Mark Bell's Power Project - Increase Your Movement to IMPROVE Your Life - Kelly & Juliet Starrett || MBPP Ep. 900

Starting point is 00:00:00 Power Project family, how's it going? Now we are in episode 900, 100 away from a thousand. Thanks to you guys with Kelly and Juliette Sturette. They're talking on this podcast about their new book, Built to Move, and you're going to have a lot of actionable takeaways from how you can move better, feel better, and do this daily without the need of a gym. So share this with a friend, utilize the stuff in this episode. And I also want to say thank you because you guys have been giving us five-star reviews on Apple and on Spotify. We're almost at 2,000 on Spotify and the reviews have just been pouring in and that

Starting point is 00:00:29 helps the podcast grow. So if you haven't yet, if you're listening to this podcast on Apple or Spotify, leave a review for us. Let us know how you're liking the podcast, how it's helped you out because that helps us out and if you're on YouTube, like the video and enjoy the episode. All the cameras that they have, Jay.

Starting point is 00:00:45 Yes, I see that. We got to make sure we get every angle. Where's your book? Do you actually have a book here? We don't have a physical book. Didn't we send you one? God damn it. Should we have brought one today?

Starting point is 00:00:59 You don't have one? No. We didn't bring one. I literally was like, I think I sent one to Mark. Didn't I send one to you? I never got one. I sent one to Mark. Didn't I send one to you? I never got one. I sent one to you. Graham Tuttle has one, though.

Starting point is 00:01:10 Oh, Graham has it? Yeah, Graham. I was like, what the fuck? The Barefoot Sprinter took it? He took the book. I don't know. He didn't take it from here. I think he...

Starting point is 00:01:19 I don't know. I don't know what happened. Do we need to do this on a different day with this book? Is it currently for sale? Not yet. Not until April 4th. You're like, hey, do we have a book? I literally thought you already had one. Me?

Starting point is 00:01:34 You're on some list. Am I? You are on some list. You're on some list that was supposed to get one. It has nothing to do with a book, but you're on some list. I don't know. You were supposed to be on two lists. Maybe that's why I'm not mobile.

Starting point is 00:01:46 Maybe I never got the first book. Do you think we can just talk about it anyway without it? No. We can't leave. Yes. We cannot leave. The supple leopards are there. We're not coming back.

Starting point is 00:01:56 And I thought Desbound was over there. Mm-hmm. Yeah, we got some stuff. We've been trying to figure it out. It shows, though, that Mr. Miyagi said it. Literally laid it out a long time ago. He meets Don Yasani. He's fixing this thing.

Starting point is 00:02:10 And he's like, oh, learn mobility from book. He was like, oh, that's not going to work. And here we are. And here we are. All right. Well, let's knock this part out because we haven't had you on the show before. I don't think. I was.

Starting point is 00:02:26 Or was it a long time ago? Like in like 2013 at your dining room table. Do you remember that? I do not remember that. I don't remember that. Yeah, it happened. I was on it and it was at your dining room table. The syphilis.

Starting point is 00:02:37 Was this a dream? Was this a dream? I just slept through. I mean, I don't think I'm mistaken. I think it did happen. Was it on the same day that you stole my gum? That was a different day. Oh, okay.

Starting point is 00:02:51 But I was already planning on stealing it again today. Well, how did this book come to be that you guys are putting out pretty soon? And hopefully we'll receive one one of these days. That might be nice. Yeah. how did it uh how did it come to be because i know you guys have been in business together i've been married for a long time there's a long ass story behind all of it but uh how did you guys kind of marry your ideas together because i know that behind the scenes you've been coaching him the whole time because he'll he would get doctory and then you would be like nope no one knows what you're talking about

Starting point is 00:03:23 no one cares and he would get doctor again you'd tell him again and then you would be like, nope, no one knows what you're talking about. No one cares. And he would get doctor-y again. You'd tell him again. She's not behind the scenes. She is the scene. So, I mean, you know, the main reason that I'm involved in this book is just to spread the word that I'm not Kelly's secretary. No, just kidding. Just kidding.

Starting point is 00:03:38 I'll take a crack at answering that question. I mean, you know, we obviously put out Supple Leopard in 2013. Ten years ago. 10 years ago. 10 years ago. So it's like literally 10 years ago in a month and then a second edition. That's great. Since that time, we've put out a couple other books, including our book, Deskbound. But in that time, we've gotten 10 years older. And I think our own interest... That laugh makes me think 20 years old.

Starting point is 00:04:04 Feeling 20 years older. I think our own interests and what we've cared about has really changed, as has yours, obviously. And one of the things that we've seen is that we feel like the fitness industry has lost sight of what it is we're trying to do. And hopefully what we're trying to do is help people get better, faster, stronger, more healthy, feel better in their bodies, have less pain. And I think instead what we've done is firehose people with information on Instagram about shredded abs and which diet you should follow. And what we see in our own community is that people are totally confused about what to do now. You know, what we've done in our business is we've made ourselves and those I would say ourselves are like all of us and those people who are really into health

Starting point is 00:04:48 and fitness, like we're like in a little vertical. We've made ourselves better, faster. We track everything. We're super optimized. But we've really like left regular people behind. And we really started seeing that because while we live and breathe in this health and fitness space, we're also parents of two kids. And we live in the suburban community in Marin County. And most of our friends there are not in the health and fitness business at all. They're like busy people trying to raise kids and go to busy jobs and figuring out. But what they all share is they want to be healthy. They don't want to be in pain.

Starting point is 00:05:22 They want to feel good in their bodies. Let me translate that. They want to be less gross. They want to be less gross. They want to feel good in their bodies. Let me translate that. They want to be less gross. They want to be less gross. They want to feel good in their bodies. And they want to feel good as they age. And they want to be able to do the things with their bodies that they want to be able to do. And whether that's hiking or mountain biking or just playing with their grandkids, they just want to be able to use their body for whatever it is they want to do. And we are always approached in our community with questions of should I intermittent fast? What

Starting point is 00:05:45 should I do here? What diet should I follow? I know I should exercise, but what exercise and how much and how often and how much should I lift? And what we saw was this like universal amount of confusion among basically everybody who's not really deep in our space. And so we started saying, okay, you know, how can we approach this? How can we write a book that helps people manage their own pain, gives them simple tactics to take care of their body, include some really simple lifestyle tests, and then actually make it objective. So every chapter is a test, an objective test that people can measure whether they, you know, and we're not giving people like an A or an F, but it basically gives you a benchmark and some information. Some vital signs. Some vital signs about where you are

Starting point is 00:06:28 as a human. And it's comprehensive. It has nutrition, lifestyle, sleep, breathing, balance, mobility work, exercise. And it's our way of saying, hey, this is the one book that you could read if you're a really busy person who cares about the things I mentioned before about being healthy. And if you do these 10 things, like you're pretty good, like you're going to be pretty good as a human and you're going to feel good in your body. And so I think it was that group that we really wanted to approach with this. And I know you've done a ton of that, Mark. I mean, like you're the every man's coach or the people's coach. And I think you've really tried and done a good job of trying to bring people along on the journey with you.

Starting point is 00:07:08 And like, it's one of the things I get mad though. They do get mad, but I think you've really, you've really tried to say, look, here's, here's, here's what I'm doing and here's what works for me. And so really these 10 chapters, 10 vital science, 10 benchmarks that we've put together are the things that we do in our own lives. And we've tried to figure out a way to make it accessible to people. Like not only these are the things we do, but these are when we do them and how we fit them into our crazy busy life. Because contrary to what a lot of people may think, like we basically get our kids ready for school in the morning and then sit in front of a computer all day. Like we are not meal prepping for four hours and taking five hours in our sauna and ice bath and exercising for five hours and doing all that on Instagram. Like that's not what

Starting point is 00:07:53 our life looks like at all. Like our life really looks like a normal person's life. And so we're, we really just wanted to take a crack at saying, how can we, you know, cast a way bigger net here and let people in a little bit on what we're thinking and how to do it. And look, last 10 years, particularly, we spent a lot of time in some very crazy environments. We're invited behind the scenes of a lot of elite groups, world-class teams who are showing us, hey, we have these problems. Help us untangle this and help people become more durable. So what's interesting is that we have really always, and you've heard me say this before, sport is our way of understanding what is essential to be human.

Starting point is 00:08:40 And what we felt like is that sport is this great laboratory to really understand inputs and outputs, nutrition, fueling, recovery, all of those things, even how we manage pains. A lot of that stuff has come out of how we help athletes manage this in sport. But if we don't actually take those lessons from sport and transform to society, then that sport is just entertainment. Like it's gladiators and we'll throw the bodies away. But we think the highest calling with sport is actually transform communities. the bodies away. But we think the highest calling with sport is actually transform communities. And these 10 essentials have ended up becoming the base camp behaviors that we use with our elite athletes. Then we can look at nutrition and fueling even differently or exercise or game readiness.

Starting point is 00:09:20 But these are the things that you need to do if you want to be elite to cover your basis. And it turns out the same side of that coin is if you're not an exerciser or not into diet culture, that's cool. You've got to do some care and feeding of your body if you're going to be 100 years old and durable. Yeah, I think so much of it comes down to like stress management. And so if you have things that are simple that people can actually follow, even that in and of itself can be less stressful because it's not a four-hour gym session or whatever it might be. What are some of the suggestions? I know you guys are big into walking as I am into walking as well. But what are some other suggestions you guys have?

Starting point is 00:09:59 Well, I have to just say a couple of things about walking because I'm obsessed with walking. And speaking of our – Can I have your arms if I can walk? Yeah, you can have these arms. Just, you know, 30 years later. You know, as we all know, our friend Huberman is really big. Huberman said that you should get some sunlight on your body. So that's one of the thousand reasons why I'm such a fan of walking is that you actually get outside. You get some sun on your body. You get a bunch of non-exercise activity and additional movement in your day.

Starting point is 00:10:29 You decongest your tissues. So if you've done something athletic, it's going to help you recover from that and feel better. And I think the other piece, speaking of people being depressed, is I think the pandemic really exacerbated this. But I mean, people are not doing well. People are stressed. Kids are stressed. People feel lonely. There's a huge spike in depression. When I tell people to walk, I get pictures or like a little video of them and they're on a treadmill and I'm like, please go outside and please see some people and please see this.

Starting point is 00:10:57 That's right. And it's, yeah, exactly. It's the perfect opportunity to like connect with your friends or your family or take a walk with your older parent or whatever so and i mean that's not to mention the fact that there's a crap ton of data that shows that the more you walk every day the longer you're going to live the better you're going to feel and the fewer chronic you know chronic illnesses you're going to suffer so i mean literally i'm obsessed with walking i think it's like the coolest thing ever and it's it's really hard to make it sexy on instagram um but if anyone can do it, it's you, Mark Bell. I'm trying, I'm trying to strut up there. I think one of the things that we end up seeing a lot of

Starting point is 00:11:31 is that people, you know, are like, oh, diet by itself. But you sitting, one of the greatest performance hacks that we have, performance boosters for high performance environments is I tell people to sit down and have dinner together or lunch together. All of the best groups in the world usually eat one meal together a day on teams, at least one meal. And the very least, you know, or most, they're eating every meal at the very least one meal a week. And so there's something more to

Starting point is 00:12:00 nutrition than just me having this, my perfect macros out there. Like we're sharing, we're interacting. And the research is super clear about kids who sit down with their parents and have dinner. They feel less stress. There's more like they have better agency. There's better communication in the family. So that's highlighting the fact that there's no one aspect of these systems that works by itself. And as Juliet's pointing out about walking, if you have chronic pain and persistent pain, one of the ways you can access your neuroplasticity, as Huberman says, is actually walking fast in the environment is a really

Starting point is 00:12:34 simple way to turn on those mechanisms for rewiring your brain. Just walk a little faster. Your brain's like, what's going on? Are we being chased? Well, I need to pay attention. So as Juliet points out, there are so many bottom lines. The thing to do is to walk. If you want to have a better society and community, we believe in this idea of this hyper locality. We think that the functional unit in the world is the household. The people you live with are the people that you're responsible for saving and taking care of. And then the next sort of valence out there is your neighbors. And even just walking down the street with your white dog being like, hey, what's up? You suddenly are interacting with people in a neighborhood that makes a society that makes you

Starting point is 00:13:16 feel like you're in a safe place. Then add in all the other physiology and turns out you end up sleeping better because you actually accumulated enough non-exercise activity to fall asleep. So Juliet points out that you can come at this any way you want. The real thing is are you walking enough or not? And what we're trying to do with these vital signs is to help people have benchmarks where they can find out where they are. It's not that 10,000 is good, 8,000 is bad. It's that what we found out was, hey, if you're below this, maybe you need to pay attention to it. If you're getting it, you're probably good.

Starting point is 00:13:51 What's the below and what are some benchmarks, if any? So, I mean, for walking, we say 8,000 to 12,000 steps. And, you know, obviously everybody knows the, like, get your 10,000 steps. That was actually a marketing ploy by a Japanese pedometer company in the sixties, the 10,000 steps at that time wasn't really supported by any data. It was just a marketing thing. Well,

Starting point is 00:14:12 bonsai like maybe last 10,000 years. That's what that's about. You know, since that time, a bunch of data has filled back in to, you know, show all the things I said earlier, which is,

Starting point is 00:14:21 you know, the more you walk, the better. I mean, honestly, that's, that's the data, but the average American walks around 3000 steps a day. And we read some research that people can realistically walk about 8,000 steps a day. So we weren't going to choose 10,000 steps because

Starting point is 00:14:39 we, you know, one of the things we wanted to get done in this book was actually create these benchmarks and create practices for people that they could actually do realistically. And so if we said 10,000 steps, what we were worried about is that everyone would say, well, I can't get 10,000 steps, so I'm not even going to try at all. Versus, okay, going from, you know, 3,000 to 8,000 steps is maybe two 20 minute walks or two, you know, 25-minute walks a day. I can actually get that. I can do that as a post-meal walk, and that's actually doable. So, you know, that was our thinking there.

Starting point is 00:15:12 You know, obviously the research shows, you know, the more the better. So, you know, if someone's out there motivated to get 16,000 steps, like more power to them. But check this out. You know, we worked with some elite military units. I mean, like the badasses of the badasses. And one of the things that we discovered working with some of these teams and groups is that when they have men who can't sleep, men and women can't sleep, the first thing they do is make them walk more. So here we have all of the resources of the Army aimed at the tier one military groups of the Army. And the application is, oh, you're having a hard

Starting point is 00:15:46 time sleeping. We're going to have you walk 15,000 steps and we're going to track it so that you can't be like, yeah, I walked a little bit. I don't know. As you heard me say earlier, we believe in these objective measures and our objective measures are range of motion, biomotor output. So when we saw in the pandemic that people got really comfortable with increased vital signs, we were like, well, let's expand the concept of vital signs. Let's create some benchmarks and vital signs for people in some areas of their life to help them know, you know, like 120 over 80 isn't good blood pressure. It's not bad blood pressure. It's just average. And if you're, you know, above that, you're like, Ooh, I should pay attention

Starting point is 00:16:21 to that. Right. And if you're below that, you're like, hey, I'm doing okay. So let's do that with some other aspects and quantify objectively some of these other features of your life. Well, and one other thing I wanted to add about walking is if we have a client or patient come in to see Kelly with low back pain, he does two things. He works with them on their breathing mechanics. That's number one. And then he tells them to walk more. That may be 10, 30 second walks around the kitchen island. That's what we get, right?

Starting point is 00:16:51 Yeah. But I mean, it's also, you know, we've also used it in the physical therapy, you know, side of our life as, you know, restorative care for people with low back pain. Power Project family, your normal shoes are making you weak. This is why I partner with Vivo Barefoot Shoes 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? Yes, that's over at vivo barefoot.com slash power project. And you guys will receive 15% off your order automatically. Again, vivo barefoot.com slash power project links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Yeah. Do you guys think that there's like almost something, uh,

Starting point is 00:17:46 notes. Yeah. Do you guys think that there's like almost something, uh, like inside the human will that, uh, desires like X amount of movement per day? Um, you know, X amount of like steps, like, uh, without a pedometer, like, do you think there's something like hardwired into the body that requires like X amount of movement? And then even maybe on top of that, do you think there's something that's hardwired into the body that if you don't do it periodically, get your heart to race and these things, that's just like really detrimental to us? Well, I think you can start from one side of this by saying, you know, how do you circulate your lymphatic system? The lymphatic system is your sewage system of your body. So you have the circulatory system lymphatic system. The lymphatic system is your sewage system of your body. So you have the circulatory system everyone's heard of.

Starting point is 00:18:27 Let me introduce you to your lymphatic system. All of the protein waste, broken cellular material, all of that stuff that can't go out through your capillaries goes out through the lymph. And so if you've ever had a blister, that's lymph. So you have miles and miles of lymphatic drainage in your body. And that lymphatic tissue is flushed through muscle contraction. If you've ever flown on an airplane and had cankles, you're like, whoa, cankles. Didn't Mark invent the term cankles?

Starting point is 00:18:54 He may have. It was a need to foot. Trademark. Yeah. And circle C. It's a sexy thing, cankles. Having the knee go straight down. It's a great look. Everyone loves yeah it just makes it so your shoe is nothing's gonna get into your shoe that is a great never get a pebble in your shoe

Starting point is 00:19:15 maybe that's a defense mechanism so that's a great indicator that you're not contracting your calves and hamstrings and quads enough to pump up the fluids and they're actually catching in your feet. So there is a certain amount of movement that needs to happen so that you can flush out your lymphatics. And that means that there is some kind of movement that needs to happen. I think the issues that are livelihoods and how we just lived and operate in our communities used to require a whole bunch more movement. So some of that was just built into our day. You got up and down off the ground. You had to walk and toilet. You had to get resources and bring them back. You just had to walk to places a little bit more. So how cool that our bodies bootstrapped the

Starting point is 00:20:00 lymphatic system into our movement system. So if we're going to flush the toilets, we might as well do something we're doing anyway, which is walking. What we know also is that there's huge genetic differences in drive to move. So if you look at David Epstein's book, The Sports Gene, he talks about a group of mice that they discovered. Some mice were running one mile a day. Some mice were running three miles a day. They started breeding the three-mile mice. They had mice that ran 10 miles a day. And then they gave them Ritalin, and they ran one mile a day. So I think we know that our daughter Georgia has—

Starting point is 00:20:33 I was going to tell that story. Tell it. Well, I was going to say reason number 9,999, why our children will probably need therapy in their 20s. But, of course, we have extensively genetically tested them for all genetic markers of human performance. We didn't know what we were working with. Whose fault is it? We knew the answers when they were like nine years old. No, I'll let Kelly really tell this.

Starting point is 00:20:55 But one of the things we learned about our daughter, Georgia, is that she has a low genetic drive to move, which is something we actually saw. Like she her default is to like bake cookies and watch cooking shows. Like that's what she kind of defaults to want to do. And once we actually learned that, we realized that like, she's a kid who needs to be pushed to move a little bit and to learn how to enjoy the feeling of movement. Because what we would see is we would send her to volleyball practice or swim team or whatever. And she actually loved it and would come back feeling invigorated. So she loved the experience of exercise and the way exercise made her feel.

Starting point is 00:21:28 But she didn't have that genetic drive to like get up off the couch and go do it. And I think one of the things we're the most proud of as parents is she's about to go off to college next year. And she, you know, talk about epigenetics like that kid has learned to love moving. And she still does want to bake cookies and sit on the couch but she also doesn't feel good if that's all she does and she knows she needs to move and she does it without being prodded by us she's in she's in a battle with her school right now she's a senior and there's a weight room at the school run by anton and anton will not let her come in and squat because he requires a um a three-hour onboarding class in order to be able to use the weight

Starting point is 00:22:09 And George is like, what? Do I need a power snatch? What do you need me to do? Do you need me to- She's like, overhead squat? See if you can find any videos there, Andrew. I think there's a couple videos of her lifting on your Instagram. But she is throwing up her hands.

Starting point is 00:22:22 She's like, I'm not taking this plank class where you're going to watch me plank. She's like, I know how to squat. Why don't you just let me squat? And he's like, no, you have to do the basics just like everyone else. And she's in this little battle with Anton right now. And I support her. I'm like, nope, you don't need to do that. Just go squat.

Starting point is 00:22:36 So she'll bake and then disappear. My favorite thing is deadlift and barbecue. Set up a bar, turn the things over, go deadlift a little bit, right? Back and forth. Get on the slack line in between. Georgia now bakes cookies and back squats in the garage. Speaking of barbecuing,

Starting point is 00:22:54 when I was in labor with Georgia, which was a long one, Kelly was like barbecuing in the backyard because he didn't know what to do. And it was like OG, like we didn't have like a gas barbecue. He had to like set up the coals and like, you know, fire up the wood and everything. But like his reaction to like, I'm about to have a baby was like, let's barbecue.

Starting point is 00:23:10 So wait, did you have the baby in the house? No, I was at the, just at the house in labor before we went to the hospital, but it was, it went on for a while. And so, you know, Kelly was just out there barbecuing. What were you barbecuing? Like a brisket? Do you remember? Bulgogi. I mean, he hadisket do you remember bulgogi i mean he had trader joe's bulgogi it's really good it's still we still eat it today you know i do so good i do

Starting point is 00:23:33 have a question um especially like with georgia what other things did you guys or do you guys think is good to set up the environment to aid in movement because one thing that i've noticed is like for example as we've been podcasting like we have these things at our feet and we even have things on the table. And over time, Mark and I have noticed that we just fidget more now than we ever have because there are things at our feet and things at our hands. So we just move more. So what are some things that you think people can just do in their environment to aid in movement? So we're obsessed with this topic. And actually I was so stoked that this was a standing situation because our podcast table is also standing and I just stand there all the time. But we podcast is standing because of you guys.

Starting point is 00:24:12 Yeah. See, I was like, I can't sit on this information that he's given me. Yeah, you can't. So we we have two phrases we use to describe this, but one of them is just called constraining the environment. And the way Kelly likes to describe it is like, look, I love cookies. And if I have cookies in the house, I eat them. So if I don't have cookies in the house, I don't eat them. So we have applied that to literally all aspects of our life.

Starting point is 00:24:35 Right. Our office is all standing desks. So you can sit on a stool if you want. But the default is standing. You know, we started a walking school bus when our kids were little. So we were like, well, we don't drive to school. We walk to school. If you look at our living room, it's like a mobility tool paradise. You know, we have mats you can sit on the floor and foam rollers.

Starting point is 00:24:55 Did you see my little video the other day where I opened my mobility tool drawer and there was a Mark Bell hip circle in it? I saw a lot of the videos you've been shooting where you guys are kind of next to your coffee table and you're preaching to sit down while you're watching TV like on the floor rather than on the couch and stuff like that. Yeah. So we just we try to make it. We have balance boards and slack blocks around our house to practice our balance. People don't have enough will. No. We spend your will and your self-control on really important stuff.

Starting point is 00:25:23 Don't set up the world to have to make another heroic effort to be like, okay, now that's never going to work. And it doesn't work. Yeah, like we have a whole chapter on balance in this book because we think it's so important and it is so a use it or lose it situation. I mean, the backstory is my mom who is lean and fit and has always been super active her whole life. But she really didn't do a lot

Starting point is 00:25:45 in terms of balance practice. And at like 65, she couldn't ride a bike anymore because she felt just like timorous on a bike. And so balance is really one of those use it or lose it things. But I mean, if I told you guys like, hey, Mark Bell, you need to go to a one hour balance class today and you need to drive there and park your car and pay $30 for a balance class, you'd be like, oh yeah, no, I'm definitely not doing that. Like no one's going to do that. So, you know, we have a whole chapter talking about how much, how important we think balance is, but the practices are all constraining your environment. They're literally standing on one leg while you brush your teeth, putting on, you're doing the old man test every time you put on your shoes. What's the old man test, Jay?

Starting point is 00:26:25 The old man test is you leave your shoes and socks on the ground and then you lift up one foot and you pick up your sock and put it on. I think it ended up going viral like through us somehow, right? Chris Hinshaw came out. Chris Hinshaw. Yeah, and we credit Chris Hinshaw. We put it in the book and we're like, it's Chris Hinshaw and people have definitely seen it. You know, again, like I said, we have balance boards in our garage. And it's people have definitely seen it.

Starting point is 00:26:44 You know, again, like I said, we have balance boards in our garage. So it's like if you walk through the garage, you just take a minute and get on the balance board. And we have balance tools at our standing desk. And so we've just tried to say, OK, we think this is important. I need. Oh, there it is. I've seen that thing. Yes. I want it.

Starting point is 00:26:56 It's called a bongo board. Bongo. There I am. You're seeing dynamic balance where my kids are throwing something at me. People get seriously fucked up on those things. Yeah. I mean, you can, you know, yeah. Like step one, you can lose your teeth,

Starting point is 00:27:07 but, um, just be a basic person like me. Get a longboard. Longboarding is kind of easy. I mean, it's easier than skateboarding. Here's what you're doing.

Starting point is 00:27:15 A ton of work with a local coach, right? Look at all of the amazing balance and coordination training that's happening as part of this play that you're doing with this coach right what's his name i'm not sure which guy you're referring to but probably john john so john is having you challenge your center of gravity so one of the things that we see a lot is ideally if you and i went out and played frisbee or there's a soccer ball out there you play soccer ball you're juggling on one foot plans balance needs met i saw you jump rope on one foot to balance needs met we need to figure out how we can get these stimuluses in stimuli into your life but that's not what's

Starting point is 00:27:56 happening people don't do that they're living basically like with oven mitts on walking around ski boots and they don't feel and people think they're getting a lot of that from the gym, and you're not necessarily even getting it from the gym. If you're going to the gym, remember. Right, right. You know, we're seeing that. Julie and I are really approaching 50. We turned 50 this year.

Starting point is 00:28:16 And one of the things that we're seeing is, man, are you prepared for the things that are coming your way? If the number one reason people are likely to die is that you fall and break your hip, that is it. Because then you start to break your hip, then you have surgery, and then you lose your muscle mass, and then you lose your independence, and then, right, it's a bad thing. The number one reason people end up in nursing homes,

Starting point is 00:28:36 can't get up off the ground. So it seems to us, if you were using the same technology we use, hey, I'm going to set a world record. On this day, I'm going to squat this. You start to work backwards and you say, well, how much do I need to squat today so that I can progress? Well, just like his marathon training program. Same, same. Right?

Starting point is 00:28:52 Like you didn't just say, I'm going to go run a marathon tomorrow. You're like, I'm going to run a marathon, but I'm going to work backwards and build up to running a marathon. So why aren't we applying that same thinking around fundamentals in our bodies? And it turns out balance is an easy one that comes up. And remember, one of the things that we're always kind of going back and forth was this isn't just for your parents. We spend a lot of time working on balance and foot strength with all of our athletes because we find it to be such a competitive advantage. So what's good for the goose is also good for the gander. And we're interested in technology and ideas that scale up and down, whether I'm trying to rebuild

Starting point is 00:29:28 my ankle awareness after an ankle sprain, or I want to, you know, set a world record, having strong rad feet makes a huge difference. I think it's great that you guys came from the background of helping people get out of pain because pain is so, it's really complicated. It's a complex, complicated thing. And a lot of times I know some people were going to you guys as like last resort. They went everywhere. They tried everything. They tried all the painkillers. They tried surgeries. They tried so many different things and you're able to peel back the layers. And there is like some simplicity probably once you start to really think about pain, you always say like things are upstream downstream um and then you get into hydration your sleep what's your lifestyle like

Starting point is 00:30:10 and so i think it's really cool the way that you guys have uh transitioned into talking about uh the stuff you're talking about today because it has is so related to how you diffused a lot of people's pain and let me just say that, you know, where are people going to have that conversation? It doesn't happen in the physician's office because she does not have enough time to have a conversation with you. She's got six or eight minutes to figure out, tell me what your sleep looked like for the last three months, Mark, or the stress. Like I, that's not the place for that conversation. The place we learned to have that conversation was in the gym. That was where we could have conversations about nutrition and, hey, why are you wearing those shoes?

Starting point is 00:30:50 What's going on? And my knee hurts. And what did you do for your knee that made you feel better? And now we're saying, can we take those lessons and then hand them over to our neighbors? Again, if the unit of change is the neighborhood, right, then what we wanted to do was also create a book that you could give to your mom or dad or uncle or neighbor to say, hey, I see that you're interested. You're asking me a lot of these questions. Start here. Let's get you kind of spun up on some basics. And then we can have the next conversation.

Starting point is 00:31:19 One of the things I like to tell people, too, is almost every time Kelly does a speaking engagement, he asks the crowd, which is five people or a thousand people, how many of you are in pain? And like 98 percent of people raise their hands. And so I think this goes back a little bit to what I was saying at the beginning about what people care about. And, you know, again, there's so many people who do want to be healthy and be out of pain. out of pain. But I think we've really not done a great job in the fitness business because I think we think that they want to have shredded abs and, you know, and follow the perfect diet and look a certain way on Instagram when really most people, you know, even, even many people who are like, we're college athletes and legit athletes at some point in their life, but like they could care less about a lot of the things we think in the industry they care about. But most of those people care about is like, can I live without chronic

Starting point is 00:32:08 pain? And can I do the things with my body that I want to be able to do? And, you know, up till now, there hasn't been any accessible way for people to get some really basic information. And, you know, one of the things we haven't even talked about it yet, but there is a lot of sort of movement-based mobility-type chapters in this book as well. Tests. Tests, so that people can get a benchmark. Because speaking of pain, as you know, Mark, it's like one of the big issues is poor mechanics and lack of range of motion. And people don't even know that they should care about that.

Starting point is 00:32:40 They don't even know. I mean, we've been beating that drum for a while, and I know you care and you guys care. When I met Mark, Mark couldn't put his shoes on. Without sitting down? Without sitting down, without maybe using a stick. It's still hard. My feet are so far away from the rest of my body.

Starting point is 00:32:57 You're not wrong. But I want to just keep getting further and further away. And showing, because a lot of people are like, can this change? I'm like, you have no idea how much you can change you have no your body never stops healing it never stops remodeling and you if i cut you in half and like countered the rings there are some years back there look like forest fires and droughts right and then all of a sudden i have a lot of droughts all of a sudden i look at now and i'm like, Oh, look, there's, there's wind and hair and all these things happening. And it really just shows that you, if you start to begin to be consistent on some of

Starting point is 00:33:36 these behaviors, they start to aggregate and roll and you have no idea how much you can change and make the system more robust. You really can. I don't know if it was just that moment where you fell with a thousand pounds. Is that the moment that you were like, wait a minute, there's maybe it's not just a thousand and one or a thousand seven or a thousand eight, you know, there's, there's something else to this whole system. I just know that, uh, my fat friend, Jesse Burd, was the one that kind of just encouraged me to walk after I fell with that weight. And he was like, you know, he would tell me, you know, just go for it.

Starting point is 00:34:13 And I couldn't walk very well because I was in a lot of pain. But I just started walking and walking and walking and walking. And eventually the walking turned into running. You know, it took many, many years. It took like 10 years. But just the encouragement to walk was big. And then I think I wanted to try to turn it into something else, but I wasn't really able to. And I would try and turn it into something else.

Starting point is 00:34:36 I would try to like even just like walk with like a weight vest or like I tried to make it harder than it needed to be or more complicated. And it just didn't need to be. And I just learned I was like I'm just going to keep walking. And so I would walk, I don't know, two miles a day for a little while and then three miles. Yeah. You did your 10 minute walks. You would do like a bunch of 10 minute walks all the time. So did you do anything else besides walking to get out of pain and losing weight, losing weight and walking to get up? Yeah, obviously the diet and stuff like that. I mean, I was 330 pounds. You guys remember. I mean, you guys were there with me for a lot of that.

Starting point is 00:35:09 And yeah, I just had to make changes. You know, I was doing stuff at that time that I thought was in my best interest to do the best I possibly could on the platform and in the sport of powerlifting. That's a sport I love. And so I was just throwing down as hard as I could in that realm. And when it chewed me up and spit me out, I was smart enough to recognize it. And I said, I think that's it. Human beings are the only animal we think,

Starting point is 00:35:37 like I should fit in the same jeans I wore in college when I was 19. Like that's crazy. We're the only, like you have the same weight your whole life. We should, like, when we have athletes. What's your favorite weight? Well, we can get into that. But, you know, we should be able to re-spin up, spin down, retool. I'm interested in this for a while.

Starting point is 00:35:58 I feel like I'm too heavy as I ski. I want to get lighter, right? You know, we have that capacity to remodel and change in your tissues. Similarly, your range of motion is you've proven has radically changed. You're moving more fluidly. You have access to different shapes and positions. You've always been a good athlete. I think sometimes you don't get kind of the credit for being such a, I think world champion. I think the world champion end or something like that. But you have continued to change and remodel,

Starting point is 00:36:30 and your body is right there to be it with you. It takes a little bit longer when you're coming from a 330-pound world champion strong person. But as an allegory for the rest of us, we can improve our range of motion. We can improve these systems. The body doesn't ever turn these capacities off. It just gets harder to access them. What are some of the tests that you guys were mentioning? Like some of the basic tests that you guys have in the book that people can try or maybe they can even try it out while they're doing the podcast?

Starting point is 00:36:58 Well, I tell you, here's a good one. We love this one because it's so accessible. All you need to do is stand crisscross applesauce and then lower yourself to the ground can you do that while you're here maybe you don't have enough room so can you sit all the way on the ground crisscross applesauce just sit cross leg that will kill me yeah right sit sit all the way down there you go just sit cross like you're on some weird balance board thing that's going to kill you It's amazing watching SEMA

Starting point is 00:37:27 Try to fit his big body back here Now, without He's basically sitting criss-cross Now, without putting your hands down Without putting your knees down Can you stand up from that position? I think you can You can lean forward, put your hands out in front of you

Starting point is 00:37:43 Rock forward Oh, he's got a big butt He does have a gigantic butt, and I'm jealous of that You can lean forward. Put your hands out in front of you. Rock forward. Oh, he's got a big butt. He does have a gigantic butt and I'm jealous of that. So you put one hand down, you've got a B. So you put one hand down, so you've got a B. Now I have a caveat and a question. I got a big ass and some

Starting point is 00:37:58 big legs. Me too, my friend. Okay, I mean, actually, I'm not going to comment. But my friend okay i mean i actually i i'm not gonna comment but but like it's it's really dumpy back here so i wonder is that like holding me back or is it because my back yeah he's got and i had a knee replacement i can still do that so i have a b And he's almost 50. Comma. Not even a world champion.

Starting point is 00:38:30 Wait, how old are you, Mark Bell? Is that a secret? 46. Okay. I had to have to check. How old are you? I'm 30. Oh, man.

Starting point is 00:38:37 Do you remember that? Cut off your hand, it grows back the next day. So that test is a mid-range test of hip flexion and not even strength. We see little tiny babies be able to do that, right? But what that does is that actually is a really good indicator of your early mortality and early morbidity. The more points of contact you have. Like for you, again, there's a lot of things going on. Am I worried about your health because you struggle to have some hip flexion? But if that could indicate, you're like, wow, I have a hard time sitting on the ground. I have a hard time flexing my knees. I have a hard time

Starting point is 00:39:14 putting my hips in external rotation and balancing in those positions. And it really gives us insight. I think one of the reasons, you know, supple leopard stays on the shelf is that we always are trying and we haven't done a good enough job of making the connection between you care about this because it limits the things you can do and the things you care about. I got to say, some of these challenges are really annoying because there's people that can do them that don't work out or do anything. And you're like, how the hell were they able to do? But I still get it. Your girlfriend could probably do that very easily. Oh, Sam could easily.

Starting point is 00:39:46 She trains. But you mentioned, I don't think she was an athlete growing up. No, she wasn't. She just walked a lot with her mom. But she was a mover, but she moved. Well, and you know what I'd like to say about the get up and down off the floor test is that, you know, it's one of the easiest practices to fix in your life. Because the recommendation we have is sit on the floor and watch TV or watch one of your shows because everybody's doing it. Everybody's watching Netflix or whatever at night. So how about just change it and sit on the floor? Because then

Starting point is 00:40:15 by getting back up off the floor, you've practiced that movement. Or like the other thing I do is every time I go to the gym and do a workout, I literally do that crisscross once down, once up. And I mean, now now it's just you have a benchmark. You're like, oh, okay, I'm missing some hip flexion. You have an awareness now, which is what we're hoping to give you by having this objective test. Like you have an awareness that you have a bit of a limitation there. And there's super simple things you can practice, that you can do to practice it and get better. Those are mid-range tests.

Starting point is 00:40:43 Everything in here is very reasonable. practice it, and get better. Those are mid-range tests. Everything in here is very reasonable. For someone like you who's an athlete who says, oh, wow, this was harder than I thought. Like, I'm like, you're a good athlete. I don't want to compete against you. One of the things that you can suddenly realize is, oh, hey, I'm below this benchmark.

Starting point is 00:40:57 It was a little harder than I wanted. So now I can do a couple things. Maybe I do a little pigeon pose, standing. Maybe I work on my hip range of motion. I got it. And then now what we've done is we've given people a language to understand minimums and understand sort of where they are and the cost of their lives. Have a baby, run a marathon, take a red eye. Let's see how well you do. I guarantee you, you're going to look like crap.

Starting point is 00:41:19 What about even something as simple as just get up off the couch without sounding like a bear? Yeah. Cocaine bear? Come on, that's different. Well, I'm like, let me give you, you're only 30, so you don't care about this yet, but you will. So we were just on the Conquer Athlete podcast with Jason Layden, and he's a great dude.

Starting point is 00:41:36 And he was telling us he has like a young baby, like, you know, four months old or something. And he had two sets of his own mother and then his mother-in-law were there to help take care of the baby. And his mother-in-law couldn't get down on the ground or back up again. So she was unable to sit on the floor with their baby to be able to play with the baby. So it actually, and mind you, this woman's like 65

Starting point is 00:42:02 and also not unfit, like not unfit, but she couldn't sit on the floor with her grandchild. And so, you know, like it's just simple things like that you don't even think about. But like that's what you could lose if you don't use it is that kind of thing. And you don't think about that. You're like, oh, it would never occur to me that I'd want to sit on the floor and play with my grandchild when I'm 65. And, you know, one of the things that's happening at Super Training, which is really fun, is that you're bringing in all of these other modalities of training.

Starting point is 00:42:29 You're bringing in experts and you're like, show us what's going on. And you're starting to see the kinds of people that are training here and the things that they're doing really start to be diverse. It's really fun. I mean, it's like a cardio bunny gym out there now, basically. Right? Jump ropes, jogging. I'm like, where am I?

Starting point is 00:42:44 Cats are sleeping with dogs. You didn't even see the ropes we have man that's right you got to try it all right i mean that's that's what we do you got to you got to try things out and see you know what does this thing actually work and can i do the thing you know we get so obsessed with no no my training is like the secret school program of all secret school programs and i say say, well, that's cool. Can you transfer that to this skill? So what we've done is created some neutral tests to see how well your skills transfer.

Starting point is 00:43:13 Because if you're, you know, only box squatting so high and you don't ever, we talked about one time, you're like, I don't think my knee has gone deeper than my hip. And, or, you know, my hip has gone deeper than my knee. And I don't know, 10 years? Didn't need to. And I'm still the best in the world at what I do. So these tests give you an example of, of seeing how well your training is going or is your training because you're into running, is it costing you on one of your kind of key metrics? We call that, that idea session cost. There is a session cost to the training you're doing. Your brutal training that you did yesterday is going to impact your ability to generate force today,

Starting point is 00:43:51 your volume today, and your range of motion. So if we can reduce that session cost or develop practices that diminish the cost of the activity, then what we see is we have better, less compensation, better capacities in the long haul. These tests are simple. I don't know what you did yesterday or work training, but suddenly you're like, I should be able to come in and do David Weck stuff or get into FP stuff. I should be able to do all of that if the truth of my training is real.

Starting point is 00:44:21 So over Christmas, our daughters, as you know, they both play water polo and then they like to weight lift and stuff. But they went to a Pilates class in Tahoe. We were like, go. Go get your ass kicked in Pilates.

Starting point is 00:44:33 They were so worked, like rhabdo level sore, like worked from doing a Pilates class and we're like, well, there you go. of a fitness person when they come on,

Starting point is 00:44:42 they're like, I've got rhabdo. You're 15. So anyway, we make them test their fitness in weird ways like Pilates. You know, I've been seeing, there's been a lot of people that have been annoyed at how much like we've been talking about the feet and how deep we've gotten into it because we've noticed a big difference with ourselves. And I know you guys have kind of talked to us about it a little bit but are we uh are we focusing on it too much or have you guys also i mean i saw on ready to run you i was i've texted mark and andrew about some like kelly's been talking about this shit for a minute right do you see what i'm saying to you mark

Starting point is 00:45:17 but huberman said yeah huberman said uh i'm gonna let ke Kelly take this one because he is truly obsessed with the feet and my guess is he would say you're not talking about it too much. The real question is where and when are we going to work on your feet? That's the real question. What thing am I going to give up? Because that's really the conversation that people come in.

Starting point is 00:45:39 I need the three key mobilizations for my body. Just the three. I'm like, okay, so you don't want to put your arms over your head or squat? Like what's not important to you? I want to say, when are we going to talk about our feet? Like the next time that I go to the grocery store to like the person that checks me out. Hey, nice feet. Like instead of talking about like the weather and stuff, I want to say, when are we going to talk about your feet?

Starting point is 00:45:59 When are we going to talk feet? You nasty, nasty. I've been listening to the power project. Kelly also just subtext Kelly. Are we going to talk for you? Nasty, nasty. I've been listening to the power project. Kelly also just subtext Kelly.

Starting point is 00:46:11 His most triggering thing that anyone can say to him is what's like the number one mobilization I should do? Like if you want to like, I've seen so many people ask him that and his head like tilts to the side and he starts like twitching a little bit. And he wants to be nice to the person, but he's like dying on the inside. So you say something deep like you need to eat more. So then, then I, I come in as like, you know, background. I'm like couch stretch, just couch stretch. He won't be able to tell you, but just do that one. 10 minute squat. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:46:34 You know, what is it you want to do with your body? Where are you connecting your feet to the ground? So we're, we're working with this pretty good surfer right now. are working with this pretty good surfer right now. He is first in class, extraordinary, and his feet are so strong and so balanced and so springy. And it's weird how that somehow connects his world-class world champion surfing. His connection to the board is his feet and he obsesses on his feet. And he's working with Vivo on, you know, kind of telling the story. And it's interesting because we'll, we were watching this documentary.

Starting point is 00:47:10 It's, it's called make or break on Apple right now about the surf contest and the athletes who surf there, men and women. But sometimes Julie will go, Ooh, look at his feet. And you're like, Ooh, that guy can't go very far. At some point, he is not going to be connecting all the power to the board because his feet. So if balance matters, if locomoting in the world, there's a guy named Philip Beach who wrote a book called Muscles and Meridians, and he says, really, if you look evolutionarily, and I don't think that's the best lens always,

Starting point is 00:47:40 but he's like, what were human beings needing to do? We needed to throw stuff. We needed to get up and down off the ground and we needed to carry stuff. Well, all three of those things require the foot. And what we see is that there's, you know, if you look at the homunculus on the brain, that's the pattern of the brain, the sensory cortex that like your hand takes up a huge amount of space in your brain, your face and tongue, huge amount. But your feet almost take up as much space as your hands. Right? Your feet almost take as much space as your genitals

Starting point is 00:48:09 in terms of the space on your brains. The homunculus. Whoa. You're welcome. Didn't I tell you in the car I was going to bring up the genital homunculus? That's the name of my new alt-rock band. I was going to say, they have another book. I don't know what Kelly's talking about, but quick side story.

Starting point is 00:48:26 So Kelly was at this chiropractic conference last week, and he came home and he had this little device, and he's like, oh, okay, I'm so excited about this device. I'm going to measure your foot strength. No, no. Big toe strength. Big toe strength. So you put this little thing under, and it's got this little thing attached to it that tells, and I got like the worst score and i got so mad i was like we got in like an actual fight not really but like a fake fight

Starting point is 00:48:50 and he's like yeah you only got 10 and i got 30 we were literally having this like like this is how sad our life is actually as i'm saying out loud it's embarrassing um but we were literally like measuring our toe strength with a device on the living room floor like basically two nights ago. So if that tells you anything about how much we care about it. What you'll see is that the Russians have an old saying, you're as old as your feet. Look at all of the, you know, look at the work of David Weck is really talking about foot position, foot strength. Any of these groups are talking or be talking about how do we develop the foot? The real question is, do I need a secret

Starting point is 00:49:31 squirrel foot program? How can I begin to strengthen my feet? What can I do in the context of the things I love? Well, walking around barefoot is a real, that's a good starter. Having shoes that facilitate the right movement. You're running in a running shoe right now, right? Because that allows you to run. But you're not wearing that running shoe currently, are you? No, I'm barefoot right now. You took them off. That's how we want people to start to view their shoes.

Starting point is 00:49:56 Even though when we wrote Ready to Run a long time ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended zero shoes for children. They were like, the shoe we recommend is no shoe. Then the second shoe we recommend is the shoe that doesn't disrupt your feet. So here's a simple test you can do with your feet. Stand barefoot, which you guys are doing. Find balance between the ball of your foot and your heel and put your ankles right in the middle of your feet. So you look down and your ankles are just balanced in the middle of your feet.

Starting point is 00:50:25 Got it? Balanced from front to back. Okay, yeah. Ankles in the middle. That's what we call reference foot position. If I was going to have you squat the most, I want your feet to look like that to generate the most force. Some of our Olympic lifting super studs call this flat foot jumping

Starting point is 00:50:40 or full foot jumping, jumping from the full foot. This position allows you to handle the most force. It's our reference position. It's not the only position your feet needs to be in. But now put on your shoes and see how far from this position your shoes are pushing you. Are they pushing you outside? Can you even weight your ball of your heel? Are you slammed into your heel?

Starting point is 00:51:00 Are they pushing you inside? And that's a really nice indicator of which shoe should you use. It's the shoe that disrupts your function the best or the least or the shoe that disrupts how your brain is interpreting the ground. And that's a really simple way. That means Juliet's wearing some cute shoes right now, right? Why are you calling me out? I was trying to hide those. It's okay that she's wearing cute shoes because she's not only wearing cute shoes.

Starting point is 00:51:24 I think that's what we want people to understand. You can start to strengthen your feet, play. You know, one of the things we were talking about besides environmental constraint is this idea of peppering. So we will throw Georgia. She'll never hear this. So we'll just keep talking shit. Yeah, she's never going to listen to this. No offense.

Starting point is 00:51:41 No offense, Mark Bell. Oh, she's just not. She's Uncle Mark. Like, whatever. I'm not going to listen to this podcast. So when she was a little kid, she had a pacifier in her crib and she would lose the pacifier. And then she'd be like, I can't find a pacifier. And our pediatrician was like, oh, yeah, we solved that.

Starting point is 00:51:55 You just put 20 pacifiers in the crib. And so in the night, she would lose her pacifier, but just move her arm around and hit like 16. It didn't matter like where her little arm was sweeping. There was a pacifier there. And then she'd out, right? So we took that idea. And if you, like right now, you're standing on a pebble mat. There's a, you got the sole feet over here.

Starting point is 00:52:13 The idea is if you can create opportunity to explore, balance, foot, without having to do another thing, you're going to do it. We call that reducing barriers to adherence or, you know, reducing friction, whatever the behavioral language you want. But what you guys have done back here is created an opportunity to have really strong feet and you don't have to go do something else to have really strong feet because that's where we lose the narrative of all of this. I would just like to add to that being barefoot means actually being barefoot because we see, you know, we know a lot of people who have like shoe off homes, which is,

Starting point is 00:52:49 I'm a fan of that great shoe off home. But then in a lot of those homes, people are wearing like these really soft, squishy slippers around. Is that you? Oh, you're not that. I was like, are you wearing a soft, squishy slipper? No, no, no. Yeah. You're like background person. Anyway, I'm just saying that, you know, the soft, squishy slipper is not barefoot. How about socks? You guys care about that? Nope. Nope.

Starting point is 00:53:11 Yeah, Kelly actually was just in Japan. And I'm going to tell a story about that, too, because it does relate to getting up and down off the floor. But Kelly was just in Japan and he said he called me a couple of times and he's like, OK, so it's really trippy because once you go into a building, basically everyone's wearing a robe, the same one, and socks. Like just around the hotel. Like you're like down there at the hotel bar. You're wearing your socks and your robe. And then you're like going to breakfast at the hotel bar and you're wearing your robe and your socks.

Starting point is 00:53:34 Like everyone's just wearing socks. Imagine like all of the older people in your life, all of them. They're in their 50s, 60s, 70s, and they're all hanging out in socks on Harvard floors. How's that going to end? That's what's happening in Japan. I was like, everyone's going to die. You're going to slip and fall.

Starting point is 00:53:52 It's not even like hospital socks that have the traction underneath. But anyway, so just speaking of getting up and down off the floor, Kelly was traveling and skiing with a bunch of friends. And the guy he was supposed to share a room with had a cold. So they wanted to separate and sleep in different rooms. And the hotel staff was freaking out because they're like, well, we don't have an extra room. We don't have an extra room. And when they got down to the bottom of it, what they realized or what Kelly and the guys realized is they did have an extra room.

Starting point is 00:54:18 They just didn't have an extra like American, Western white person room where the bed is at a normal height and the table's at a normal height. They had Japanese rooms still available where the futon is on the floor, the table and chairs are on the floor, the shower is set up so you sit in the shower on the ground. You know, literally like the- The ceiling's real low.

Starting point is 00:54:39 The thermostats are at floor level, like squatting level. And Kelly was like, this room was made for me. Like Mr. Toddler joined himself. Meet me, choose me, pick me. Yeah. And so he was so excited. But, you know, they literally have to have two separate rooms in Japan for American and Western tourists because we need our bed off the ground and we need our tables off the ground. And we literally can't get up and down off the ground.

Starting point is 00:55:06 So Kelly was like the perfect person to get the all on the ground room. So if you're into socks, you're into toe socks, I think it's a great opportunity to express your individualism. You know, I am a raw dog, barefoot guy. I just, I don't even wear socks or shoes. No, I don't like socks. Sometimes I have to cycle my, barefoot guy. I just, I don't even like socks. You don't even wear socks in your shoes. No, I don't like socks. Sometimes I have to cycle my shoes a little faster. But you wore them when you were in Japan, right?

Starting point is 00:55:30 Only because I don't want to be that creepy white guy. You were in a robe and socks. He was in a robe and socks with everyone else. Get right in line. Sipping on some green tea. And they're the toe socks. So your big toe is separate. Oh, really?

Starting point is 00:55:44 Like ninja socks. Yeah, but just your big toe. Like not all your toes. Just the the toe socks. So your big toe is separate. Oh, really? Like ninja socks. Yeah, but just your big toe, like not all your toes, just the big toe separate. How have you guys been able to do this together for so long? Because that can be hard sometimes to work with your significant other. So how have you guys been able to? Wait, are you saying it's hard to work with Andy? Is that what you're saying? No, no.

Starting point is 00:55:59 I've heard from other people that sometimes these situations might be difficult. Sometimes it can be difficult. Sometimes it can be difficult. Why don't you take that one? Well, it's easy. Raising kids and starting a business, getting everything all going all at one time. I think it's easier than people think. I think if you are in a relationship, you're already running a small business.

Starting point is 00:56:19 You're running a household. You're solving problems together. All we've done is, though, expanded what that thing that you're doing with your partner in your house is already happening. Someone's got to do dishes. Someone's got to – like you've got to pick up kids. Whatever your house is, just expand that same level of communication to having a business. I think it's the same. There's an old saying.

Starting point is 00:56:45 It's like – saying, it's like, what is it? It's like strangers in public married in the bedroom, you know, where we're really polite to each other. We try to be thoughtful to each other. I think it helps that Juliet and I have radically different skill sets. Like Juliet is really skilled and I'm really good at picking up things. I'm good at flexibility. But, you know, one of the things that is known, and I think it blows people's minds, but I'm like, do you guys train together? If people struggle to think about us working together, I'm like, you don't train together with your partner. Juliet and I, Juliet's the greatest training partner I ever had. In fact, I met Juliet at the World Championships in whitewater paddling, and I saw Juliet perform, talk, hang out, flirt, have fun, and to her the most stressful time in her life at the World Championships where she could die on the river.

Starting point is 00:57:34 It's very big and scary. And in that moment, I sort of knew everything I needed to know about Juliet. When it gets really hairy, I'm going to know what looks like, how Juliet's going to handle that stress. I'm going to know what looks like how Juliet's going to handle that stress so I think the other thing is that people don't jump into fully formed businesses together we started, Juliet's an attorney, I'm a physical therapist

Starting point is 00:57:52 we started a gym with a really great banner sign that you really love and we kind of step wise it wasn't really a gym Mark is making a parking lot of drinks gym is a loose term gym idea, gym adjacent gym adjacent really a gym. Mark is making a parking lot of drinks. Gym is a loose term.

Starting point is 00:58:08 Gym idea. Gym adjacent. Gym adjacent. You turned it into a gym at one point and you ruined it. It fucked everything up. When you tried to make it real and tried to make it legit and actually have a sign it jacked everything up. Your intuition was dead on from the beginning. You know, I think if we use the allegory of things, when are you going to do this stuff?

Starting point is 00:58:27 If you end up working with your partner, the things you're going to have to make sure that you're doing is you have to pepper your environment and constrain the environment so much that Juliet isn't my business partner. Juliet's my wife who I work with. And I'm always going out of our way to have dinner together. work with. And I'm always, we're going out of our way to have dinner together. We're going our way to make sure that we're hanging out and we like each other and we still play and exercise and adventure together because it's easy suddenly to slip into a different relationship. You can make that mistake where suddenly Juliet is the CEO and all we're doing is running business instead of that other thing. I think that's the magic is that we've continued to adventure together. And, Julie, that's still my number one adventure, kid.

Starting point is 00:59:07 Well, also I would say I do think a lot of relationships is just luck. Like I think you kind of luck out to choose someone who you ultimately end up or that your interests continue to evolve together and you stay interested. Like I think part of that is literally just luck. But we did have some really fundamental things going for us. Like we really see very eye to eye about how to raise our kids and like what we value and what we value in life and how we think about money. And a lot of those really basic things like we we haven't had to really negotiate that much of our in our relationship. Like we really have seen eye to eye on that. And so we truly it makes all the money.

Starting point is 00:59:43 We definitely you know, we definitely have our moments and, you know, I am like bossy as heck. And sometimes Kelly has to like do box breathing to deal with my bossiness. You kind of just like talk at people sometimes. That's what you've always done with me. Yeah, yeah. You don't give me an opportunity

Starting point is 00:59:59 to think. No, I'm so excited to see you. She hits me like so many times. I'm like, I'll just do what she said. It's not like that with everyone. I'm just so excited when I see you. I'm like, I'm so excited to see you. She hits me like so many times. I'm like, I'll just do what she said. But it's not like that with everyone. I'm just so excited when I see you. I'm like, I have so many things to tell you. But check this out. If you're really in a partnership with someone, a training partner, right? You're in a feedback state. So if you and I are really like we're on the platform, we're doing something, we're giving each other intense feedback because I make the assumption that you can see things and perceive things about me that

Starting point is 01:00:28 I can't see. That's why we have training partners, right? They're coaching. You're getting coached. You're giving me feedback every set. Really liked how you did that. The same thing is true with your partner. It's difficult to get to a place where you can appreciate that Juliet actually is bossy. That's true. My life is better and organized because it is. But also Juliet can see a whole bunch of shit that I can't see. She perceives when I'm going off the rails or I'm missing something or I've handled something wrong. And when I made that mind shift that Juliet was on my team, that made it a lot easier. We weren't compatriots.

Starting point is 01:01:04 Juliet has my back and she's looking out for all the traps that I'm going to step on. Power Project Family, how's it going? Now we talk about sleep all the time on the podcast, because it's one of the biggest things that helps you with your health and fitness, your recovery, your muscle gain, your fat loss, everything. That's why we've partnered with Eight Sleep for such a long time now, because the technology behind the mattress allows you to track your heart rate, the amount of times it takes you to fall asleep, your tosses and turns, your heart rate variability. It changes its temperature through the night based off how you sleep, but not only yourself,

Starting point is 01:01:31 but maybe your partner on the other side of the bed. It is an amazing mattress. Andrew, how can they learn more? Yes. Head over to 8sleep.com slash power project. That's 8 spelled out E-I-G-H-T sleep.com slash power project. Along with more information, you guys will actually save $150 off of your entire order automatically links to them down in the description, as well as the podcast show notes. What about in terms of having the kids kind of do some of the things that you guys are doing? I mean, I know you, I know it's in the household, so hopefully they see it, you know? Um, but I saw my dad, uh, wear a suit and tie and go to work every day and never wanted to do that.

Starting point is 01:02:07 So, like, how do you get your kids kind of incorporate some of what you're doing? I think that's always a, you know, you're always like, oh, my God, is my kid getting even, you know. I mean, I think we are huge proponents of sort of, like, trying to lead by example with our kids. And really, my only hope with them when it comes to all this physical stuff. They're not vegetarians. That's it. That, you know, with this, with all this physical stuff we do, and I mentioned it earlier, like my only hope with them is that, that we've, you know, trained them or taught them or showed them how important it is to keep moving in life, whatever that means to them, however

Starting point is 01:02:42 they want to do it, whatever brings them joy to just keep moving and sort of keep an eye on, you know, some of these built to move kind of benchmarks. Georgia's a really good cook. She knows how to cook like real food. She'll make dinner for us regularly. She has a, I mean, she knows how to train and program for herself. So, I mean, even that. Well, like, like the other thing I was going to say is we really had, I mean, we've never

Starting point is 01:03:04 been big alcoholic drinkers. Like that's never been a big thing for us. But we sort of made a conscious decision to like pretty much not drink when our kids were quite a bit younger. Because we you know, where we live in Marin County, there's like the highest rate of adult binge drinking and teen binge drinking and we were like, okay, well, if what we do every night is drink and everything that we do for fun involves drinking. That's how we self-soothe. And if that's how we self-soothe, then that's what we've taught our kids. And we want to teach our kids that the way to self-soothe is by moving and playing and connecting in meaningful ways with other people and being outside and doing adventures.

Starting point is 01:03:42 And so we've really tried hard to show them that like that's how you can kind of take care of your mental health as a human and not self and doing adventures. And so we, we've really tried hard to show them that like, that's how you can kind of take care of your mental health as a human and not self-suit. And we don't demonize alcohol. Just everyone knows. Yeah. Like we'll, we'll have a drink at a wedding or whatever.

Starting point is 01:03:53 I mean, we're not like totally anti-drinkers, but we just really took a moment to think and we wanted to be intentional about, Hey, what do we want to, how do we want to teach our kids? Why can't you just enjoy each other?

Starting point is 01:04:02 Why can't you just enjoy times together? Like, why does there always have to be alcohol? Like there shouldn't, you shouldn't have to feel like you need it. Yeah, exactly. And so now we're old and alcohol trashes us. Yeah, really? That's really, that's really, when I was 30, I was like, tequila, it's fine. Now I'm like, tequila, clear this, clear the schedules. You know, with, with, it's interesting. You know, one of the things we believe strongly in, and we have this in the book, is we have protein minimums, right? Like, I think that's really reasonable.

Starting point is 01:04:31 And our goal's in there for the average person. If you're not very active and you're just kind of cruising around, 0.7 grams per pound body weight is a reasonable goal. We tell people if, like, you're trying to heal, if you're trying to grow, if you're trying to get better or change your body composition, we're like one gram per pound body weight. And we think that's really reasonable. And that's reasonable end, right? You guys go, you know, can go super crazy. But we have the same thing with fruits and vegetables. We're trying to get 800 grams of fruits and vegetables every day.

Starting point is 01:04:57 And one of the reasons is we feel like people don't get enough micronutrients and you're growing, loading child needs more micronutrients. So Caroline only loves brown food. Like we have to trick her. And I'm like, look over there, an airplane, you know, and like to try to get her to eat fruits and vegetables is a constant, constant battle. So some of the things our kids have grown up and they know what they need to do. It's not perfect. I mean, our kids are like fish is disgusting. We're need to do, it's not perfect. They don't always do it. Our kids are like, fish is disgusting. We're not eating fish, Dad.

Starting point is 01:05:28 So we're constantly battling. But also simultaneously we have Georgia who was like an all-league superstar water polo player, but she's like, playing college? Are you crazy? Do you see all those college players? All those Olympians who come back and are broke and depressed? She's like, I don't want that. Kids have such a different viewpoint nowadays. They seem like they're so much smarter.

Starting point is 01:05:49 She's like, I'm going to go study economics. She's already started a subscription cookie business and she's already got like $1,200 of recurring revenue every month. Now that you're running, you could be a subscriber. She works four days a month, four or five days a month, cooking. What kind of cookies are we talking about?

Starting point is 01:06:05 I love cookies. It's cookie of the month, so you don't get to decide. It just comes. You should be a subscriber. Now that you're running, you can definitely manage it. What's the website? Georgia'sbakeshop.com. Check it out, Pete.

Starting point is 01:06:16 It's legit. And she's done. She now bakes for the Presidio. She'll bake for big events. But she's figured out. She's like, oh, this entrepreneurial thing, owning. She was, there it is, she was a lifeguard the summer

Starting point is 01:06:29 before, and she was so bummed. She's like, I didn't make any money. She was making $15.25 an hour. She's like, I'm never working for the man ever again. You're defamming the family name by making cookies. Isn't it funny, though, that our whole mission is to try to help people move more and be healthier,

Starting point is 01:06:48 and then our daughter has a subscription cookie company. I mean, you know. It's legit. She's trying to send more people your way. Her senior project for—she's about to graduate, and her senior project is she's actually working with Momentous Nutrition to make a proprietary protein recovery cookie. Yeah, because she's like, none of these protein cookies are even slightly edible. of momentous nutrition to make a proprietary protein recovery cookie. And that's her senior project. She's like, none of these protein cookies are even slightly edible.

Starting point is 01:07:09 She's like, I can do better. So she's trying to make a protein cookie. I like what you guys preach is seems to be more add-ons rather than like just subtract from people's lives rather than saying, hey, you can't do that. You know, you guys are trying to add. So but are there things that people need to eventually just, maybe they do need a departure from it? Like maybe it'd probably be a really good idea for a lot of people to have a departure from alcohol. What do you recommend when it comes to that kind of thing?

Starting point is 01:07:36 How about this? Let's cover the basics, right? And then make a decision about how that's going to be. So for us, for Juliet and I, if you pin us down, you're like, what is the one behavior? We're like, it's sleep. We organize our day around sleep. We protect our sleep. Sleep is the game for us.

Starting point is 01:07:55 So if we view that, we know that if we sleep and drink, we're not going to get good deep sleep. We're going to, Juliet will wake up with a headache at three in the morning, which after one drink she does. Right? Nice little feedback loop. So suddenly you can make a decision. I'm not very stressed. I'm well rested. This sleep, this alcohol is going to mess me up, but I'm going to take that hit. That's a real different conversation than the only way I know to hit the brakes is to have a bottle of wine. Right. And that means that we have poorly prepared someone to be able to handle their stressors, and we've given them a less effective way to manage that. Versus I'm out at dinner with my friends, and Mark just ordered a great bottle of wine.

Starting point is 01:08:33 I'm going to have a glass, and that's okay. So you're right, though. We really talk about expanding whenever we can. So if you eat 800 grams of fruits and vegetables and hit your protein macros, guess what happens? You're super full. And you're like, well, I guess there's not any room for cookies. Right? So what we found is that if we can net positive change this way, instead of taking things away from people, then we see a lot better adherence. You're right. I'll answer that. Maybe people could stand to spend a little less time on their phones before they go to bed.

Starting point is 01:09:05 That'd be like the one thing I would say is a subtraction. Okay. Quick question. You guys mentioned the sleep thing. Young and old, I want to say, because we tend to think that just younger kids are on there. No, no, no. We're all doing it too. But it's us and it's people that are 60, 70.

Starting point is 01:09:20 It's our parents that are on the phones a lot too. Yeah. It's universal. I agree. I agree. I put Instagram on like it's on the app page. It's not on my home screen. So I have to swipe all the way over.

Starting point is 01:09:37 And what that did is I was on it too much because I really like watching what's going on in the world. It's fun, yeah. It's super fun. It is fun. So I had to make it so it was hard for me to find it. Now I open it in the morning. I open it in the evening. I try not to go. How about burn 20 calories every time you want to try to make it so it was hard for me to find it. Now I open it in the morning. I open it in the evening. I try not to go. How about burn 20 calories every time you want to try to use it?

Starting point is 01:09:49 Because I don't have enough calories to burn. I would do it all the time. It's fine. What else do you guys do to guard your sleep? Oh, man. I mean, we are truly obsessed with our sleep. I mean, the biggest thing is we just actually try to go to bed early. And, you know, one of the things we recommend and we learned actually through all this sleep tracking is that, you know, if you go to sleep at 10 and wake up at 6, that's not 8 hours of sleep. That's 7 hours of sleep.

Starting point is 01:10:14 I mean, that's one of the biggest things I learned once I started actually tracking my sleep is that the average person loses like an hour of sleep just from, you know, not falling asleep and getting up and whatever you're doing. And, you know, a lot of those wake-ups you're not even aware of, you're not conscious of. So I think one of the big things we do is actually just know that we are like, it's a benchmark, seven hours is a minimum, eight hours is ideal. So we actually set up our life. If you're in pain or injured or trying to grow muscle or change your body composition, learn a skill, it's eight hours. That means you may need to be in bed for nine hours.

Starting point is 01:10:44 Like straight up. You can't be like, well, Bill Clinton only slept four hours. That means you may need to be in bed for nine hours. Like straight up. You can't be like, well, Bill Clinton only slept four hours. Well, then he died. He did die. And they brought him back. Yeah. But I mean, I think we just try to structure. We really do try to structure.

Starting point is 01:10:55 That's what we like to tell people. We're like, great, Bill Clinton, except for he died. We just try to structure our life around making sure we can get enough sleep. And it does, I will say, sometimes impact our social life. Like we're definitely not the fun people that go out till 12 o'clock. We're the boring friends who are like, party's over, 8.15, see you guys later. So we probably take a hit from a social standpoint a little bit with our obsession with sleep. But we just really try to make sure we've structured our life. And I will say, though, we're not perfect. We also have to travel for work and we take adventures and, you know, we also like to travel

Starting point is 01:11:29 for fun. So, I mean, we, like everybody else, have phases where, you know, we don't get enough sleep, but we just are aware of it. We're like, we take note. And like you did with, you know, you're getting up off the floor, like, okay, noted. I'm not getting enough sleep. When I get home, I'm going to make sure I reprioritize my sleep when I actually can. So, you know, we try to be realistic about it. I mean, we're all busy and doing things, but wherever we can, we try to make sure we get enough sleep. We both sleep in eye masks.

Starting point is 01:11:54 We figured that out. I had to train myself too. It's dark and cold in our room. And then we have these things we sleep on from this company called Sleep Me, this Doc Pro, and it allows us to modulate the temperature of the bed. So in the summer, we can keep the bed really cold so you don't wake up sweaty and hot. And in the evening, in the winter, because our house is basically like a shed, a mid-century modern shed, we come in and our bed is warm when we get in, and then it starts to drop

Starting point is 01:12:20 the temperature. And it's literally the greatest thing that's ever happened. Do you guys have one of those? Eight sleep. Yeah, yeah. It's pretty sweet, right? It's a game changer. What about like cold therapy and hot? Like I see you guys doing all kinds of weird shit and I think you guys are like exercising

Starting point is 01:12:34 on the bottom of your pool and stuff like that sometimes. I don't know what the hell's going on over there. That's why I haven't come over in a long time. You're scared? Because I'm like, I don't want to be subject to any of this stuff. You don't want to drown? Look, the research is really clear. Sauna is great for you. There's more and more data coming out around cold water immersion exposure, just getting cold and shivering, making yourself cold for a few minutes.

Starting point is 01:12:57 Brown fat. Brown fat. I think one of the reasons, forget all that. We love that if you get hot and get cold, you will go to sleep no matter how stressed you are. So one of the feelings that we have is the bigger the engine, the bigger the set of brakes you need to have. And for us, we're lucky enough to have a sauna and a cold plunge in our house. We don't have to go anywhere. And no matter how stressed we are, we go sit in there. It's kind of dim. We have to talk. It's super hot.

Starting point is 01:13:25 Then we get cold and then it breaks us every single time. You can look at it simply as warming up and cooling down are two of the most expensive things your body does. And if you swing back and forth, make your body do that, it's going to exhaust you. You're also going to become more effective at it. So if you end up in a cold environment or hot environment, you're going to be better at handling those things. You can look at a range of motion for your vasculature

Starting point is 01:13:46 just so that you can handle and have better circulation to your feet and your hands. But also it's fun. It's super entertainment. So there's the JSTAR. I mean, I would just like to say though, one other thing that is not always appreciated about the sauna and is that, man, we've had like some of the greatest and best like interactions and conversations with our friends in the sauna. I thought you were going to say sex. Nope, nope, nope, nope. You already said genitals earlier and I felt uncomfortable.

Starting point is 01:14:13 Sauna sex parties? No, we use the sauna as like a social tool, like just as an example, not to make a sad example, but one of our dear friends lost his parent recently and he and Kelly just sat in the sauna for an hour and a half and, you know, they talked and connected and processed and, you know, it just was, you know, it's a phone free, you know, you can't bring your phone in there. So it's just this lovely place to actually have some human connection and whether that's with your spouse or your friends or whoever.

Starting point is 01:14:38 So it's just like one of the things we love about the sauna. So how about you come down and sit in the sauna and we won't even make you go in the pool. Both of you, Both of you guys. Is that a burger place still next to you guys? No, we're not a business. God damn, that place was good. I know. And you were on the wall. Grass fed,

Starting point is 01:14:54 grass finished beef. That was awesome. Wait, you're on the wall? For what? They put like a picture of me squatting or something on there. You guys came in one time and then she took a photo and they were like, world champions eat Wheezy's burgers. Yeah. And they had like a fat chicken was like their logo or something.

Starting point is 01:15:10 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course it's called Wheezy's. That's the way you used to breathe. I know, right? Yeah. That's all I could hear. Andrew, I sent you over a clip where we got like more of the scientific facts on the cold plunging. Yeah, Huberman says. This is on the cold plunging yeah Huberman says

Starting point is 01:15:25 this is from a guy that's in Huberman's lab I think oh god you know I just saw research that came out around cold water that's they put military in the cold water and guys had better sex they had better

Starting point is 01:15:41 subjective perceived readiness so some of this just can be entertainment you know I think Michael Easter wrote a great book called The Crisis They had better subjective perceived readiness. So some of this just can be entertainment. You know, I think Michael Easter wrote a great book called The Comfort Crisis. And there's a reason, like, being a little bit uncomfortable, disrupting homeostasis is good for us. I think it's why some people don't like exercise. It's uncomfortable. So any way where we can find ourselves to be uncomfortable a little bit, I think, you know, die a little bit every day.

Starting point is 01:16:07 You know, getting cold is simple. I think here's our clip. Plunge probably two or three times a day sometimes. What I like to do is really keep my body guessing, and I'll just find somewhere to plunge naturally. If I'm walking out on a hike and see a creek, it's cold outside, the creek's cold. I'll jump in and hit a plunge. See, the benefits to cold plunging are... Oh my God, I love his hair. I'm obsessed with his hair. Where'd the sound go? Oh, is it still going?

Starting point is 01:16:35 It's cold plunge. Your body's guessing on multiple levels. I actually created my own method for cold plunging. I call it iso-plunge. What I do is isolate a body part in the cold. You can do a hand at a time. You can do a foot at a time.

Starting point is 01:16:51 You can actually do it at home if you just open the freezer door. Look at his arms in the freezer. I read somewhere that if you cold plunge regularly, you don't really even have to watch your diet or your exercise because your body's going to be out of any power. He's got all the facts right there. Yeah, I'll hit a pl a block how do you guys uh or love this guy you you've heard of how how it affects inflammation so like post lifting cold plunging how do you guys feel about that

Starting point is 01:17:13 because that's some people are fighting against people cold punching because of that partially i would say that huberman says no we actually started to realize that cold was blunting the body's response to adaptation. So it's blunting the adaptation response. So if you're trying to have, and we started to see this in a lot of our professional soccer teams, premier soccer, they were keeping some of the cold water immersion as far enough away from the training as they could so that the athlete could have a natural response. We could maximize that and then get cold. So getting cold first thing in the morning when they've overnight sleep,

Starting point is 01:17:53 they were finding and they were using it sort of periodizing the cold. Sometimes they'd put it in. Sometimes they'd want to wait on it. I think for the average person, if you can get cold and it's something you enjoy, do it when it works for you. Stop being, but if you're trying to get really strong or you're trying to change some aspect of your physiology and that cold water immersion maybe limits that in some way, because that's really the limiting factor, then maybe you need to, again, just put it a little bit further away. I think the only exception to that is we have athletes like at the CrossFit Games who are, it's 100 degrees there and their core temperature is really high.

Starting point is 01:18:31 So jumping in to drop your core temperature after a hot run might be a really good way to speed up your ability to recover because you're not spending all that energy cooling. You're spending that energy recovering. Again, I think we're like, like well i'm elite i'm a 50 year old middle-aged mountain bike guy with a fake knee like you know i'll keep my cold plunge away from my five squats with 60 kilos i don't want to blunt my adaptation like you know i think we're a little precious yeah what has been a message that maybe has been hard for you guys like where you communicate it to people but it seems like they're having a hard time to adapt to it. Is it the changing of eating more protein?

Starting point is 01:19:10 Is it the sleep? Like, where do you find most people are just even with all the suggestions and saying like, hey, make your your living room your kind of mobility area? Like, what do you think most people are struggling to actually adopt? I'm sure Kelly will have an idea, but I think what I think, and it is also a challenge in our regular business, the Ready State, is to get people to care now about their range of motion. You know, as you guys both know, a lot of people find us because they get injured and that's sort of their first foray into, you know.

Starting point is 01:19:45 Or they've got pain that's limiting them from doing something. Yeah, the pain that's, they're injured or pain's limiting them. And, you know, we, and I think this book is one of the, one of the ways we're trying to do this is to, you know, teach people to care before they're injured or before they're, you know, suffering from chronic pain. And so I think we hope we've taken a swing for the fences here with this book to try to make it really accessible and relatable

Starting point is 01:20:10 and explain to people why they should care and why they should care about spending some time working on their range of motion even when they're 30 years old, not just because you want to sit with your grandchild when you're 67, but because you know now it's going to reap a lot of benefits for your athletic performance or reduce your chances of injury or make sure you're pain-free. I mean, there's a lot of reasons to do it now at any age, but I think that's the biggest challenge is people kind of know they should care about nutrition and sleep and, you know, breathing is becoming more of a thing with Wim Hof and it's become kind of hip.

Starting point is 01:20:41 So people are sort of aware of it. But I think it's getting people to care about their range of motion and really care about working on it now because a lot of it is use it or lose it. Range of motion, maybe even in just a sense of like being able to do most of the things that you're. Yeah. And that's exactly what I mean. I mean, without pain. Yeah, exactly. Like if I were to describe like what mobility is to me, mobility is the ability to move freely and do the things you want to do without pain. I mean, to me, that's more. And someone says, Hey, let's play some volleyball and you don't like tear your Achilles tendon. Exactly. Like you want to be able to do that off the couch or you want to be able to go on a rafting trip with your family. If that's what you're going to do this summer or whatever, you don't, you just want to be able to do what you

Starting point is 01:21:17 want to do physically. So to me, that's what mobility actually is. What, you know, a lot of the things we do are mobilizations, which are, you know, soft tissue techniques and other mobilizations that help support mobility. But to me, that's really what mobility is, is to be able to do what you want to do with your body. When you said decreased risk of injury, I know there's someone who literally got triggered when you said that because they're like, well, no, increased range of motion won't absolutely decrease your risk of injury. It's not an absolute. I'll let Kelly take that one. Because people always say that. So this is where the semantics fall apart.

Starting point is 01:21:48 You can't do anything to decrease injury risk. Because if I tackle you and put your knee through the floor, it doesn't matter how much sleep you got. But we know, it turns out that there are these levels where we start to see things like kids during finals at high school suffer higher injury rates because they're sleep deprived. So at some point, we have to make a logic connection. Okay, maybe that doesn't necessarily that you're going to get injured if you get a bad night's sleep. But population, there's something we can control for in these behaviors. Range of motion actually turns out to be one of those things that we can control for.

Starting point is 01:22:29 And it's really funny because, you know, you're absolutely right. Some people will be like, you know, you can't predict injury risk. You can't prevent injury. Or I can't predict injury. But one of the things I can do is say what? If I can give you better access to your position, I can have better biomotor output. Yes. So we're always hanging our head not on injury reduction. We're hanging our hat on we think you can go faster and be more durable if you have access to your native range. But what's really funny about that conversation is someone's arguing for incomplete range of motion. No, no,

Starting point is 01:23:02 your steering wheel doesn't need to turn all the way to the left. I guarantee you, you can totally drive your car if it only turns to the right. You're going to have to back up, go forward, back up, like those old remote control cars that only reversed in one direction. All we're advocating for is being able to do what every physician, every orthopedist says your body should be able to do. Put your arms over your head. Is that really a dangerous idea of having the normal rotation of your hip

Starting point is 01:23:30 or having full dorsiflexion of your ankle? That's the thing you want to hang your hat on that you shouldn't be able to do that? Because that's all we're trying to do is get people back to baseline. Yeah. And one thing that you kind of noticed was like I see a lot of coaches when they get triggered over the decreased risk of injury. Yeah. Wrong conversation.

Starting point is 01:23:47 It's within strength sports. Yeah. Like, you know, when we're talking about people in the population, you want people to be able to have that range of motion. But why do you guys think that lifters need to maybe think about this even as they're within their sport of powerlifting? Olympic lifters tend to have better range, but like within these sports. Tend to have better range? Excuse me? They do.

Starting point is 01:24:08 Okay. Yeah, they do. They do. Good God, man. But why should these athletes start concentrating on this now? Because it seems to be something that you realize you needed in the future, but not right now within your sport. One of our friends, mutual friends, Laura Phelps, right?

Starting point is 01:24:22 Great powerlifter. She was a gymnast level like a level nine gymnast really good gymnast as a kid and she came in and started getting strong and she could access these crazy positions and she was super strong and then she actually told me she's like you know i i didn't do anything because my shapes were so good i don't have to work on and all of a sudden they went away because she got super stiff and they went away and it started to change how she was lifting under high load and subsequently she was having some pain they went away and it started to change how she was lifting under high load and subsequently she was having some pain and that's when mark was like hey can

Starting point is 01:24:49 you talk to my friend laura and i was like happily and we jumped on the phone gave her a couple ideas she set a world record the i think one of the things is when we tell people these shapes matter they matter under specific conditions. And those conditions, the only conditions I give a crap about are high load and high speed. Because you can do a lot very low. In fact, a lot of the physical therapists love to point to power lifters and rounded backs. And I'm like, look, ready to be triggered, everybody. Squatting is a low power movement.

Starting point is 01:25:25 It's low power.. It's low power. High force, low power. Yeah. And you can get away with murder at low power until you can't, until that foot is turned out. You can't squat down. You get pinned in a weird position. Yeah. Andrew, see if you can.

Starting point is 01:25:37 I sent you a video of Chad Ikes. Do you have that video? I do now. So people have seen me do my fall and we can maybe bring that one up too but here's a difference of having great mobility versus uh not having great mobility this is chad ike's um i want to say i i don't remember the weight that this was but it looks like a lot chad started to push like 11 1200 pounds i think he finished his uh powerlifting career with a 1221 squat very strong guy.

Starting point is 01:26:08 And he was known for being like really mobile. I don't know if you ever met Chad or ever seen him before. Yeah, he he worked a lot on his mobility, but he falls with this weight here. Oh, and you know what happened to him after that? Nothing. He got up and did it again. Yeah, nothing. He didn't finish the meet because he he did get his his stomach got stretched. Yeah, his his stomach. He was like, did it again. Yeah, nothing. He didn't finish the meet because his stomach got stretched.

Starting point is 01:26:29 His stomach, he was like, I feel something weird. I don't know if you know this, but that's what happens when you bail with 1,200 pounds in your bag. It's a dynamic mobility tool. Yeah, exactly. You only have to do one. A little stretch. It's a little stretch. I felt a little something in my stomach. Anyway, he came back and he squatted 1,221, which I think was a record at the time.

Starting point is 01:26:45 And here's what happened to me when I fell with my weight. And I saw him the next one that was 1036 or something like that. Easy weight. And then this is a thousand 85. And this wrecked me for months for months. Oh, maybe, maybe it's a different meat.

Starting point is 01:27:03 No, it's not. Oh, that might be the meat though yeah oh oh no you might have found something you might find something different oh my bad the you know what we see is we can make a certain that the physiology starts to become very clear at high speed and i think we can say to people you can get away with a lot under low speed. But the physiology, the body organizing itself, these patterns really start to aggregate. Franz Bosch is one of my favorite

Starting point is 01:27:32 coaches. There's a couple of great books out. Anatomy of Agility is his last book, but in there he has a quote, he says, there's more variation in waltzing than there is in sprinting. At low load and artistic, you can do a lot and get away with a lot. You can walk however you want. But when it's time to go fast and add the speed component, those shapes don't often transfer or take force or generate force from those less effective positions.

Starting point is 01:27:56 And so ultimately, what we can start to have a conversation about reasonably is this shape gives me more choice. This shape transfers to new skills. Can you back that up just for a second there, Andrew? Oh, yeah. This shape allows me to generate more power.

Starting point is 01:28:12 And here's my fall. So somebody that's not mobile, I got, you know, it's slightly different circumstances, but we fell similarly, right? Yeah. And I was wrecked for months and months and months on end. Look at your thigh gap though it's really so you know somebody having more mobility i know sometimes people are like well i don't want more mobility because all i want to be able to do is just the actual drill

Starting point is 01:28:35 but i mean you and i were communicating at this time and we were talking about it i was i was doing some stuff to try to yeah uh to try to address some of those things and this is this is a really good point because this is an accident. This is trauma. And what we're trying to do is say, hey, you know, I was having this conversation around dorsiflexion with a world-class sprints coach named Stuart McMillan, who at the time was coaching Andre de Grasse, who's the Olympic gold medalist. He was the heir apparent to Usain Bolt.

Starting point is 01:29:04 And he was like, hey, man, my sprinters only need zero degrees of dorsiflexion. When they hit the ground, I want them to have zero. I want them to be stiff at 90 degrees, so their ankles at 90. And I was like, totally agree with you. He's like, everyone's obsessed with dorsiflexion. I'm like, totally agree with you. I was like, does your athlete go down the stairs? He's like, well, yes. And I was like, we need more than that. So how does he solve that problem? He starts turning the foot out, starts bringing his knee in, starts collapsing his arch. Does he squat?

Starting point is 01:29:27 Does he train for his sport? And he was like, well, yeah, I guess he does. I was like, so you need dorsal flexion to do enough training. So how much dorsal flexion do you need? You need enough where you can solve the problem in a way that transfers and where you don't start competing with the primary movement pattern. So if you're turning your feet out to solve this problem, that's a less effective way to run. You might hit the ground with your foot straight and the foot might spin and da-da-da, right?

Starting point is 01:29:53 Dave Weck, I'm not trying to trigger you. But the idea is if you do a triple jump, you're going to land with a foot pretty straight in that peak impulse. And when we see kind of force production, we're going to start to see that there's less of this and feet start to get straighter into this range because those positions transfer more effectively under speed. So again, what's nice instead of saying, don't do that, you might get injured. We say, do this because it'll allow you to pick up new skills more effectively. And it transfers to other movements and maybe it protects you because you had enough hip flexion and rotation. And then some people listening, they might be like, wait, I think we just got way off a path because now we're getting super technical.

Starting point is 01:30:31 But the technical piece is like what if you want to go play golf with your friends on a weekend? Or what if you're – you run into so many of these people that play recreational sports and they're like, man, I'm tearing my knee apart when I'm playing golf. sports and they're like, man, I'm tearing my knee apart when I'm playing golf. And then maybe they might need to look into some of the things that you're mentioning right there to help them have better positioning. My biggest fear as an adult man is to tear my Achilles. And I obsessively jump rope and work on my feet and I'm barefoot and I push sleds barefoot and I load the crap out of my Achilles so that I don't go. The most dangerous sport used to be basketball for middle-aged people.

Starting point is 01:31:08 And now it's pickleball. I just tore his Achilles tendon. He's a firefighter. And he was playing in what's called the pig bowl, which is the cops versus the firefighters. And it's supposed to be fun, right? Super fun. But what sport was it?

Starting point is 01:31:22 Pickleball? Football. Oh, football. They call it the pig bowl if they call it the pig bowl and call it the big bowl yeah so that's that idea of you know what's the mechanism where you're like it was just fluky well like was it fluky like did you actually eat any collagen or protein did you have ankle range of motion how healthy were your tissues show me your loading yeah did you have you slept did you put that leg and hip extension ever and load your achilles

Starting point is 01:31:43 when's the last time you sprinted? Yeah. You know, so if you haven't sprinted in a long time and now you're trying to sprint, that's not a great thing you need to prepare for. But we can't predict that injury. We can't predict that. We had Kaylee Humphries, Olympic many gold medalist bobsledder at Bobsleigh. The goat. She's the goat.

Starting point is 01:32:03 Out visiting us maybe six months ago or something. Obviously, she's an amazing sprinter. Kelly was talking about, how would you think I'd fare if I outright sprinted against you? She was like, oh, well, you'd tear your adductor off the bone.

Starting point is 01:32:20 Given. Kelly's like, all right, I guess I won't try that. I dabble with running. I was running barefoot on, I was running barefoot on a soccer field. Daughters are playing and I had some time and I recorded myself sprinting, just doing some speed, some tempo up a little bit. And I sent it to my world-class sprint friend. And I was like, how am I running looking? He's like, that's not running. He's like, you're waddling. And I was like, well, that's fair. And, you know, really is that the speed is the ultimate arbiter of the forces on your body.

Starting point is 01:32:54 And I think ultimately the reason we should be caring about how the best athletes in the world work within their physiologies is that it tells us about what we might do in our day-to-day lives to have more abundance and resilience in the system. Because I crashed on my skis on the weekend when we filmed the shoe video. That was when I just deadlifted a bunch with you, and I crashed on my skis and put my femur through my tibia, but I didn't tear anything. And I was able to recover from that big surgery because I had so much money. We deadlifted with chains. With chains. It was back in the chains days. It was in the chains days. I just wanted to add, speaking of the golfer and one of the things we're really trying to do with

Starting point is 01:33:36 this book is that people are bummed when they are sidelined because when they can't do the thing they want to do, man, talk about depression and loneliness. I mean, really like the, you know, I think people forget, you know, in advance how much the things that they do physically are also connected to how they connect with others and create community. And so when people are sidelined, it's a huge deal and a huge loss on their life and, you know, prevent injury, whatever.

Starting point is 01:34:04 But like, you've got to put a little input in your body because you don't want to get sidelined or, you know, and maybe we'll all get sidelined. You know, Kelly had this catastrophic knee situation and obviously was sidelined for a little while, but it's like, you want to get sidelined as little as possible. And you want to be as durable as possible when you do, because you're going to recover so much more quickly. as possible when you do because you're going to recover so much more quickly. By the way, I injured myself skiing at 60 miles an hour.

Starting point is 01:34:28 It wasn't from squatting. Just so we're clear. Why are you going so fast? It's a good question. That was dumb. I would like to take that back. He was like racing a stranger. Look at me. I'm not supposed to tell anyone that because he's embarrassed.

Starting point is 01:34:43 I'm not supposed to tell anyone because because he's embarrassed. You need to edit that out. I'm not supposed to tell anyone because he's embarrassed, but I'm always like, fun point of fact, you were racing a stranger. That's not the important question. Probably a kid who laughed at the bottom of the hill. Did I win? Kids like that old guy probably died up there. You did win. Wait, but did you win? I won. But I really lost. Ultimately,

Starting point is 01:35:01 he lost. I sometimes try to remind Kelly, I'm like hey you know you are stuck in a man's body like you know you do things it's not the body it's the problem babe well whatever whatever it is what you got over there andrew that's just it reminds me of uh like a real clark griswold moment you remember those movies oh yeah okay so like when he's like always trying to raise somebody on the street or whatever but no no, my question is kind of going back to the foot stuff is what's your take on toe spreaders? I think toe spreaders in the evening can be a really useful tool to restore what your feet should be doing, especially if you've been cramming your feet into shoes.

Starting point is 01:35:37 When I was 20, I went to Nepal and did this big trek up to Everspace Camp. We did like 26 days in the mountains. And there were these porters who were carrying 80 kilos on their back and they were barefoot and their feet looked like triangles. So the heel was back, but their feet were so wide and none of their toes touched. And every time they took a step, the toes touched the ground. So they were carrying these huge loads barefoot in the mountains and they had these feet. And I remember being like, and these huge loads barefoot in the mountains, and they had these feet. And I remember being like, whoa, that's weird.

Starting point is 01:36:10 So toe spreader is a great way to recover your feet, especially if you're having to use a shoe that does what? That compromises your foot function. So, again, all tools are valuable. When am I going to do it? How useful? If I have to wear a cute shoe and then, you know know i'm a climber or i wear a soccer shoe great great recovery you know even olympic lifting shoes aren't aren't necessarily designed for

Starting point is 01:36:28 your foot function yeah i mean seriously you guys i don't think you know like kelly may have broken the internet a few times but he broke the internet the most when he was like sorry people you can't wear flip-flops i mean whatever on all the other ways that you know he is he's like people mad brian mckenzie from a million years ago. Yeah, that's the number one. People freaked out. They were like, it was as though, I don't know. It was hard. It wasn't hard because I was right.

Starting point is 01:36:54 Can you reiterate the flip-flop thing, though? Because I don't think people have seen that. They got actually mad. All right, everyone. Look, here's the deal. If you're going to the bathroom on a gas station in the middle of a long drive, definitely feel free to wear flip flops. And what we see here with these flip flops is, and I got married in flip flops before I knew. I just want you to know.

Starting point is 01:37:16 People are going to pull up old pictures. Liar. If there's any of those photos on the Internet, someone's going to find them. So remember what we said is I'm trying to not change my function at all. I'm trying to have shoes and clothes that just allow me and my body to do what it should do. So in order to keep the flip-flop on, you have to just clench your big toe. And that changes how you walk because as soon as that toe can't flex, you actually can't make your foot do what your

Starting point is 01:37:45 foot is designed to do. As you walk and that big toe flexes, that flexible plantar fascia everyone hates becomes a rigid spring. And that allows you to transfer energy and use energy from your calf to propel yourself forward. So if you clench that big toe, you've created an artificially rigid foot, super rigid foot. Talk to anyone who has turf toe and they can't walk through their big toe and that they end up walking around. So now if your toe is super stiff, you end up solving that problem by walking through your foot, not around your foot rather than sort of using your ankle and using your toes the way they should be. And what you start to see is that arch and foot starts to lose some of its integrity. It loses its spring.

Starting point is 01:38:30 It starts to kind of collapse a little bit. And if you see in cultures where people are barefoot, their feet look rad. And in cultures where they wear flip-flops, they don't look as good. In fact, in Hawaii, they call it island feet. There's actually a phenomenon for people who wear slippers all the time. Their feet tend to be just look like they've been created this rigid thing. Go ahead and sprint in the flip-flop and let me know how that goes for you. So again, I say to you, if we add speed to this, how does that work? There is that one video that's been going around

Starting point is 01:38:57 about that really good runner who runs in like every kind of shoe, including a flip-flop. Have you seen that thing? Have you seen that video? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. He does like, he's a really good, technically good runner, and he runs in like every kind of shoe, including like some weird boots and weird trippy stuff. Anyway, it's a good video. Are you guys ready to secondhand experience the hatred that is don't wear flip-flops? How about this? It's not the limiting factor. Maybe it shouldn't be your primary shoe.

Starting point is 01:39:23 Again, if it- Look how reasonable you've become. Wear some sandals. Yeah. If it has a back, you're good to go. So any shoe that has a back, you know, any slipper, anything that has a back,

Starting point is 01:39:33 you're good to go. Yeah, he used to be a lot more blunt. He'd be like, take those off. Real athletes don't wear those. Yeah, exactly. That was the title of the video. I mean, look what's happened to us. Real athletes drink water.

Starting point is 01:39:41 What are you doing? What is that? What are you drinking? Yeah, I tell you what, my skin is just scarred. I can't take the hate anymore. Sorry, everybody. I was wrong.

Starting point is 01:39:50 I was so mean. What's up, Power Project family? It's time to stop dressing like you're a fucking preschooler and step your game up by checking out Viore clothing. Now, I'm not one to talk. I wear a fucking pink hat that has a dog on it, but at the end of the day, at least my shirt and shorts are popping. So head to Viore because they have great stuff for your top and your bottom andrew how can they get it

Starting point is 01:40:08 yes you guys got to head over to viore.com slash power project that's v-u-o-r-i.com slash power project and you guys will automatically receive 20 off your order links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes let's get back to the podcast you know we were actually talking about my fast release in the gym and we didn't talk about it much here but i do wonder you know for some people who are getting into it as mark has been sharing some stuff on his instagram if they do find points that are painful like let's say they're rubbing on a ball or whatever and it's like oh this hurts should they avoid it which should they pay more attention to it in the closet never touch it again if you push on a part of your body, that's painful.

Starting point is 01:40:47 And this is actually something we talk about. We have a first aid kit in the book because we feel like if something is hurting, again, your brain, your message of pain in your brain is a request for change. That's the way to think about it. It doesn't mean tissue trauma. I mean, if there's a bone sticking out of your leg, that's the problem. Yeah. Right? tissue trauma. I mean, if there's a bone sticking out of your leg, that's the problem, right? But oftentimes if you discover a painful area, you don't realize that you can make that area feel

Starting point is 01:41:11 better by dropping into my symmetrics, by contract relaxing, teaching yourself to be, you know, active in that position by incorporating some breathing strategies. So if you find a spot that you're rolling on and it hurts, stop, you found the spot. You don't need to go anywhere. This is what we're looking for. And you can pause there and just take a four second inhale, contract for four seconds, relax for eight seconds as you exhale and stay on that until that changes. So as a therapist, we say things like let's mobilize until we make change or until we stop making change. So if I'm trying to get something done and I'm doing a manual technique on you, I'm going

Starting point is 01:41:48 to go until I actually get the result or I'm going to change until I get the result. And then I'll keep working until the results stop. That seems reasonable. We start squatting and then I stop having a good adaptation because I can only squat 700 pounds so many times in a day, right? So even that sort of makes sense. And then what ends up happening then is that what have we done? Well, we've changed how the brain is interacting or perceiving the tissues.

Starting point is 01:42:11 We've changed the local tissue physiology. We've hydrated it. We've changed how the muscle functions. We've got blood flow in there. The bottom line, though, is did it change your range of motion? Did it allow you to generate more force? Those are the magic. If it has less pain, that's a benefit.

Starting point is 01:42:29 Why do you think some people, when he's given advice, like he can give a lot of advice and people are in pain and people are desperate. Why do you think sometimes there's not follow through, like in your opinion? Because since you've seen it firsthand happen so many times. You've seen it firsthand happen so many times. Well, I've seen the, I mean, I will say there is follow through among the injured or people in pain who are able to make change. I mean, I think that we have a lot of people who have a light bulb moment when, you know, Kelly literally tells them like, hey, you know, they come with knee pain. And I mean, I can't tell you, even to this day, we will get emails that have like 10 paragraphs where someone's describing their entire medical history. They've seen every specialist on earth for their knee pain. And then it actually starts to become part of their identity. Like knee pain is their identity. They're like, I'm a knee pain person. And I've accepted that knee pain is what I'm going to experience

Starting point is 01:43:15 the rest of my life. And to have Kelly actually be able to give them some really simple tools, like mobilizing upstream and downstream of your knee and feeding some slack into your knee and actually experiencing a change in their pain or their function. I think it's really remarkable for people. And I think a lot of people come into it really skeptically. I think they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, I'm going to do these like five things Kelly told me to do with a foam roller or whatever, you know, a ball or a tool or whatever. I think, you know, people do come in skeptically, but I will say once they experience some change, you know, people are sold. And so, you know, unfortunately, it does seem like the most adherent are those who have experienced an injury, have been able to figure out how to solve it on their own or not an injury, but whatever pain, you name it, just they've been able to solve a problem and as a result have been able to do the things they

Starting point is 01:44:09 want to do and move better. Those are the greatest adherent. And again, I think it goes back to the question about you asked earlier about what's the challenge. It's still the challenge of, you know, getting people who aren't in pain, aren't experiencing an injury to want to care now and put a little care and feeding into the system in terms of taking care of their body. I mean, I think that's the crew. A lot of people didn't stretch or stop stretching because they didn't even see a benefit from it.

Starting point is 01:44:37 You know, like it just seemed like a waste of time. You know, I used to tell my coach, I'm like, I'm pretty stretched. Fine. Like, you want me to touch my toes? I can do that. You know, I can sprint cold. Never made the case that I could work harder. I could feel better.

Starting point is 01:44:49 That I could improve my times. Like, as soon as we make it about something that someone cares about, then they're in it. So that's our failure, you know, around this. And, you know, if it's just, you know, every once in a while there's a group of people. Like, mobilizations are not my thing. They there's a group of people like mobilizations are not my thing. They're just a set of tools to restore position, training and positions and shapes. That's what I get involved in to help people sort out.

Starting point is 01:45:13 And so there's just this set of tools that you're like, I'm anti-tool. I'm like, okay, well, what tools are you using to solve this set of problems in your athletes? Moving more, that's a great tool. But oftentimes there's still a physiotherapist on your team. I noticed that every professional soccer team has five physiotherapists on their team. Why is that? Do you think that they're dumb and wasting their time? Is that what it is? So if you can come up with one reason why this works, like I've heard some people who are super anti-mobility or

Starting point is 01:45:40 anti-mobilization, some they're like, well, maybe it allows you to spend time in positions you wouldn't touch normally. I'm like, okay, great. So you just lost the whole argument, right? And more importantly, if that's for you, the thing that allows you to spend time in shapes, cool. I think that's really okay. I think you can have multiple bottom lines, but the bottom line comes back to, does it facilitate you working harder in your sport?

Starting point is 01:46:04 I can usually show you that there's a net positive for that and again it may not be rolling around on a foam or well one of the things we're trying to one of the things we've been seeing about this book is we're trying to frame it as like a 401k for your body right because you're 30 and you know you you again like Kelly and I are 50 and we're starting to think about about what do we want to be able to do when we're 75 you're not thinking about that right now that's Mark Bell

Starting point is 01:46:28 we can see it right here we took the whole idea which line though we all do a lot of things now in our life where you don't it's not immediate gratification you put money in your 401k and it's gone and you hope and assume you're going to have it later

Starting point is 01:46:45 when you actually retire neither one of these guys are good with money so you might have to use a different example you guys should start a 401k we can talk about that afterwards um but we just think about this as a 401k for your body right like for people who don't get yourself a j-star like i'm available for advising on that on that later financial financial success um anyway so so that's how we like to think about it. We want people to think about like, hey, I saved money and I don't care. I don't get any benefit from it now. And so taking care of your body a little bit,

Starting point is 01:47:14 putting some input into your body now is going to reap dividends later in your life. If you are listening to this podcast, you're not the person we're talking to. We're talking to your family. You're already into all of this stuff. You're not the person we're talking to. We're talking to your family. You're already into all of this stuff. You're into the weird shoes. You're into the creepy stuff.

Starting point is 01:47:30 You do weird stuff. You stuffed me into a suit so I could squat more. I was into it. That's weird. Yeah, you were really stuck in that suit. I disagree. There's a lot of power lifters listening to this podcast, and some power lifters, I think, could stand to-

Starting point is 01:47:44 Sure, all three of them. That's great. Put some input into their body. But the idea here is we think that you can, you're already the node for so much information in your community. You tell people, you give people ideas around training and nutrition and sleep. But really our athletes have the real chance to change their communities and society. They already do. They're inspiring their friends and society. They already do, right? They're inspiring their friends to lift.

Starting point is 01:48:07 They're eating differently. They're talking about nutrition. They're getting blood panels. That's all coming from sport. And this is an easy way for you to become a super node for people who aren't going to exercise, but who are starting to think about, hey, I want to be able to do all the things I want to do.

Starting point is 01:48:23 What do you think is missing in fitness? Like what's the gap in fitness at the moment? Do you think there's something missing from your average gym goer just going and practicing some bodybuilding and some powerlifting? That's great. If that's what you're into, that's great. Don't hold that up and say this is the way to go win a gold medal in this sport or this is the way to become the most the best runner. Like, you know, I think that's if someone's doing that, they're not the person we're worried about, whether they're, you know, whatever they're eating or how. I disagree. I feel like a lot of those people are exercising and that's the only thing they're doing.

Starting point is 01:49:01 Right. But that's not going to make them a durable human. No, I didn't say that. I didn't say that necessarily that their sleep is ordered. Yeah. All those things. We're hiding a lot of dysfunction. We're keeping a lot behind because we're exercising. There were a lot of people who were running marathons,

Starting point is 01:49:20 but stopped running and became diabetic because they were eating so much sugar and they were fueling with so much carbohydrate and goos and gels. And they did that for, and then they stopped running and then they became diabetic, pre-diabetic very quickly. It was the exercise that was keeping that at bay. You know,

Starting point is 01:49:36 we, you can't out train a poor diet. We know that people are hearing that they've heard that forever. Now I think people are starting to realize that there are other components to, you components to performance in the gym, whether that's aesthetics, which is totally fine. But I think the real mistake is that we've held that up and we said that this is enough. If you're a bodybuilder, you're going to be great at athletics. Did you guys watch Physical 100? Yes.

Starting point is 01:50:01 That was fun. I think the thing we're missing, though, is we haven't given people these objective measures, which is what we've been trying to do in this book. We're trying to say, hey, look, okay, yes, you need to exercise, but we haven't really, there's too much confusion around how much, what to do, when, for how long, whether you should do this, whether it should be high intensity, low intensity, running, walking. We haven't given people a quantifiable way to actually take a measurement of where they are and where they should be. I agree with what you're saying, because I think a lot of people,

Starting point is 01:50:28 sometimes they look at your average gym goer and they're like, I don't think that's for me. I don't think it's the right place to go. And they see people maybe go too far down that path. There's also just the idea of like most of the stuff that we do in the gym, most of the lifting that we do in the gym, unless we start to get really creative, there's not a lot of reaction. That's right. You know, there's not a lot, there's not a lot of sport or anything. So that's kind of what I meant with the question of like, what's sort of missing in fitness? It's incomplete.

Starting point is 01:50:54 I think a lot of the stuff you have in your book alludes to some of these things. There's like fundamental things of being able to do some of these mobility tests and balancing and things like that. Yeah. And play. Like, I think we're missing a lot of play. Like I feel like every time I come here to the gym, I mean, I've literally never done like a real workout here ever. I just like mess around on machines and play and try your tools. And, you know, and it's like, just that, that play I think is missing and just also having the capacity to be able to do it. Like one of the things Kelly and I love to do is throw the Frisbee.

Starting point is 01:51:25 I don't know why we love throwing a Frisbee, but it's like, it's like, well, we want to be able to like walk out of our garage onto the street in bare feet and be able to like throw the Frisbee for half an hour because we get a lot of joy out of that without like worrying about tearing our Achilles. Throwing a Frisbee is like a real skill, like to be able to play catch with the Frisbee. Yeah. Like to just let her rip or whatever. You can do that. But like to actually figure out. It's able to play catch with the Frisbee. Like to just let her rip or whatever. You can do that.

Starting point is 01:51:45 But like to actually figure out. One of our tests of your athleticism. Can you go play catch with us with a Frisbee? If you can't throw a Frisbee, I'm like, if you can't double dutch with jump ropes, I'm like, sketchy, sketchy athlete here. Do you guys have double dutch ropes in here? I will not pick you for my kickball team. You got to get some.

Starting point is 01:52:03 They're so fun. We don't have double dutch ropes. They're so fun. Don't know how to jump into it. Oh, we could teach you. You got to get some. They're so fun. We don't have double dutch ropes. They're so fun. Don't know how to jump into it. Oh, we could teach you. Next time we come back, we're going to bring some. You got to jump really high. Super high.

Starting point is 01:52:13 You know, you do bring something up that we used to train for something. And now training has become an identity, right? It is. It is a cell. It's how I identify. It's my friends. It's my I identify. It's my friends. It's my social group. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

Starting point is 01:52:27 Like my deadlift is for my deadlift. Yes. It's for my, I'm a deadlifter. I'm a powerlifter. It's recursive. It's your identity. I do pull-ups so I can do more pull-ups so I can be good at more pull-ups. Right?

Starting point is 01:52:37 It just never ends. It's like doomsday prepping. Right? Never have enough ammo or deadlift. right never have enough ammo or deadlift and if we think of the application for it look if you just want to look good naked on instagram august you know 2022 you won fitness and health nailed it then just retire off with your donuts and your belt you know that's just not the real world because we work in the application we We are always viewing the gym as does this make me better? Do these skills transfer? And there's a time for bodybuilding.

Starting point is 01:53:12 I want to have strong elbows. So I'm like, Hey, we need to do some curls and get you really strong elbows. So you don't dislocate your elbow when you're climbing or surfing, right? There's, we can steal all those tools, but I think powerlifting made it confusing because it was just always heavier weights. And sometimes those things took away from athleticism. Olympic lifting, the same. And even aesthetics, you know, we lost the narrative a little bit.

Starting point is 01:53:36 And that physical 100, you know, who's the kid who won? Like the CrossFitter who actually had pulled on a rope before, right? I think that's the only trick. That's the person who won. I've seen the last episode. The track. Oh, pulled on a rope before. That's the only trick. That's the person who won. I haven't seen the last episode. Sorry. Spoiler alert.

Starting point is 01:53:49 Notice that the kid who was the track cyclist had a huge aerobic engine and could put out massive amounts of power. I was pulling for him. He could squat 500 or 600, very strong. His set of tools did really well. The kid, the beautiful man who couldn't put the ball over his head.

Starting point is 01:54:07 Right. He was so jacked. And I was like, I want to look like that guy, but I don't want to move like that guy. Like he struggled. He had two minutes. Physical 100 is a great show, guys, because like there's a bunch of crossfitters, a few bodybuilders, some wrestlers and UFC fighters from all over. And it's just like, it's great to see how like yeah you're specialized in this

Starting point is 01:54:26 but you're totally lacking with this other area of your fitness yeah like there was the ice climber guy he did really well in a lot of stuff the climber right like he was the best on like the rope climb and stuff but then obviously he you know even he when he got eliminated he's like there's a lot of holes in my fitness

Starting point is 01:54:42 they're totally gonna have a US version oh they so are. The track athlete. Maybe you'll be on it, Mark Bell. The track cycling athlete did really well because he was an Olympic lifter track-based athlete, track and field. And the other guy who did really well was a skeleton athlete who did most of his training that looked like classic track and field, which is running, jumping, and throwing. Yeah. Running, jumping jumping and throwing. Yeah. Running, jumping and throwing.

Starting point is 01:55:06 It's interesting when it comes to things like that or when it comes to CrossFit or I guess there's only like there's weight division sports and there's things like gymnastics and like figure skating. But when it comes to the money sports, people are really big. You know, people are just like large human beings. MLB, NBA, NFLfl hockey players are massive like all these people are really big was anyone mad at that barry bonds was taking steroids no one was mad about it right we loved him smashing the ball and he was jacked it's true it was but when it comes to having a capacity to uh you know be able to do some of

Starting point is 01:55:42 the things we saw in that video from that show. And then from what's that other show where they're going through the challenge and they got the monkey bars and they got a ninja warrior. There you go. Oh, yeah. To be able to traverse ninja warrior, like good luck being 250. It's going to be very difficult. That's right.

Starting point is 01:56:00 Well, again, what is it you want to do with your body? And I don't know if you know this but you're not gonna be a great swimmer why you are thick why you're so thick mark you're not gonna be a good sprinter you just don't have the mechanics for it and um does that hurt your feelings both of you guys are you feeling sad i've known this he still has it in the mean side kelly does yeah oh it's mean it's just it's just well it's coaching though because not maybe now Nah, I've known this. He still has it in him, the mean side. Kelly does? Yeah. Oh, it's mean. It's just tempered.

Starting point is 01:56:28 It's coaching, though. Maybe now he's going to start swimming. Somebody just made a funny comment on the swimming thing that I love. I love it. I didn't even touch it. I'm like, what are we talking about? I think the key here is your body is going to probably push you into a certain set of things you're really good at, and then you reinforce that. Being capable and strong and durable doesn't necessarily have to match up with any of those things that you're good at.

Starting point is 01:57:03 I think the CrossFit, for better or for worse, has lost the narrative of a lot of people about why we were training. What's the minimum amount of training I can do so I can have the maximum play? I can go out and be fit enough and strong enough across a bunch of domains so that I can actually do sports. Instead, the gym became the only thing, physical culture. Someone like Ido Portal, I think, has a right, like some of his reactions to what we're seeing as modern fitness, I think, are good. He's like, you're actually not very capable. You don't react. You can't absorb force and spring. You don't know how to interact or fight or apply force. And what you see is you

Starting point is 01:57:35 have this huge wattage on this whole bike and you can do the leg press. And that doesn't make you a very competent human being. I think that's a valid criticism of some of these things. And that simultaneously, I'm like, well, if all you do is physical culture and you can't squat or deadlift, that also may mean that you have an opportunity to do a little bit better with your physical culture with some training. What's the right amount? I don't know. Mix it up. Have you guys started watching that show alone? I love it. I watch the show a lot. Oh yeah. We've, we're like weirdly kind of obsessed with it right now and I think my big obsession is that I have no skills

Starting point is 01:58:08 I think I could like maybe build the shelter and carry the wood you could write a P&L for all the squirrels I bring in I could definitely advise the other contestants on setting up and maintaining a 401k but I have no

Starting point is 01:58:24 useful skills for alone I I mean, do you have any? Like, how would you fair mark? Badly. Yeah, no, I wouldn't do well. Primitive living? I'm not even fat adapted. I can't even, like, if I eat a bunch of fat, I get diarrhea and that's all they eat. You would do well, like, at the just not eating part because you've done a lot

Starting point is 01:58:40 of fasting and stuff. Like, you'd do really well at that part. There was one show where the guy got sick and he was throwing up. had diarrhea and stuff i'm like even just that like you're out like you're done like wait that was when you went carnivore that's why yeah i know but i'm just thinking like that would be like okay it's one thing to have that at home right and you got all the amenities that you need to clean yourself up you can hop in your shower and use your shower head and like you can do all kinds of stuff to get yourself clean.

Starting point is 01:59:06 But if you're out there in the wilderness and it's 20 degrees and it's windy and I mean and you shut your sleep. I'm just thinking I'm just thinking like he could go in the water, but he kind of can't because he's going to get so fucking cold. He's got to wash all of his. I mean, think of the logistics. You got to wash all his clothes. You got to wash himself.

Starting point is 01:59:22 Then he has to dry them in front of a fire. Choice. Choice. Yeah. Choice. Sorry. That doesn't have anything to do with anything, but I was like, I bet Mark Bell's watching alone. I do. I love that show. So you guys are on a book tour? Yep. This is

Starting point is 01:59:35 Stop One. Nice. I love that. On April 4th, we'll actually be on Good Morning America. No way. Launching on April 4th in New York City. Nice. We're starting to roll and we'll see what happens. What's different about this book versus some other books is that we have a

Starting point is 01:59:51 book agent who knows people who introduced us to the people at Knopf, which is a huge old school New York publishing company. And for the first time ever, we feel like we are on the right team with the right people super fun we'll see if anyone notices

Starting point is 02:00:08 you know I'm curious about this what are some because CrossFit was a really good thing because it's a community based thing when people go to the gym they usually go to the gym alone and it's not something that draws you in within a community unless you're at a certain gym Jiu Jitsu has been pretty great as Andrew's noticed too because

Starting point is 02:00:24 like you made a ton of new friends at your Jiu Jitsu school and it's unless you're at a certain gym. Jiu-jitsu has been pretty great as Andrew's noticed too, because like you made a ton of new friends at your jiu-jitsu school and it's like you're doing this, the, all these different types of movements that you're not used to with a community. So what are other things that you think people could get involved in outside of powerlifting and bodybuilding? That would be a good way to, you know, have recreational fitness and enjoy the community aspect of it. One of the ways that we have solved, you know, Juliet has a training group of women.

Starting point is 02:00:50 She gets together with Monday, Wednesday, Friday, they train no matter what, right? It doesn't matter if you follow it on your Instagram. That's right. If you're beat up, doesn't mean you just show up and you just do what you can do. We also have a mountain bike club that meets in our, in front of our house on Saturdays. And we're all just, you know, various sizes and abilities. There are some pros like me, and then there's some people who are less fast than me.

Starting point is 02:01:10 And we actually have actual pros there. But, you know, the key is, I think, is what is it you like to do, and then who are those people? You know, you're right. The gym can be a really isolating, lonely place. And it's even more confusing because people are like, I'm putting my headphones on, ignore me, but ignore me filming myself for my Instagram feed. That's super weird.

Starting point is 02:01:29 It's not weird that you want to film yourself. I've been filming myself for years, right? To see what's going on. But the interaction, those places are lonely. You know, you should, this is a great opportunity to reach across and be like, hey man, can I work in a squat? What are you doing today? I don't know if this actually really answers your question, but I just want to sort of emphasize what Kelly said. And I think it talks a little bit about, and it sort of points to what we talked about earlier with constraining environments. I mean, you know,

Starting point is 02:01:53 my little workout schedule is a constrained environment. We have a set time. It's the same time every Monday, Wednesday, Friday at seven 30 in the morning, we show up and train. So no planning has to take place. Is that because you grew up without a cell phone? Maybe, but like no plan. Like we don't have to text and say, is anyone coming? Is this still a good time? Where are we going to meet? Like none of that. It's just like

Starting point is 02:02:13 you show up because it's a set thing. It's not even on the calendar. It's like a goddamn PTA meeting. It's like a goddamn PTA meeting. And same thing with our mountain bike club. Like it's at 9 a.m. on Saturdays. Like everyone's invited 9 a.m. on Saturdays. Everyone's invited 9 a.m., but there's no planning. There's no discussion. It's just happening. Whoever's in town and available shows up. And I think that's just, I think people can do that with whatever

Starting point is 02:02:35 they like to do outside the gym, whether it's like if you're into hiking or walking or whatever, it's just like set up a time. Like say, I'm going to be walking in the neighborhood at this time. Olympic lifting clubs. There were clubs where people came and in between you just sit down and talk like that's the power of Olympic lifting club, powerlifting communities. Juliet was just telling someone else, I just heard over this conversation. She's like, powerlifters are the kindest people I've ever met. They're so nice. They need each other.

Starting point is 02:03:00 They're like, they're generous. They help each other out because you have to. And it creates that and fosters that community of athleticism. I think in Europe, there are all kinds of clubs. Go to Thailand and everyone's got a boxing gym, right? A Muay Thai gym. And so I think what you're seeing is these sports are a great reason to organize people. So find something you like.

Starting point is 02:03:21 And really, if you feel like going to the gym is isolating, it is. Yeah. But like be the node, you know, find something you like to do and say, Hey, you know, I'm going to be doing this thing every day at this time. And like, please join me. And people will come because people need a little structure and they need an invite and they want to hang out with other people. What's your recommendation for lifting for resistance training? You should do some. Yeah. We, we. We really have the idea that never do nothing is this concept from Dave Spitz that you always can go and do a set of push-ups. You can do a set of air squats. I mean at the peak when we were our most busy selves, I did the 10, 10, 10 at 10, which was I'd roll home. It was like when we were filming the Mobility Project too.

Starting point is 02:04:02 You guys remember that? Ten minutes at 10 p.m. It was like ten pull-ups, ten kettlebell know, you guys remember that. Ten minutes at 10 p.m. It was like ten pull-ups, ten kettlebell swings, ten push-ups, ten minutes, 10 p.m. That was what I had. I was like, well, check the box today. And, you know, do people not get the message that they should resistance train? I think they're getting the message. You know, you can buy kettlebells.

Starting point is 02:04:21 I just saw bumper plates at Target. So that's some upside down shit. That's crazy that you can buy bumper plates at Target. So something's happened. I think the Olympic lifting clubs and powerlifting clubs were a lot of people's basements. Those were the truest amateur sports for a minute. And I think that's starting to happen a little bit where we're starting to see more and more people realizing the best place they can work out is in their own homes. So more of that. So just a little resistance training whenever you can get it, whatever way you can

Starting point is 02:04:52 get it. If you have a slack block, if you can do some squats onto a chair. Yeah. Like keep a kettlebell in your living room and do some kettlebell swings. If we had a kettlebell in every kitchen in America, we could cure a lot of problems. You got to be springy. You got to react. I mean, it solves, you can see why that style of training has been so resilient for so long

Starting point is 02:05:13 and why we get so much out of it. And, you know, yes, you may not be able to deadlift 600 if you only swing a kettlebell, but is that really the limiting factor? No, probably not. I'm not really sure this is for your audience, but now that I am one of those people, I end up communicating a lot with like the menopausal

Starting point is 02:05:28 female set, um, like late forties, early fifties women. And I will say that that is a group who I think struggles to figure out how to fit in any resistance training in their life because they all grew up in like the eighties, nineties, like just do cardio and eat low, a low fat diet. Like women are irrational too. Yeah. They're also irrational. So, so, 90s, like just do cardio and eat a low fat diet. Women are irrational too. Yeah, they're also irrational. So, I mean, I think that would be like a group of people that I think partly just by the, you know, the time they grew up and what they learned about fitness that was probably a lot mistaken in the 80s and 90s, or at least just not evolved.

Starting point is 02:06:01 I think that's a crew that struggles to, you know, I think they're more apt to like go for a jog. But I think slowly but surely the message is starting to get out to that subset of women and it is classic barbell strength training floor press strict standing press pull up push up back squat you don't like the back squat front squat deadlift like lunge or like we're huge fans of rucking like there's just certain people who are never gonna lift a weight they're just like not gonna do it you guys know some of those people like in your neighborhood classics yeah like super put a heavy backpack like everyone you put a heavy backpack on and walk like at least you've gotten something you just you just can't say that you're

Starting point is 02:06:39 gonna win the olympics with that program no that that's not the goal and that's always that's always one of my own personal tests. Well, if I did your training only, could I go to the Olympics? And I'm like, oh, it may be incomplete. No, at home, I keep it super simple. I have a kettlebell too. I have some of those base blocks, dip bars or whatever.

Starting point is 02:06:56 So it's a cross. So whenever we pass by it, do some pull-ups, do some dips, pick the kettlebell, do a little bit of shit. It adds things into the day. Is that called a repetition method? You use the same weight over and over and over of shit. It adds things into the day. Is that called a repetition method? A repetition method. You use the same weight over and over and over and over,

Starting point is 02:07:07 and then some magic coach is like, today we go heavier. Repetition. So we did an interview for Bay Area Parent. It's like a magazine. And they wanted us to, it was connected to this book, but they wanted us to give like 10 tips for helping your kids and family be more active in the summer. And I think we definitely offered some suggestions that were so not what the journalist was expecting at all. But one of the

Starting point is 02:07:29 things we suggested is we're like, everyone should have a pull-up bar, like hanging somewhere in their house or their garage, or even one of those door ones, because, you know, hanging is a fundamental skill and you, you know, everyone should be able to hang and it's great for your shoulder function. And, you know, there's just a lot of reasons why hanging is great. So everyone should have a pull-up bar and maybe put it somewhere where you walk, where there's a high traffic part of your house. So every time you go by, you just hang for a second. You need to do pull-ups. Who cares about that? Just go hang. And we have like pull-up bars everywhere. And in our garage, we have a pegboard and like literally every kid who comes into our garage goes and

Starting point is 02:08:01 tries to do something at the pegboard and whether they're successful or not, they're like drawn to it. If you're over 100 kilos, you're excused. So yeah, I mean, get one of those like cheap like pull-up bars. One-arm pull-ups. No, no. You know those like pull-up bars you can put in your door from Target or whatever? Get one of those and like hang on it sometimes. That's awesome.

Starting point is 02:08:20 Andrew, take us on out of here, buddy. Alrighty. Thank you everybody for checking out today's episode. Please drop those comments down below. Let us know what you guys checking out today's episode. Please drop those comments down below. Let us know what you guys think about today's conversation. Hit that like button and subscribe if you guys are not subscribed already. Follow the podcast at MBPowerProject all over the place. My Instagram is at IamAndrewZNSima. Where are you at?

Starting point is 02:08:35 IamAndrewZNSima. I am AndrewZNSima. I am AndrewZNSima. I am AndrewZNSima. I am AndrewZNSima. I am AndrewZNSima. I am AndrewZNSima. I am AndrewZNSima. I am AndrewZNSima.

Starting point is 02:08:37 I am AndrewZNSima. I am AndrewZNSima. I am AndrewZNSima. I am AndrewZNSima. I am AndrewZNSima. I am AndrewZNSima. I am AndrewZNSima. I am AndrewZNSima.

Starting point is 02:08:37 I am AndrewZNSima. I am AndrewZNSima. I am AndrewZNSima. I am AndrewZNSima. I am AndrewZNSima. I am AndrewZNSima. I am AndrewZNSima. I am AndrewZNSima. I am AndrewZNS you guys and the book. The book is that you can learn more and buy it at built to move.com.

Starting point is 02:08:45 And I'm at Juliet star at on Instagram. And you say you at the ready state on all the channels at Mark smelly bell. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness, never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.

Mark Bell's Power Project - Increase Your Movement to IMPROVE Your Life - Kelly & Juliet Starrett || MBPP Ep. 900

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