Mark Bell's Power Project - MBPP EP. 676 - The Power Of Play..ing With Yourself and Fitness

Episode Date: February 14, 2022

Andrew Huberman had a great podcast on The Power of Play. We felt he hit the nail on the head and wanted to give our thoughts on how adults need to play to learn new things and have novel experiences. Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 15% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢https://eatlegendary.com Use Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢Bubs Naturals: https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢Vertical Diet Meals: https://verticaldiet.com/ Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% off your first order! ➢Vuori Performance Apparel: Visit https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order! ➢8 Sleep: Visit https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Subscribe to the Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerofPlay #PowerProject #MarkBell

Oh my goodness. I've been enjoying sitting in the SESA chair. Like I'm just, I'm like literally I go right outside the front door. I have a laptop stand and I sit in the SESA chair and I just work and I remove it. I'm just sitting on the ground working. It feels great.

Yep. It feels great. Yeah. Um, Ryan had come into the office and, uh, he's like, Oh,

what's that? He's seen the, you know, the go to SESA chair. And he's like, I showed him and he sat and he's like, Oh, this is really comfortable yeah it's deceptively extremely comfortable to sit in seiza especially with

the chair without it i'm still working on it but it's really nice yeah and the cool thing is like you can so my setup is i'm sitting in the seiza chair and i have a thing for my laptop but if you don't have something like that you could sit in the chair and then you can take the chair and sit on the ground and then the chair can be used as a laptop stand. That's what I did the other day because I didn't have something else, but that chair is such... Everyone needs one of those

things. They're cheap too. Are we? Yeah, we've been rolling for a little bit. But yeah, we have no code for the GoToSazer chair. No, but just go get yourself a GoTo... Well, yeah, GoToSazer chair code for the go to Sazer chair. No, but just go get yourself a go to, or a, well, yeah, go to Sazer chair, but just like any Sazer chair. Yeah. If you think, if you look on Amazon, ooh, dude, this smells good.

You open the packaging and you smell caramel. Nice. Yeah. We got some, this is the way vanilla protein powder. We got some coffee. Andrew, have you opened yours yet? No, no. I just, I didn't know we were getting that new hotness.

I'm going to dump my, try dumping your coffee in the vanilla first and then taste it and then you can add the salted caramel later. Let's go. Do I need, you think it's going to mix well? Oh, it's going to mix fine. Alright. Nah, you don't need any balls. Or do I?

You don't need any balls. With that trend dick you got going on, you don't need any balls. Or do I? You don't need any balls. With that trend dick you got going on, you don't need any balls. Where we're going, we don't need balls. Wait, what? What is trend dick? It just makes your dick not work. Oh.

Yeah. Okay. I thought it was... I thought it was just like you just always run around rock hard. Oh, I'd be on trend all the time. You're like, dude, Mark is just always pitching a tent. I'm not sure what's going on around here. That's great.

Oh, it does mix well. Okay, there we go. Shake, shake, shake. You know what's so dope? I have the sickest setup right now. I have the coffee, right? This is the way vanilla and coffee. I have some fucking legendary brown sugar.

I can just like... This is about to be a fucking... Having a party. That smells good. Alright, I'm going to mix this in. Bruh. Jesus. Pretty damn good, eh?

I see what you're talking about. You're leaving them hanging. That's okay. Yes! Ooh, I can... Let's go. That's okay. Yes. Oh, I can. Let's go. Uh-oh.

There you go. These little mason jars we got are pretty sick. Those are cool. All right. Let's try mixing a little. So you said I shouldn't do the whole packet of the electrolyte. I should just put like half of it. Yeah, just try half of it first. See what happens.

Whoops. That's more than half. Wait. I, just try half of it first. See what happens. Whoops. That's more than half. Wait. I did about half. Oh, shit. You did the whole thing. I'm like, what are you doing? I thought it was about to be half.

My bad. I was like, damn. This is like we're in one sip territory, you know? You have a little bit more coffee than I do. That might be fine. I will try that tomorrow morning. Too much coffee for me today already. No, come on, bro.

I had a cup. Are you mixing? You have some water over there or no? I was just explaining. I mixed the original one, so the blueberry lemon. So I have a full thing of that right now. So I didn't know we were going to get the new, new stuff. Oh.

Do you want to try the vanilla with some water? I can do that. Yeah. But I really want coffee with it, though. It's really good with coffee, dude. Oh, my goodness. Should we just, like, get you coffee? No.

I think I'll just stop being cheap and I'll just do it again tomorrow. So I'll just do it with water. You don't have any water over there, do you? I do. Oh, I can't fancy that. That's really good, too. Man, that's really, mmm. You know what I think, too?

Dude, good job with the catch. Fucking opened the fingers up. Your hands were even in the right spot. Dude, that was sick. Shout out to my cousin, Eddie Zaragoza, for teaching me how to catch a football. God damn, Eddie. An amazing stack. An amazing stack would be, just for a taste, honestly.

You know how the Bubz MCT oil powder is? I love how excited this team gets about flavors and stuff. No, because it's all about the harmony. the, the, the harmony. So that, this is the way. You're like fucking Ratatouille right now. This is the way vanilla. We're lucky that you exercise. You would be 900 pounds.

Fill this jar all the way up or. Oh, all the way up. Okay. The thing is, this isn't even released yet. Right. Well. You don't have to fill it all the way up. Fill it up to the top of the sticker would be good The caramel hydration

One day you guys will be able to try it No, everything's out Oh, the caramel hydration's released? Everything's out So is this specifically salted caramel? Salted caramel, yep Salted caramel hydration And the Bubz MCT oil is flavorless.

And on its own, it's a really good, it tastes like a creamer. It has everything that MCT oil is having in it. But you can mix it in here. Oh, yeah. That would be. Yeah, the Bubz MCT oil powder kind of takes that little bold, little bit of spike that you got in coffee that some people don't like. I mean, most people don't like black coffee

because it's got that kind of pungent, a little punch to it, you know? But the MCT oil powder from Bubz pulls that shit out of there. It makes it so smooth, though. I put that MCT oil powder every single time now. Makes coffee smooth. Even if I have, like,

I'll do heavy whipping cream. I won't put, like, eight ounces like I did that one time and almost died. This tastes like candy. I'm going to try this one. It really does. It really does. Are we selling these jars too? This is sick.

We only have the jars, I think, in store for now. Is it for people to try it? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Bro. Yeah, Ron Penna, our boy Ron Penna, he gave us the challenge of, he said with the steak shake, he said, you know, your biggest hurdle will be to figure out a way. He's like, I challenge you guys to figure out a unique way to get people to try the product. And so that's when I came up with this idea of this mason jar.

I thought that that would be just an interesting and different way. And then you have a, now you have a jar that you can keep at home and put fruit in or whatever the hell else drinks you want to put in it. Put your weed in there. Put your weed stack in there. Put your weenie in there if you want. Some people might be able to get their wiener and their balls in there. Nailed it!

Dude! This new studio. What the fuck? Can't miss! Holy shit. Did Steph Curry just walk in? What the fuck was that that was perfect i don't know it's a line drive three-pointer with nothing but net nothing but net your man can't normally those are banked off the you know the backboard and it's like a luck shot but that one was just a swoosher right there yeah normally he breaks the backboard hey now dude i do oh man good shit yeah well guys check out with what's the website it's just markbellslingshot.com right now yeah yeah and the company's so new it doesn't even have a website there you go this is the first time i've been able to try this is the way because i only tried that i've only had the

steak shake yeah but this has been out for a minute i just haven't been able to get my hands on it wait until you try some other stuff we got coming down the pipeline too we have uh keto pro which that's just the keto pro has been in the past when there was more of it i that was my best that was the protein i liked the most i don't know what you guys did with that one but it just tasted really good maybe it's the fat that's in it but it's really it's really good fucking protein you guys did with that one. But it just tasted really good. Maybe it's the fat that's in it, but it's really, it's really good fucking protein. You guys doing something else with it?

Yeah. The new one is going to have a avocado oil in it. It's not available yet. Avocado. Yeah. Some avocado oil. And, uh, yeah,

it's just, people are going to dig it. So I'm super excited when that comes out. But for now we got, this is the whey protein. We have vanilla, we have chocolate. Um,

I actually mixed the vanilla in cottage cheese, which sounds weird, but I mix it in just regular cottage cheese. And I have it with some fruit pretty much every night. You can mix it in yogurt, mix it in whatever you want to mix it in with just to get that extra protein. We also have, from the Within You brand, we have the electrolytes. We got lemon, uh, blueberry flavor. And in addition to that, we have, uh, this one that we're drinking right now, which is a salted caramel, which I know you guys are going to absolutely love to put in your coffee.

And I'm going to see if my boy over at Phil's will, uh, let me have these packets in his coffee shop so he can dump it into some of the coffee that they have because i think it would be amazing yeah so we'll link everything down below but also like right now is a really really good time to make a bunch of purchases over at markbellslingshot.com because i don't know who's doing this but somebody at markbellslingshot.com is giving away ten thousand dollars actually maybe up to fifteen thousand yeah see i don't think mark would have okayed this but i think sema just threw an extra five grand second place wins five thousand dollars first place wins ten thousand dollars and third place sema knows a lot about this he might be

trying to get in on this what if i just magically just made it up yeah so for every dollar spent on the website i swear to god i know huh every dollar spent on the website. Pulled the name out of a hat. I swear to God. I know. Every dollar spent on the website equals one entry. So $50 equals 50 entries. Damn. So again, it's that simple. Just head over to markbileslingshot.com. Get some fucking supplements. Get a slingshot.

Get some knee sleeves. Get whatever you want. But just know that that's going to enter you into this opportunity to win $10,000. Holy shit. So yeah. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes it sucks because i don't want to finish this i'm the same way dude this is really good save some of it i just mixed this just water with the vanilla protein and then just a tiny bit of the salted caramel hydration and it's fucking good this is this is a home run this is amazing i think the way the cool thing though the cool thing is that you guys like when a lot of people do

supplements they just it's it's called white labeling i just learned about it but they'll legit just take something from another company and slap their name on it and say i have a supplement line you guys didn't white label anything this is literally because you guys have the ability to, this is literally all your, like you guys, it's all specific ingredients that you guys have in there. It's your formula. There isn't other shit out there like this. That's dope. Yeah. And it's, you know, I've, I've loved protein shakes forever. I mean, I've been, you know, all the way back in the Myoplex days and Metrex days, and, like, those things would, like, break my blender. I've utilized supplements over the years, been a huge fan of them over the years,

and I've actually publicly have said, and I will continue to say, that I don't think supplements do a whole lot for you, even though now I have supplement brand. I still believe that. I still believe that things are about habits. But if you look at the stuff that I've been trying to do over the years, I've been trying to make things a little easier for people. When it comes to the slingshot, when it comes to the hip circle, the knee sleeves, all the products that we make that people see over at markbellslingshot.com. It's to make exercise more comfortable, to make it easier. Why do I want to make it easier?

Why do I want to make it more comfortable? I want it to be a habit that when you think about that habit, you're not like, oh man, I got to go do squats today. I know my knee is killing me. And same thing with this. You're not really bummed out

that you're on a diet. Nowadays, you can go with some of the Within You products, some of the whey protein that we have, with Steak Shake, which will be available again soon, in vanilla chocolate and salted caramel, and with some of the other products we have coming out. But you'll be able to go through your day. You might start your day off with a legendary Pop-Tart and a coffee with some Bubz MCT oil powder in it and maybe the salted caramel hydration that we just used today. And then you make it through some of your day and you have a steak. You know what I mean? And it's just the day is not as hard.

It's not as hard to do that diet that you have been trying to stay with. And then at night you have a sweet tooth and you have a vanilla protein shake and some fruit. Maybe you blend them all together. And that's the way to end your night. My brother's been doing that with, I think some yogurt and some,

he's been using yogurt and frozen berries. Yeah. Because then the frozen berries kind of like – it acts as like ice and then it gels together and kind of makes a shake that's kind of thick. I really need to try that because at night I still have like cravings for some Ben & Jerry's and shit. Like I still do. And I still sometimes have Ben & Jerry's. That's why I love talking about this mindset stuff on this podcast so much and why I'm so passionate about it because my own mind is completely broken. It's completely like it's a wreck.

I need to mind it all the time. I need to pay attentionend and all the stuff that he shared with us. Really, really powerful stuff. But I like some of the stuff that's coming from Huberman because Huberman's like, hey, you might want to be careful thinking that you can only mind your mind with your mind. careful thinking that you can only mind your mind with your mind. You're going to have to go outside of it a little bit and figure out some other strategies and techniques. So the body, mind, spirit have to be strong. And while we can sit here and say, oh, that person's being lazy

because they're not hitting the gym or whatever, we don't know that person's life experiences. We don't know. We don't know that person's life experiences. We don't know. For all we know, they could have a clear clinical medical issue mentally that is a hurdle for them. So we can say, hey, man, anxiety ain't no big deal. What's your problem? But they might have,

maybe they have some crazy dopamine. Maybe they don't produce the same amount of dopamine. Maybe their body doesn't react the same way to dopamine. Maybe their body doesn't react the same way. And some of the studies that we're seeing, like the milkshake study and some of these things that we're seeing that Andrew Huberman's doing a great job highlighting, it really opens up my mind and say, holy shit, man, like, I think I've been misrepresenting what I've been trying to communicate about. And I hopefully over the years, I'm not making anybody feel worse about themselves. I'm working on trying to make people feel better about themselves. And I may have misrepresented because I just didn't know. I didn't have the knowledge that some people are, I grew up with an amazing upbringing. I mentioned that all the time. And I think it's foolish to not bring it up. So anytime I talk

about anything that somebody would recognize as being successful in today's world that I've done, as being successful in today's world that I've done, I'm always like, let me back you up a long way because I started off to where I could think about stuff more. We're going to talk about play in a little bit. But man, how much play do you get an opportunity to think about if your life is threatened or if your life is on the line every day or you don't live in America. It's like, well, now fucking everything's way different.

You live in a different country and maybe you don't have the same freedoms and stuff like that. So, yeah, the last decade or so has been a real mindfuck for me. And over the last two or three years, my mind's even gotten more melted and more into a lot of these discussions because I think it's unbelievable how much change that we can make. So while I did say, hey, maybe I started off on the racetrack of life a little further ahead and I can recognize that, I never had any control over that and get to choose my parents or where I grew up or anything. Actually, one really interesting thing that I saw the other day, one of the major determining factors of your success is?

Environment? Your zip code. Okay. You know what I mean? Like that's wild. So I can sit here and say, these are the 10 things that I did, and this is what makes you a winner in this world. that I did and like this is this is what makes you this is what makes you a winner in this world and it's like well that is a factor you know that people statistically can actually reference now

there's always things to refute stuff right but that is a statistical thing where it's like well there's a lot of people from that same area that happen to be very successful too so yes anyway um well i know three guys out of pokips pokipsy well and there's like that uh in pennsylvania there's an area where like all those quarterbacks came from you know it's like dan marino and a bunch of other ones i think all came from the same spot anyway none of that really matters because what's amazing and we're going to talk about today is how much change you can have access to through some of the power of play that we saw Andrew Huberman talking about. Damn, I was chewing. Now, man, real quick, I want to, I want to highlight something that you mentioned there because, you know, I have some friends that have clinical depression and I have a lot of conversations with them because I'm like I have a level of privilege to even though my mom was a single parent.

I was brought up with massive levels of pushing and belief. But at the same time, depression is for many people, like you mentioned, a chemical imbalance. And the only time where I even had inklings of that was when I was 13. I've talked about this at Oshkod Slaughter. Couldn't run, but I was able to get into the gym. And when I started working out, that went away because I had an outlet. But even so, when people like us, right, people are talking about, oh, I feel down, or even some people feel depressed. And we talk about, you know, just change your habits, get sleep, get sunlight, get your nutrition, whatever. There are some people that do all of those things, but there's still that imbalance where like it doesn't matter.

They like they have their health in check. They're getting sleep. They're getting sunlight. They are exercising all of this. And they're still dealing with literal depression. They do need to get on medication. So just saying, change your outlook. That's not going to work for them.

And it's hard. And when I have these conversations, I'm like, wow. Even though I cannot understand the way you feel, because for me, all of these things help me not feel bad. I can see why that's necessary for you. So it's good that we understand that there's certain people who need like need to get on some type of medication. That shouldn't be something that's shameful. That should be something that, you know, find those solutions because they're there.

And also there are some people, too, that, you you know my mom was a civil engineer she put me in different programs for education etc and even though she was a single parent she was a good single parent so I feel like I have a level of still is I have a level of privilege that I had a good parent there but people who didn't or you know it's to be certain things might be a little bit harder in life. And then also right now, I did used to work a normal job in the past. Like I worked at a gym, you know, personal training and selling personal training. And I remember what that lifestyle was like, but after I started doing this and when I started doing stuff online and now I'm doing this, certain things that we talk about, you know, certain things might be harder for some individuals because, you know, some people, you literally work a nine to five. Maybe you have a family

or whatever, but then you got to go home. You mean at some point you got to find some time to work out. We understand that certain things that we talk about may be harder, but we're like, we've all been there. We've all been in those situations. So we know that you have to figure out a way to still implant these habits in your life so that you overall feel better. Because it's hard to say, if you're trying to figure out a way to work out more, if you're trying to figure out a way to get better nutrition, et cetera, we know that life, there's going to be certain things that make it harder, but you still have to figure out a way so you have a better quality of life. You can't, as easy as to say from our perspective, but you can't let that be an excuse for really trying to take care of your health. Because you've been there in the past too.

Like you were a trainer. You worked as a, I think you were a PE teacher too at some point. Like you know what it's like. And yeah, you're on the other side now. But that doesn't mean that you have to stop spreading that message. Yeah, I was a coach at a high school. I was a strength coach. So that kind of acted like a PE teacher in some way.

But I wasn't an actual PE teacher. I was a strength coach for Pioneer football team in Woodland. And I was also the defensive line coach. But I mean, I learned a lot of great lessons, you know, in, in, in that it was just to see like so many different kids and so many different types of personalities. And for one kid, all you had to do was kind of yell at them. For a couple of kids, all you had to do is yell at them and say, hey, man, what are you doing? Or make fun of them. Be like, dude, that was like, that was a crap effort.

That was, are you serious? And then a couple other kids would laugh and then that kid would do better on the next drill. And you're like, dude, where was that before? Like, you know, you had that in you the whole time. Meanwhile, if you said that to another kid, you know, they would tuck their tail and they would, their posture would change.

And now they didn't even really want to participate. They didn't even really want to try. So you had to really, you had to really mind the way that you treated everybody individually. What I think is really important about, you talk about your mother so much, I think it's a really important factor and it's going to be interesting

to see how you end up parenting. But I would imagine that you are going to, you're going to want your child, you're going to probably push them in a good way towards some form of education. Because I think that education, and I'm not talking about school necessarily. This is where I think people get tripped up a little bit. You're going to want your child most likely to find an interest that they can maybe become,

maybe they can get themselves to a point where they're kind of like a material expert in some way in that field, whether it be personal training, whether they're an art teacher, whether they love to play music, maybe it's a foreign language or who knows what the heck it might be. Maybe they're into athletics because you're a stud. Who knows what it will be, but most likely you'll probably push some of that. And that's with my own children. It's not about school.

And I don't care if they go to college necessarily. But let's say that Jake starts to have a particular interest. Well, I would say, hey, why don't you go to the junior college and go pick up a couple classes in editing or whatever, or in photography? Like, what's the harm in that? And then that also becomes a form of like play. It's like, who really cares about the grade that you get? Go in there and kick some ass and take some pictures and have some fun. And like, no, I don't, it doesn't matter if you graduate, you know, cause it's, it's about, it's about figuring out and learning stuff and being able to digest stuff that you're going to actually be able to apply to your own life. That's what wisdom is. Wisdom is the ability to take knowledge and to actually have application with it.

You know, guys, Andrew Huberman's podcast is amazing. He has a lot of great episodes. But I got to say, these past few have been bangers. This episode that we're talking about in terms of the power of play that we've been referencing on the pod, on this podcast, we've talked a lot about like doing things new as an adult or doing new things as an adult, you know, getting into a new hobby, getting into a new sport, whatever it is. Even when we had Susan on the show, Yes. Like everyone laughs and like we make jokes about it because sex stuff is kind of funny, right? But at the same time, it's like, well, shit, why not?

Like if both people are willing to try something new, maybe we'll end up with a cool new experience. Exactly. And that's a big thing right there because there were a lot of comments on the Susan episode of like guys in the comments like look at these dudes taking sex advice from a woman or whatever like like oh I guess you guys don't know what you're doing but none of us come into any situation like the person

that knows it all right we're all trying to learn new things because we have a belief that there are other people who may know things that we don't know. And we want to implement that knowledge. So white belt mentality. That's how we tackle it. I have no embarrassment about coming up to somebody and saying, I don't know. That's perfectly fucking OK. Parts are kind of confusing. Hey, you know what? I was having a conversation with my girlfriend the other day and she was watching sex in the city. Right. And on this episode of sex in the city, the joke was there's this guy who,

he, the woman that he was having sex with continuously was continuing to fake orgasm. And she finally told him that I've been faking the orgasm this whole time. And the guy was like, Oh, what? What? And she's like,

he's like, I've never not been able to please woman. But she was like, and then in his head, he was like, what? What? And she's like, and he's like, I've never not been able to please women. But she's like, and then in his head, he was like, what have they been all been faking it? So then he was like, all right, well, start teaching me. So she's like, you know, you think you're licking the clitoris, right? You're about four inches off. So I talked to my girl. I'm like, geez, let me ask you a question.

Is that really a thing? Do, do, do a lot of guys, can they not find the clip she's like it's real like there are a lot of people out here that don't know where that is so this is the thing like you can't go into these situations thinking you know it all you got to be open to taking advice from other people that would help if women just get a little testosterone so it's easier to find that it just grows right make it a little longer for us. Have that thing pop. Tell them how they can get a discount on merit.

Well, I mean, mine is well. Yeah, I mean, they can take care of a woman's testosterone needs if needed. Susan mentioned she uses it. Yeah, yeah, it's true. Yeah, and she's super, I mean, I don't remember how old she was, but. 60 or 61. And she is. She's good looking for a 60-year-old, man.

In amazing shape. She's exercising, full of tons of energy. So if that's something you want to, you know, I don't know, get checked out if you're a lady of the show, head over to MerrickHealth.com. That's M-a-r-e-k health.com and at checkout enter promo code power project 10 to save 10 off your labs and if you don't know where to start uh you guys can always chat with them even hop on the phone with them and when it comes to paying for some of the recommended labs you can just verbally tell them or you know tell them through chat uh power project

10 and they will uh apply the discount at checkout. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Parents listening to this show. Sorry. We're sorry that we're so gross. Yeah, we are. But parents that are listening to this show, I think one of the number one words as a parent is just the word encouragement. Try to figure out ways to encourage and do your best to not discourage on anything.

Rather than saying, hey, video games are bad or you play that way too much, you're on your phone way too much, you're on your tablet way too much, provide them with other options and repeatedly say I would like to see you do this a little bit more like this would be important if you started to put some more of your time into this rather than like focusing I don't like that you're spending all this time over here on this

you're just going to get a negative response they're not going to come through they're not going to want to follow through on that so do your best to encourage rather than discourage. And whenever you can encourage them to just do something, just to play. I mean, when they're six and they're seven years old and they say they want an iPad and you're like, well, okay, last time I looked, iPad's pretty expensive. Rather than say, no, you'll never get an iPad or no, like we don't have money for that. You can maybe start to try to make some sense of it with them and say, that's great. You want to get an iPad. Let's talk about ways that you can work towards that. Let's

talk about things that you can do towards that. Right. And then now, now maybe their mind starts to open up a bit and they can start to think of ways they can make money. Maybe you can present them with some options. Say, hey, you know that we need a lot of help with the dishes. Like you see both of us all the time folding laundry. Like we could use some help with that. We could use some help with some chores around that, whatever the things are. Well, now the kid maybe starts to develop a bunch of ideas or the kids, uh, maybe more entrepreneur driven. And the kids like makes a bunch of stickers or something that you help them with and they sell it to their aunts, their uncles,

their friends, or whomever it is like, like present them with some opportunity so that their minds can continue to grow. Don't stifle that. When they say the weird things that makes everybody laugh and all that stuff, that's great. Laugh, but encourage it even further. Say, I wonder how we can actually turn that idea of you wanting to own an ice cream truck into something that's real. Because why not own an ice cream truck when you're 12? Yeah. And then the other thing, like when it comes to like parents, we all know like, oh, our kids probably should be exercising more.

They shouldn't be playing video games all the time. But what you can't do is go outside, go play, go exercise, and then sit back and start playing on your phone because you just got mad at them for being on their phone. It's like whatever you say holds significantly less weight if you're not also participating in it so you can talk the talk but unless you're walking the walk it really doesn't matter what you say because they're just going to be like

well this fucking guy's not doing it why do i have to now it's punishment whereas we're talking about play go fucking play basketball with them go i don't know do whatever it is but yeah if if you're not setting an example like good luck i have a question for both of you guys real quick because you're mentioning encouraging your children or give you know giving them um you know not just discouraging encouraging them and then you mentioned like don't like set a good example but how about like educating them on the reasons why they might want to do something because i like when i think about sometimes when i was a kid i was told i wasn't maybe i was told i couldn't do something but i was never really told the reason why and like for example for me with porn i was

never told like once it was found out that i was watching porn because my fucking uncle saw my search history and told my mom oh god like yeah i was just told you shouldn't do it you know and the religious context behind of it but they didn't actually know how it affected the brain or whatever i learned about that when i was 17 and when i learned about that with the reasoning and the effects and i saw the effects i was like oh god damn i really need to figure something out that's when i made the switch when i when i looked up the forms and saw the scientific changes it was making. So I was like, damn, if somebody kind of educated me a little bit on that, gave me real reasons. And even to this day, if you just say you shouldn't do something, I'm going to be like, the fuck?

But if you literally educate me a little bit or I learn why or the important things, that's when I make changes, even when I was a kid. So I'm thinking, I don't think there are a lot of parents that really tell their children, this is why you don't want to do this or this is why you do want to do this. Think about this. I was just talking to a friend about this. Alcoholism runs in her family. So she's scared that when she has a child, how do you teach a child that in the future, you might not want to drink as much as your friends because this ruins the family.

And for myself, there are certain things that run in my family that I'm going to have to tell my kid, you may not want to try psychedelics until this point because this could potentially happen. Got to educate them, right? Yeah. I'll go first because I would like to hear what Mark has to say, and it would probably be a more applicable answer.

But for me, with my daughter Jasmine, she's 13, trying to get her to exercise more, it's been tough because we're losing the battle right now because she's a healthy kid. She can drop down into like a ben patrick like uh like fully flexible yeah super bendy very thin yeah and so like what the only thing that i can do is i could just give her examples of like what happened to me i'm just like hey you know that thing when you drop down to your knees and stuff i'm like i used to be able to do stuff like that and And then one day I sat down and I never got up. I was like, because I got really into video games, I stopped playing sports. I stopped running around friends and that's all I did. And now what? You know, I have back pain. Like that's all because I sit down a lot. That's because I used to sleep in a lot, like, or not sleep in a lot. It's because I used to kind of just lounge around and not really go outside the house. So like, I'm, I'm trying to find the right ways to be like, you're, you're going to

lose your vitality. Like, you're not going to be able to like drop down on the floor like that. You're not going to be able to just get up and start running. And so like, I have to find the right wording, but I'm like, you know, we're, we're basically turning into jello when we sit down all day long. I was like, imagine not being able to just get up and run. Like, but for whatever reason, you know, you might not ever have to get up and run that, you know, hopefully, but you know, at some point, like you're going to want to get up and move and you're going to be like, Oh wait, I don't remember that hurting. And now it does hurt. Or jumping. Imagine how weird jumping is for a lot of people. They can't just do for, for me right now. Like right now like if if i like you know we have a little step right here walking

into the studio if i'm not paying attention and i fall off that it's like oh shit like it hurts so like little things like that is like like like babe like you don't want to be like this but it's just it's hard for me to also not be like oh if you don't move you're gonna get fat you're gonna like you know i can't get that far so i'm i'm trying to to get the right verbiage so that way it sticks and i'm also not being so negative that it goes the complete opposite and she's just like well fuck it like it doesn't matter anyways i'm just i'm rather gonna i'd rather have fun you know playing Roblox or whatever. So in my case, I just give her very succinct and very just 100% proof of what happened to me and how I got here because that's what I do know. And it's proof I can tell her like, hey, after eighth grade, I just got really into video games

and I didn't start lifting till 27. So in that time period, my body broke down and I am still trying to recover 10 years later. So if you don't want to have to deal with that, we're going to go out on walks, we're going to hit the gym and we're going to do these things,

we're going to run around and play. But also she knows that like every time that we have her go do like a CrossFit class, her mom is right next to her every single time. She's, we're never like, you're doing this and we'll pick you up in half an hour. We're always there with her. I think you hit the nail on the head with a lot of that stuff because you're, you're able to like show her, you know, examples that are in her life. I think that that's important too. Without judgment on other family members and other people that are around, I think it's important that you point out the things that are good about

some of the people in the family and then you point out some of the flaws as well. Again, not from a place of judgment, but you say, hey, your aunt so-and-so, not from a place of judgment, but you say, hey, your aunt so-and-so, like she doesn't eat properly. She doesn't move. She didn't ever learn the skill set of exercise. And as a result, she's a lot heavier than she'd like to be. She's also in a lot of pain.

Like not only is she heavier and she has to battle that every day, but she doesn't feel well. She's kind of sick. She can't do the stuff that she used to do when she was young, as you're kind of pointing out. You won't be able to have access to being able to do a lot of these things. I think educating your children has a lot to do with time and it has a lot to do with showing them. And I think because of the time factor, it's like, it's a nuisance. Um, let's, let's say like you just sat down and you got yourself some food and you're going to watch your favorite show. You just settle in. And what does

your puppy do? Your puppy scratches at the door, wants to be let out. And you're just like, your kids, they always have that timing. Like you and your wife, you out and you're just like fuck that every time you know your your kids they always have that timing like you and your wife you know you're fired up like things that things just hit for a particular reason at a particular time as some part of the day and then all of a sudden when your kids comes knocking on the door or they just barge right in or whatever you know and my son is one years old and he knows for a fact every single time that it's going to go down. He's just like, Oh,

well, it's my, my spider sense. Hold on. Let me wake up. I need to be the only little baby running around here. I'm going to put a stop to this shit right now. Fuck dude.

Again, how does he know? But yeah, you're right. The timing sucks. Yeah. So there's the time factor of like, sometimes you got to stop and then you, sometimes you're like a kid will do something that will really you'll get pissed.

Like you'll be like shit. Like I can't believe they did that. I talked to them yesterday about this and the day before and they did the same thing to their cousin three weeks ago. Like why did they push him down the ground or, like, whatever the thing is, right? I don't know. Yeah, you're right. But your best option is to get down on their level, lower your voice, take your time. That way there's an explanation.

And you can say, hey, this has happened like for the last three weeks. Is there a miscommunication? Like, am I not describing this well enough to you? Like why you got my attention? What do you need? What can I help you with? I hear you now. Okay, you hurt your sister again

or you hurt your brother again. What the hell's going on in your world? Can you describe this to me? And sometimes it's even such a pain in the ass that when you do that and you do take that time to do that, they cry, they get real upset. Now they're like, now they're sad. They let you down and you're like, okay, we're going to talk about this more later. Go back to doing, you know, whatever it was you were doing five hours later you go into their room and you talk to him about i don't know i don't talk about it you know well we we we have we have to talk about it like we don't we don't do things that way in this family we we need to

address this because i don't want to see it happen again. So you have to, time and time again, you have to continue to communicate about it. And in my life, I'm very fortunate where there's really good examples in the family to kind of point to. My son was bringing up this thing about Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos has this yacht. Jeff Bezos has this yacht and all these people all these Dutch people I guess they're lining up and throwing eggs at it

I don't know if it's happened yet or if they're prepared to do that I'm not sure what the deal is but they're prepared to do that because they're going to take out a bridge that is a historical bridge they're doing this so that his yacht can go through, right? And so like, who's this billionaire, you know,

trillionaire, whatever the hell the guy is, asshole, you know, with this boat basically, you know, doing, what are they doing to our property or whatever? So me and Jake got talking about, you know, whether Jeff Bezos is an asshole or, and so then we talked about Elon Musk a bit. Then we talked about The Rock a little a bit then we talked about the rock a

little bit and we're like not sure it's hard to say like uh anyway my whole point in in all this is that i said jake one of your heroes in your life right now is your grandfather right and he's like yep and i said the attributes that your grandfather has, those are not attributes that would be highlighted by society. Those are not attributes that are going to put my dad up on a pedestal like The Rock, like Jeff Bezos, like Elon Musk. Those guys are not up on a pedestal because they're kindhearted, because they always find a way to smile, because they always find a way to turn things. My dad is the ultimate at turning things into play. He's the ultimate at that. He'll figure out all kinds of fun and weird shit to do with my kids and my nieces and nephews and stuff like that.

He loves that kind of stuff. But those are not things, those aren't attributes that are like overly appealing to, you know, what's appealing to the general population is people being, oh, what's the word? People being narcissistic, really. Say that again, he's what? I was going to say like one of the attributes that is kind of applauded is people being

narcissistic in some way or people being selfish in some way. And I'm not saying that, I'm not saying that any of those people are that particular way, but it probably does take a certain degree of some of those things in order to be those kind of people. And it doesn't mean that they're self-centered to the point where they don't take care of the people around. I'm not saying any of that. I'm just saying that the attributes from somebody like my dad is the attributes that are in your mom, their attributes and your family members. These are the things, this is like the backbone of America in a lot of ways. This is the backbone of our society, but it's not something that people just being

faithful, people just being married for 20 years, 40 years, 50 years. Yes. Other married people will say, wow, that's sick. That's dope. But you're not going to have a hundred million followers on instagram because you dated the same woman your entire life you know what i mean they're going to call you a simp yeah but dan blazerian will get he'll get all the guy people like that will get all the attention so it's it's just a, it's a really interesting thing on, on who we get kind of, uh, I don't know who comes across our eyeline because of whatever thing they worked on forever. But anyway, I think that the key with children is to have a lot of explanation. There does need to be education behind everything.

You do have to have a lot of good explanations and explain shit as much as you possibly can so that they know the real reasons behind what they're doing and what they shouldn't be doing. And like, you know, what you guys were mentioning, I think a big thing because the absence of what Hooperman was talking about in the episode, you know, should we just pull some up real quick sure i'll just give me one of the uh let's stamps that you would like let's go to the part of the episode i think it was like the 30 something the 32 17 the power of playful mindset and you know we'll just we'll just let him talk about it a bit y'all should just go listen to the whole episode at some point too. But we'll highlight some of the parts of this episode that I think you guys will appreciate. So before I continue, I just want to point to a tool that anyone can use, but in particular, the less playful of the group. And I would put myself into this category.

And I'm not somebody who really engages in spontaneous play. I enjoy sports. I enjoy exercise. But that is – He doesn't normally talk this fast. Sorry. I take it pretty seriously. They're not low stakes for me. Actually, exercise, but that doesn't normally talk. Sorry. No, I take pretty seriously. They're not low stakes for me. I put actually put a lot of importance on them. She's

I'm saying all this. I probably should put a little less importance on them and have a little more fun with those. And yet what I'm about to tell you is that anyone and everyone can benefit from engaging in a bit more of this playful mindset. The playful mindset is not necessarily about smiling and jumping around or being silly. It's not it at all. It's not the Tigger character from Winnie the Pooh necessarily. It could be, but it's really about allowing yourself to expand the number of outcomes that you're willing to entertain and to think about how you relate

to those different outcomes. So what this means is putting yourself into scenarios where you might not be the top performer, right? Playing a game that you're not really that good at. I had this experience recently. Friends that like to play cards, they like to do some low stakes gambling.

This is not an illegal gambling ring. They play for trivial things. And I generally don't buy it. I like the disclaimer. I generally don't play. He always does that. Always does that. But in the mode of assuming a more playful spirit, the idea would be well, if the stakes are low enough, then to

play simply for the sake of playing because there's something to learn there about the other people in the group and about oneself and how one reacts to things like someone who's clearly trying to take everybody's money or somebody who is clearly trying to cheat or somebody who's clearly very, very rigid's money or somebody who is clearly trying to cheat or somebody who's clearly very, very rigid about every last detail,

including how the cards are dealt and shuffled, right? There is learning in this exploration. And that is at a biological level, the prefrontal cortex starting to entertain different possibilities, starting to entertain different outcomes in this low stakes way. And if you think about it,

that's not something that we allow ourselves to do very often. Even if we listen to new forms of music or we go see new art or new movies, those are new experiences, but that's not us making new predictions about what's going to happen next. It's not the brain working to figure out new possibilities. And so you can immediately see how just a small increase in your willingness to put yourself into conditions where you don't understand all the rules perhaps, or you're not super proficient at something, but you enter it

because it is low stakes. And because there is information to learn about yourself and others could start to open up these prefrontal cortex circuits. And when I say open up, I don't mean that literally there's an opening in your skull. What start to open up these prefrontal cortex circuits. And when I say open up, I don't mean that literally there's an opening in your skull. What I mean is that your prefrontal cortex can work in very rigid ways. Meaning if a, then B, if I go down this street, turn left and go that way to work. It is fast. If I go down the other street, it's slow. If there's a traffic jam there, I'm going to go there, but it's starting to explore different possibilities. And there are very, very few opportunities in life to explore contingencies in this low stakes way, such that it engages in neuroplasticity, the prefrontal

cortex. So play is powerful at making your prefrontal cortex more plastic, more able to change in response to experience, but not just during the period of play, but in all scenarios, because you get one prefrontal cortex. You don't get a prefrontal cortex just for play. You get a prefrontal cortex that engages in everything. So going forward, I will layer on some more concrete aspects of tools, but for now. And later on, there's one more part of the episode we'll play, Andrew, after we talk about this, but it's at an hour and three seconds.

But like right there, that's a really big deal because like he mentioned, as an adult, there's not many – If you're somebody that doesn't consider – Sorry. Oh, you're good. There's not many instances you put yourself in where you're doing something new, where you're doing something novel. where you're doing something new, where you're doing something novel. At a certain point of this episode, he also mentioned that, you know, if you're someone who's been playing basketball since you were five and now you're playing it as an adult, that doesn't necessarily help with neuroplasticity.

Neuroplasticity being your ability to do and learn new things as an adult. But getting to something totally novel, right, and learning and being at the bottom, like when I started jujitsu as an adult, um, or like even you, there are certain new things that you've been doing. Um, those things will really open up your ability. It's not specifically your ability to learn that thing, but it opens up your ability to learn in general new things as an adult, because there's so many people, and I've heard this from so many people that are like yeah when you get to an adult people don't really change that's who you are this is a stark contrast to that belief and it's concrete it shows that if you do put yourself in situations that are new and novel you then open up your ability to learn new things and become a

new person as an adult if something like jujitsu didn't have so many components of like these puzzle pieces fitting together, and if it didn't have so much value in problem solving, like over and over again, problem solving with people trying to get you in these different holds, you experimenting with different escapes. If it was just about just taking people out in the streets,

like you wouldn't do it. Like, you know, most people wouldn't care just to have that knowledge. And I think originally when it came to martial arts, you know, self-defense, those kinds of things, I think that's the way that people used to view it. But you don't understand like what you can learn off of throwing a few punches at a heavy bag.

I mean, there's a lot to be learned.. I mean, there's a lot to be learned. Even more so, there's a lot to be learned if you push yourself really hard in something. If you do three rounds of a heavy bag and during your minute interval rest, you're jumping rope, that's going to explore your mind in some ways that you may not have tapped into before. So I think there's so much more that we can learn from just giving something a shot.

I'm not running just because it might be good for my heart. I'm not running just because it might be good for my lungs. I like some of the challenge of it. But so much more is coming along with it. I'm gaining new lungs. I like some of the challenge of it, but so much more is coming along with it. I'm gaining new experiences. I'm thinking of new things. I'm thinking in different ways. One way that you can explore some of these things

that he's mentioning without even necessarily doing anything is just to think a little differently. You know, I always thought the Apple campaign of think different is probably the, in my opinion, the greatest, the greatest like saying of all time. If you're to think about a certain situation that you might be in, think about like the exact opposite. Think about the exact opposite and walk yourself through that for a minute.

Let's say somebody cheated on you. Flip it over and think if you cheated on them and then the perspective of that other person, right? And it could be anything. Could it just hurt somebody in a relationship? You could have said something weird that you shouldn't have said. And you can kind of think about it that way, or just put yourself in someone else's shoes, come from somebody else's perspective. These are all things that are free to do. That doesn't cost, like this literally doesn't cost you anything.

He's talking about how there's some cost to, on your way to work, you know, just randomly taking a left. Like you would never do that because you're like trying to get your ass to work on time. But this is what you can jog your brain in all kinds of different places.

I can sit here and think about, I wonder what it's like to work in the warehouse here. You know, I wonder what that job is like, even when it comes to entrepreneurship and running a business. And let's just say with the supplement line that I'm starting, maybe there's no way to order individual products at all. Maybe the only way you can be part of the within you brand is to be,

it's all subscription based. Maybe I don't sell any of it on Amazon. Maybe it's only on Amazon. Maybe it's only sold in stores. Like you start to think maybe, maybe not necessarily always opposite but just start to throw a lot of different things and start to literally play around with it imagine if you sit down and we're going to have a podcast meeting and you just thought how much

fun would this be right if if the first thing i said is, all right, guys, let's think of the worst fucking podcast that we could ever do. And that would spawn stuff in reverse rather than like, usually our focus and usually we kind of get, even though we don't take it super serious, we are serious about this. We do want it to work well. And so we might be kind of grinding it out, flexing our hands and gritting our teeth and thinking like, I want to get the most out of these podcasts. I want to do the best podcast that we can. I want to get the best guests that we can. What if we just kind of relaxed and went the other way and said, let's just make the worst fucking content anyone's ever seen.

But it will give you a lot of ideas into things that could be amazing. Absolutely. And I think this is a specific example is we had Ben Patrick here this past week. We made a lot of content with him. But when he was showing some things with squatting, you grabbed a band, you put it around the squat rack, and you started squatting.

And this is interesting. Ben has really good mobility. Ben is also really good at regressing movements but you came up with something that he's adding to his system that is a type of squat that allow people to activate their bml's and get into a deep squatting position though people who typically wouldn't be able to do it and it's also a movement that's extremely effective for people who already can get there it's and it's very simple you just put a just put a band on a squat rack. I don't think we even came up. Have you come up with a name for it yet? Oh, the teardrop squat, teardrop squat. It's called

the teardrop squat. Right. Um, but you tinkered with like, Ooh, I wonder about this. And I wonder about this. And I wonder about this. And you came up with a movement that it's, it's, it's a big adjustment to his programming and to what he's going to show people. And it's super fucking effective. So that's, I think you're a good example of an individual who you're in your forties, but because you do so many new things and your mindsets, you think kind of like a kid and that's not a bad thing. I think we all want to keep that childlike mindset of trying new things and doing new things and experimenting because it allows you to open up new avenues of, of, of discovery and, and do new shit. And this is that literally just happened. And that movement, by the way, guys, the teardrop squat that we're showing on the screen right now,

watch that video. If you do try that thing out thing out the the level of activation that you get into your vmos which is your teardrop muscle is insane it is insane that thing fucked us up we got pretty sore from doing a lot yeah yeah i was i was walking around cramping all night it was crazy. The discovery part of what you just said is, is, is amazing. You know, think about if our ancestors didn't have that discovery in their, in their body, you know, they didn't want to, I mean, look, you're, you're looking into the ocean and you're like, I don't see any other land. So I ain't going out on that ship, you know, but you, you go out in the ship and you're like, let just fucking see what happens i mean back then shit sucks so bad that that didn't seem like that bad of an option probably and there was probably other people that would come back on a ship and they'd

say hey we found you know cool shit over here or we found more food over here or whatever and then you go out but there was people you know years ago as people were migrating towards the West, they thought once they got to the Mississippi River, they thought it was way too dangerous. They're like, don't fucking go past. There's no reason. There's nothing out there. That's what they thought. There's nothing out there. And there happened to be fucking gold.

There happened to be literal gold in California, you know? So who knows what you'll find? Who knows what you haven't found yet? Just because you're not willing to explore, you're too scared, which is understandable. There's shit like we talked earlier about like singing. Like for me to get up in front of people and sing or dance would be like nuts. But I guess, you know, amongst the right people, I guess I, I guess I would probably do it, but it's interesting to even explore that. Like,

why wouldn't you do it? Like if you, if you don't typically dance, then who's expecting you to be great at it? Why not just have fun with it? If you don't typically sing out loud, I don't think anybody's going to assume that you're going to be able to really belt something beautiful, right? Absolutely. Um, Andrew, you think you can go to the hour mark? This, I think this is the last part of the episode that we'll, we'll show, but it's, it's a pretty, it's a pretty cool part.

And I raised this because another one of the top 10 questions I get is how can I keep my brain young? How can I continue to learn? How can I get better in school and sport and life and relationships, et cetera, emotionally, cognitively and on and on and on. And yes, there are supplements that can support neuroplasticity. Yes, there are brain games and apps that can support neuroplasticity. But if you really want to engage neuroplasticity at any age, what you need to do is return to the same sorts of practices and tools that your nervous system naturally used throughout development. And that evolved over hundreds of

thousands of years to trigger this thing that we call neuroplasticity. And the reason this is so important is because it starts to move us away from what some people called hacks. I define hacks as using one thing for a different purpose to kind of get a shortcut. I don't really like the term, frankly, and I don't like it because it's not grounded in any biological mechanism. But when we look at play, we can say play is the portal to plasticity. Play at every stage of life is the way in which we learned the rules for that stage of life. And play is the way in which we were able to test how we might function in the real world context. So play is powerful. And we could even say that play is the most powerful portal to plasticity. The reason for that is that yes, this high opioid, low epinephrine or adrenaline state is what opens up play. But

then inside of the arena of play, when the prefrontal cortex is running all these different possibilities in this low stakes way, but with some degree of focus, there are a number of other chemicals that are deployed, things like brain derived nootrophic factor and other growth factors that actually trigger the rewiring of brain circuits that allow for it to expand. And indeed, that's what is neuroplasticity. If you're interested in those chemicals and the kind of arena of things that happen when one engages in neuroplasticity, there's a vast literature out there. But one of the more popular books that I think is quite good is from my friend and colleague, John Rady, who's a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School. That's R-A-T-E-Y. He wrote the book Spark a few years back, and I think it's still very relevant.

And John talks about the important role that play exerts in the neuroplasticity process and points to a number of different protocols that one can engage in. He also points to the importance of navigating new environments to not just go on the same hike every week or take the same walk, but actually get into new novel environments. So you're starting to sense a theme here. There's novelty, exploring contingencies, keeping the stakes relatively low, et cetera, et cetera. But these really are the gates to this holy grail that we call neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity, as I've talked about in the podcast before, is a two-step process. It involves focusing very intensely,

or at least focusing somewhat on whatever it is that one is trying to learn, and then engaging in deep rest, ideally deep sleep, in the following nights. And I've also talked about the benefits of things like naps and yoga nidra, so-called NSDR, non-sleep deep rest, for enhancing or accelerating plasticity. You can check out the episodes on Focus at hubermanlab.com or the episodes on How to Learn Faster that detail all those. We had a newsletter that lists out all the tools for neuroplasticity, enhancing neuroplasticity.

All that is available zero cost to you at hubermanlab.com, et cetera. You can just download that information. But John's book, that newsletter, those episodes, they really point to this two-step process where it's focus and then rest, focus and then rest. And play is its own unique form of focus and then rest, focus and rest. It's not the same as learning something for sake of school or critically

trying to learn a motor behavior for sake of sport. It's really about expanding the number of things that you could learn down the line. Okay. So said once again, so I just want to make sure it's abundantly clear. Play is about establishing a broader framework within which you can learn new things. It's not about learning some specific thing. It's not about the game you happen to be playing. It's not about the dollhouse that the kids are playing with so that they can become amazing dollhouse players when they grow up, right? The dirt clod war that I referred to earlier, for better or for worse, was not about becoming the best dirt clod thrower or winning the trophy for dirt clods in the neighborhood, although we actually had a trophy for the best dirt clod team. Alas, it was not my thing.

But the point is that you're learning rules and establishing a broader foundation of practices that then you can learn more things within that context. Thus far, I've tried to convince you through a comment. So a lot of cool stuff there. Yeah. And I think I think the coolest thing. And when I was listening to this episode, guys, I know there are people in the audience are like, and see my shut the fuck up about jujitsu. But I got to mention this because I think it's really cool.

Like, you know, when I started that as an adult, I really sucked at it. It was really bad. I was getting beat up by people half my size. But there were so many different things within the martial art and so many variable types of movements that every single time I went, things were novel, things were new. And every single time I go now, there's things that my teacher Casio is showing or Julian or Dan, and those things are novel and they're new. And there's so many different movements within the martial art and so many different body types. Like I could spar with a guy that looks like Mark. Then I could spar with a guy that's built like Andrew.

Then I can spar with a guy that's like 6'6", 280. And I have to approach all of these things differently. But a thing that Andrew mentioned, Andrew Huberman mentioned within the podcast is low stakes. When I approach training, I approach training as fun. Like I'm not like, okay, I got to be everyone's ass today. I'm going to do this same thing every single time. I approach it as like, oh, I want to try this. I want to try this. And no wonder what happens if I do this. It's playful. And sometimes I find myself, I find myself sparring with somebody, we get a position and we're laughing about like what we're doing. And it's very, it's, it's literally adult play. And I've noticed that as I've been doing that, it has helped me being open to other things. And to what Andrew was mentioning, a wonderful thing is like, for example, your wife is doing CrossFit

with your daughter, right? And there's probably aspects of it where they're sitting there doing their thing and they're having fun. If we can find things as adults, physical activities that maybe we can do with our children, I know everyone, some people have limited time here and there, but maybe you could do it with your kid, that will allow you to continue to keep that childlike mind and do new things.

But then you're with your kid doing this thing too, playing, having fun. So that, that could be something like, I see a lot of adults that have their kids do jujitsu. I'm like, that makes a lot of sense because like jujitsu is, it's like grappling, it's wrestling, right? We all used to wrestle as kids or fucking tumbling around, but now you're just doing adult tumbling. That's what it is.

You know what I mean? And that's super sick. And you've pointed out before that, like, jujitsu is not necessarily like inherent. Like you'd be like, Mark, uh, actually roll to your right. And I'd be like, huh? And, but that would be the way out, you know, cause it doesn't make any sense a lot of times. But if you're just to tell people, yeah, just kind of wrestle around, like everyone kind of has a sense of some of that. And when went to jiu-jitsu class a handful of times they were just like at towards the end of class they're like you're not going to really learn any further for today because like you've been at it for two hours and like

your brain's going to melt at a certain point you can only learn so much of this shit uh and and then it starts to kind of like regress and you got to come back and so forth so they're like just kind of wrestle around a bit so in doing that towards the end that's and you got to come back and so forth. So they were like, just kind of wrestle around a bit. So in doing that towards the end, that's when you start to go, oh, that's, oh shit. Okay. I popped into the position they were just talking about earlier, but I actually just kind of popped into it from something they showed me two weeks ago. Yeah. And you're like, ah, shit.

Like that's pretty, that's pretty amazing. I think one of the biggest issues when it comes to something like play is even the very definition of it. Like, cause that, as I was listening to the Andrew Huberman stuff, I looked it up and it says to engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious, rather than a serious practical purpose.

And I think that, I think that that's a little bit of a mistake. Like I think that it's okay to kind of, to start out thinking that there's not much purpose to this. I think that's where you want to start out. I think that probably is the definition of play. Low stakes. But it ends up having a high purpose at the end. Like it ends up being very purposeful.

It ends up being very intentional. Like you were setting out to do something and fuck man you discovered something amazing so it does to to try to think that something doesn't have a purpose makes you think as an adult like i don't have time for that like if you were like hey this you know when you fuck around it doesn't have a purpose but messing around dicking around as i always call it it can have a really a big purpose a lot of times yeah and it's something that i usually recommend for like um upcoming photographers i guess i'll put it you know when it comes to working for free you know i'll be like yeah

volunteer and do it for free but take it serious but also you know if you accept payment then you have a lot of pressure on you and it's not play anymore because you're now you know exchanging money for services you are now a paid photographer versus if you do it for free you know you're still playing um you're still going to get the experience but you are playing and you're going to have fun with it and there's no expectations because if they get mad you'll be like well fuck i didn't charge you anything so you can use play in in a in a way to like advance your career yeah you know what we were talking about uh you guys remember when john berardi from precision nutrition came onto the show and talked about how i think he was wanting to learn gymnastics and how to do like a front flip or something that gymnastics is another thing that i think an adult can do and i i don't

think it can get i don't think it even gets in the way of your, your fitness because not many of us know how to do a flip. Not many of us know how to do gymnastic type movements. I think at some points they also have people jumping on trampolines. I could see an adult going and doing some adult gymnastics stuff and then also taking their kids to go do some gymnastic stuff too. That's another thing. That's another activity that I think could actually meld well to help you learn different types of ways to have move your body in terms of your body weight, but then also enjoy that with your child. Another thing that if you do have children, you can link that together and it's beneficial. It's low stakes, it's novel and it's new, and it can spur that neuroplasticity that he's talking about within this episode.

Some like drills you might do for sports would be butt kicks. You're jogging and you're kicking your own butt with your heels. You might do high knees where you bring the knees up and you chop. You might do a basketball slide, going to your left, going to your right. You might do all these drills. Kids are smart enough to understand. They wouldn't really want to work out because they're smart enough to kind of see. They think it's really fucking boring.

And Jim Wendler wrote the famous article, Boring But Big. And it talked about the repeated effort, how important that is. But that is really boring to do like 10 sets of three and use the same weight the whole time and to do everything the same. Like when you're lifting, especially the more, the higher the skill of the lift or the larger, the amount of weight, the more locked in you have to be to have your form be identical and look the

same every single time. How bold, like it's really, really boring. A five by five, five sets of five with 225 pounds, three seconds on the way down, three seconds on the way down, three seconds on the way up.

Like it's excruciating. Like you don't want to do any of that. What people will often do, people that do some strength training is they'll try to have kids, young kids do that. And then you get into the whole argument of whether weights are bad for kids and stuff. But it's not any of that

that I think is all that detrimental to kids. I think what you're doing though though, is you're ruining their creativity and ruining some of their ability to really think. And you would be better off saying, hey, let's do those drills, the high knees, the butt kicks. Let's see how fast you can do them against your friends. Now I'm talking about kids that are like 10 years old. They start to get older, and they have testosterone in their body.

They're 18, 19 years old and they go try to sprint out of nowhere. They're going to hurt themselves. But younger kids, they should still be playing. And hey, can you jump up on this box? Oh, that box is too high. Let's try a little bit lower one. Can you in midair, can you fucking

turn around as you're jumping up? They would be pumped to do that. But how many times are they going to be pumped to do that? A couple times. Then you got to find them some other shit. It takes a lot of energy to keep up with that style of mind because it's always thinking. It's always searching. And it's always seeking for new things.

Yeah, exactly. And that's the same thing. Like, for example, you know, a lot of people, when they talk about like bodybuilding and training, there's, I think I can also understand why like now people like, like drop sets or like doing multiple supersets with different types of load, even though from potentially a training standpoint, you could just keep the same ret and like rep and set scheme through a workout for certain movements and you'd get the same and decent results. It is much more fun to do a drop set or a pyramid set of a certain movement because of the variability, because of the change, because of the potential intensity, keeping rest time shorter.

It's more fun and enjoyable. And it's a little bit more playful. Like it maybe doesn't happen to every aspect of play that we're talking about, but it's not as rigid, right? You're not told like, yeah, you had, you do have the outcome of gaining muscle or whatever, but it's not totally focused on getting the set and rat scheme and getting the certain amount of volume. It allows a little bit of freedom and a little bit of play. And if anything, I'd say, let's try to inject a little bit of play into the things that we're doing. Like when we work out in the gym, we got the go to stuff that you guys are adding. You know, we got the knees over toes stuff that's being added.

There's so many different things that are novel to us. You know what I mean? Like I wasn't doing Nordic hamstring curls and fucking split squats and all these things last year. And when I added those in, I was like, God dang, this is fun. I'm discovering new things about my body. This is a different type of sensation. Novel stimulus creates positive change. And then having confidence in those things. You know, I have a lot of confidence with trying stuff because I've gotten great feedback from it, but I don't have confidence all around and everything. I don't have more

confidence than everybody and everything. If we were to do something physically and someone showed it to us, I would probably be a little hesitant you would be like I think I can do that you might even say I can do that better like you could you might in your own head say man I bet if I worked on that for a few weeks I could make that look cooler than what that guy is able to do because you know your

athletic prowess you're aware of it and so I think a lot of things are good a lot of great things are going to happen from like messing around and trying new things but one of the ultimate things that's going to happen is you're going to have more confidence. I mean, confidence is such a huge, a huge part of everything. Having, there's really nothing that can replace it. And the body is really smart and the brain is really smart. We know whether we actually have that confidence or not. It's hard to, it's kind of a hard thing to, it's a really difficult thing to fake. You have to kind of have it from doing something. I think a cool thing though, that all of us have here, and I

think it's something that a lot of people in the audience, like you guys have it too, is we don't have an ego about things when it comes to the gym. Like if we're not really good at something, we're not immediately shying away from it. A lot of times what happens is if you try something and it doesn't click immediately or you're not really that good at it, you're like, that's not for me, right? But when we have people that come and they're giving us new things, that's a new stimulus. And maybe it's movements that were not useful. We're like, Oh wow,

I suck at this. Okay. Let's, let's, let's, let's train this. Let's get better at this. Let's implement this.

Right. Let's see the progress. We, we struggled at just crawling when the go to guys were here. It's like, how stupid is this? But it's like, yeah,

it was completely new. It's something that we never thought about and yeah and what it showed me especially with like the wall sits is just like wow like what do you mean i can't do a wall sit right now you know like this this is pathetic but it it didn't bring me down it just kind of like opened my eyes to be like wow i got i have a lot of um areas i need to be working on and just having consideration. Whereas before, it's like, no, dude, just squat bench, dead. Yeah, the movement that they showed us to get into our hips and stuff.

Our haunches. Yeah, I'm able to get into my left hip way better than before, and it's starting to finally open up. And then when I'm walking, there's all these things that I've like lost I didn't even like know I mean in my eyes I'm pretty aware of that because you didn't realize you lost it yeah I didn't even I didn't really I knew that certain things were maybe being plucked away here and there but I didn't really know the to what degree and when I walk I walk with pretty short steps but like I always kind of thought like, well, I probably walk with short steps because I'm tight and I'm sore from certain workouts and stuff like that.

But come to find out, I'm kind of favoring my left hip a little bit. I don't want to open up my stride at all because when I do, I get a little pull. So the body's really smart. The body's like, dude, don't want to just take shorter steps like that's an easier route, right? How often is the easiest route, the right route, right? It never is. So now that I've been getting into that hip a little bit more, I can walk with kind of broader steps. And by facing my feet in the direction that I'm doing, and by starting to have some like actual locomotion to my walk where I'm moving my shoulders, which I was, again, wasn't even hardly aware that those were barely moving. Now I have like a stride.

Now I can walk way faster than I was walking before with no pain. But all these things were kind of, they were taken away over like a long period of time. So I didn't, it wasn't like one day I woke up and I was like, oh, I got these short choppy steps when I walk and my hip, you know, my hip is really tight. So it took a lot of, it took me a lot to mess around with a lot of these things to discover all this. You know, and that's because again,

you're open to doing new things. And by doing new things, you're discovering new things. And what Andrew mentioned, there are a lot of people who are like, ooh, just squat bench, like squat bench deadlift. bench but this is the thing there's nothing wrong with squat bench deadlift but i see these comments all the time when we have individuals that come onto the podcast and talk about potentially new shit there's always the guy who has like why are you guys trying to reinvent the wheel yes we know that if you just squat you build big legs why are you

trying to do new shit just do bench press it'll give you a big chest we don't need all this new shit snake oil all the time so there's snake oil with these new workouts we've seen tom platt's history it's history we've seen it work like it's so fucking close-minded like all you want to do is stay comfortable because you're good at something and i get it i understand it. I understand it because it's human nature to seek comfort. It's human nature to stay with what you're good at. That's what you want to do. It's not comfortable trying something and not being good at it.

But like Mark just mentioned, it'll allow you to find out things that maybe you didn't know you lost. Maybe you didn't realize that exactly. He was matching you. You don't walk evenly on one side. Or now you lack hip extension. Like, wow, you fix that by trying something new. I wonder what else you can fix in your body. I wonder how much better you can feel by trying new things.

You know, this month, like one of the things that I'm working on is like not lifting. You know, because the go-to guys came and they were like, we don't expect you guys to change everything that you're doing. But I'm like, you know what? Why not change everything that I'm doing? It's not like I still can't deadlift something heavy if I felt like it. It's not like I still can't build up my squat or my bench. I'm very confident that if I just wanted to turn around

and I wanted to work on those things, I could build those things back up to similar amounts I've lifted before. And who knows how much further I could go or whatever. But I'd have to, the commitment I have to make to go back to being the same person I was and to have a lot of the same attributes that I did. I don't want to do any of that. I feel like I've graduated to do some other things, but I want to work on being able to run faster. I want to be able to work on being

able to move better. And I don't think taking a hiatus off of some of these lifts, I don't think it's going to really show up negatively in my physique or anything. And if it does, I'll just go back to implementing some more lifting again. But it's also like I'm not completely abandoning all lifting. I'm still going to do some arms and some shoulders and some chest and some back, stuff like that. But the main thing is I'm just pulling the sled, which should keep muscle mass on you.

I'm doing a lot of these go-to exercises, doing some of the stuff that Kelly Sturette mentioned when he was here and just taking all that stuff, knees over toes, obviously, doing a lot of that stuff and taking that a little bit more seriously and pushing on that, because those are, those are workouts, you know, especially when you're not as used to them. Real, I wanted to mention, this is the thing, lot of guys a lot of people think oh wow if i if i move away from doing my deadlifts or a heavy deadlifts or squat i'm gonna lose that ability you might get a little bit weaker but as long as you're doing some level of training volume and activity that's not gonna go away it's only if you go and you're sitting on the couch now for

weeks and you come back to the gym your body's going to be weaker because there's this guy his name on instagram is every goddamn dray he's the kettlebell he's this guy that walks works with kettlebells he's jacked but all he does is work with kettlebells he can still just go into the gym and deadlift 600 even though the max kettlebells he's working with is like one something because of that explosion and still using weights and still having diversity of movement he's still able to go to a barbell and deadlift heavy and then if he really wanted to progress it he could probably get to 650 700 etc just because you stop lifting super heavy doesn't mean you lose the ability to right andre milanichev rebuilding his swat right now he like you you were mentioning he, he's incrementally building it up, but he hasn't lost that ability

because Andre has still kept active, doing a few other things in the gym. So just because we're doing all these new things, we're getting different types of levels of movement within our bodies. All of us are now moving better and with less pain. And I guarantee that if any of us chose to go back and train to start lifting heavy,

we would probably be able to move even better loads because we move like better humans. It's, you're just gaining access. And one of the things Huberman pointed out was that you're, when you are in a growth mindset, your mind has the ability to grow even more. So the more open-minded you can be and the more that you practice some of this stuff, Jesus! I would eat shit so many times. It's looking beautiful.

Inside ankle bones high the whole time. But, you know, people that are trying to, you know, improve and get better on stuff, I mean, keep that in mind that when you stay open-minded and you have an open mind in as many different aspects of your life that you possibly can do it, it's not always

easy to manage. You're going to find yourself sometimes where you get thrown off a bit and you're like, why am I, you're like, shit, I'm kind of thrown off in this one area, but the more open-minded that you can be, it's going to continue to encourage your mind to continue to grow. And it reminds me a little bit of strength. Like we were saying with Andrei Milanochev, he has access to that strength. He has access to uncommon strength because he has already built it. And so he can lean back towards that direction anytime he wants and be very, very strong. So that's kind of what we're talking about here

is develop some of these skill sets, work on them. And once you work on them and once you develop them and once they're pretty good, why not just explore some other stuff? Look into some other things. There is a time to sit in the pocket and to continue to get better and better and better and better at the thing it is that you're working on. Like a Ronnie Coleman who said he did the same back workout. Ronnie Coleman had the most legendary

back. So he did the same back workout for 30 years. Now you got to keep in mind, he didn't mean he literally did the same exact back workout for 30 years um because there would be changes to it he might change exercises a bit he might change rep and set schemes a bit in accordance to the weights that he used like those 800 pound deadlifts that he did for example those 765 squats that he did he didn't do those every week so while he's his point is is that he did a lot of bent over rows he did a lot of squats he did a He didn't do those every week. So while his point is that he did a lot of bent over rows, he did a lot of squats, he did a lot of deadlifts, he did them over and over and over again for many, many, many years. But there was still some changes going on within all that.

But he also, over a period of time, found the shit that felt right to him. And once it felt right to him, he stuck with it for a really long time, and he was able to get that measure of increase in those weights, which also helped kind of trickle down into the fucking massive back and hamstrings and legendary physique that that guy had. Yeah.

Yeah. It just, it fits. Maybe I will read the whole thing, but from James Clear, the greatest threat to success is not failure, but boredom. We get bored with habits because they stop delighting us. The outcome becomes expected. And as our habits become ordinary, we start derailing our progress to seek novelty.

Perhaps this is why we get caught up in the never-ending cycle, jumping from one workout to the next one diet to the next one business idea to the next as soon as we experience the slightest dip in motivation we begin seeking new strategy even if the old one was still working so maybe ronnie coleman did have the exact same squat workout but he was able to fight through the boredom that none of us would have been able to endure the key element of bodybuilding because it's the same what you know what's the technique to get ready for the show the same exact goddamn technique i did for the last show except for maybe a couple more weeks piled on to it that's why honestly i had to find something else like

i mean i really liked bodybuilding when i was competing in it, but in my mind, I'm like, well, I mean, I know what it's going to take for me to get to the next levels to potentially win first as the ultra heavyweight or like in the heavyweight division. But it's all the same. I'm going to be doing the same thing year after year after year, like the same movements. I'm just going to be getting strong. I'm going to be getting bigger. And although that's cool, I wanted to really learn something new. You know what I mean? I wanted to use my body in different ways. So that's why I had to switch it up a little bit. But I want to mention something from that Hooperman episode. And Hooperman mentioned that there's not really a lot of research that's been done into this, but in animals,

he mentioned that animals that play for a long time, meaning they play for all their lives, have more plastic brains than animals that don't. Meaning that these are animals that can, they're not rigid. They're not super rigid in terms of the things that they can do. And truly, you see this in adults. When you've found a way of living. That makes sense. A shark versus a dolphin. Like, it's clear that dolphins, they seem like they play a lot.

Sharks don't seem like they fuck around much. Yeah, yeah. Slow up tight. But that yields to people. If you're an individual who, as an adult, you don't play much or you don't do really new things, you're going to be very rigid. And that falls in line when people are saying, as an adult, you don't play much or you don't do really new things. You're going to be very rigid. And that falls in line when people are saying as an adult, people don't

really change. They are the way they are. I hear that so much. And that doesn't have to be the case if you expose yourself to new routines, new habits, new exercise stressors, new games, etc. Keep doing new shit and you will be able to be a person that can learn more in general for the rest of your life. That's exciting. I think there's even more to discuss on this and we'll probably have it for some future shows because there's a lot more stuff to even dive into.

But I think there's a type of genius that happens when people really explore what they're capable of doing and what they don't believe they're currently capable of doing. We, we all know like we got certain capacity for certain things, but when you start to work towards gaining new capacity at something new or different, it's like,

that's really special. Like I, it's my belief that everyone has like divinity within them, a God-like feature. And I know it sounds a little weird, but I do think that if you, if you just pay attention and you just open your eyes and on your drive home today from work,

you look at the bridges and the skyscrapers and things that have been built around us, the modern technology, the fact that you can flip a switch and all of a sudden the lights are on, the fact that you can have cold and hot water going right into your shower. I mean, that's from like human will, you know, and I think that there's nothing stronger than that. I want to kind of finish with this quote.

It's one of my favorite quotes, and it goes like this. It's one of my favorite quotes, and it goes like this. Genius, which often dazzles mortal eyes, is nothing more than perseverance in disguise. So it's just somebody's ability to have will in sticking with something for long enough. You can look at it and say, this person's so great. Oh, my God, they're so great. But they just did this thing. Like Casio doesn't think he's great,

but he's fucking great. He's dope at jujitsu, right? Like he's admired by thousands upon thousands of people. And he enrages his opponents that get their ass kicked by him every single year, right? And he would just say, that's just what I've been doing. I've been doing it since I was a kid. I stuck with it for a really long time,

and I love it. And so I think there's a lot to be gained from just the ability to stick to something for a long time, but you're not going to be able to stick with it if you find it boring. So you're going to have to find a way to have some play intervention within all of this and to make it fun.

I mean, a great example is Anderson Silva, like when he was on top. Yeah. Just toying with people. People are like, it looks like, and he got caught. He got caught playing and he got knocked out that way but so what he's also like one of the fucking greatest of all time right take us on out of here andrew i was trying to remember because now i'm getting books crossed i'm not sure if it's in range or atomic habits but in regards to you know doing it for a long

period of time you kind of get more out of it for just doing it as opposed to doing it over and over and over uh so simplest way i can put it like let's say you practice a new thing for an hour today uh you actually get more benefit with that one hour than if you were to do it tuesday thursday friday for 45 minutes total even though you got the reps in it seems that getting more time under tension i'll say is where you actually get a little bit more benefit out of it you know a funny thing is that in his episode he mentioned that his suggestion is an hour a week of play yeah i get to play more per week but i mean that was the suggestion so yeah that's pretty cool yeah all right well let's get out of here so thank you everybody for checking out today's episode. Please like today's video and drop us a comment on anything you found fascinating and a huge

shout out and thank you to Merrick Health. Again, merrickhealth.com and use promo code PowerProject10 to save 10% off your entire purchase of labs or order of labs. And again, go enter this $10,000 giveaway at markbellslingshot.com. All you have to do is just buy a bunch of shit. So go buy some within you supplements because they taste amazing. There are high quality products and they won't let you down. And again, every dollar you spend, it gives you an entry into winning this $10,000. Please follow the podcast at Mark Bell's Power Project on Instagram at MB Power Project on TikTok and Twitter my Instagram and Twitter

is at I am Andrew Z and Seema where can people find you? Andrew probably already mentioned it but in the description box below everyone we work with is there so check him out and comment down below what you guys are thinking like what forms of play do you guys think you're already doing or what forms of play are you going to add in or try to add into

your life because we want you guys to really take action and start doing some shit. Because it's helping us. So we know it's going to help you too. Yeah. Adult play sounds like fun. It sounds like sex. This is adult play.

Hey now. Hey now. I didn't see my ending on Instagram and YouTube. I didn't see any ending on TikTok and Twitter, Mark. Be careful who you're playing around with too. You know, like if I'm going to like punch someone in the arm, like it's not going to be in SEMA. You know what I mean? I'm going to punch someone in the arm, it's not going to be in SEMA. I'm going to punch someone in the arm. I'll size them up first and say,

okay, I think whatever rebuttal they have to this punch in the arm or this playful thing. You wouldn't punch Josh Settleage either though, huh? No, no. That dude would fuck us up. Josh would get me an arm bar as my arm's in the air. And I'd be like, my arm's broken.

Thanks. Thanks, Settlegate. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength. I'm Mark Smelly, but I'll catch you guys later. Bye.