Mark Bell's Power Project - Ryan Parker - Making Sense of Different Movement Methods || MBPP Ep. 773

Episode Date: July 25, 2022

In this Podcast Episode, Ryan Parker, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, Andrew Zaragoza try to make sense of the various movement methods they've been learning this year. Ryan has explored them all, on top of being a running coach, high level Crossfit Athlete, Head Coach and Owner of Crossfit Northgate. Follow Crossfit Northgate on IG: https://www.instagram.com/crossfitnorthgate Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!! ➢Enlarging Pumps (This really does work): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject Code POWERPROJECT20 for 20% off Vivo Barefoot shoes! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://eatlegendary.com Use Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori! ➢https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep! ➢https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast

Power Project family, how's it going? Now, we like to look good in the gym and out of the gym. That's why you always see Mark and I and Andrew is stepping up on the short, short game, wearing shorts from Viore and clothes from Viore. And honestly, the number one compliment that I've seen that I've gotten and even Mark's gotten is, damn, your butt looks good. And that's because, well, the clothes we wear make our booties look delicious. Andrew, how can they get it?

Yeah, you guys both have pretty big wagons uh you guys can head over to viore.com slash power project that's v-u-o-r-i.com slash power project to receive 20 off the most amazing apparel that looks so good inside and outside it's gonna make your ass look fat and your ass will look fat links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. God damn it. That was a good one. That was a good one. Make your ass look fat.

Super white, we call that. Now you're red. Yeah, he's got a reddish hue to him there. It happens all the time too. I walked in today and they're like, oh my God, Does anybody ever told you you look like this guy and I'm like It's just anyone with freckles That's like if you have red hair you look the same it's great It's all the same all the same demographic. Is that racist though? That's what I want to know. Of course, of course

It's all racist. Do your kids they did they inherit that? Or you can't tell? Well, I can't tell because I didn't try to have kids. Oh, you don't have any kids. No, the genes stop here, man. Oh, okay. I don't know. All right, so I'll never know. What about when you were young?

Because sometimes when people have red hair, they have kind of blondish hair when they're young. No. Or like whitish hair almost. I was red. You were red forever. Oh, yeah, the whole way. Right out of the gate. Like red, red?

Yeah, real red you ever done 23 and me to to know where like all that comes from or no no somebody gave me a test one time but we didn't take it he's african it's it's quite obvious there are some albino africans that have like pale skin and red hair that's a thing yeah yeah we have uh i think, my mom's side is kind of German and maybe like Swedish. And my dad's side is a lot of English. And my uncle pretends he's Scottish. I think it goes back somewhere in there. It's all Celtic, you know, but it's European mutt for sure.

All right. Well, we got Ryan here on the show today because, you know, we're trying to figure out some of this like functional pattern stuff. We're trying to figure out some of this go to movements and some of these just various movements. There's a lot of kind of shit stirring up on the Internet on who's got it right. And we have some of the guys have been around for a long time. You got like Paul Check. You have Kelly Sturette. You have some of these guys that have been sharing great information.

And I've been a person who has always liked to try to take on some of that information and try it for myself and say let me see how this like factors in like what I'm doing can can these things help make me better and through that process can I help make other people better or can I give people ideas that could potentially help them with pain you know we also have Graham Tuttle the the barefoot sprinter here. And Graham has kind of showed us the importance of just letting the feet be feet. Just getting out of your shoes whenever you can. Allowing your feet to have some toe splay and be able to wiggle your toes all around.

Much the same way that you can move your hands around. But sometimes some of this stuff is really can be difficult to know who to trust or what to try or where to start. And you and I ended up getting into a lot of conversation. I met you years ago, but we kind of reunited at Sane Strength more recently. And so I just kind of wanted to have you on the show today just to have some real open dialogue about training and how someone can start to detect what they think will fit into their program best without being too dogmatic yeah yeah i think a couple of important questions around that you know as they come up one is to be right does everybody else have to be wrong it's a serious

question yeah you know but um you know it seems like whenever something new comes around, there's this kind of wholehearted rejection of what came before it, you know. And definitely I saw that, you know, towards the beginning of CrossFit. You know, you got into CrossFit and there was a lot of rejection. I'm going to move this closer to you a little bit. Yes. There you go. Yeah, there was a lot of rejection, you know, kind of of, you know, what we would consider a more traditional style of training at the time, more bodybuilding oriented. we would consider a more traditional style of training at the time, more bodybuilding-oriented.

And now you see a lot of, you know, incorporation of many different modalities of training in CrossFit. And so, I mean, that's a serious question because you hear a lot of people talking about what's right. And I'm sure they believe that. But a lot of time through that process, they make everything else wrong. When you and I were talking just a couple days ago, we were talking about squat, bench, deadlift. And I know that you even like some Olympic lifting and obviously the CrossFit background and stuff. But you mentioned, you were like, I have absolutely seen these movements be transformative for people. And so some of what we're seeing with the shift of these movement patterns and these various things that people are getting into, maybe some of the knees over toes stuff. And I'm not saying that Ben Patrick has said to not do those movements because he certainly hasn't said that.

But I think people are in favor of a lot of these, quote unquote, functional movements more than they were with squats, deadlifts, and maybe some of those heavier weights that we've seen in the past. Is that kind of a shift that you're seeing as well? And what are some of your thoughts on that? Yeah, well, I think the key is, is that people have to get stronger. You know, when we get untrained athletes in the gym, you know, somebody's coming off the couch, gaining strength is transformative. You know, the back squat is a really, it's not an easy thing to coach, but your strength will increase tremendously. You know, the back squat is a really, it's not an easy thing to coach, but your strength will increase tremendously. You know, the deadlift is the same thing. You know, you can teach somebody to deadlift pretty quickly and they're not moving big weight initially, but

they will get way stronger, way faster. I just want to interrupt for a second. And when you specifically talk about a deadlift or squat in the case of like a back squat, not only does the movement get stronger, but in people that are new to some of this stuff, everything usually goes up. A lot of their other lifts that you might have them do or other exercises, they might even tell you, like, I just feel stronger, right? Oh, yeah. Just the ability to organize your body, you know, to generate enough tension. And, you know, it's funny because you've got too much tension now. But the ability to create that tension is really important. So a lot of people don't have the ability to even figure out how to get tight to pick something up or to push load or to, you know, move their kids around the house, you know, whatever that looks like.

So, you know, teaching some basic motor patterns are really important, I think, you know. And squat and deadlifting long term, you know, is that ideal? I don't know. I'm open to new metrics for that stuff. But getting people stronger, building metabolic conditioning, giving them access to better range of motion, you know, and joint stability, all hugely important. You know, one thing whenever a lot of these people come on to the show, I always try to think about, OK, instead of totally getting rid of something else, like just totally stopping back squatting. How is there a way that maybe this can be included for someone, but it doesn't end up causing them more pain than benefit in the long term? Because when it comes to fitness, everyone starts something and then they have a goal.

If you start lifting in the gym and you just do barbell work, you're like, well, I squat, bench and deadlift to get stronger. So that means more weight on the bar over time. But then maybe if you are able to squat 500, maybe there are certain things in terms of how you move that just become kind of shitty, right? So my question for you, what do you think would maybe be some baselines because let's say instead of squatting triple your body weight it'd be maybe 1.5 times your body weight as a squat would be something that could be beneficial for your bone density and strength but maybe it's not too doesn't take away too much from your movement over time right totally what would you think about

there yeah i guess i don't have an exact answer for that question, but it depends on the starting place for somebody. You know, you get some people who come in and it's just like they can just rip weight off the floor, you know, day one. They're just strong. You know, that's what they're programmed for. You get some people, maybe they're from a yoga background or maybe they're super flexible and it's like they can't generate tension at all. So their end point is going to be very different, you know, so maybe quantifying that isn't important. Helping people understand how to progress is important. And I think one of the things that goes pretty well in a CrossFit gym is that we're trying to access all these different

aspects of athleticism. We want strength, we want endurance, we want to be able to handle our body weight, you know, plyometrics, everything in between that. And so if you come to a gym and you're relatively untrained and your goal is just get a big total, you know, power lift total or Olympic weightlifting total, you're probably going to be motivated to push in that direction way past what might be healthy or optimal for movement long term. If you're unwilling to get too strong because that's going to compromise your ability to run, there are some checks and balances built into that that I think work pretty well. And CrossFit has done a very – like when some people in the audience maybe sometimes think of a CrossFit – and I used to think of CrossFit in this way too. I mean, you used to see a lot of maybe ridiculous ways that people would put things together, but then it would cause injury down the road because of movements being done in irresponsible fashion. But CrossFit, if someone does it well, it does a really good job of allowing athletes to be able to lift some decent weight, be able to go out and run comfortably, be able to

jump, be able to move in different ways while maintaining a strong body that has different abilities. And that's something like if you see a powerlifter or a bodybuilder, try CrossFit. We actually did this video back at the old super training gym. It was great. I think Alan Thrall was here. Tactical, real-world tactical. Real-world tactical. And Ben Alderman, who was the crossfitter,

and I was the bodybuilder, powerlifter of the bunch. I was the fucking worst. I think I was around 260 pounds, but we were going through a workout. Alan was the strongman guy. He was doing better than me. Ben was killing both of us, even though he wasn't as big as either of us. And I was the worst because I didn't have these other abilities, right? So CrossFitters have a very good overall way to express their body's fitness.

Yeah. And when we think about like fitness, I think it's important to try to define it. And I think that's one of the things that Glassman did early on that was really good. He was saying, what is it to be fit? How do we define it? Because if we can't define it, then how do we measure it? And if we can't measure it, how do we know if we're improving it? And I think that should still be one of the questions that we're asking when we're exploring some of these different modalities of training. You know, we should still be saying, you know, what are we trying to accomplish? You know, try to figure it out. Yeah, we're watching some video of these guys dragging a sled. I think they had to drag a sled, jump up onto something, pull something. But you're 100% correct.

I think even now, like a lot of times with my own training, sometimes I don't have it defined. Sometimes I'm like – sometimes it's just floating out there. You're like, what am I doing? And then you might set an idea up for, oh, I'm going to do this contest or competition of some sort. I'm going to go do this run. And I think that having that groundwork down first, like what do you consider healthy? What are some of your goals? Like somebody wants to be 10% body fat, but yet they also want to maybe do some other things that don't align with that really well. We see that a lot. Or somebody that wants to be really strong,

but they also want to have a great amount of endurance. You can do both. You can. But it just might slow down the progress towards some of that. So defining what some of your goals are and defining fitness and health for you, I think, is massively important for people. I agree with you 100%. I had a friend. I've been trying to get this guy,

I've known him since birth and I've always tried to get him to work out. He lives on the other side of the country now, so I'd leave him alone. But last time we lived together, you know, we're in close proximity, you know, trying to get him to work out, do anything and he didn't want to do it. And so finally, like this was years later, his wife got him to try CrossFit. He was like, oh dude, we went and did this workout and like, you know, they just try to kill my shoulders. And I was like, well, when you say kill my shoulders, do you mean like they were trying to help you become stronger? And he was like, yeah, stupid.

And he just rejected it and never went back. And I was like, listen, man, you don't have to do CrossFit. There are tons of ways to be strong and healthy and fit. But I was like, I would encourage you to define that for yourself and not make excuses around it. So I was like, why don't you define what it is to be fit? I was like, how many pull-ups can you do? He was like, I don't know, a couple. And I was like, is that good? Is that strong and healthy and fit for an adult man who's, you know, 38 years old? You know, I was like, what about like, you know, running? I was like, how fast can you run? You know, how,

how effective are you in your pickup basketball league? You know, you define, running. I was like, how fast can you run? You know, how effective are you in your pickup basketball league? You know, you define it. Don't let me tell you what it is to be fit. You figure it out, you know, and then figure out or go find somebody who can help you set up a program to reach those goals. You know, and I think that if more people spent time thinking about what it is to be fit or healthy and how to get that, I think that would be a good kind of end point to work backwards from. What did you notice with functional patterns that stood out to you to make you want to try it? Because we both get trained by the same guy. We both get trained by John Mills.

And so what was something that – I know you're pretty open to exercise anyway. You're pretty open to new ideas and concepts. But what stood out to where you're like, I need to investigate this more? Well, I'd seen it online a little bit, but it was mostly because my buddy Pasha, I think he and John used to work together. But he started doing it. And we actually started coaching CrossFit together. It was like 12 years ago. And he had a CrossFit gym and then he got into gymnastics and he got into kettlebell stuff and then he found functional patterns.

And he's just one of these guys that I think he tries to find the bottom of a rabbit hole. So he'll just like dive down all in and figure it out. And so I saw him training. I was like, that's pretty intriguing. What's it all about? And so I did some sessions with him, just had him show me some stuff. And I was like, huh, this is really interesting. It definitely showed me that there were some holes in my game, just the way I move and the understanding of my body.

And you try that a couple of times and you're like, it's cool. What you see is what you can't see. You don't know what's outside of your periphery. You can't see it. But you see somebody who's a really good practitioner and they show you something in a different way. And all of a sudden you're like, oh, I can see this now. I have some awareness over this aspect of the way I move or my athleticism. That's pretty interesting.

What are some of the key things? Because I've had my interpretations of it from seeing certain things on social media, right? Many of those interpretations could be potentially wrong, but you know, what I was seeing was helping people learn how to move multiple, have different types of movement going around at the same time. Right. But what, when someone's looking at that, what are some of the key things or key fundamental things that are going on that most don't understand? Because when you do see it on social media when you go to either nowdy's page or fp or whatever you see a lot of this cool stuff but you're like it's cool but i don't know what the fuck is actually happening here yeah well to

be honest with you a lot of the movement based stuff like a lot of stuff that john was showing us where you know you're doing some pendulums and and there's some footwork in there like i'm not that attracted to that. I don't enjoy doing that. I think there's a reason to do it, so I'll play along and do that. But what I found to be most compelling was the awareness of posture and creating better posture. I've always harped on people for posture,

but I didn't have all of the tools I needed to really help them change that or even to improve my posture to the degree I wanted to. So that was really cool. And then some of the stuff that he didn't show us today. And I don't know if you can go into all that, you know, FP stuff, if he's able to do that. But really... Some of the stuff with the cables is probably more what you dig, right? Really slowing down movement and practicing it almost isometrically, right? It's like you practice the position. You really get that dialed in. And you can see how your body wants to move one way, but you're trying to create a better position.

And it's very specific. He has you do the movements in SEMA. He has you do these movements so slowly that like if there's a glitch he makes you he he pauses and like makes you do it the right way and it's frustrating because it's we all know it's like it's harder to do it slower you know it's harder to do it slower so as soon as i don't know if it's the same for you but for me like as soon as he lets me kind of go then i can like i can figure out a way to go but he doesn't want like any glitches in there because when you do go to put force into something, the glitch that's showing up when you're

moving really slow is probably still showing up when you're moving really fast. And you're probably being lazy or overcompensating in some way. And he was kind of mentioning today, I forget the wording that he kept, oh, cages. He kept saying he kind of put things in cages and you kind of, you protect around it and then you could still be extremely functional from there. And I think, you know, that might be some of the stuff that happened to me. Like I got tight and I put stuff in cages and it's like, oh, I can do this stuff really, really well. And then as soon as I'd go outside of that, I could do stuff, but I would obviously be very tight and had a hard time, I guess, displaying my strength or prowess in any other areas. Yeah. Yeah. Back to the video that you guys had up there a minute ago. Are you familiar with some

of CrossFit's definitions for fitness? Give it to us. Well, so one of them is called the hopper model. And I don't know if you guys remember the first CrossFit games. I don't know. It was in 2007. But they literally had a hopper, like a basket, and a bunch of movements in there. And they just pulled movements out of there. And that's how they decided what the competition was going to be. And the idea behind that is if you have several athletes show up, and this was like open invitation.

You had some really strong guys, bodybuilders, endurance guys all showing up. John Wellborn, a former football player. Yeah. Oh, yeah, exactly. He was at the first CrossFit Games. Yeah, he competed. But, yeah, I remember him doing CrossFit back in the day. Offensive lineman.

I mean, you've got to admire that. Six, five, 300 pounds. But it's kind of a fun contest. It's like we were talking about. It's like MMA used to be before everybody became a specialist, right? But it's fun, right? So let's say you have Kip Choge, Kip Choge, who's like the greatest marathoner of, you know, our generation. And then you have, you know, you show up doing a little bit of running, strength background.

And you have Matt Fraser shows up and, you know, you kind of pull some random tasks out. You know, what's the task? Let's say it's going to be a ruck, right? It's going to be, you know, 20 hours of hiking with a heavy pack on your back. You know, what's the task? Let's say it's going to be a ruck, right? It's going to be, you know, 20 hours of hiking with a heavy pack on your back. You know, who wins? Who's the best at that? Kachogi's got endurance, but if you put a heavy pack on him, I think he's probably neutralized pretty quickly. You can certainly carry the heaviest pack, but for how long?

You know, and so it's like it's an interesting, you know, conversation. So if we are trying to define fitness in a way that's going to let us improve it, that hopper model is interesting only because you can put in any task in there. Help me water the trees. Haul around a 55-gallon barrel of water. Who's good at that? I don't know. It might not be the best sprinter. It might be.

But it's interesting to test it out and kind of see. It might be the guy that's the most efficient at it or has some experience doing it, right? Right. Yeah. But if you want to train for that breadth of activity, and that's what we don't know about things like go to our functional patterns, how does that translate into everything else? Now, if you're like, I'm just trying to get better at standing, walking, running, throwing, well, really good protocol there, FP. Probably for martial arts pretty good foundation but you know how do you want to you know how good do you get at pull-ups

is that important to you should it be important i don't know but that's all part of the conversation what is the definition of uh fitness from crossfit well there are more specifically i know you mentioned the hopper model and that that's kind of like we're just going to throw down and let's figure out like what exercise someone is the best at. Yeah, they've got a few ways of defining it. Another one they look at is if you look at – have you ever seen the whole sickness, wellness, fitness continuum? I don't believe so. So that one is interesting too. So if you have this arc,

right, and at one end you have somebody who's sick, you know, pathologically sick, in the middle of that you'd have well, and then on the other end fitness. And if you take any markers that will indicate that, right? So if you look at inflammation of the body, or if you look at blood pressure, if you look at body composition, there it is, there you go, triglycerides, flexibility, muscle mass, you know, all indications of somebody who's, you know, sick, well, or fit. The idea being that if you influence your fitness, all of these other things come along with it. You know, so if, you know, sickness, you have very high blood pressure. Wellness is kind of like a, you know, a healthy American at like 120 over 70. What's the typical, you know, blood pressure of somebody who's, you know, of an athlete?

So the idea is there are a couple of different ways to define fitness. We can look at this from some different angles. But they all kind of tie together. Yeah, and I guess you can also over-fitness yourself, right? Well, I've always said when I look at this. To the point where it starts to really pull on stuff. So go back down from wellness. Totally.

And I think that one of the things that's a real trap is when you get into competition because i know as an athlete i'm sure you guys know too like when you were chasing an athletic goal you are probably going to be willing to make some compromises to your health to pursue performance you know and if you're trying to get up to that like razor's edge of what you're able to do, what are you willing to compromise? In my 20s, I would have compromised anything. I didn't care. So that's – you bring that up and it makes me immediately like – I think of high-level no-gi grapplers, right? Because someone can do jujitsu and they can stay fairly safe. Actually, they can stay really safe.

and they can stay fairly safe. Actually, they can stay really safe. But when you get into the competitive aspect of it, especially when you get into competitive no-gi grappling, where the game isn't just like jiu-jitsu, but now the game is knowing how to submit somebody from the feet, and then more specifically heel hooks, the amount of videos I've seen of high-level grapplers get people just— and at that point, it's a fight.

So they'll just crank it. ACLs are going right and left. And it's normal for these guys just to get surgeries and be back six months later like ah yeah i tore my acl ah yeah i tore my mcl and it's like you know their jujitsu is great but then when you take it here oh god you it doesn't it's no longer fitness anymore it's now it's competition right you know yeah and i think that's what we have to be careful of when we're talking about training. You know, you really have to figure out what that level is. You know, we were talking earlier about, you know, you know, my experience, you know,

back squatting, deadlifting, you know, pressing, you know, and, you know, we're just saying, I was telling you that, you know, I don't really care about my strength anymore. I stay under load so I can still, you know, I could probably max out close to, you know, I don't really care about my strength anymore. I stay under load. So I can still, you know, I could probably max out close to, you know, where I did, you know, my all time best, but, um, you're not pushing that. You're not chasing it at a certain point. You're staying strong. And if it advances, it advances often. It does because if you're training smart and sensibly, it will keep, you know, you'll keep getting stronger, but your goal isn't to push that as hard as possible. And I think that's, that's a trap for a lot of people, especially people who really get into training and they see some – they get excited because they see a change in their body and they see their fitness go up. Then they want more, more, more.

They want to get greedy. And to help people understand, like this is a lifetime endeavor. It will probably look different to you in 5, 10, 15 years. So making sure that you, you know, have appropriate balances is critical. Actually something that, I don't know if you mentioned this, but like something that a question that anybody can ask themselves is like, what am I compromising? I think that's actually a question you can ask with anything, because if you go way too deep down the bodybuilding rabbit hole and you're like, I want to get as big as possible, what are you compromising? You're probably compromising your ability to move well,

to pick shit up, to even run a mile without being winded, right? If you go too deep down the powerlifting rabbit hole, what are you compromising? Different levels of, again, mobility and movement. If you go too deep down the yoga rabbit hole, what are you compromising? My ability to create stiffness in certain positions where now like if low touches me, I'm a fucking limp noodle. Right. So it's, if you can figure, and it's, it's individual to everybody because some people love bodybuilding, so they don't care about the compromises on the other things because fuck, they don't care about running or anything like that. But you know, I can kind of feel like for me, I want to be good at a lot of different things. So I'm being careful not to go too deep down certain rabbit holes where it doesn't take away from other stuff.

And I think everybody has that different level of compromise they're going to be willing to make with anything that they do in terms of their fitness. Yeah, I was fortunate enough to learn from Louis Simmons and like even though I did power lift at a high level, even though I did crush myself with a lot of heavy weights and I'm a little bit stuck. I'm still standing here and I'm still able to do stuff. I'm still able to make some good conscious decisions on how I want my body to like proceed from here on out. And a lot of that has to do with after every competition, I would always lose weight. I would always work on being healthier every single time after every competition. I'd always start back over. I'd always start with lighter weights. It wasn't like I just perpetually tried to lift more and more and more and more. I would discontinue what I was doing. I wouldn't

necessarily do the opposite of what I was doing, but I would bring in higher reps. I would do various movements. And I knew, I knew that I was turning my body into concrete. So I was like, well, let me work on some lunges. Let me work on dragging a sled forward and backwards. Let me, it wouldn't kill me to do some med ball tosses. It wouldn't kill me to do some box jumps and some various things like that, just to try to keep in some form of athleticism. And it didn't look very athletic. I had 300 pounds, but there was some – at least there was a percentage. And I think for the people that are listening and people have been following for a long time, I just want to make sure people understand that if you're going to leave something behind, just keep it behind just for a little bit and go ahead and bring it back in

if you're dealing with a lot of back pain you might have to leave out some conventional lifting that you really love but it's not forever it's just until you get other things figured out until you start to move better until you start to feel better once those things happen

then you can start to reassess and say I wonder I don't think the deadlift is that bad of a movement. Maybe instead of like a regular deadlift, maybe I could do like a trap bar. Maybe I can look into doing more partial range and start there and start light and kind of go from there. I think people don't have to be like disappointed about a message coming from a particular group saying like they don't want you to clean anymore. They don't want you to do your cleans and your snatches and stuff like that. If those are things that you like to do, I strongly suggest that you figure out ways to stay connected to them.

But again, if your shoulder is all fucked up and you had rotator cuff surgery recently or something like that, leave that shit behind for a little bit. But it's just for a short period of time and you should be able to get it back. There's no reason why you can't lift weights. There's no reason why you can't bench press until they die, in my opinion. Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, one of the, the, I mean, I call everybody an athlete. Everybody is an athlete, right? But, um, but one of the things that's really important to understand is that what we're doing is building a relationship with our body.

And the closer we listen, the more tools we have to listen, the better we're going to do. And so if you love back squatting, if you love deadlifting, if it's the bench press, if it's cleans, if it's snatches, if it's gymnastics or if it's running. I mean a lot of people – there are a lot of banged up runners out there. You need to step away from that before it becomes a real problem. Like when it starts bugging you, that's you that's actually you should be digging into you know this guy is so smart with his training with jujitsu like i know that you want to go but sometimes you're like nah i'm not gonna you know and meanwhile you have other guys and i appreciate the how dedicated people want to be to it how excited they get about it but, but they're like, I have to go seven days a week.

I have to go seven. I got to go seven days a week. I got to be there every single time. And that's, you know, to each their own, I guess. But slow and steady, slow and steady. It's boring. It's not the greatest thing. But if you're banged up and you can't go do jiu-jitsu

the way that you want to do it, then I don't know if it's a good idea to go. You should back off as soon as you feel it, you know, that it's not right. Or if, you know, if you're really not motivated to train on a given day, that doesn't mean you shouldn't move, but you've got to be willing to walk away from whatever your plan was, you know, in a heartbeat. And then, you know, if it is something like, you know, your shoulders bugging you or, you know, your knee, your hip, your ankle, whatever it is, don't do what you plan to do just because that's what's on the board for the day. You know, that's the worst plan. What you should do is start figuring out like, okay,

why does it hurt? You know, how's my soft tissue work? You know, how's my mobility? How's my range of motion? You know, how's my technique? You know, these are all things that you could do, you know, instead of what you had planned to do that will make that activity better, right? So if you're dedicated to squatting, don't keep squatting until you can't squat anymore because that's the worst way to get better at squatting. You know, instead, like the second you feel, you know, some limitations there, what you need to do is peel back layers of the onion and figure out what's going on. You know, once you have figured out what's going on, it's going to make you a better squatter, and it's going to make you healthier long-term. I was just going to ask, because as a very simple running question, we ran that mile. You guys were all in the front pack.

I was kind of more towards the middle, and then we had a pack behind us. But one thing, I was running next to John, and he was, I mean, the way that guy that guy moves was i don't know if you guys paid attention but it's like his feet didn't make a sound his his uh he didn't he just didn't make a sound period he wasn't i was like is he even breathing but me on the other hand by the time we made that he wasn't even sweaty when we were done right i was like did he even go like okay but me after we made that like that last uh turn i'm like fuck dude control your breathing like and i couldn't you know i'm just like you know i just don't want to quit so i'm gonna get there however i get there um so for my very simple basic level one question when it comes to running jogging moving jumping on your feet in a you know in a pattern forward um how do

you teach like endurance and cardio like to get to build your cardio up because since i was a kid i can sprint okay and then i'm not even talking about like good mechanics or anything like that i'm just talking about like i can get up and down the basketball court pretty good a couple times but then after that i'm just dying and i remember my dad telling me like well you should just be able to find a pace and just like never stop like what are you talking about you're like i am dead like already. So for someone like me who just, I mean, like I said, I don't have any experience long distance running,

short distance running hardly either. But like how do you coach somebody to like just help start building up that endurance so that way they can, I don't know, man, like some of the stuff you're teaching us today, I'm like I would love to be able to put that in practice. But by the time we get down to the end of the turf, I'm already kind of gassed. Like, you know, like I don't have that big gas tank right now. So how do I build that up? Yeah. Great question. A couple of thoughts. Number one, John wasn't sweaty because he ran so slow.

Okay. So he did, he ran like a 10 30. All right. I was trying to keep up with him too. No. So I think that, um, a couple of things about getting better at running. If you want to run, like you specifically just want to get better at running, right? So you want to do a running program. I always start people off with a run-walk program. And nobody wants to do it. Nobody wants to do it. You know, they get bored of the walk part and they just run through and they're like,

oh, you know, I made it like 21 minutes. It sucks to stop. Yeah. You feel like defeated. Right. But instead, you've got to like kind of stick to a plan. So what I generally tell people is start with something like this. We're going to run for 30 minutes, right?

Only we're going to break that into five-minute intervals and we're going to run 230, right? And just easy, just an easy casual run for 230 and you're going to walk for 230, you know, and do that. Whatever we decide fits into your program, twice a week, three times a week, whatever. And then the next week, you can bump that up to three minutes of running and two minutes off. And then we go 3.30 and 1.30 and then, you know, four and one. And you just chip away at it until, you know, the last week, you're running for 4.30, you know, and then you're, you know, just walking for 30. So you're basically running for 30 minutes straight. It's just one way to approach it,

but you've got to make it easy enough that you can just kind of commit to it and chip away at it. Don't do too much too soon. And how many weeks would that be over? What is that? I don't know. I'm not good at math. I can't count that high.

And he was pretty good at that. I think it's like a six-week program, five-week program, something like that. Okay. You'd make huge improvements in just a handful of weeks, really. But the key is, like, if you want to get into running, make it easy enough that you can enjoy it. You know, don't punish yourself out there because then you'll just hate it. Yeah, because, like, you know, just thinking, you know, like when John was showing us some of these movements where it's like, you know, I was telling him like, well, I just want to bro out sometimes.

Can I do like all these movements separately and, you know, like chase the pump kind of a thing. But when he was talking about putting it all together and there's kind of like almost like for like a survival purpose. So that's how I'm looking at jogging. I'm just like, dude, if I can't, you know, if the fucking earth cracks in half, you know, like I, I'm not going to get from here to, I don't know, fucking Utah.

You know, like I just, I won't be, I won't make it. So I'm just like to get from here to, I don't know, fucking Utah. Like I just – I won't make it. So I'm just like, well, for like if we are talking about survival and like the way like humans are supposed to move, I should be able to jog for a long distance. And right now I can't. Totally. If we're writing a list of like, okay, what physical skills do we need to be competent in to be decent humans? I think running is on that list for sure. need to be competent in to be decent humans. I think running's on that list for sure. I think a good goal for somebody who's already like halfway fit, I mean, if you're really heavy or something and you're coming from a further place back, running for 20 minutes, I think,

is a really, really, running for about 20 minutes straight is a really good goal for people to have. Run for 20 minutes straight and have some sort of controlled breathing, not just nasal breathing. That's like a different level, but some sort of controlled breathing. That's probably going to take you about two months, three months, but that's not really that long. I mean to go from where you're at now to be able to run for 20 minutes. And then once you can run for 20 minutes straight, you'll actually find out.

You'll be like, I actually can probably run for like an hour straight because once you're there, you're there. How much conditioning do you do now? So right now I just do steady state cardio about three times a week on a StairMaster. But my heart rate will usually be under 120. Some days I will bump it up a little bit, and then I will get above that. But for the most part, I'm getting better at controlling my breath and being comfortable on that long enough. If he got his heart rate up 10 beats or so, he's like right there, right? Yeah.

Well, have you ever tried like CrossFit-style metabolic conditioning, any of that stuff? Very little, but yeah. I mean, we've done it here in the gym a couple of times where we would do circuits and pushing the sled. He's pretty good at it. So I can. It's just not my preferred way of moving around in the gym.

So you might incorporate a little bit of that. You can put in some weight movement, some gymnastics into it. Sled pushing is great. Throw in some running intervals and that sort of thing. But I can tell you a quick story about an athlete I just started training. She came in about three months ago, and she's a soccer player. Kind of that's what she's done forever. And so she ran a little bit to stay in shape for soccer, like, you know,

a couple times a week and was doing some HIIT program. I don't know what HIIT program, but something at home. And so she had no interest in CrossFit, didn't want to try it, but her friend, like, just dragged her and kicking and screaming. So finally she tried it, and she was like a tough sell. Like, didn't want to try it, but her friend just dragged her and kicked her in screaming. So finally she tried it, and she was like a tough sell. Everything was pushed back, which I like. It was a fun little challenge. So we got her going a little bit, and during this time,

she was training for an off-road 10K and started to develop a little bit of tendinitis in her Achilles, and she has some WOTA patterns for sure in her right foot especially. And so I was like, you've got to stop. And so, um, I was like, you got to stop running, back it off. I was like, you'll be fine. Race is in like five, six weeks. You're going to be fine. Right. And so I was like, we'll modify for you in here. We'll make sure that you're, you know, we're not aggravating that. And so she trained for the next six weeks and, uh, went out and did this race and she PR'd her, uh, 10 K time by, uh, 25 seconds per mile without doing any additional running. Now, she's not a high-level runner, and that's not really what her goal is.

But especially at the beginning of training, metabolic conditioning is so potent. It's super potent. So if you want to just upgrade your metabolic capacity to the point where running is easy, if you incorporate some hard metcons on a regular basis, that can make a pretty profound difference. Give us an example. We kind of did one together that one day. Yeah, we were playing with some different stuff. We did a triplet, right? Yeah, we were doing a little – we're using a landmine attachment to do some clean and jerkks in the landmine, get a little more rotation in it.

We're doing a sled push, and then we just did a core movement. We're doing V-ups. You know, and we just set the clock for 12 minutes. You know, we set the rep range of something that would keep us moving, so we weren't really grinding it out. And then, you know, we just got as many rounds as we could in. And it's as difficult as you want to make it to be. I mean, if you feel like you can explode into some of those movements, you're, it's a whole different game, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I think there's, there's, there's a mental aspect to that type of training too. You know, you don't want to just be blasting

out super high intensity, uh, metabolic conditioning all the time, you know, but to put that in your program is, is definitely reasonable because you can easily create a stimulus that's just overwhelming. You know, it's, it's hard. And, um, and when you go running then and you're cruising along, you're like, oh man, this hurts. You're like, actually it doesn't hurt that bad. You know, so you just kind of recalibrate to what it feels like to breathe hard, to, to be under that kind of exertion. When you think of a triplet, which is just the three exercises together, what kind of comes to mind? Like how do you organize it? Because I've done them twice with you now and both times

there was a like a core component, an ab component to it. How are you pairing them up? Because I try to add an exercise or two and you're like, nah. And so I'm curious on your kind of your thought process as you go through that. Is it as simple as matching up like two easy exercises with one zinger or like how are you thinking about it? It depends on what you're trying to accomplish. So if we're making a workout for a high-level CrossFit athlete that has a complete skill set when it comes to gymnastics, cardiovascular conditioning, and weightlifting, right? Then we can make them really nasty. You know, if you've got a person that has less, you know, capacity in one of those areas, you know, you have to be a little bit more careful. So some of the classic CrossFit, you know, triplets would be like Helen. It's three rounds, a 400 meter run, 21 kettlebell swings, and 12 pull-ups.

That'll fucking knock you on your ass. Jesus Christ. That last round, you go deep. And you finish a 7-minute workout, 7- to 10-minute workout like that, and it'll put you on your ass. It's pretty serious. That one, you're really taxed on your grip. The running is hard because you're just trying to,

you know, you can't give up time on that run. You can push it pretty hard. So someone could look at something like that and they could kind of take their own model, like, you know, maybe the 12 pull-ups and maybe the run is a little far. So someone can say, I'm going to do a minute on the assault bike. I'm going to do, you know do 12 reps of a seated row.

You can kind of make it your own, right? Yeah. Or we can adjust the rep range to make it more accessible to somebody to keep them in an appropriate time domain. Run 200 meters, six reps on the pull-up, something like that. And so if you're trying to challenge me, you might want to give me some longer sets, right? So then it's like, okay, really, how am I going to break up this set? How do I keep moving? That's going to be the challenge.

For a less conditioned athlete, you might want to give them much shorter sets to just keep them moving, you know, so that you know they can pick up the kettlebell and do 10 to 12 swings. You know they can get, you know, maybe it's not pull-ups. Maybe we're doing like a horizontal ring row or a jumping style pull-up. And you give them a slightly shorter rep and it just keeps them moving so they get that high metabolic output. But they're not taxed so much by the movements that they're looking at. And there's no break. Like once you get through the three movements, you just start right back over again, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Or if we wanted to do – if we wanted to do a running workout but we wanted to focus on some running mechanics and some speed on our runs. Let's say we're going to stay with a 400 meter run. We could make that an interval where we did something like, you know, we could just switch around that particular triplet where we did that 400 meter run. We come in, we hit a set of pull ups, whatever we agree would be, you know, kind of an appropriate range that we can push straight through. And then we set the clock in the remainder of time, we're going to do max wrap kettlebell swings, and then clock stops, you get designated rest. That way we can start running again. We can maintain the quality of

our run if that's really what we're trying to accomplish that day. Thinking about the quality of the run, since you have so many people that come through and maybe they're picking up some running with their workouts. And we definitely have a lot of people in the audience that are getting more interested to running since Mark's doing a lot of running. How important are the mechanics of the way that the folks strikes the ground? Because I believe when Chris Henshaw was here, actually, I don't want to necessarily put words in his mouth, but I've heard individuals that were runners like Nick Bear actually mentioned this. He doesn't quite literally care about how the folks strikes the ground. I think he actually strikes heel toe.

He doesn't quite literally care about how the folks strike the ground. I think he actually strikes heel-toe. I don't want to – I might be incorrect, but some people have mentioned how like, oh, that's not a big deal whether you heel strike or whether you forefoot strike. But when you coach people through becoming better runners and running so it doesn't end up hurting them in the long run, how do you help them develop good running mechanics from the feet up? Well, that's changed recently a little bit, you know, with a lot of that Gota stuff. I've been playing with that for the last few months, and it's made a huge difference just in my foot shape, ankle shape, you know. How so? Well, I used to have pretty flat feet.

Oh, okay. My navicular bone dropped a little bit, you know, low inside ankle bone. Um, and I could control that, uh, if I'm standing here and we're talking about it, but definitely running, you know, I watched some videos of myself and, and losing it. So incorporating some of their exercises has definitely helped. So I just started, you know, before we, we run now, I have, you know, the class start to incorporate some of those exercises. Like the go to warm up? Totally. Okay. Yeah, and just working on that foot strength and the ankle strength.

But I can't tell you exactly how important that is because there are a lot of really smart people, much smarter than me, that are having disagreements about it. Right? So it's back to that thing. Like, I don't know. Like, maybe everybody doesn't have to be right or wrong there's probably a lot of variability from athlete to athlete um but what i was showing you guys today like i think finding good position when you run and maintaining fast cadence i think that's the easiest way to keep people from hurting themselves what jacks

people up running is that slow cadence heel strike you know now i'm talking about big heel strike if you're a little heel striker and you've got a fast turnover, you know, and you're healthy doing that, you know, who am I to say that that's wrong? But I can tell you that if you're really striding it out, those feet are staying close to the ground and you're just, you know, slamming your heel into the ground, decelerating and then re-accelerating, that's a really rough way to run. Yeah. There's so much confusion about this sometimes. And I, I always have to go back and just kind of remind people that when it comes to jogging, you know, jogging to me is like a little slower pace, you know, jogging is not somebody running like a six or seven minute

mile to me that's running. And I think when you're running and when you're starting to produce more force, I think that's when you have to be more careful and more conscious. I'm not saying that when you jog, you can do whatever you want, especially because people will jog so far and they'll do so many reps that it might have a similar amount of damage as producing tons of force and going about it potentially the wrong way. But jogging initially was taught to have a heel strike. to have a heel strike you know that's kind of initially how it was uh brought up and initially how it was popularized by one of the co-founders of nike was to heel strike and to roll forward and so i just think that people don't know the history behind it and if you're wearing a shoe that's appropriate that's guarding you from that there's potential that you don't have anything negative happening to you however i get a lot of questions from people.

They're like, how in the hell are you running? How often are you running? And I'm like, I pretty much run every day. And they're like, how is your knees and your back? And I'm like, they're fine. Everything feels good. And I think a lot of that has to do with I started very, very slow, like very slow, maybe even doing like 12, 14 minute miles, something like that. Um, I started with walk runs. I started, uh, saying, Hey, I wonder what it looks like when I run for

30 seconds straight. You know, I started really, really slow and really comfortable. And as I've been running, I've been practicing more stuff and I do so as well, uh, very slowly. And I try not to leave the ground too much because I don't want to like – I don't want to like jump into stuff that can potentially hurt me. So with each stride, I try to almost stay low to the ground and I don't know a ton about running but I know what I know from working on myself and it's just stuff that has been feeling right for me and I've noticed some good changes in these different practices,

but I've also noticed that by default certain things start to happen and certain things start to open up. Like my stride is starting to open up just via running, just via like me trying to run a little faster. One leg shoots back a little bit further. One arm shoots a little bit more forward. And next thing you know, like the body rotates a little bit more with each stride. The other thing that I've noticed too is like when it comes to trying to keep the feet straight,

if you just pull your hip into the center of your body, your foot kind of ends up straight anyway. And if you slow down the fastest sprinters in the world, which might not be always the best place to start. But when you watch those guys run, there's a lot of internal rotation of that knee and the knee almost crosses over the body. And so when I'm running, those are things I'm trying to be conscious of because I'm like, I think my foot will land nice and straight. I think I'll have a good toe strike if I can just lean forward and have that knee come slightly in with every step that I take. Yeah.

And that's where, you know, doing some of those positional drills and then, you know, running, you know, a short run of 400 and 800, coming in, kind of running some rounds of that to really kind of feel that patterning and then ingrain it, I think could be really useful. Is there any detriment to being too far on the balls of your feet? Because, again, going back to like my history of running, like I thought you only could heel strike. Like I didn't know that there actually was a difference. My dad would tell me, get on your toes. And I'm like, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, dude. But like today, um, I was wearing, um, very minimalist, uh, Vivo barefoot shoes. So like if I heal, if I didn't land on my heels, uh, everyone would have heard it and I'd be screaming in pain, you know, cause it would have been terrible. But so that forced me to do was

literally be on my toes the entire time. Now my calves aren't used to it, so they're really tight right now and like almost started to cramp up it was fine but is is there the opposite where it's like okay heel striking is pretty bad but if you're only on your toes is that equally as bad probably but i don't think a lot of people default to that and i think what you'd feel if you were too on your toes i think you'd feel real bouncy when you ran you wouldn't feel like you're propelling yourself forward at all you'd just be kind of hopping in place that sounds actually that's very accurate because like when i would start again trying to like i got to catch up like oh shit i am completely upright let me lean forward which is also new and awkward for me uh so trying to combine it all into one was was actually pretty

difficult for me yeah that makes a lot of sense. Okay. Yeah. And, you know, Mark, as a counterpoint to that, I would worry a little bit about, um, I worry about people getting into jogging, you know, and just going out and jogging. Cause you're right. If you're keeping it that slow, um, are you going to hurt yourself initially? Probably not. But are you going to develop, you know, you've done a lot of, I mean, you're talking to some of the best, you know, you know, people in the, in the country, like working with you about, you know, how to improve your running mechanics. You know, most people don't have that kind of access or it wouldn't even occur to them that people coach running. That's always surprising to me too. But what will happen for a lot of people is they will develop that heel strike.

And then as you know with running, you just get like doing anything. You get better at it. So as they progress as an athlete, as they get more capacity, then they're still running like they're jogging. They're still doing that shuffle pace and slowly too, right? They haven't increased their cadence at all because they're not doing any speed work. But they get faster and faster and faster. And all of a sudden, you get these people. I see them running down the sidewalk all the time.

I'm like, that lady looks like she's been out there running for like 15 miles. And if I ran like that for like that far, my knee would just be done. But they just pound away until they can't anymore. I see the same thing when I'm running. I see it. I'm like, man, that person's probably been running way longer than I've been running. And I think one of the issues sometimes is that some people are probably not really making much progress and they're not, maybe they're not even that interested in making much progress. And so therefore they kind of just

sit in this rut of doing the kind of same thing, but they continually land on that foot, uh, with a, you know, ankle in low, or they continue to have pressure on that knee or their back or their neck or whatever it might be from running. And then they go to the doctor and the doctor is like, oh, it's a it's a continuous use or overuse injury. We hear that a lot, but it's like, how are other people able to run, you know, twice the amount of miles I put on my body and there they feel fine. Right. Yeah. Some people are just built for it, you know. But the amount of miles I put on my body and there they feel fine. Right. Yeah. Some people are just built for it, you know, but I think that it's, this kind of goes back to our discussion or a larger discussion about fitness.

Why are people running? Are people picking up running because they're like, yeah, it's a basic human skill that we should all be proficient at. No. Why do they really want to run? Most people is because they want to be skinny, you know, or less fat. And, um, I, I think that's where, you know, a big part of your messaging is really important to people is telling them, you know, how to do that, you know, and, and being certainly looking at nutrition first, but being open to a lot of aspects of, of, um, of fitness, because I get people all the time who are like, Hey, I signed up for a, uh, half marathon. Will you help me train for it? I'm like, why, why, why'd you do that? And they're

like, well, because you know, I really, you know, I thought it would be a good goal. And I was like, okay, cool. Tell me how much you're running right now. And they're like, well, I'm not. I'm like, why would you sign up for a marathon then? You know, I'm like, and listen, if that's your goal, I'll help you get ready for it. But what I like to help people, like the people I want to help train for a half marathon or people who are like, man, I got into running and I just love it. You know, I do it like every day. If I don't run, it's like my morning coffee. It's just like, I, I, I love it. I think it would be really cool to kind of test what I can do over X distance, whether it's a half marathon or marathon, whatever. I'm like, yeah, cool. Let's dial in your training, really see what you can do. That's, that's an exciting

person to work with. But I think if people really boiled it down, like, why are they getting into running? It's because they want to be healthier. Right. And one of those metrics that we're talking about, you know, body fat percentage, you know, that's a real problem for a lot of people. So, you know, they want to get into that. And I'm like, well, you're, you're already carrying a little bit of extra weight. You're not that strong. This is kind of a recipe for disaster. So you'll walk it back with people and say, hey, maybe I can encourage you to do this instead. I'm like, okay, well, let's just join my gym.

But no, yeah, it's like, yeah, I'll help you train to run if you want, but let's look at this kind of holistically. And let's definitely work on nutrition because that's the largest driver of your body fat percentage. You run all the miles in the world. It doesn't matter. When you're mentioning the jogging thing, people can jog without heel striking. I think that's one thing that people can try to be aware of that if you're going super slow, you can still go super slow and strike on the forefoot. Like you don't have to go super slow and the heel strike your way through. Obviously walking, you can't. But like if you were to jog and jog slow, that's what I was doing initially.

Like I was just trying to stay on that forefoot really fucking slow and slowly build from there. You know, so it's just something that you can be aware of so that you don't develop okay i won't say bad but you won't develop i guess the non-ideal habit of heel striking through your run yeah and it also protects your body like for me my back um you i don't know if mark had told you about mine but like i've been trying to just go easier on my back trying to repair things it's been kind of uh it's been bugging me for a long time now, but when I'm on my toes, like, yeah, or sorry, on the balls of my feet and I'm kind of being real, it's like I have my own, um, like springs in there and it catches me every time. So even though I'm going up and down, my body feels like it's actually kind of almost staying, you know, on the same level because I'm just catching myself every time. And without that,

I wouldn't be able to do anything unless I was on the balls of my feet. Totally. And those barefoot shoes, they'll really help with that. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. So they're great. The thing you can't do with those barefoot shoes, if you're not already using them for running a lot, you can't just ramp up your mileage really fast. So something that you might be interested in, if you're doing that steady state cardio, instead of just staying on the stair climber, it might be interesting to kind of like do the stair climber, you know, do some air bike, but then throw in like a 400 or an 800 or even a mile, right? So you can incorporate some mileage in there, but you can stay with that steady state if that's part of your program that's really working for you. I like that idea.

For someone who like, let's, on the running side of things, because, you know, he has a stair climber at home, right um would there be an ideal like treadmill that would be good if you were a runner because i mean obviously if you can go outside cool but if someone wants to do something in their garage typically just a normal treadmill changes the gait pattern right yeah i don't know too much about that but you know you've had some experience with one of those curved treadmills you know um it It's like the Woodway was, I think, the original curved treadmill. And I think the idea behind those is that you're using your, you know, you're using your body weight and your gait mechanics to generate speed. So I think that's probably a better option than a motorized treadmill.

Because, yeah, they feel different. It's almost like you can't help but slap your feet. You know, I've always hated running on a treadmill. Same. I would way rather go outside and run in the snow or the rain than I'd get on a treadmill. I could never do it. I just think it feels quite different being on a treadmill,

but if that's the running you can get in. Again, I think you always have to kind of go back to why are you doing it. If you're doing it to be fast outside, then maybe you should work on spending some more time outside or just spend time outside where appropriate. The other thing I think with a treadmill is that, you know, people get, they get used to like, especially like kind of there's a lot of shitty treadmills, you know, that people

will go and run on and they're trying to have their like mile time apply outside. And it's like that belt is just running underneath you as you're jumping. It's quite different than you actually propelling yourself through space. And so again, if you're trying to run to lose weight, which that's what a lot of people are doing, maybe that's not the best place to start. If you like to run, then by all means, figure out a way to do it. Yeah. I mean, if somebody, if that's what they have access to is either a treadmill or, you know, you know, they want to go outside, but they don't love running, you know,

I would rather walk up the treadmill on an incline or go outside, go to your neighborhood, find a hill, you know, and do some hill repeats on that at a hard walk, even throw on a backpack or something. Like you can get all the fitness you need without actually running if running isn't actually part of your goal. Power Project Family, how's it going?

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Okay. One thing I want to let you guys know real quick is that the Bubz products, number one, they mix super well. So I've had different MCT oils and I've talked to people who've used MCT oil and mentioned to the copy and it doesn't mix well. Well, their MCT oil is amazing on coffee in the morning, just on its own, but their collagen protein and collagen is great for joint health, hair, skin, nails, all that stuff. That also mixes just so well into coffee and everything. It's that's the one of the crazy things. But secondly, these fricking apple cider vinegar gummies. I don't ever supplement apple cider vinegar, but they put them in gummies, which is great.

Two per serving. We have literally eaten one of these full things. Andrew and I have split this and mark mark has to be so careful like we give him two and we take it away because it tastes so good that's actually really good for you so andrew tell them how to get it yes guys seriously have just the recommended dosage uh just have two of those gummies don't have two full bottles the way we do head over to bubsnaturals.com and check out enter promo code power project to save 20% off your entire order. And what's really

cool about Bubz Naturals is they actually donate 10% of all their profits to various charities, starting with the Glenn Doherty Memorial Foundation. Again, bubsnaturals.com promo code power project to save 20% off links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. You mentioned to me three different ways of running that can really help people. And you gave me a book today about backing off how fast you're running to run way faster. What are some things you've learned and seen with some of that? Well, we were talking today about just finding posture when you run. It's really easy to get fatigued when you're out there running.

And the first thing that you'll lose is your posture, right? You'll start to slouch a little bit. You'll get rounded out in your upper back. You'll get that kyphosis. You'll maybe start to hunch over a little bit. And so really remembering to stay tall is important. It's important for breathing, and it's important for the mechanics of running. The second thing I try to help people figure out is kind of using gravity.

Get the chest in front of your hips. Fall forward a little bit. Let gravity be your friend there. And the third thing we're talking about is just cadence, the number of foot strikes you're taking every minute. And increasing that, I haven't seen anybody run too fast, right? So you don't need it. We were playing with a metronome today just to kind of give you a bearing on where you are. But just always remind yourself to step a little bit quicker will help ensure good running mechanics.

The book I gave you today is really just about how to build a running program. And this particular program there, I'm sure there are thousands of great ones out there, but this one just encourages three key runs every week. And those key runs are endurance, tempo work, and speed work. And each one of those is trying to influence a different aspect of your fitness. You know, the endurance, we're trying to stay zone two. We're just trying to build your base, just your cardiovascular efficiency. When you're working tempo, we're really trying to influence your lactic threshold. And then the speed work is really about developing your VO2 max, you know, your output. And I think that running mechanics improve at high speed too. So, you know, pushing that pace

will help translate to more efficiency at lower speed. But the idea is that we're not just out there getting junk miles. And I think all exercise is good. So I never encourage or discourage someone from running because they're not on a program or doing any exercise because it's not a structured program. Sometimes feeling it out is the best way to go. But understanding a little bit of structure can make a huge difference. What's that book called? Because I don't think we got the name of the book. It's called Run Less, Run Faster.

Run Less, Run Faster. A hard concept for people to grab a hold to is to basically be able to do nasal breathing while you're running or to be able to have, just be very calm while you're running, right? Be in that zone two cardio ratio. Is that something that you have practiced much? I know you said you have a background with cycling, right? Yeah. In my 20s, I did a lot of bike racing. I was pretty serious about trying to compete for about five years, and then I did another three years of triathlon reasonably.

It's a pretty dedicated focus. And so, yeah, there's a lot of base building that goes into that. I think on the bicycle, I put in at least a couple of 10,000-mile years. It's a lot of time. It's like 15 to 20 hours a week of riding, you know? And so we were on a team, you know, we had a collection of guys that were kind of at the same level coming up through the ranks. And was the majority of that done at like 70, 80% or was it a little higher up? Conversational. Yeah. So you're zone two,

zone three, most of the time, and then bouts of intensity. So I'm curious about that. How has your breathing over the years and how do you breathe now when you run? What do you try to focus on? And then secondly, we were talking about how you got into like strengthening your feet and changing some of that. I'm also curious how that's influenced your movement, your training, and maybe what type of improvements you've seen there. So first part, breathing and its influence. And secondly, your feet and its influence. So first part, breathing and its influence, and secondly, your feet and its influence. So I hate breathwork.

I hate it. You know, I've actually reading about it right now. It was funny that John was talking about that today a little bit. But I've got a book in my truck. I was reading it before you guys got here this morning. And I've always found breathwork to be really tedious. It's uncomfortable. I don't like it.

So I just like— When you say breathwork, what kind of—like what do you mean? Well, focused breathing. it's uncomfortable I don't like it so I just like breath work what kind of like what do you mean well focus breathing you know whether you're doing like box breathing or some tempo breathing you know diaphragmatic breathing you know any type of breathing drill where you're just breathing really just pisses me off I hate it okay I find it tedious just to be still and yeah to be sitting there with your own thoughts and trying to thinking about the breathing right yeah makes you antsy yeah a little antsy you just get bored right I'd rather go run and be like, okay, I'm just breathing. Sometimes, though, I do notice like some breathing issues. I don't think my nose works as well as it should.

So sometimes I feel like at higher intensities, like the nose just kind of like becomes a bit useless. So there's probably some work I could do there to improve. Okay. So not a lot of breath work. Gotcha. I try not to think about it. Yeah. And then how about like your feet? What have you been noticing? Cause you said you've been digging into strengthening your feet and some of the go to stuff too. And how like that falls in line. Have you noticed it's changed anything in terms of the way you move,

the way you run, the way you lift? Yeah, for sure. Um the way I walk. That's where I feel it the most. It's just walking around feels different having worked on the lower legs. And some of the stuff I've done with John, you know, the mechanics, you know, find a couple of dead spots in my gait that he's helped me really kind of cue into. But how I kind of move around feels different. And it's not like a really conscious thing. It's not like you're thinking about, you know, it's not like you're pushing the sled, go to style,

right. You're working on that pivot and really finding, you know, the corners. Um, it's just, uh, more ease of movement in that way.

Um, I haven't been running much actually, so I'll be interested to see how it translates to running. Yeah. When you're walking is you're saying you're moving easier, but is there any concentration on trying to keep the feet straight or when you stand or anything like that? You're just kind of, well, when I stand, cause you know, I'm standing all the time, you know, I'm in the gym a lot of time and doing a lot of coaching. And so it's really easy to kind of play with foot position there. You know, it's

kind of cheating, you know, when you work in fitness and you're around it all the time because you know, you're, you're, the time because you make this movement look easy while you've demoed it a thousand times that day. So when I run a warm-up, I'm doing at least part of that warm-up several times every day. So if I want to start working on my feet, I just start coaching it and my feet get better.

So it is kind of cheating. But definitely just being able to find the outside of the edge of the foot and the high ankle bone inside ankle bone that's become much easier um i feel like you know before a few months ago i couldn't really even i couldn't i wasn't aware of that or at least i couldn't feel how to correct it and now it just it's kind of doing it itself because of some of these drills yeah that stuff makes my calves go on fire. That's for sure.

Yeah. My peroneal is on the outside of my leg. Just crazy. But it's interesting. I used to roll my ankle a lot. You know, every time we were hiking, as soon as I got fatigued, I was just kind of like, you know, just pronate my foot or supinate my foot and just kind of follow the outside. You know, just on something unstable. the outside, you know, just on something unstable. And, uh, and the first time I did some of those drills where you're really kind of like holding it to failure, that's the exact spot that lets go

when I'm out there hiking and roll my ankle. So, um, since I've been doing that, haven't noticed as much of a problem there. So in, uh, you know, training some of this stuff and incorporating it on your own, has it changed some of your interpretations of strength and has it changed the way that you're working with people at your gym? Yeah, definitely. What I want to do is develop, you know, what we see, what I see a lot are people that come in fairly deconditioned and they see radical change in six months to 12 months. And at that point, now they have some capacity, they have some strength, you know, they've, you know, some people like have had a profound experience, they've gotten

off medication or lost a lot of weight or whatever their goals are. At that point, like it's time to start peeling back some layers of the onion. It's like, okay, cool. So we got you like a lot closer to what your goal is. Now, my goal is to help you be able to move well for the rest of your life to be healthy to keep going. And so we need to start to move well for the rest of your life, to be healthy, to keep going. And so we need to start to address some of this dysfunction that you had. It's like you were dysfunctional before you came in. So now we have to start working on that stuff. So I think there will be some good ways to just – I mean we do throw warm-ups every day and cool-down stretching. So there's a real opportunity to incorporate some of this stuff that will really change people's movement patterns.

What are some of the – like what are some things? I think a lot of people like applicable things. So for you and the way you've worked with people you've worked with because you know some go-to stuff. You know FP stuff. You've worked with a lot of different things. What are some things that you have people work in just for some general good movement? Well, I mean, I think that's just about everything. Understanding spinal position is a big one.

Okay. You know, so just understanding good posture. I'm on people about posture all the time. Okay. You know, so just understanding what standing up straight is. Understanding I catch people hanging on their front chain all the time, you know, so just understanding what standing up straight is understanding. I catch people hanging on their front chain all the time, you know, like how you doing it today, but I didn't call you out. Okay. So, so let's talk about that real quick. Uh, hanging out on the front chain, what exactly does that look like? Your hips are in front of your

chest, right? And what it feels like is it's not an active posture. It's a passive posture. So if you just like, you know, if you're standing tall and you just relax, what happens? Those hips shoot forward. We probably get a little kyphotic. And the question is, you know, if we're standing in that posture, you know, through a lot of our life, what kind of, you know, negative effects does that have? And so getting people to assume better posture most of the time and move with that posture is key. Part of that is deadlifting, you know, or squatting. You know, if you can't find a neutral spinal position, you know, if you're trying to squat, you don't have decent spine mechanics or the ability to brace your spine, you know, you're not going to progress very far.

I think that there's a lot of translation in this stuff too. I've been following Kelly Starrett since 2008 or nine, I think I found him and probably contributes to the longevity I've experienced, um, so far, but, uh, really getting into a soft tissue work, you know, on a regular basis is huge. And, you know, he's been talking about foot mechanics for a long time and we've been teaching the squatting, you know, we're, you know, creating a high inside ankle bone when we squat. Even though I could do that squatting really effectively, I didn't really see that translate into walking and running very well. Once I started incorporating some drills specifically for that, I noticed it impacted my squat immediately. Much easier to find that position of squatting. Even playing with like

the hip circle, taking it from your knees down to your ankles for a warmup, you know, can make a big difference there. So just kind of thinking about rooting through the foot, you know, a little bit differently has changed, you know, squatting and deadlifting to an extent. So real quick on the, on the changing the way people stand thing, right? The changing the posture, what are some key, how do you cue people how to do that? Like what, because you mentioned, you know, hips forward. So like something like that is not ideal. So then what should people be thinking about when they do stand around so that their posture is correct? Yeah, I think that the first thing that people should do is just, you know, you can kind

of like put them in a mirror sideways and have them look at themselves. But taking those hips behind the ribs is key. And then if you're a little kyphotic, right? So if you're sitting there, your hips are forward and you're kyphotic, take the hips back and then can you extend through your chest? And what you should feel is your thoracics, you know, really kind of lighting up when you do that. And so just trying to find people in neutral. And a lot of people stand like that.

They're like i feel so goofy i'm like well let me take a before and after like let me take you a side profile of how you like normally stand and i show like we take that and then i show them how i want them to stand and we take that they're like i feel so weird they look at it they're like oh yeah that doesn't look weird it actually looks a lot better but i think it just goes to show how habituated we get to um you know all the activities of life that bring us into this kyphotic shape yeah you can tell if it feels really good to get into some of these shapes that you're talking about it's probably because you hang out there a lot i can kind of feel that if i kind of put my hips forward a little bit and just let my ankle go out and like it feels pretty

good because that's the way I stand often. Yeah. Yeah. We just get fatigued, right? And we kind of dump into that position because we don't want to work anymore. You kind of hang out there. The thing you mentioned about some of the myofascial release, that's been transformative for me and I think for all of us. I think we've all been rubbing our butts and rubbing, rubbing, uh, the bars and med balls and

whatever else we got in the gym, kind of just all over the place. And that's helped a lot. Has that helped you a lot? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I, um, I hurt my back and it wasn't a major injury, but that was probably in 2008 and I was training a lot. I was still doing triathlon. I think I was doing CrossFit a ton. I just found it. So of of course, I was way overly gung-ho about it. Training a ton, I went from that to sitting for a lot. I just took a job and started sitting a ton. One day, I went to sit down. I was like, oh, my God, my back is killing me.

I was like, is this back pain? This is crazy. I actually found an ART practitioner. I was in Phoenix, Arizona at the time and, and he helped me unlock it and felt way better almost instantly. And then I kind of stumbled around, uh, found, um, Kelly Starrett and he was doing his whole mobility project at the time. He was trying to put out a free video a year, you know, a day for a year, which turned into like two years or something. But so I just started following along with that. And I really learned a lot. And it was kind of like, that was the first time

I felt like somebody gave me the tools I needed to keep, to, to work on my own body. And, uh, yeah, so I became, it just never had another issue with it. It just became part of something I did. And I had a lot of dysfunction and injury from years of, um, bike racing, a lot of bike crashes and, you crashes, torn meniscus in my right knee. I think maybe some labral issue in my right hip. So I buxated my left shoulder in a crash and had a torn labrum there. And so just nothing major and catastrophic, but things that needed a lot of work on a regular basis to kind of unwind.

Were you super light when you were doing that? Because I know sometimes the guys on the bikes, they lose a lot of weight to be faster, right? Yeah, I was about at 170. And what are you now? About 200. Oh, shit. Yeah.

That's a big fucking difference. Yeah. What about shoes? Where should somebody start when it comes to jogging in their shoes? Oh, man, that's a loaded question. There are a lot of opinions about that. If you go to a running store, they're going to kind of size you up and look at the way you run and try to give you something to correct that. I would encourage anyone to find a running coach or even a strength coach that is reasonably versed in this stuff and have a look at the way they run.

And don't just start running, but kind of approach this from a more holistic fashion. Like maybe we do need to be doing some soft tissue work if you don't move very well or if you, or if you're super stiff or if you sit for a job, you know, don't just like buy shoes and start running. You know, I'm not saying don't buy shoes and start running. I'm just saying do other stuff too. You know, you mentioned something in the gym, which is it's, and you kind of alluded to here, like your job, you're standing a lot of the time. So a lot of things you do are perfectly natural, but I'm wondering since you have so many types of people with different types of jobs that come into the gym, what do you suggest that they try to implement into their daily life, just whether they're at work, whether they're at home, to maintain a general level of good movement and

health? Because if the only time that you work on the way you move and work on your body is in the gym, then there's a lot of dysfunction outside of that if you're sitting literally for eight hours of your day. So what do you suggest to people? Soft tissue work. Soft tissue work? You've got to start doing it. Like what? Well, get a foam roller to start out if it's super painful and just start to get in there a little bit. Just, you know, rest on it, you know, kind of explore with it.

Just spend, pick a couple of body parts and spend 10 minutes just on those body parts. Yeah. Really getting in there and then gradually get more specific with it. Depending on who they are and how they're moving, I recommend some different things. A lot of people, because they're always in that flexed hip position, those hip flexors are a real problem for them. Everybody's tight in their spine. Their T-spine needs to be unlocked. Something that's a little bit overlooked for people who do a lot of sitting is kind of working on your pec and your core. You know, if you're not rolling those things out, they're all tied together. So you can open your

hip better, but if you're still stuck in that crunch position all the time trying to extend that, thoracic spine isn't going to get you anywhere if you're completely locked down on the front side. And then, you know, moving more. For a lot of people, you know, have you ever tried a wall squat where you're standing with your face against the wall, like hands overhead or against the wall, right, to keep you in that vertical position? For a lot of people, really tight. I'm like, dude, this is a really easy way. Like you've got a wall at home.

You know, 10 really slow reps is brutal, but it'll help teach you those positions. So if you're at work, get up, you know, every half an hour and do some wall squats, you know, or find a little runner's lunge or like just move more. Just stand close to the wall and pop some squats. Yep. Yeah, try to maintain wall and pop some squats. Yep. Yeah, try to maintain all the aspects of a squat that we pay attention to do. Foot position, knee position, hip activation,

and then work on getting that torso upright without hyperextending the lumbar spine. Stretching? Tough to do. Yeah, I mean, I've- You mess around with stretching? I stretch mostly dynamically to get ready for workouts. I don't do a lot of, I've got a pretty good range of for workouts. I don't do a lot of,

um, I've got pretty good range of motion, so I don't do a lot of stretching post-exercise to cool down or to, to finish. Um, I think that's beneficial for some people if they're really locked up. Um, but definitely I like to explore kind of full range of motion before I start exercising. So, you know, just dynamically moving through your end range of motion specific to the movements you're going to be doing that day is, is worthwhile. Yeah. It seems like, uh, it seems like stretching can be more effective. Like if someone has something that's really tight, if they're doing some of the myofascial release along with the stretching and along with, uh, finding range of motion as well. So like doing the squats that you were mentioning, rolling out the area that's troubled, and then also working on strengthening the area as well.

Yeah. You got to hit it from kind of all angles. Totally. We were talking earlier about what you compromise as far as your fitness is concerned. And then you also mentioned what some people are in the hard way through injury or through they go so deep down the rabbit hole that they need to dig themselves out, right? Was there anything that you kind of had to learn the hard way and changed, like forcefully changed the way that you look at your fitness? Or did you just constantly kind of just adjust and change and there was nothing that really made you switch?

Yeah. I mean, an example, um, I was going to mention this earlier, but I was running, um, when I first started triathlon, about two years, I still had about a year to go in it, but, um, I, uh, developed some IT band syndrome, which is just like, uh, it feels like somebody stabbed me with a knife in the side of the knee. It's really brutal. And at that time I didn't know much about, you know, running mechanics, but I stumbled on that book Born to Run. I was talking about it. And he was advocating for – McDougall is a really colorful writer, so it's a fun read.

But he was kind of illustrating barefoot running and the benefits of it. And so I just tried it out. So I bought a pair of, I think, five fingers for my first barefoot shoes. And, you know, of course, I did what you shouldn't do. And day one, I went out for a five mile run. I was like, Hey, I can run again. It doesn't actually hurt to run on my, uh, on the balls of my feet. So, um, but that kind of got me into really try to, uh, you know, learn about running and, um, kind of the next methodology I learned was pose running, which CrossFit used to embrace. I'm not sure if they still do, but that's, you know,

is definitely, you know, the concept of falling forward. It's going to be a midfoot strike. So you're getting out of your heels. Um, and from there I never had any other issues, um, and, and kind of, you know, still play with barefoot shoes to an extent, but, you know, it wasn't like an exclusive thing that I used. It was just a tool to help me get out of pain and to figure out some mechanics. And we did, when we mentioned cadence running and what we did today with the metronome, I don't know if we talked about exactly why that can be beneficial and important. Like we mentioned it, but why would somebody want to download the cadence app or one of those apps and think about the cadence at which they run? Well, I think that's kind of like twofold. Number one is, you know, kind of like the,

you know, the go to system, like those guys are looking at, you know, the way the best athletes move. You pull up, you know, a good runner, you know, even a marathon runner, watch how fast their legs are cycling. Right. So, um, mechanically, I can't tell you exactly what happens at a given cadence, but what I can tell you is that nobody who runs well is running with a slow cadence. What I do know is that when we slow it down, when you're not running fast, you are more likely to land heavy. And so whether or not you're heel striking, there's a lot of time in the air between your steps.

You want to kind of minimize that up and down and maximize forward momentum. That makes a lot of sense. It just made me think of like somebody jumping up onto like a box, you know, and somebody, you would think the more explosive person would make more noise landing, but they don't. Right. They're able to receive their own energy as they land on the box. And even as they come back down, they'll be much lighter or at least lighter sounding, right? come back down, they'll be much lighter or at least lighter sounding, right? Yeah. Right. So one thing I'd see happening here is if somebody tries to increase their cadence too quickly, there's probably going to be some problems there.

So how can people, if they're working with the app or whatever, how do they know when they can safely increase their cadence and still, I guess, have the benefit of the run? Well, I think that's kind of like anything. So we started out with, I think we started out with 160 beats per minute. We were just doing those like, you know, drills inside. And I just gradually ramped up the cadence. And so you can kind of play with that. So if you were going to run with a metronome and you just wanted to see like how fast am I actually foot striking, you know, just kind of match it up and be like, okay, that's about where I feel like I am. Bump that metronome up a couple of stops and then try to match that. And you might get to a point where you can't keep up and that's okay.

That's just kind of what you should be pushing for. And then if you just kind of play with increasing that over time, you know, getting all the way up to like 180 steps per minute, you probably going to be gaining some efficiency there crossfit games are coming up they're coming up right they're like just a maybe like a week or two away or something like that right um do you still follow it quite a bit are you still like way into i know you still have a crossfit gym um but are you as excited about it as you've been in the past well we do like to gamble a little bit in the gym. So we've contrived a fantasy CrossFit Games kind of. Oh, awesome. What do you got?

Well, I haven't. We actually haven't started yet. Oh, you haven't officially done it yet? No. I can't give it away. I've got to release the podcast after it's over, although I never win these things. But that makes it more fun because you have a dog in the fight.

I think that with the CrossFit Games, for me, it's a spectacle. And I love to see what's happening in the sport, what these athletes can do. I think it's bonkers. They are freaks. So it's super fun to see some of the young people coming up. And it'll be fun to see if Mal O'Brien can push Tia Toomey a little bit. She's been so dominant for a few years. So, yeah, I pay attention to it. I watch it. But I think the CrossFit games are always fun compared

to, you know, any other CrossFit competition because it's really what CrossFit's supposed to be about. These guys are getting thrown at, well, probably not that volume in like a four-day stretch, but, you know, but it does demonstrate the capacity these guys have developed. But, you know, they're going to be, you know be expected to swim or paddle or get on a bike or do something they're probably not used to training for. They are going to be expected to do something heavy, obstacle courses, different events. Those are the ones that are really kind of fun to see.

If they're asked to do a lot of different things, how are the same people winning multiple times? Have you figured that one out? It's interesting, right? Yeah. It's, it would be, I think there'll be some interesting conversations down the road, you know, with Tia Toomey and Matt Frazier really about what their training, you know, look like and how they trained out weaknesses. Cause it is pretty shocking, you know, how well they did with that.

You know, those guys were able to like develop so much strength and so much endurance. Right. And even just the mental aspect to be able to compete at that level. Maybe they're just fucking better than everybody. Honestly? You know what I mean? There's an aspect of they're just better. I mean, they're training hard, obviously. I'm sure a lot of people are training hard.

But then there's just a lot of other things that line up. Your history, too. I mean, Matt Frazier was a very, very very good olympic lifter he's very strong tia toomey as well right i think she maybe competed at like the olympic level right yeah so i think that's got to make a big and i something i noticed from rich froning and matt frazier was uh they can both squat really well like i'm not thinking about like the weight that they squat they both are tremendously strong as thinking about like the weight that they squat. They both are tremendously strong as well, but just the way that they squat,

they squat so efficiently. Yeah. And if you think about CrossFit, there's how many movements have some sort of squat component. Like there's just a lot of that. So I think if you were to break CrossFit down, then you would find probably a lot of similar movements, you know,

if you really thought about it, right? Yeah. Well, and it's an interesting question. Are movements, you know, if you really thought about it, right? Yeah. Well, and it's an interesting question. Are they, you know, is one of the reasons they were so good because they had good squat mechanics and there's a lot of squatting in the CrossFit Games or is there a translation from the squat into other things or Olympic lifting into other things? I mean, Tia and Matt were both, you know, Olympic lifters before CrossFitters.

Is there a translation there? I don't know. And Matt Frazier has like a hell of a mindset too yeah because it's average yeah he's just like if you signed up and i signed up you're done you lost congratulations you're not getting first who did you say would be pushing tia uh there's a uh a woman named mal o'brien i think she's 18 now, but she's actually training with Frazier. Shit. Yeah. So he's coaching her and, uh, Oh yeah. She was brought up before. Yep. Yep. So young, but so strong. And I mean,

it always shocks me to see young athlete that's that well-rounded, but it looks, you know, after the last competition, like she is really kind of rounded out her skillset. Probably working with Matt is, you know, good for that. Right. But. Is there something that you would like to see CrossFit do differently? Or do you kind of. CrossFit games or CrossFit in general?

Yeah, CrossFit games, I guess. So I've always thought it would be really cool to have some more standardized metrics in this. And what I mean by that is, like, I would love to see them run just a straight one-mile race on the track or pick your distance. Or if you're going to make them do a triathlon, which they've done a bunch of times, like make them do a relatively flat sprint distance or Olympic distance triathlon or some strongman stuff that's kind of standardized or just give them like – I see. Something that the public can compare something to. Right. Like how good are these guys actually? I mean we know they're really good and really, really good for CrossFitters.

But what does that really look like? I mean what about the combine test, max reps, max rep bench at 225, right? So that would be kind of interesting. If they did a mile, I mean in crossfit and they did it for the next five years you'd probably see some people break a four minute mile yeah you know what i mean like you probably would right i mean it's insane yeah and i don't even mind having them not know what it's going to be but just know that there's going to be a standard test so we can see okay these guys in this really brutal weekend of competition uh just got this test thrown at them,

what were they able to accomplish? Like, you know, like, cool. If it's coming up in the combine, you know you're going to have to run the 40 or you're going to have to do the bench or, you know, the other drills. But these guys didn't know it was coming and look what they were still able to do.

So I just think that would be a really interesting test that would kind of give us looking outside like some real perspective on how good these athletes are is there something missing from crossfit at the moment that uh you miss because like i know when i talk to people about crossfit they get so excited about the way it felt when they first got into it did something maybe go awry uh in the popularity of crossfit or is it missing some of that original connection to the things that you fell in love with?

No, I think those components are still there. You know, I think, you know, what you get from a CrossFit gym is usually a pretty competent coach and a pretty well thought out program and you get a pretty fun group of people to train with. Yeah. And I think that's the thing that just keeps people going.

It's super fun. You know, the overall stimulus is pretty low. I mean, people think about CrossFit as crazy, but like, you know, you do like a 12-minute Metcon and some skill work, like one heavy strength set and, you know, a 12-minute Metcon. Like the volume isn't that extreme. It's easy to sit here and say that, but if you're in the middle of one of those. Oh, God, yeah. I'm practicing it for a while now, right?

So it feels kind of normal. But I think those are the things that are really special about CrossFit. I do think that as coaches, we need to, as this type of information is available, expand our skill sets to keep people healthy and keep them progressing in the direction they want to go. And that's really why I'm diving in. I love to learn about this stuff, and I love to be a white belt too. I love going and trying something I've never tried before and being terrible at it because that's usually, you know, and that's really why I'm diving in. You know, I love to learn about this stuff. And, you know, I love to be a white belt too. I love going and trying something I've never tried before and being terrible at it. Because that's usually, you know, just kind of, you know, you want to itch that or scratch that itch.

You know, it's just like I'm not good at this. How do I get better? Right. I don't know if we mentioned it, but like what are some pretty cool concepts that you learned from Goda? As you've been digging through that stuff, you're like, oh, wow, this some pretty cool concepts that you learned from Gota as you've been digging through that stuff? You're like, oh, wow, this is pretty cool. So what have you been noticing like this can apply really well to generally everybody that I work with? Well, I think the idea of really cornering the hips and finding that high inside ankle bone, it's something you have to work for when you're

initially doing it, you know, and it's hard and it really wakes up your posterior chain. You know, you can find your glutes in a really different way. And I think that's important. You know, a lot of people are really disconnected from their glutes, even when they like squat deadlift, you know, some people can't find their glutes and they do that. So I've personally found that you put people through some go-to drills and their glutes are awake. They're ready to go. I mean we're talking about Brad Contreras, some of his glute activations. I don't know.

I've done some hip thrusts and that sort of thing, some frog pulses or whatever, and it doesn't really wake them up like cornering the hips do, you know? Yeah. So. Yeah. Getting in some of those positions, those bows and corners, I think that's, what's made the most sense for me personally. And, uh, it's something I've been working on and it still hasn't like fully transferred over into like my, the makeup of the way that I move, but it is creeping in there it's creeping in there what i've noticed is that my default position uh if i'm just kind of banged up from a previous day or like we did we were so excited at the 49ers thing yesterday that we just

we just kept fucking running around and like they had this they had this uh they had this ramp that was outside and they're like yeah we this uh they had this ramp that was outside and like yeah we don't really use this anymore whoever built it like built it way too steep but it was a ramp that had turf on it and we just kept running up it it was the most fun thing that we did there the whole time it was amazing it was so much fun it was kind of dangerous come back down because like you didn't know if you're gonna fall and shit but like we did a lot of stuff yesterday and there's a lot of new machines they They had the air pneumatic press Kaiser machines. And I did like a leg extension thing where I pushed the legs out,

and then I just like loaded it with like fucking 800 pounds or whatever. Not 800 pounds, but 800 pounds of air pressure. It's different than 800 pounds of weight. And so I'm just like trying to hold it. And it felt so good though. Yeah, I'm trying to do this isometric contraction and I'm seeing like that my left leg or whatever leg was weaker than the other.

And we did a bunch of stuff like that and we were super excited. So when I woke up this morning, I'm walking around, the right foot's ducked out and I'm kind of like a little, you know, fucking rocking back and forth. And then, you know, moments later, I'm starting to feel a little bit better.

But I'm excited to see if I can – I know that I'll always wake up after a day of hard work of feeling some of that work, and I like that. But I have noticed that I continually feel better and better and better. It's been interesting to work through these processes and to start to adopt some of these things and have them in my training and then have them work. It's like it is frustrating learning it. It does suck to try to learn it and try to pick it up. But if it was having zero impact and it wasn't doing anything, I wouldn't be doing it. Yeah. Yeah, this is important.

Your training has to feel good, right? You want to feel like you did something, like you made progress. Being sore is not a problem, but being banged up, that's a little different. Yeah, what did you think of the multi-hip machine at the Niners facility? Yeah, I think it's sick. I love that thing. That one in particular was really nice. Yeah, it was really tall.

Yeah, it had a lot of adjustments and stuff, just like one of those multi-hip, you know, standard thing you see at like a Gold's Gym or whatever. But that one, you know, everything they have is like, nothing they have is normal. Everything's like top of the line, top of the line, some shit you've never really seen before. Yeah, but like when John was demonstrating like the movement of our, I guess, hip or leg, you know, he was coming all the way up and then all the way back saying that we we don't traditionally do that in the gym with that machine that's exactly what you do and it's such a awesome like there's no way to isolate the glute quite as well as that machine can because everything else you're going to use something somewhere else except for on that machine that machine's dope yeah i got like a home one but it's not as nice because it's like a plate loaded one so once gravity is done like the other arm you know so like once that's like vertical, then the tension comes off. So I have to figure out a way how to like set up bands on it.

It'll be sick, though. All right, Andrew, take us out of here, buddy. Absolutely. Thank you, everybody, for checking out today's episode. We sincerely appreciate it. Please make sure you guys slap that like button on the way out and subscribe if you guys are not subscribed already. Please make sure you guys slap that like button on the way out and subscribe if you guys are not subscribed already. And please follow the podcast at MB Power Project on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter.

My Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter is at IamAndrewZ. And before I forget, Mark Bell, thank you so much for yesterday's trip. That was like the most amazing thing ever. We'll talk about it more about the 49ers facility trip, but that shit was beyond incredible. So thank you so much for letting me tag along. Sinc welcome and sema where you at at discord uh check it out so links in the description community and there's poppin and sema any on instagram youtube and sema yin yang on tiktok and twitter ryan where can people find you uh you can get me on instagram at crossfit northgate cool just at crossfit Perfect. Yeah, yesterday was pretty spatial. You know, I've just been a huge football nerd since the time I was a kid.

And the strength coach has taken us through all these different spaces. You know, he takes us to the training center where they have weights and sleds and just the normal weight room stuff. But, you know, it's the 49ers, so it's out of control. Everything, you know, multi-million dollar facility, turf everywhere, and just really cool. And exceptional athletes all over the place and stuff like that too. Then we get kind of taken into each different kind of department.

He shows us like where they eat and he shows us some offices and just taking us through. And then we get to like this area where they have the trainers working with some people that have injuries and things. They got the cold tubs and the saunas and all these different things. And then we go into this other room and I hit my nephew. He's like 11. I hit him. I like start poking at him.

I said, we're going to go into the stadium. That's what's going to happen here. And we go through the next thing, and the guy's like, here's where the coach would give the speech, get everyone all fired up. They got the music going. They get the smoke. And then he's like, and then you come through here, and you come out, and boom. And so I recorded it. I got to play it later.

He just didn't know how to react. He started looking at the ground and stuff because he was just so fired up so fired up he just thought it was amazing but we're such knuckleheads too we i mean but like we were all fired up too checking out the locker room dude like i forgot to breathe you know like i was just in there like i was just like whoa like i couldn't believe that i was standing in that same room as all these you know great athletes but yeah uh when he's like yeah this is where they're the players line up right before they head out. And, like, dude, my heart was just pounding. I'm like, are we seriously about to walk through the fucking tunnel right now?

And then, sure enough, we just kept going. I was like, oh, my God. And then walking on the field, oh, my gosh. Yeah, it was great to walk on the field. It was sick just to see those guys. They're just sitting there. They're just, you know, they're eating nutritious food, and they're all into their game.

And it's just awesome. How jacked was Dre Greenlaw? Everyone's all jacked. People are all jacked. He was so jacked. Yeah. Yeah, he's big. That was the guy that's.

That was the first guy that we met. That was terrifying. He's so jacked. That fucking guy's huge. And then he came out and he was asking the coach. He's like, coach, you see this gold chain laying around somewhere? And I was like, ah, shit. Like, I promise I didn't take anything.

Did you see that chain he was wearing? No, I didn't see it. Oh, dude. I'm trying to stay far away from him. The chains that we have in here. Holy shit. 20-pound fucking chains. It was huge.

How tall is this dude? He had to be 6'5 or 6'6. Let's see if we can bring up a picture of him real quick. Can we send that to you? Yeah yeah but um but he's 320 pounds very green law um i don't know if he was that tall but dude he like fuck dude yeah he's nine thousand feet tall yeah uh let me see i can't find enough physique he's like how big he is right there i mean he is standing on something that makes him a little taller than what he actually is, but he's just a fucking giant. My brother-in-law is like 6'3 or 6'4.

I saw that picture. Yeah, I showed it to you. He's a monster. And if you zoom in, look at his arms. Looks big. He's so jacked. He's huge. Yeah, but then him and Fred Warner, fucking tall.

He was benching 315. I mean, I probably shouldn't even be saying that, but he was moving. Hypothetically, if he was working out. If he was working out next to me doing bicep curls, he was potentially doing 315 for reps. I was like, damn. Making it look easy, too. I just texted you that picture. See if you can just pull it up for a second.

I'd have to email it to my show. I know. It's always all I know it's always all complicated it's always all complicated anyway that was great having you here today and it was sick to have you here and communicating with Gary Scheffler the go-to guy and then we also had

John Mills here who practices more functional patterns and I just wanted to try to bring people together I think it's fun you know and um gary was like oh i wonder kind of why do they think that and he's like i'm going to talk to him more privately because no one's trying to like out anyone no one's trying to be disrespectful but i just i would love to see uh you know us to be able to get you know someone like nadia aguilar get him on the podcast and get him on the show with somebody that opposes a lot of his theories,

a lot of his information. I mean, we'll do that to him anyway when he's here to try to get the best out of him. But I think what I'm finding is there seems to be tons of similarities between a lot of these things, more so than there are differences. Yeah, it'll be cool to see it unfold over time.

I think that, I think. Right. It's definitely heading somewhere. Right. And it's cool, the platform right here, it's like for gymnastics and stuff. Yeah. Like they just bounce around on that. It's like a big old soft squishy trampoline. A bouncy, bouncy trampoline.

Big old trampoline behind them. Yeah. All righty. All right, I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Strength is never weakness. Weakness never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.