were like flexing your quads before. It probably wouldn't help the same if you were flexing your triceps, right? Same concept as Mark was saying. The rush of performing in front of a crowd often messes with people because they don't take into account the fact that their biology, their heart rate, their respiration rate is going to be higher in sports performance the day of because we have these outside variables and then all of a sudden what you thought was maybe doing a kimura under a heart rate of 128

Starting point is 00:54:29 is now trying to do a kimura with a heart rate of 158 and now we have a different scenario the funny part about that is sometimes your athletes perform better than you'd think in bad scenarios when i was doing my assessments for the golfers you know arguably one of the best golfers on the team had the highest putting success rate with the highest heart rate on the team at the same time. I was like, oh my god, that's kind of crazy. You shouldn't have that happening. But what we start to notice then is he's actually able to perform under a higher level of norepinephrine than any other athlete on the team. So that's why his success goes up as his heart rate increases.

Starting point is 00:55:06 on the team. So that's why his success goes up as his heart rate increases. He's able to perform under higher levels of norepinephrine than maybe other guys on the team are. So his high point of success is a different biological marker than the high point of success for someone else. Is there a reason for that with him specifically? Did he, without realizing, train that aspect of himself or is it just something that he was used to over a long period of time um probably a little bit of both probably it definitely has to do with personality too definitely has to do with past successes like this athlete had a lot of huge wins in a short period of time in his career so it's like all of a sudden to now make sense as to why he may have been accustomed to that because so many things happen so quickly short periods of

Starting point is 00:55:43 time all the pressure and then you've had success during that high pressure scenario, you create associations. If you ever tried to jerk off with sandpaper, it probably didn't go well. So you're going to go back and remember and be like, shouldn't do that again. I'm going to grab a tissue. Yeah, yeah. Perfect. I think what you're mentioning about success is huge because sometimes when someone's successful at something, they tend to kind of make it look easy.

Starting point is 00:56:10 And sometimes it looks like nonchalant. They barely even care. They close their eyes and hit a free throw. I think through that confidence that you build when you're young, I've said this before, there's some people that you can kind of see in their step, in their stride, that they never hit a home run. You know, they weren't, they were never the guy, they were always the last guy picked type of thing. And that's going to shift your confidence in the other direction. And so you're going to be, you're going to be convinced in your head that you can't, I can't slide into that plate the way the other guy did because I don't have that capacity but if you had success in sports in other areas and you're like well I can mimic anything anybody else can do and watch this I'm gonna do it better yep it's funny success and winning is such an interesting

Starting point is 00:56:54 thing in pro sports everyone thinks it's something that you could chase you can't chase a win until you've already won that's what makes the first one so difficult because once you've won, you now have all these data points, all these things, and most importantly, recent memories that you can refer back to. Whereas if you've made a bunch of mistakes in a row doing something, the most recent memory you have for it

Starting point is 00:57:16 is probably multiple failures. So it makes it difficult. So whenever people are like, Andy, I really need to win this tournament. You haven't won yet? It's like, no, you don't. I need you to outperform yourself and manifest your best and then if you happen to win then afterwards we can talk about winning and how you win but you can't talk about how to lead a horse to water if the

Starting point is 00:57:35 horse has never drank the water you know if the horse isn't accepting of it so when you have an experience like failure it might change you but you also need to realize in a funny way how it didn't change you. So when you win, there are certain things you don't want to change. And there are certain things you do want to change the same way with failure. So if you won for the first time and you happen to do a couple of novel things that I might look at as your coach that really contributed to the win, we have now have data points that say you respond really well to this. That's why that heart rate test I did on that athlete was so important because now i can go back to his team and say in fact we need to be getting his heart rate even higher in warm-ups the day of because we know this

Starting point is 00:58:15 response to norepinephrine he has whereas with someone else on the team i might limit his heart rate in his warm-up to 128 because he doesn't respond better to norepinephrine as it just dose-dependently goes up. What if somebody's listening and they have a negative association to pressure? Like, let's say competition's coming up and they're trying to be positive, they're trying to feel good, but every time they're about to either get on that platform or they're either about to get on that mat and they're about to compete, it just falls through for them. What can this person do? Or like, I know there's, there's so many things that a person like that could do, but what are the things that you think someone who's just

Starting point is 00:58:49 had so many losses, what can they do to try to turn that vision of themselves around? So it's funny, you probably won't expect this answer, but the worst thing you could do in that scenario is positive self-talk. You're setting yourself up for an expectation that is very unlikely to happen. It's colliding with your recent memories. And then you're going to get to a point where you're going, oh, crap, I don't even know what to do right now. When you're going through, you know, in golf, they call it the yips. You call it a slump in baseball.

Starting point is 00:59:15 It's all the same stuff. A period of recent memories that are negative, you don't want to identify with, atypical for your performance metrics, whatever. You need to accept the fact that there's a high chance it's going to happen again. You need to take it on the chin and then have strategies that you can train or not train mentally to overcome it. So for example, let's say every morning of a tournament, you take a massive shit and like your stomach hurts and you can't eat a lot of food and you realize to yourself

Starting point is 00:59:44 that's negative and you keep anticipating it and be like, oh, man, if I get this stomach ache, I'm not going to be able to perform. And you just said that to yourself. Yeah. And it happens. You're screwed. But if you also say, man, I just need the stomach ache to go away and I will be able to perform well tomorrow and then you get it, you're also screwed. So what you then need to do is accept it. There's probably a 95 percent chance I wake up tomorrow with the runs. But what I'm going to do is accept it you know there's probably a 95 chance i wake

Starting point is 01:00:05 up tomorrow with the runs but what i'm going to do is i'm going to maybe eat something i'm going to do this meditation maybe expose myself to some cold temperatures and just eat it and then maybe one day it won't happen and i'll deal with it then but lacking acceptance is the only or sorry lacking acceptance is the best way to continue to lose and make the same mistake over again. You know, it's, if you,

Starting point is 01:00:27 I always give the people the example, if you swing a hammer at a nail and you accidentally hit your thumb, are you going to swing it again and be like, huh, that was a mistake. Or are you going to move your thumb out of the way? Move your fucking thumb, bro.

Starting point is 01:00:38 Yeah. It's reminiscent of like Jordan's flu game. You know what I mean? Like everyone always references that, but like, I mean, he's had a lot of fucking wins, but he gets the flu or he gets food poisoning or whatever he's still able to perform

Starting point is 01:00:48 at a high level you know it just because it's you can self-talk yourself into or out of something but that's just acute persuasion that's very different than having conviction in the fact that it doesn't matter you know when I was competing in strong manner quite often, I had some success. My mantra at my peak of success was, you got to shoot me. It was like, the only way I'm not going to do this today is if you shoot me.

Starting point is 01:01:14 I can get a stomachache. I can puke. I can only eat bananas. I'll starve. There's just no scenario where I will not complete this task. You literally have to physically disable me for this. And look, that's intense, but a strong man is intense. You pick mantras that match what you want to do in your personality, right?

Starting point is 01:01:30 But it's always going to be acceptance of the possibilities that allows you to perform. Putting 1,000 pounds on your back, Mark, is never not going to be scary back in the day, right? But it doesn't mean you didn't squat it, right? So there's that dichotomy. You need to be accepting of what you're doing to be fully participant, submerged, all that stuff in what you're doing as well. So like lowering expectations might not be a bad idea or reinterpreting what you're expecting of yourself. Yeah, reinterpreting because we don't want to – like for example, let's say you've had recent failures. I just don't want to get teched here. It's like that's a terrible expectation, you know, but the expectation should be, I want to get a takedown when I feel nervous. You know what I

Starting point is 01:02:10 mean? And that's how you would start and be like, okay, I felt nervous. It was 10 seconds left on the clock where normally I'd be like, eh, I'm just going to fight and hand fight and just hope nothing happens in 10 seconds because I'm scared. My heart rate's high, but instead, no, take a shot and I want you to go for that shot for real. Don't just like put your head down and do one of these and like hope they're close. Like take a shot. You know what I mean? And that small success is like, wow, you know, I was actually able to do something not stupid as shit when I was nervous today.

Starting point is 01:02:36 Like let's do something slightly less stupid next time. Yeah. What you got, Andrew? Well, I'm just thinking because like I haven't lost in jiu-jitsu because I've never competed in jiu-jitsu. I'm still within my first. Undefeated. Yeah, I'm undefeated. Also winless.

Starting point is 01:02:50 That's okay. We don't need to share that part. I'll edit that out. But yeah, I plan on competing at some point this year. So I'm kind of figuring out how I can approach that as far as like not having expectations but I want to also still be positive and I don't have a negative experience with like competing to like be like, hey, 95 percent chance I'm probably going to get X, Y, and Z might happen. So for someone like me, what advice would you give for the first-time competitor going in? I'd start with – so it's funny. The confidence is the discrepancy between how you view yourself and how culture reaffirms you. So having a confidence issue means I think I'm skinny and you told me I'm fat.

Starting point is 01:03:33 People think confidence issues have to do with like, oh, I'm sad. I'm this. I'm that. It's like no. Something I believed was seemingly not true to the people that I care about. That's all a confidence issue is. seemingly not true to the people that I care about. That's, that's all confidence issue is. So when you're doing something new, the reason people tend to feel like they lack confidence because they don't have a self image, you know what I mean? So I would ask your coach, Andrew, be like, Hey, like, what do you see in my jujitsu? What's the typical vibe? What do I, what am I good at? What do I suck at? Watch yourself on video and start with like, who am I? Who's my sport self, if you will, then that'll give you some more data. It's like, wow, sport self is like actually kind of intense. Like, you know, Andrew's a pretty cool laid back guy.

Starting point is 01:04:11 Maybe it's a kind of intense. And like, he really likes to shoot single legs and like put his forehead in someone's floating ribs along the way. You know what I mean? Something crazy like that. So it's like, all right, well, my expectations should probably be to not back down

Starting point is 01:04:23 if I'm an aggressive guy going out for the first time. You know, you look at that mistake, especially the first time, try to avoid it and then give yourself something to chase. Don't attach it to numbers or wins. Just say maybe if I get put in this scenario, I just don't want to be a little bitchier. You know what I mean? And that's where you start with. Not saying that you will, but you get the idea, right? Or maybe it's like maybe for the first match, like I snapped guy's head down i just got this huge hormone rush and i just

Starting point is 01:04:48 wanted to punch him in the sternum you know what i mean and maybe when you get that hormone rush it's don't overreact don't do something crazy you know have a managed expectation of what you can realistically do that does not impede your self-image as an athlete and then as you develop that self-image then you could start talking about strategies and do i want to win this match or who am i going against but if you don't know who you are you know there are not many decisions you can make what about like uh associating with uh like a badass character from a movie or like a superhero so uh one of my diffusion drills i know like little kids do that like a lot of little kids that have uh

Starting point is 01:05:26 sometimes they're not having a hard time at home, but kids that have a hard time at home, they'll go around in a cape like all the time. You know, they'll go around in like a Batman cape or Superman cape all the time because they want that strength and security from that. And I think that's actually pretty intuitive. 100%. Kids are geniuses. You know, children are

Starting point is 01:05:42 actually the only way you could form new language. You don't realize until you think about it. Like you start to get old and you hear some kids say something. You're like, what is that? You know, and you lose it because what passes on language is generations. Like imagine if all of us in our adulthood now is like, I'm going to make up a new word and see if it catches on. You say it to one of your friends. You're like, dude, what's wrong with you?

Starting point is 01:06:03 You know what I mean? You can't do that. You know know children are what manifest and promote these changes so one of my favorite diffusion drills diffusion drills are how you kind of separate from something you don't want to identify with with one of the golfers i'm using i'm working with right now is he had some really bad negative memories recently had some mental health stuff so he loves baseball so it's like all right we're gonna do something that has to do with baseball in your drill. And we're going to have you do a spatial diffusion drill. Cause I added that like little skill aspect to it for him to really pull them out of the scenario to kind of force you to one, actually change your brain,

Starting point is 01:06:37 but more importantly to let yourself not identify with what you're feeling for a second and then return to participation so like when it comes to if somebody wants to i guess start doing something let's say that they they don't view themselves as being a good grappler or they don't view themselves as being uh you know good at whatever is they doing what should they try to do today get a win get a smart start with the smallest win and make it happen so maybe the smallest win is just set up to i just i just keep shooting my shot with no setup you know so it's like i don't even care about hitting the shot i just want to hit a setup today and then force yourself to hit the setup and it's like great that was a win let me take some new pep afterwards because maybe you're a more intense guy you don't need it beforehand take some new pep and some cbd afterwards you get your heart rate down you got

Starting point is 01:07:29 that win long-term potentiation is what happens after you're done exercising in the brain with your motor pattern it stays on you could learn next time i want to do the setup and then you know make that first step again i don't care about the shot yet because i have too many bad memories with this shot to just jump right into hitting that double i want to hit the setup and then fake make that first step again i don't care about the shot yet because i have too many bad memories with this shot to just jump right into hitting that double i want to hit the setup and then fake it or just do it and even if the shot's shit my only goal today was to hit the setup and then take a step and going that way people are like i said with the fat loss they're always just jumping ahead you know i took 47th this week i'm gonna come back and win the tournament next week it's

Starting point is 01:08:03 like are you now? Not saying you can't, but it's like I'd be very impressed if you made that jump because you don't have a branch to swing to like Tarzan. You're going to broad jump from that branch to that tree over there. All right, buddy. See if you could sink it, but go for it. You can be a hero. But the likelihood of you doing so is low. So whenever I tell people, especially as professionals, look at what the potential for success is. If you're walking into a meeting and you know you have this deal closed and all you got to do is sign it and smile, the worst thing you could do

Starting point is 01:08:34 is go in there hot and try hard. When you have a high likelihood of success, the best strategy is being mindful and present. You only want to try really hard at things you suck at logically. And like, for example, in the context of a lifter, you were talking about like tiger woods ritual. It would be beneficial for lifters if they feel like, Oh my conventional deadlift form is shit.

Starting point is 01:08:55 They need to figure out how to have just a ritual before that lift and just get in some good repetitions so that they can bake in those motor patterns. Yeah, pretty much because, so for example like you know i was great at yoke walk and i was able to get myself to a point where i would just think of like a rocket ship taking off and that was my whole yoke warm-up i wouldn't have to get under the yoke at all and i it just took me a long time but i was actually quite good at it i did 865

Starting point is 01:09:19 in nine seconds um that wasn't training it wasn't a competition i've done 800 in competition in under 10 seconds wow um but i was able to train myself where thinking of this rock chip take off just made everything triggered but that's obviously comes with mastery so let's say you're that grappler right and you're like you know i heard someone say this and i want to envision myself as a fucking samurai and cut this guy's head off or some shit like that, right? You don't have the skill to be able to do that in the first place. So maybe you need to start with a spatial drill. It's just you and a stance or just you and a gi and you go in 360.

Starting point is 01:09:56 And then the next step is seeing you hit the setup. And eventually you'll be able to be that samurai who cut someone's head off and shoot a double. But that only comes with mastery. So if you want to start, your first visualization drill might just be diffusing from stress and it could have nothing to do with grappling you can imagine yourself on a beach with your girl and that's literally step one for you just to get yourself in a place where you can participate then step two is okay let's do that spatial drill then step three is maybe let's see you hitting the shot quickly and then slow it down immediately one of the best ways to go from a novice to a really good at spatial abilities is to alter the speed. So imagine like you see the Nike commercial and it's like someone throwing a football.

Starting point is 01:10:32 It's like, right? Yeah. Make that your spatial drill. So it's like, all right, I want to see speed stop and own it. And then all of a sudden return to that speed. That's a great way to kind of progress through the intermediate stages and eventually you just think of like x and i mean curious about like these these spatial drills for the athletes you work with i know it's probably a pretty big deal but what is like how how how often and maybe how long do you do you tell them hey i want you

Starting point is 01:11:00 to try to visualize or think of this for at least this much each day or this much every few days. How often do you think this is something that people should try to do? Most people suck at it just because we don't ever get taught early on in life to practice it. So just do it every day. Even if you sit there and you just feel like an idiot and you're like, oh, I don't see shit. You did get better at it. And eventually it will get better. But you need to – it's legitimately a skill.

Starting point is 01:11:25 Some people can just do it much easier than others. But just like weightlifting, like there's – you didn't just walk in and squat 405 day one with perfect form. You had to get yourself there a little bit. So when you're doing these spatial drills, it pretty much needs to be done daily. And the cool part is – and this is sometimes what makes people lack buy-in. You could do the spatial drill having to do with anything to make yourself better at X. You could just think of the Rubik's Cube. And if everyone did the Rubik's Cube drill in their head, they would get better at it.

Starting point is 01:11:52 Maybe it's boring. Maybe it's hard, but whatever. But it's worth it because anxiety is essentially nothing more than too much electrical stimulation or ionic or hormonal, whatever, too much stimulation in your brain. And it can't be centered into the cortical region or the brain area that you're using. So it's spilling over to other areas. And now what's happening is your field isn't just like field of vision in front of you having to do with the microphone. It's the microphone is my stove on. Oh my God. I think I got screwed on the flight on the way here and you're thinking about all these things that are taking you away from the moment so spatial drills over time and the reason they're so valuable for athletes is because you actually increase the

Starting point is 01:12:33 ceiling of how much electrical stimulation you can handle oh man this is exciting yeah do you have any other instructions like you said uh you know you had somebody visualize like a whole 360 rotation of like looking down at them the speed thing is there any other like instruction that you give those my favorite ones just like be consistent like it could literally be like like in Seamus Yeti water bottle start I'm just gonna like see the whole thing in 360 or whatever it is like you know maybe if you like art you can like see a drawing you know it could literally be anything and again that's what I say that sometimes what turns people off because it makes you think you're a charlatan but the brain is just so much more advanced than your other organs that it does

Starting point is 01:13:13 like think about what i said about the monkeys you don't even have to have a freaking arm attached to you to change your right arm nerves like think about how crazy that is so it's more of a lack of appreciation and understanding than it is like oh your drill wasn't good you can do the dumbest drill on the planet and it'll work what was that free throw study oh yeah there's some yeah really interesting information on that i forget exactly what it was but uh there was guys that actually shot a free throw there were people that um i forget what the other people were doing but they visualized it some people that did both. Right, right. And I think the combination of the two was the winner. For myself, I found it – I think this can go a little too far, and I think if you're getting to the professional level, maybe it could be overkill at a certain point, but I think that it's important early on

Starting point is 01:14:05 in someone's new endeavor to have access to the sport in as many different ways as possible, in the easiest ways as possible. Um, something as simple as like your jujitsu places, like down the street from your house, like that's a good start because you're probably going to be consistent with it. But even beyond just that, maybe now that you picked up, you know, running or bodybuilding or jujitsu, now your library looks a little bit different, right? Now you have a book that shows the execution of these moves or you learn the history of jujitsu. Like where did jujitsu come from? Um, you submerge yourself in it. And when I was powerlifting, um, I would watch tons and tons of videos of other lifters lifting. And after a while I started to kind of recognize, okay, well that's that guy and that's that guy and that's not necessarily me. However, I can still

Starting point is 01:15:03 take a little chunks of what this guy is doing, little chunks of what this person's doing. And then I started to kind of match up with, oh, that guy kind of like he's I think that guy's like similar height to me. Oh, he's in the same weight class. OK, well, he's got some of the same some of the same things he's going through. I probably need to go through. And I started to kind of just be able to mimic some of the stuff that they're doing. And I found that to be huge. So like something like mimicking is something that's so underrated. But if you can mimic something that somebody is doing, or if you can figure

Starting point is 01:15:36 out ways and or figure out ways to surround yourself with the information, looking up stuff on YouTube and being relentless with it. Anytime you have a chance or opportunity to have a small break, now your podcast changed too. You're not just listening to regular podcasts. Now you're listening to podcasts by jujitsu people or again, whatever your sport is. I think that that is massively important. And again, you know, in my powerlifting career, I remember I would, after my shower, you know, the mirror would have, you know, in my powerlifting career, I remember I would, after my shower, you know, the mirror would have, you know, moisture on it or whatever. And I would write down my, my numbers, the numbers I wanted. I'd write, you know, for months and months and months and months, I would write down a

Starting point is 01:16:14 thousand pounds over and over again. I'd see it over and over again. I'd talk about it in the gym. I'd talk about it with other lifters. I'd talk about it with other guys that had the same goal. I'd talk about it with guys that already did it, you know, and I would gather information, like, how is this going to actually happen? How is this going to actually go down? And when I unracked a thousand pounds for the first time in competition, it was nothing. It was like a beautiful thing. I was sitting in the hole with the weight. Well, maybe not the hole. Cause I always squatted high. I'm a cheater. I was at the bottom of my squat. And I just remember like, this is awesome. Like I felt the strongest at the very bottom, which I never even felt like that

Starting point is 01:16:53 ever again in my powerlifting career. But at the bottom of squats, probably where you should feel the worst. But I visualized that so much and ran through that so many times. And it's also by no mistake that, or maybe by my mistake, I didn't envision 1,100 pounds and I squatted 1,080. That's where the story ended. And then same thing with the deadlift. I ended with like a 766 deadlift, but I really wanted an 800 pound deadlift. But when it came to deadlifting, I didn't have the same confidence. I didn't have the same carefree flow that I had with the other two lifts. And so therefore I wasn't able to perform it the same way. I also was just the least interested in it. So I thought about it less. So I practiced those visual visualization things a lot less. I didn't put

Starting point is 01:17:42 as much into it. And that's what you end up getting out of it. 100%. When you speak about something, it gets spoken into reality. You know, it's not just like this random, like hippie thought it's real, you know? So it's like, you only, it's funny. I'm saying this cause I have to pee right now. Like when you mentioned it is when you really have to pee, like think about how many times you're driving home and you're like, I'm good. I'm good. And you're five minutes away from the house. You're like, oh my god. I'm not making this. You know what I mean?

Starting point is 01:18:08 Holding the keys into the doorknob. That's when it's over. Drop them. But then every now and then, you'll get home and you're like, oh my god. I forgot I had to pee somewhere. All these managed perceived realities because people think that like we're not in control of what we're perceiving. But we very, very much are actually. Maybe it's not direct, similar to your heart rate.

Starting point is 01:18:28 You can't directly bring your heart rate down and up through breathing, but that can get you pretty close. If you just – Wim Hof breathing, you're not going to do that with a 64 beats per minute heart rate. It's not the point either, but it's like you can have this relationship. So when you're looking at something like that thousand pound squat again and again in so many different scenarios you actually have like an affinity for it rather than a repulsion from it you were getting to that thousand pound drink salivating because you've thought about you've seen it so many times now the moment's finally here whereas with the deadlift you know 776 was probably pretty close and then when it got to the time for 800 you just didn't have that same affinity for it so in fact when you

Starting point is 01:19:09 broke the ground and it felt heavy or fuck this but when you unwrap that's heavy right when you unwrap the thousand pounds though you're probably i wanted this to be heavy i was expecting it to be heavy so you have a different response you for example, let's say someone was like, go lift up that car. And you're like, I can't lift that car. But it's like, oh, your girlfriend's under it or your baby's under it or something. You're going to lift that car with no second thought. And that's what I mean about this perceptual reality. You created a scenario in your brain where that moment coming to life was not just the most enthralling, exciting thing. You had been prepared for it from a neurochemical, a muscular technique and all this other stuff.

Starting point is 01:19:47 So you might have fully been able of deadlifting 800 pounds, but you couldn't create a reality and be mindful and have an affinity to the moment that allowed you to do so. So when I spoke about sports psychology back in the day, it's crazy how COVID killed all that stuff for me. It needed to happen eventually. I wasn't going to make any money being a speaker. But I would speak about you walk up to your deadlift.

Starting point is 01:20:12 You're getting ready for your third attempt at a meet and you open up the curtain and it's St. Peter's Basilica in Italy on Christmas Day. It's like, do you hit that deadlift? It's like, fuck no. You're not going to hit that deadlift. You know what I mean? You're at church. It's Christmas Day in Italy. You know what I mean? Like you're at church, like it's Christmas day in Italy. You know what I mean? Like, or the Vatican or whatever it is, like you're not going to hit that deadlift because that environment, that know whereas let's say you did it and it was like a grungy gym and like music was blasting and there's blood on the floor

Starting point is 01:20:50 in the corner i can literally do whatever i want here no one's gonna say shit do you want to pee yeah is that cool yeah i'll be quick guys power project family your normal shoes are making you weak this is why i partner with vivo barefootes because they have a wide toe box, they're flat, and they're flexible. So with every single step you're taking, if you're taking a 10-minute walk outside or when you're working out in the gym, your feet are able to do what they're supposed to do in this shoe. They have tons of options for hiking, running, training in the gym, chilling and relaxing, casual shoes. If you're out on a date, you need to check them out. And Andrew, how can they get it?

Starting point is 01:21:27 Yes, that's over at vivobarefoot.com slash powerproject. And you guys will receive 15% off your order automatically. Again, vivobarefoot.com slash powerproject. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Where exactly did we leave off? We were talking about how you had to pee. Yes. Oh, oh yeah like the visualization

Starting point is 01:21:46 perception reality all that stuff yeah these guys were just commenting on how they feel it's going to be really helpful I think both of them probably have been practicing some of it to some degree but how it's going to be helpful with their jiu jitsu yeah it's funny you know I think going back to what you said or I think

Starting point is 01:22:02 what's the most archaic thing going on what we see in the golf world or sports as a whole? You know, part of the reason why I did go super brain in the first place, you know, separate from my private stuff and invented it or invented, brought it around, whatever you want to call it, was because, you know, I'm a chatty guy similar to Mark. So I would always ask people, hey, real quick, give me three things you know about the brain. And the answers I would get would be a concussions are bad. Like caffeine makes me go fast. And like, you know, if I drink enough alcohol, I don't, I'm not smart, you know? And it's like, there's just this massive like separation between like what people know about their brain and like life, you know, like people know a decent about the muscles. Like you just inherently know how to eat, right? If you wanted to lose weight one day, you wouldn't go to McDonald's, get a double quarter pounder, and then look in the mirror and be like, I can't believe I'm fat.

Starting point is 01:22:51 I'm shocked. I can't believe it, right? A lot of people do that though. Maybe. I guess so. There's a lot. Yeah, I can't figure it out. I thought that chocolate cake was going to lean me out, but it just didn't.

Starting point is 01:23:03 But it's just not as intuitive for the brain you know so i think creating awareness about what the brain actually does the rules and all that stuff is huge you know that nootropics ebook i'm going to bring out in a little bit uh i think it's going to be actually it's probably almost done by now with my graphic team probably be up for sale like two weeks from now like end of april um i talk about the dichotomy of north and south of the neck and i talk about the mason dixon line as an analogy where it's like once you're north of the neck what you knew about the immune system and antioxidants does not apply in the brain anymore so maybe we want to minimize free radicals in the muscle outside when we train but free radicals are what put you to sleep at night you know what i mean when it comes to the

Starting point is 01:23:44 brain function if you want antioxidant in the brain, it might not be the best to do that before bed because we need these shifts and things to happen throughout the day. So being aware that the brain has different rules, I think is going to be one of those things that in the next couple of years, and maybe it's a decade with sports performance is going to change it. So a lot of the golfers I work with, they're playing the same games. They're doing all the same practice drills that they were doing before working with me. But we change them in a small way to make them more receptive to their brain so they learn from the drill better. Maybe we do it in a slightly different environment.

Starting point is 01:24:20 Maybe it's as simple as using different verbiage. You know what I mean? Maybe it's as simple as using different verbiage. You know what I mean? So especially in golf, one drill I do with people playing like what's called short game, like short distance shots is not only do you need to call it out. I want you to talk about the shot shape prior to it happening. And then I want you to manifest what you just said to me instead of just saying, I want to hit this ball to five feet what i want you to now say is i want to see the ball go through this flight pattern and roll out a lot or a little and then make it happen and if you don't you realize you have a lack of association maybe there's a certain amount of tension you need to put on like one foot before you create a lateral drop you know i'm sure in semen knows what that is so uh it's a wrestling i don't know if you guys use that in grappa regardless a lateral drop is a type of throw

Starting point is 01:25:09 yeah you need to have a certain amount of weight on one throw so you can create that change and go the opposite direction whereas if you have an unequal distribution of weight or whatever it is and you still hit the throw you're actually not going to learn from it the same way you won't be able to reproduce it because you didn't put your body in a scenario where it can listen. It makes a lot of sense when you think about the physical body.

Starting point is 01:25:30 When we talk about how the brain listens, let's say you thought that shot was going to go to five feet and roll out another five feet. But in fact, you flew it seven feet and it only rolled out two feet. It doesn't sound like a big difference to us, but when you're talking about maybe the slope of this green is like this and it creates a shot that you didn't want now you did the correct thing but you have an improper association with what happened in real life so you're not actually doing what you

Starting point is 01:25:56 think you're doing you just said you wanted to hit it to two feet and you hit three different shots two feet yeah it's not the same thing your brain won't learn from it the same way so i'd actually rather you hit terrible shots but know exactly how the shot's going to go and be in exact control Yeah. hearing somebody saying like, really define your goals. And then for me, I think partially just the way that my brain works, I happen to see everything a little backwards, which fucks me up and slows me down sometimes, but also gets me to the finish line before everybody, because I already got there because I already saw it. So working backwards has been something that's really helpful for me, but in defining the goal and painting a picture, as you're saying, like how far are you going to hit the ball? What club are you going to use? What if it's windy? Like, what are you going to do if it's,

Starting point is 01:26:56 you know, you've had trouble in the past and it's been windy, you know, in the last golf game or whatever, you know, now what are you going to do with it? Be really descriptive of exactly how you're going to reach some of your goals. That's been really helpful. I've noticed. Massively so. Massively so. Because it doesn't just tell you the end outcome, which everyone's obsessed with. It tells you how you're going to get there.

Starting point is 01:27:18 And if you know how you're going to get there, you also inherently know how you should start. And if you know how you should start, how to get there, and how to finish, it's much easier to just put it into reality and to put it into something your brain can actually see in your head. And it's funny because now all the conversation we've had kind of summates into one centralized idea where it's not just visualization. It's not just proper training and supplementation.

Starting point is 01:27:39 It's really this whole picture of what are you telling your body and brain? What's happening actually? And is that difference something that you're comfortable in accepting? It's really cool because you're just – you're trying to have the individual implant as much detail into it as possible. Because like there's some people that have really good instincts with some of these things. So like a guy, he's been shooting threes for a long time. So he has like an instinct to understand how it feels, everything. But like when you start to put more detail into like, let's say, how it feels leaving your hand, all those little things, it can maybe cement it a bit better into application.

Starting point is 01:28:17 100%. And that's what I was ultimately describing as how I got to the yoke walk as a rocket ship for me at the very end level of mastery. Because actually in reality, the rocket ship gave me associations of my feet and the tension i want to create and i just taught myself that these are now associated you know it's the same way kids have weird names for things but like you know what it is and the kid knows what it is and the same thing happens right maybe with your best friend you could say something totally stupid and backwards but they understand you and like that understanding happened you, and that's really what we're talking about here is does the image in your head match up with the reality that you want it to match up with? I'm curious about this. We've been getting a lot

Starting point is 01:28:55 into the feet for the past year and a half, two years. And I want to know, is there anything that you've noticed or anything that you've been thinking about when it comes to the feet of the athletes you work with? Feet's huge. Like it's the three anatomical areas I put my emphasis on are feet, ribs, and neck. And I just believe, you know, through my own theories, if you manage those, you're very, very unlikely to have reoccurring issues elsewhere that aren't like instantaneous or due to something random or acute, right? So when it comes to the feet, the most important thing everyone needs to understand about the feet from a brain perspective is the information through afferent, efferent signaling.

Starting point is 01:29:32 Imagine a two-way street. One goes from the outside world to your brain. One's from the brain to the outside world. The information, electricity, and everything taken in by your feet is going to create the ceiling on how much force your hips and ribs can produce muscularly. So, like, try to go take a shot with, like, Uggs on and then try to take that same double leg shot with barefoot, like, on the mat.

Starting point is 01:29:55 And it's not going to be, like, a thing where it's like, oh, no, I can do this in Uggs. Like, no, you definitely cannot. You know what I mean? And that's really, like, the reason I focus on the feet is because that's our communication mainly with the outside world. When you're walking downhill, how come you can run downhill and not tear your ACL? It's because of your feet. It's not your hamstrings. It's your feet.

Starting point is 01:30:15 How come you can like walk for miles and then do a perfect golf swing? It's because of your feet. It's not because of your brain. Your brain is deciding what to do based on the information taken in by the feet. Plus everyone I deal with for the most part wears cleats. Whether it's like football or golf, all these field sports are wearing cleats and you have what's called cleat foot or I call it cleat foot. The foot becomes rounded. Same thing in wrestling shoes if you've seen it in SEMA.

Starting point is 01:30:40 They get like the flat – I always describe it you look like a subway sandwich roll your foot's like a subway sandwich yeah it's like that perfect floppy it's not really edema inflamed but you can see there's a little bit of like lacking veins lacking that natural arches not just the medial arch but all the arches of the foot and like they flip it upside down it literally looks like a hoagie roll you know what i mean yeah like the foot's dead yes it's not a coincidence you have low back pain it's probably not even your low back it's probably your feet yeah the feet are such a massive thing and then these guys being in cleats um do you have to talk i mean if you're going to talk to them about the feet i guess you might have to have conversations around like walking and standing uh if they have symptoms of

Starting point is 01:31:24 maybe lower back or knee issues and so forth i try to approach it as little as possible because most of the athletes i deal with are already nasty by the time they meet me so it's more like you know roll out your feet with a golf ball play some of these games i was telling you about with your feet pick up the thing you see if you could throw it into the circular area and wear the toe spreaders at night after you put the cleats on and just go be a savage yeah you don't want to give them too much shit yeah yeah you know so i'm curious about have you ever heard of code footwear code no i'm curious about your thoughts on it because it's a company where they can they make um uh custom cleats for the athlete's foot so like an athlete can send whatever print of their foot and then they'll make cleats that actually fit their foot.

Starting point is 01:32:10 I'm curious if you think – because cleats up until this point have been always been – had a pointed tip. But do you think that something like that could be beneficial for field athletes or do you think that there's a reason why cleats because I actually was getting into the shoe world a little bit, working potentially with some golf industry, well-known places for creating orthotics that were specifically made for left and right-handed golfers. So you can make each shoe individual to the side you swing from because if you think about being left and right-handed in golf, it's the exact opposite. And I've talked to a couple other companies about creating better cleats. opposite you know and i've talked to a couple other companies about creating better cleats so yes there is a specific reason that wrestling shoes football cleats they all have like that like rock chip like weird yeah almost like shape to them and one it's because how you're going to cut through the air the same aerodynamics as a car but two when you make that initial point of ground contact you're going to have a better opportunity to propel yourself through the ground.

Starting point is 01:33:07 If you make ground contact with a square, you're going to make a chunk into the ground. So you see what I mean? There is some aspect to it. The tip is also going to allow you to propel better. Whereas if it's a square shape, for example, or even a triangle shape like hyper-tipped, you're not going to be able to propel off that. That's why you could still be crazy fast in cleats and have the grossest feet on the planet. You know what I mean?

Starting point is 01:33:30 So there is room to be in the middle, I believe. We need the aerodynamics for obvious reasons, especially interaction. Like what if the ground's really soft? You need that tip as well to not sink into the ground the same way. Different types of cleats you know you'll see in the super bowl especially guys will come out with different cleats in the second half because now the turf or the grass is all messed up maybe it started raining maybe it's colder now

Starting point is 01:33:54 like this is really really common stuff that not everyone thinks about so the shoe game is massively important not just for customizing it to the athlete's foot but as weird as it sounds also making the athlete's foot fit to the cleat better because ultimately i can tell you like this is the perfect shoe blah blah blah but if it doesn't make you faster then it's not worth it so we also need to get athletes to fit into these cleats better in a weird way so that's why cleat foot's a novel thing because i don't want to change too much about the foot because maybe I make you like this perfect foot and you're slower. You know, one of the issues in a lot of physical therapy practices that they don't realize is they're actually making athletes acutely worse quite often. Because like maybe we're going to solve for this asymmetry you have in your hips.

Starting point is 01:34:38 But you play an asymmetrical hip sport. Not very many basketball players go for two-footed layups or go to layups 50% on each side. They're always going to favor one side. All of a sudden, if you change something about their rib kinematics and they're a layup guy on the left side and all this, you're going to make them worse at it. You're going to make golfers worse at golf by fixing their ribs and their neck to be symmetrical. When in reality, there's nothing symmetrical about this. We their neck to be symmetrical when in reality there's nothing symmetrical about this we want you to be healthy enough to perform without any degradation but i also want you to be the fucking best like i want you to go out there and be like i took fifth but like i have a perfect

Starting point is 01:35:16 rib it's like oh sick dude nice job enjoying fifth you know what i mean like it just is what it is no one hires you to make you like worse but feel cooler or whatever it is that's one of the gripes i have with the physical therapy world sometimes is it's similar to doctors ego driven uh in my mind at points it's not that it's bad but they're going to continue to profit off of someone who may or may not make sports performance improvements so whenever i make my contracts with athletes i always make it win as a team profit off of someone who may or may not make sports performance improvements. So whenever I made my contracts with athletes, I always make it win as a team, loses a team. I don't want to be paid more if you suck.

Starting point is 01:35:52 Like I don't deserve it, you know? And therefore, if you get better, obviously I deserve to be compensated a little more, but that's because we're making synergistic movements together as a team. Whereas if you tell me you have tight glutes and I make your glutes looser but you still lose like i still did my job quote unquote and i think that's one of the dichotomic issues with sports performance nowadays is they'll bring people on staff who aren't going to mutually progress in their career and financially as the athlete progresses have you talked to some of these high level athletes before and um just been a little confused on like maybe the fact that certain things haven't been uh they haven't heard of certain things before you're like you already have a coach i don't

Starting point is 01:36:38 understand what like because a lot of times they have a lot of coaches along the way right um there's this particular athlete right now where we're having a management issue as a team because someone on the team isn't doing a good job and they're blaming other people and they're being very abrasive and the athlete's suffering because of it. So, you know, I manage his performance.

Starting point is 01:37:00 So in a way, it is my job to help manage the other practitioners. So now I have to go to him and be like, hey, you know, the way you approached him after our tournament this weekend was inappropriate. The way you approached it made him feel worse. You put yourself before the athlete and ultimately it was your failure and you blamed someone else.

Starting point is 01:37:18 So instead of looking in the mirror and saying, I need to improve how I function to make the team and this athlete better. You decided to berate this person, blame it on someone else, and then go home and let them think that their negative performance was someone else's fault. In reality, you know, it's always your fault. And that's a good thing if you believe it's your fault, because then you could take ownership over what happened, accept it and get better in the future. But if you go home now thinking that this guy screwed me over

Starting point is 01:37:46 and that's why I didn't do well today, the likelihood of you doing better next tournament actually gone down. Back to Project Family, how's it going now? We like to look good in the gym and out of the gym. That's why you always see Mark and I and Andrew is stepping up on the short, short game, wearing shorts from Viore and clothes from Viore. And honestly, the number one compliment that I've seen that i've gotten and even mark's gotten is damn

Starting point is 01:38:09 your butt looks good and that's because well the clothes we wear make our booties look delicious andrew how can they get it yeah you guys both have pretty big wagons uh you guys can head over to viore.com slash power project that's v-u-O-R-I dot com slash power project to receive 20% off the most amazing apparel that looks so good inside and outside of the gym. It's going to make your ass look fat. And your ass will look fat. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. God damn it.

Starting point is 01:38:41 That was a good one. That was a good one. Make your ass look fat. Have you seen anything common amongst a lot of the athletes that you work with in terms of like what they're able to do in the weight room? Like how much of an impact does the weight room have? Do some guys like hardly need any of it or like where do you know what have you kind of seen because working with these high level people it's a different world out there than just working with your average person the most mind-blowing thing is obviously i came from the strength

Starting point is 01:39:13 world just like you guys did um the weight on the bar isn't strength i've seen guys who are mind-numbingly strong on the field like We'll literally destroy a 400-pound human on the field, but don't need more than 30 pounds on a split squat to get what they need out of it. And conversely, I've seen guys who can bench 100-pound dumbbells that have club speeds in golf that are lower than the weak guys on tour. And that's what made that stupid nerdy joke earlier about the only difference is your sensory motor cortex, right?

Starting point is 01:39:44 It's getting a little funnier it's like hitting me different now um but that's like what it is like your muscles being activated are like electrical phenomena it's like the light switch you know they're pretty freaking stupid like they just respond to calcium ions they go through the binding bedring bridging blah blah blah but what determines how much force you can put into that 130 pound dumbbell split squat comes from upstairs in your brain so maybe they can just contract harder per calcium ion or maybe per pound of force with pound on the dumbbell they can just produce more or whatever it is the correlation between strength and load on the bar with professional athletes is not the same correlational value I see with intermediates. With intermediates, regardless of

Starting point is 01:40:31 sport, I see it mattering. When I see people get to these upper echelons of skill, the correlation goes down. Is there a way that like, let's say an athlete does want to become more explosive on the field or on the mats or in sport. Is there a way that they can train themselves, train their brains, become better at that? Yeah. So inherently you would call it game-like scenarios or activities. And that's the terminology I use. I think when we talk training, I instantly think sets, reps, and rigidity.

Starting point is 01:41:01 But that's not an exercise activity or a game that i was describing earlier so let's say you want to maybe you play football and you want to have a better cut it's funny when you look at what do the best people with a juke move do it's actually laxity of their head you see the worst jukers yeah see you even just did it a little bit the worst jukers just do this right yeah the best guys kind of do it in sema did it's like your hips are going this way your head's going that way that one foot's over there and you still ended up over there yeah you know so one realizing what the true thing you want to train is is the most important part and you know when people talk about the laws of training or the pillars of training back in the

Starting point is 01:41:43 day it's like progressive overload individual difference uh sports specificity volume and uh threats that rats volume sets and rest like all these pillars of training it's not what you think it is progressive overload is not slapping five pounds on the bar it has to do with biological stress which obviously is a more encompassing term the law of specificity isn't well I want my quads to be shortened, so I should shorten my quads. It's like, yeah, well, you got to go both ways here. The law of specificity has to do with if you're in this juke-like scenario, we're looking at what muscles need to be tight, what muscles need to be loose, and the rhythm and cadence associated with the movement is what has the greatest degree of transfer. You can read Anatoly Bondarchuk is technically the winningest Olympic coach of all time.

Starting point is 01:42:32 You're nodding your head. So I guess you've heard of him before. His Transfer of Training in Sport Volumes 1 and 2 is one of the few books that I can say is like close to your only go-to needed to understanding this stuff it's not easy to read because it's translated from like the 50s and whatever country the name anatoly bondarchuk comes from um no disrespect to him but yeah whatever country it comes from it's a little difficult to read but he's the best in my mind talking about the transfer of training and sport so if you wanted to have a better juke move and your squat max went from 455 to 500, you probably got worse. Are you saying that because like to go from like 405 to 500,

Starting point is 01:43:14 you have to usually be able to create better stiffness and that's not going to necessarily be beneficial for being able to juke better? Not just that. Like do you need more force to juke better? Like maybe you do, maybe you don't. But if you didn't necessarily need that in the first place and you got more forceful, all you do is put more force into the earth. And Newtonianly, it may or may not have helped you move because maybe there were so many Newtons in the ground that you push back that your sternocleidomastoid on the ipsilateral side had to get tight to control it. So you didn't go too far. Yeah. You know, earlier you mentioned the feet, the ribs and the neck. And we talked a little bit about the ribs and the neck earlier, but why, um, I don't think you explained why the ribs and the

Starting point is 01:43:54 neck are so important like you did with the feet. So why are they as important as you, you put them out to be? So the ribs I'll start with are obviously going to connect to your shoulders and your hips directly. You might think they're not touching, but that psoas pain you always have has to do with your ribs. It has nothing to do with your hips most likely. If it had to do with your hips, it would have gotten better by using the psoarite. And if you have to use the psoarite every single day, nothing on the psoarite, you don't have a tight psoas. You have a rib problem.

Starting point is 01:44:23 Every problem has a solution so if you apply a solution and the problem is not solved it evidently was not the solution so i think the ribs are so important because when we look at sports on tv do you have any sports besides like power lifting that are like non-rotating at all like it's just you can't rotate in sport and call it a sport or can't not rotate in sports and call it sports. Even marathon running, Mark, is pretty much all rotational. Your feet are not like this. Your feet are actually pretty much one in front of another rotating back towards each other as you go. So the rotational aspect all comes from the ribs and the hips.

Starting point is 01:45:07 I tend to avoid the hips because I think if my feet can control my femur and my ribs can control my hip bones, I no longer need to worry about them the same way. So if I can manage your feet, which are reciprocally going to work with your ribs. So for example, if I push off my left arch and activate my left glute, I have to turn my shoulders right. Right? Make sense? Yeah. If I do the opposite way, not only is it weird, that glute won't turn on. So if I go left arch, turn counterclockwise with the shoulder, it feels weird. Your low back turns on immediately and that glute is soft as baby shit, right?

Starting point is 01:45:33 Now all of a sudden you just turn those shoulders the other way and you can literally without even flexing feel those glute fibers shorten, right? We're on the same page here. So that's why I think their relationship is so important in everything. And also they don't tend to get the love they need. Like your quads get plenty of blood flow, bro. You know, you don't need to worry about blood flow to your quads too much unless you're running a marathon, Mark. Right. You know, afterwards you need to recover and worry about it. But there's not a lot of awesome vasculature that helps recover your serratus anterior, your transverse abdominis, your internal obliques, these little muscles. They're often at a disadvantage and they're super important for being strong. So if you manage those and manage your feet, I think you end up taking care of like 80% of your body, in my opinion, without having to directly care for it. Because I think the days of doing the joint by joint approach are just long gone, in my opinion.

Starting point is 01:46:28 Like looking at your ankle mobility isolated and saying you have an ankle mobility problem might not make any sense anymore. And I just don't think it ever did. But I think there's a time and place for everything and innovation must happen. If there was nothing stupid, you couldn't get smarter. I always tell people, i'll talk to anybody i've gotten plenty of great ideas from stupid people and they didn't realize they gave me that idea like you know what i mean they'll just say some shit and i'm like okay but then like it sticks with me oh my god i've never thought about this before right you know kind of mark saying how he mimicked and talked and learned from all these people you know

Starting point is 01:47:02 you don't have to be smart to get a good idea from someone. I've had plenty of instances where someone's like, Oh, I just do this. I'm like, you discovered that. I'm like, wow, that's a genius. Like, I mean, I knew that, but like, I knew that you didn't know that. And you still got to that answer. You know, I start to learn so much more from people in that scenario. So I think those two are an integral part of human movement. And the reason I include the neck into that is one, a lot of people just tend to have neck issues in general, traps, face, jaw, TMJ. We have more people with TMJ now than ever before. And we also have better dentistry than ever before. So it's like how does that happen?

Starting point is 01:47:37 But obviously there's a bigger problem. And also in most sports, you need head and skull to be able to dissociate from the rest of the body. And that obviously involves vision and all the stuff that needs to be trained. So imagine if like you couldn't dissociate from your head, from your ribs and try to play golf. You'd be like – like you would never hit the golf ball or baseball or basketball. Yeah. You would never be able to perform in anything. So I think when you put the whole picture together, it's just a great ROI, like return on investment for the way of looking at things. Feet, ribs, and neck will pretty much solve 80 to 90 percent of your movement problems.

Starting point is 01:48:16 How can people like maybe do some self-care on their ribs? The easiest way to do it, it's a fancy word. It's called your infrasternal angle. The easiest way to do it, it's a fancy word. It's called your infrasternal angle. Lay on your back and have the video kind of going over at the front of you so you can see your body in that front line. And what you're going to do is you're going to see the angle of the sternum like a gas pedal and it's going to go in four directions, up, down, left, right. And your ribs are going to do the same. You'll see asymmetries.

Starting point is 01:48:43 You'll see them be like pokey in one area, flat in another, really hard in one area, soft and normal in the other. And that'll get you to start figuring stuff out. So if you notice that most people are going to have very flared left ribs compared to their right typically.

Starting point is 01:48:57 So it's like, wow, if I have flared left ribs, it makes sense why I have right low back pain. And maybe it's like if my ribs are hard as shit, it probably makes sense why I can't do a sit-up or like bend over to deadlift pain-free or without feeling crazy tight interesting okay cool so like lay on the ground like videotape yourself breathing your ribs should move like there's just the reason i like it too is because there's so many different types of rib dysfunction yeah whereas like let's say we look at your knee there's only so many ways

Starting point is 01:49:24 your knee can be functional and dysfunctional like you, you know, it's just, there's not tons of range of motion there. It's not connected to a ton of things. Like there's like three or four compensation patterns and like one or two good patterns you can pick, but your ribs can do so much independent of what, you know, they need to be doing. You could have a super, super tight, gross rib cage and you can still go for a run and get better. You know what I mean? So that's also why I like it. You know, you can have it completely independent of sports performance. So maybe you have a terrible resting heart rate and you just do some meditation and breathing drills for two weeks. And that brings your resting heart rate down. It wasn't really that you lacked fitness to have a low resting heart rate. You lacked respiration and there's a huge difference there, but you could still get

Starting point is 01:50:08 fitter and leaner. Plenty of people get leaner, lowering their resting heart rate and getting healthier. Would certain things like gut smashing and smashing around the area of the ribs be helpful for, to help loosen things up in that area? Yeah. Especially if you're tight, you can, there's a difference between tight and inhibited. Tight is like actual tightness, very logical. Inhibited means an inability to do its job.

Starting point is 01:50:29 So you could just be stupid, like motor stupid. Just because you don't know how to use these rib cage muscles might be why they're tight. So you learn to use them and they get better. So that's kind of also figuring out what it is. I would guess like an MMA or a grappler, someone like yourself, Antima, would have tighter ribs rather than being inhibited because you need to know how to use that rib cage really, really well. But it's also like most of your sport. So the odds are you're going to need to roll out your ribs the same way Mark needs to roll out his feet when he does his marathon work. Yeah. work yeah when it comes to being stupid I would imagine that somebody like yourself has probably had this tested before any idea what your IQ is my

Starting point is 01:51:14 senior year of high school I think only smart people get this done by the way my senior year of high school so I don't know how accurate it is it was supposedly pretty solid my senior year of high school so i don't know how accurate it is it was supposedly pretty solid my senior year of high school i tested out at 184 in psychology um i don't even know what that means that's fucking high god damn i haven't gotten it tested since then um i don't really care yeah uh i think it's one so it's funny like i've had i've had like financial executives I work with use IQ testing as a measure of progress neuroplastically. And I've seen it go up 15 points. And I've also seen people get wasted the night before and their IQ drops. So I kind of view it as like HRV in the sense where it's like, what's your HRV today?

Starting point is 01:51:58 It's like, oh, my IQ today is this. You know what I mean? It was originally created to help people get job placements. what i mean like i it was originally created to help people get job placements so it really just means like your ability to like remember do random shit think outside of the box and stuff like that i don't know how much correlation it has to real life because like i said i know people who are shockingly successful in their respective field and are literally dumb as shit like you know i mean they just train their brains like it's unbelievable. It's true. Triggered out the algorithm, right?

Starting point is 01:52:26 Yeah. So that's why I'm like, whatever. What does that even mean? How are you even telling me I'm smart and I have a – what does that really mean? Yeah, smart in terms of what? Yeah. And I just – the IQ is just – like you said, it's an algorithm someone created in response to 200 multiple choice questions. It's like, what the fuck?

Starting point is 01:52:42 created in response to 200 multiple choice questions. Did you get the IQ test because like your parents noticed some sort of superhuman power that you had or something in your brain? I was actually in special ed classes growing up. That was just part of AP psych. And I remember my teacher came over to me. I did really bad in school. She goes,

Starting point is 01:52:57 did you cheat? I was like, what? No, I barely even pay attention. Like she was, I'll never forget. She was kind of rude to me about it but i i remember you got a good score what the hell is this there's no way you could get this yeah um but i was just kind of lazy and like i just like did it like it intrigued me at the moment for whatever reason um but yeah i actually growing up my parents um are cuban immigrants and when i was in like the third grade roughly I remember I did so

Starting point is 01:53:27 bad on a test I was in a Catholic school my teacher made me stand up in front of the class for the rest of class I got like a 40 something on a test and they were like having me tested for special ed and stuff my parents flipped out because like they're super conservative like Cuban immigrants they're you're telling us our son is stupid like how dare you say that our son's fine it's like no we're not telling you that at all ma'am but they took it that way so um i don't think that stuff matters you know like i think if you if someone tells you you're dumb as shit and maybe you are dumb as shit but you can you can get smart the same way i've met plenty of smart people who i'm like wow you're so intelligent it's inhibiting your ability not to be a human but to work and actually help others.

Starting point is 01:54:06 The most successful – the person I'm referencing owns one of the most successful hedge funds of all time. And I asked him, like, dude, you have some awesome employees. Like is it just because you own this hedge fund and everyone like wants to just be with the best? Like what is it? And he told me that he hires people based on the intersecting point between their EQ and IQ. He's like, if someone comes in with a 200 IQ, which is technically the highest you can get, he's like, I won't hire you if your EQ is really low. And if you come in with a super high EQ and a moderate IQ and that intersecting point on a graph is higher than 200 IQ per person, he goes, I'll hire them.

Starting point is 01:54:47 Why does he do that? Because it's your ability to actually manifest what you have in your head and deal with others and go through real-life scenarios. Like Mark said, the IQ test is an algorithm, so it doesn't actually test your ability to deal with stuff in real life. So let's say you were a professional athlete and you came to me and I was like, your feet are trash, your ribs are trash. You've never used your internal oblique once in your life.

Starting point is 01:55:09 And all this stuff is terrible. Now it's a dick to you. There's no chance you're going to get better. The same reason I said with every pro athlete I've ever worked with, it's like we're going to talk every three days for two to four weeks depending on what you have going on. And then we'll decide if we have a contract together. I think you have an awesome way about you in terms of like coaching you know just in my interaction with you you're super calm and uh it's really helpful and then you also i think it would be easy as a coach to take some cheap shots here and there to tell someone that their ribs are shitty or that this

Starting point is 01:55:41 is off or that's off but i think you have a kind way about you. Did you have to learn that from, or have you always kind of been that way? I think I've always kind of been that way. You know, everyone has an ego driven moment at one point in life. And I just like, I'm results driven. I don't care.

Starting point is 01:55:57 Like if you pay me a thousand dollars or $10,000, if I'm invested in your journey, I'm in it, bro. So I just think that when you tell someone something really negative like that you're doing it for yourself so the same way like we see parents like force their kids to do something it's like does your kid want to do that or do you want your kid to do that is it a kid problem or is it a you problem yeah so like

Starting point is 01:56:18 me telling you that your feet are shit and your ribs are shit and you're number one in the world i'm just big dicking you coming in like, dude, look at me. I know all this shit. You're terrible. That's not going to help anyone here. So it's like what's the point really? I just don't see it. And then athletes do that to themselves too.

Starting point is 01:56:37 And like you talked about how important that is that they need to reframe the way they speak about themselves. So actually I'm curious about this. Do you deal with that with pro athletes? Like do many of them actually have negative self-talk? Because I imagine to get yourself to getting to that level, you got to be kind of kind to yourself, right? Or am I kind of wrong in that? No, it's like in between. It's more of like – I don't want to call it positive or negative.

Starting point is 01:57:03 But it's like individually specific self-talk. So I know an athlete who's nasty at golf and he's awful to himself. I know an athlete who's amazing at golf and he's amazing to himself. So it's more of like how you personally respond. And look, if you're a slightly aggressive guy, your talk is probably going to be vaguely negative. But you need to figure out how to work that for yourself. Because the same way positive things can be destructive, you know, negative things can be as well. So I think it's more that we see athletes create narratives that will inherently make them better regardless of what that is. And that's always based on previous

Starting point is 01:57:39 coaching experiences I've noticed as well. So that one athlete I mentioned, like his heart rate came down like 30 or 35 beats over the course of a month i was like dude have you been doing all this stuff he goes yeah i'll never forget he had his arms over a squat bar after we took it and he's like i'm just gifted and i stopped i was like no you're not he's like what i'm like yeah maybe you're a little gifted but i said i was like you did 28 straight days of work like you can say you have gifts but that's not why this result happened and i've found that the athletes i'm like that with i'm real and authentic with not just perform better we have better relationships yeah because i could have just like sat there and be like yeah bro like

Starting point is 01:58:15 your dick's massive huge like the biggest dick ever right like you know like that wouldn't have done anything pay this guy more yeah right like what would that have done for either of us like you need to be credited when you do something correct you need to be discredited when you don't so last night i had a conversation with an athlete where he's like you know i want to make this and this change to the team i was like you had to be honest but you need to you need to practice this more and he was like what i'm like no i'm just being honest yeah you could change whatever you want but but you need to practice this more. And he was like, what? I'm like, no, I'm just being honest. You could change whatever you want, but if you don't do this, we're not going to get better. And I think that's the most important aspect you can have is not just a coach, a service provider.

Starting point is 01:58:54 Like imagine the doctor that comes in before your surgery. He's like, it's fine. I'm just going to do this and that. I'm sitting here with fucking cancer, bro. What do you mean you're just going to do this and that? You know what I mean? But we see it all the time. People that get discredited when something's actually very

Starting point is 01:59:08 important you know we see it in like our at-home relationships all the time maybe like you're the breadwinner and you're all excited about this and your significant other like you know found a hundred bucks on the floor or did something and someone gave them a twenty dollar tip here 20 bucks i make i make 300 grand a year you know what i mean it's like well that mattered to them sure it was 20 bucks and it was only going to buy you like mcdonald's or something but like that's not why it was important do you work on mindset and like philosophy with people or is that something that's maybe outsourced or something like that uh as needed as needed you know the line i draw is obviously related to dsm like once i see something that's like a

Starting point is 01:59:45 psychological like disparity from reality then i'll hand it off but the kind of line i draw is it perception and maladaptive training having to do with perception or do you have some wires that are crossed so like maybe you know one of the athletes i was working with who recently had a lot of success everyone was telling him his whole life he had anxiety. You have anxiety. You're anxious. You're anxious. Why are you so anxious?

Starting point is 02:00:09 You need to see a doctor and get anxiety stuff. And when we dove into it, I was like, you don't have an ounce of anxiety in your body. In fact, you just have a fear-based response to something that's happening. And he's like, really? No one's ever told me that before. Blah, blah, blah. We started approaching it as a fear-based response. All of his anxiety disappeared. His heart rate even went down in 12 beats. How do you identify that as being different than anxiety? So when I

Starting point is 02:00:34 made that line about like dysregulated neurochemistry versus reality, it would mean that you have anxiety in scenarios that don't beget anxiety and you have anxiety in response to things that you wouldn't need anxiety to be successful for. Soget anxiety and you have anxiety in response to things that you wouldn't need anxiety to be successful for. So let's say you were about to have like the biggest phone call of your life and you were anxious. It's like, you don't have anxiety, bro. You care, you know, or let's say someone tells you, you have diagnosed anxiety, but you wake up in the morning, you're fine. You go to home and you're fine. You're on the drive home. You're fine. But something happens and it triggers your anxiety. Maybe it's an anxiety anxiety trigger but more likely it's a fear-based response and then all of a sudden you

Starting point is 02:01:09 look at it that way and you're like you know shit maybe you're right because i was like dude like you know i like to spend a full day minimum with my athletes when we start like i'm gonna you know not really intrude in your life i'm gonna live in with you for a day or two yeah we're gonna do everything together we're going to the supermarket you know not everything like you can go to bed with your wife i'll be down here you know what i mean but we're just gonna like live athlete life together for a day or two and i was with him i'm like dude you don't have a shred of anxiety like you've been fine all day like all this stuff in fact people were looking at your side effects and just labeling you as anxious but no one sat down with you long enough to just talk and learn who you were and be like, you don't have anxiety.

Starting point is 02:01:46 You have a fear-based response to X. I do wonder with that, like how many people are in that type of boat? Because anxiety seems to be something that a lot of, especially younger people and younger athletes, it's something that's thrown around a lot, you know? And it's not, I'm not saying people don't have it, but I just wonder how many people are probably in that same boat. And that makes me wonder if somebody that is listening and let's say that they've been told they have anxiety or anxiety disorders, what maybe could they pay attention to when

Starting point is 02:02:12 it comes to their responses to question that? Is this a logical opportunity for anxiety? If you're at the supermarket and it's empty and like there's nothing going on and you just picked up your favorite food and you're anxious you know outside maybe something bad happened the day before you know outside of acute variables too much caffeine whatever it's just truly there's no reason for having the anxiety and you have it then you may be looking at a problem but if you have even an inkling of reasoning for something in your life whatever and you have the response, you can't say someone has a problem. Okay. Andrew, anything over there? Um, I'm sure you get a lot of like, I mean, I'm assuming, sorry, random texts from some athletes where you might be like, dude, you probably should be

Starting point is 02:02:58 texting a doctor, not me. Um, but I'm just curious, like, what was the most interesting thing that like an athlete has asked you about? Uh, I'm thinking, I don't know, like the glutathione thing for the C word thing. Like anything stand out like that to where you're like, huh, let's figure this out. Only funny things are coming to mind. Yeah, that's even better. I've been asked if Brussels sprouts were a green vegetable, which my response was, are you colorblind? And he said, no. And I was like, yes, they were a green vegetable and which my response was are you colorblind and he said no and i was like yes they are a green vegetable um i've had someone call me and tell me like andy i've had these stomach issues for so long and i was eating white rice and i switched to potatoes

Starting point is 02:03:36 today i feel incredible and i was like oh my god yeah fuck white rice dude and like the conversation was over obviously it's this literally almost as similar as you can get from a carbohydrate scenario. But it was real to him. So I was like, yeah, dude, white rice is bullshit. Potatoes. I get a lot of those. I'm lucky in the sense that I haven't had any – actually, no. In Mexico, they weren't – he wasn't my athlete.

Starting point is 02:04:02 But one of the caddies for one of the players was actually going into AFib and he was sitting down and he had had this issue before. And I'll never forget it because I was like, wow, if I didn't happen to be here, what would have happened? Because the residing EMT or whatever he was, a doctor in the Mexican clubhouse pulls out a stethoscope on this guy. And I was like, stethoscope? Bro, it's 2023 and all you pulled out was a stethoscope on this guy. And I was like, stethoscope, my bro to 2023. And all you pulled out was a stethoscope. And this guy's clearly a heart attack risk. So I run to my locker.

Starting point is 02:04:30 I always, I'm a super nerd, obviously. So I always travel with a pulse oximeter and a glucometer everywhere just in case. So I took his blood glucose, took his heart rate, left it on for a second,

Starting point is 02:04:39 a couple of seconds. The guy like looked at me, he's like, Oh, you have one of those? I was like, of course I have one of these bro. It cost me $30 for both of these total. Um total um put it on it turned out he was an afib

Starting point is 02:04:47 so it was like dude get the fuck out of here really like no offense but get the hell out of here like this is a hospital driven issue your heart his heart rate was going from like 73 to 183 over the course of minutes so it's that's one of those things where it's like dude get the fuck out like just like you are putting our whole organization at risk by being in here right now i don't like no like not this is badly i don't care if you potentially die on the way of the hospital but you need to get out of here jesus last thing i have is just a shout out and thank saquon for winning my fantasy football league for me it was amazing is that like the whole first half before like the Giants kind of got their shit together. He was literally like their only option.

Starting point is 02:05:27 And every defense knew exactly where the ball was going to go every single play. And he still smoked people. Just it's fucking incredible. Dude, that guy's so damn good. That's all I had to say. I had to get it on wax. Sports are awesome. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:05:39 Like I come to that conclusion all the time where I'm like out there. I'm like, whoa, that's nuts. Sports are just cool. Like there's a reason. Like this podcast is about sports. You know what I mean? Sure, we want to talk about performance, biology, the mind. But like we're ultimately talking about getting better at some type of activity.

Starting point is 02:05:55 Like sports are just so cool. Yeah, man. Take us on out of here, Andrew. All right. Thank you, everybody, for checking out this episode. Tons of stuff to talk about. So please let us know what some of your favorite topics were on this podcast down below in the comment section. Hit that like button and subscribe.

Starting point is 02:06:09 Follow the podcast at MBPowerProject all over the place. My Instagram is at IamAndrewZNSima. Where are you at? Discord is down below at NSimaYinYang on Instagram and YouTube and NSimaYinYang on TikTok and Twitter. And the last podcast we did with Andy is over here. So it's going to be somewhere. So go check it out. Andy, where can people find you?

Starting point is 02:06:21 we do it with Andy's over here. So it's going to be somewhere. So go check it out. Andy, where can people find you? GoSuperBrain.gmail.com is the email I use with my personal assistant. So you'll actually get a response. If you reach out via Instagram, it's not going to be me that responds. I have a lot of other stuff going on.

Starting point is 02:06:43 But GoSuperBrain.gmail.com, GoSuperBrain on Instagram is the best way to find me. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.

Mark Bell's Power Project - INCREASE Learning SPEED and Efficiency, Andy Triana || MBPP Ep. 916

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