Mark Bell's Power Project - Stefi Cohen - 25x World Champion Powerlifter to Pro Boxer Explains HOW Athletes can STAY Healthy ||MBPP Ep 827

Episode Date: October 28, 2022

In this Podcast Episode, Stefi Cohen, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about Stefi's transitions into boxing and how she has managed her anxiety and panic attacks. Stefi is a 25x World Record holder and the first women to ever deadlift 4.4x her bodyweight. Follow Stefi on IG: https://www.instagram.com/steficohen/ New Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://www.naboso.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 15% off! ➢https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!! ➢Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject Code: POWERVIVO20 for 20% off Vivo Barefoot shoes! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://eatlegendary.com Use Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori! ➢https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep! ➢https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #StefiCohen #PowerProject #MarkBell

Power Project family, how's it going? Now, we have been eating Legendary Pastries for a while now. They also have Sweet Rolls, which are new, but these are the best-tasting high-protein snacks that you'll be able to find. The pastries are around, let's see, 180 calories, 20 grams of protein, 5 grams of net carbs. The Sweet Rolls, oh baby, the Sweet Rolls,

200 calories, 20 grams of protein, 5 grams of net carbs, and they taste amazing. Andrew, where can they get it? They taste incredible. Head over to eatleg eat legendary.com and at checkout enter promo code power project to save 20 off your entire order links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes yeah they're always bringing up different football players on the show because they fucking i think it's football season for you guys right yeah so they're always watching football saying i think it's football season for you guys. Yeah, I give no fucks, man.

It's ball season, boys. Yeah. Around the pigskin. Yeah. But Bo Jackson, he is just an amazing athlete in general. So he knows more about him than I do. That's true. So what's the deal with him?

Why him? I was just a huge fan from when i was a kid he played baseball and football professionally which is pretty cool there hasn't been well i think deon sanders might have did that too and there just hasn't been a lot of people to be able to do that on a professional level so i thought that was pretty legit and he was really good at baseball right yeah yeah yeah and there's like uh there's like a bunch of myths around bo jackson about like what he could do and what he couldn't do there's a lot of proof and there's like a bunch of myths around Bo Jackson about like what he could do and what he couldn't do. There's a lot of proof and there's a lot of evidence obviously of like things he did as a professional.

People saw him do. But there's also like from when he was a kid, there's like rumors of him jumping over cars and throwing apples through doors and shit like that. And people are like they don't know. They don't know what he could do and couldn't do. So what did he start with? Baseball or football? I don't know what he could do and couldn't do. So what did he start with? Baseball or football? I don't know. He played both.

I mean there's even a story of him in high school where he did a decathlon and he supposedly didn't have access to a pole vault. And he went to like a local track meet or whatever. He was participating in there. He was right there. like a local track, you know, meet or whatever. He was participating in there. He was right there. And he just grabbed the pole, fucking stuck it in the ground,

and like won like his league or whatever. I think he just liked the way he looks. Oh, yeah, he's jacked. Definitely. But like also one thing that people always said about Bo, and people like even Matt Wenning came on the podcast and he interviewed Bo a little bit. And Bo like never lifted weights but when you look at him when you see his body like he

looks like a guy who lifted a lot of fucking weight but no like he was just an athlete who did a lot of body weight work and moved like a demon in the best way possible some guys just have those genetics that are insane that's like black genetics listen there is it's a good

thing. Listen, there's like a bunch of homeless guys in where I live, Miami, that look like that. How? How? Their shoulders are massive. How is that? Steffi, you're going to, a lot of the audience

is going to say that they're on TRT on the streets. Yeah, right. Right. a lot of the audience is going to say that they're on TRT on the streets yeah right it's Miami it's probably sponsored by Merrick who knows

what are you seeing in a sport of boxing in terms of like different genetics and maybe even different ethnicities and stuff like that honestly I mean the main lesson is that looks don't matter. I think a lot of the girls, at least, don't really look much like athletes.

I don't know if there's a difference in the way that they train, like females versus male. I know that guys are more often in the weight room than the girls just because it makes them feel good. They like going in and benching and knowing that they're capable kind of thing the girls really avoid it at all costs and and it it does you can see it just based on their body composition but then when they go to move though they move really athletically and flawlessly and they're fast and they're strong right yeah but they don't really look like that's how they're going to hit.

Yeah. But let me ask you this, because for example, in jujitsu, and people are running away from the stigma at this point, but there's a stigma that like, number one, technique over strength, which is true,

but they believe that if an athlete lifts, they won't be able to move well, they'll use more strength than technique, etc. And some people will not lift because of that but now in jujitsu you're seeing a lot of the top guys and girls they're jacked because they also do resistance training so in boxing on the female or male side is there a stigma of like you shouldn't lift because you'll throw punches slower or your muscle punches is that still something and do you believe there's truth to that yeah so boxing is

super archaic when it comes to training training styles and strategies closer to you yeah boxing is super archaic when it comes to training strategies and techniques so they are very kind of against lifting for boxing i think it just comes from a lack of knowledge really on how to actually use strength training principles for sports specifically. And because I think maybe they correlate lifting with bodybuilders or lifting with powerlifters. And there's just many ways that you can organize training depending on the purpose or depending on the goal, what you're trying to do, right? So, I mean, the easiest way that I can explain it is like imagining a force velocity curve, right? At 100%, like 100% of your max, how fast can you move a one rep max deadlift? Pretty slow, right? So that's

going to be a low speed, high intensity movement. And then if we go to the opposite end of the spectrum, like say a weight that's 30% of your max, You can probably move that pretty explosively, right? So that's going to be low load or low intensity, high velocity. Working too much on either end of the curve is not going to be the most optimal way to organize your training or to organize resistance training for the purpose of sports. What you want to do is you want to capitalize on the entire force velocity curve and train the entire range. Yeah, you want to, in the off season, maybe build your tissue tolerance, your capacity and try to test your athletes.

Maybe not a one rep max, but maybe a three rep max or a five rep max where you're increasing the tensile ability of your muscles, where you're building more robust tendons and ligaments and connective tissue, you know? building more robust tendons and ligaments and connective tissue, you know. And then obviously emphasizing. So it's the same with sport specific training, like the specific adaptations to impose demands. You want to spend the most amount of time doing the movements that are at the velocity, at the speed and at the weight that you're going to be practicing in.

But any kind of end of the spectrum, whether it's at the very top or at the very bottom is going to be practicing it. But any kind of end of the spectrum, whether it's at the very top or at the very bottom, is going to have diminishing returns. You know, people who do, I don't know, like crazy like shadow boxing with dumbbells. There's diminishing returns. Like, yeah, you want to build some,

maybe some muscle endurance on your shoulders, cool. Go ahead and do it. But to say that that's going to make your punches faster, it'd be a stretch. For that, actually, actually quick question i've seen um i don't know the brand but you know what i'm talking about do you think like something like that is actually applicable since it's light enough or is it a reach might maybe mimic a glove exactly maybe exactly it can help it also might not i don't. I don't think it's going to be like that kind of defining factor. But like anything, you know, law of diminishing returns. If you lift too much too frequent, yeah, you might get slower. You might get stiffer. If you don't lift at all, then you might get slower as well. Have you seen some good examples of people that have maybe lifted and did some boxing or combat sports simultaneously and were able to integrate it and do well? Or has it been – because a lot of times we're looking at people and we're like, oh, man, that guy is super tight and he throws punches like a bodybuilder. But the guy is a bodybuilder.

bodybuilder but the guy is a bodybuilder and so it makes sense that it's going to take you or anybody else time to get loose and to be like a boxer but do you see like in some of the um boxing uh establishments that you've been to have you seen some guys who kind of have managed both over the years no not really honestly the only place where i would say maybe it's at um field where there's a bunch I mean he is the coach and he has a strength background strength training background so he knows kind of how hard to push them and what exercises to to have him do and how often and all that stuff but that's been really the only place where I've been where I've seen so many combat sport athletes actually practicing strength movements Phil Phil Theroux reminds me of an action hero.

Yeah. When he showed us a bunch of tactics to self-defense type stuff and even just him putting his hands on me for two seconds, I was like, holy fuck, this guy is so strong. It's wild. And he's showing

these knees and these elbows. I'm like, that shit would fucking hurt. He's so explosive, so fast. Yeah, he's showing like these knees and these elbows i'm like that shit would fuck he's so explosive so fast yeah yeah he's a beast unbelievable for sure i sent andrew this video of this guy tirfimo lopez i just heard about him so i'm not i'm not nearly as into boxing as you are but there is somebody who's making commentary on the way that he lifts weights i don't know if there's any i can't wait of him like lifting in there but see if you can skip to it but pretty much when he lifts he doesn't just like when he does bicep curls he doesn't just do them like this right i don't know if we'll be able to get any like when he does things he tries to typically involve his whole body and he like

well actually maybe it shows a little bit there but you'll see like for example when he's doing those tricep movements or his shoulder movements he uses momentum and he uses his whole body to move the weight rather than like a bodybuilder focuses here i've seen him doing dumbbell curls and he's like he uses his whole body to move load and i'm wondering what your thoughts are on something like that because whereas a bodybuilder will do the most weight possible and try to really isolate the muscle tissue a guy like this he'll try to get everything moving together and i think that that could be something that if somebody does try to lift weights could be beneficial because they're not isolating here they're moving and and there's still movement involved in that while doing load what do you think

of that i think two two parts to that so obviously reps using momentum have their point in time like in bodybuilding even right what's the name of that of those reps like specifically force yeah okay like a bent over row and you're you're using some body language to try to do the bent over row and it might you can make an argument that you move the weight further. Or that you're getting more volume in. Because you're using more weight, moving at a greater distance and so forth. Maybe the tension is not the same as if you do it slow, but you're accumulating more volume and we know that more volume leads to more hypertrophy. But I think for somebody like that, I think it's just, again, lack of knowledge, lack of understanding. I think that it's really important to separate the adaptations when you're thinking about your own training. So what exactly is he trying important things to grow a muscle if that's what he's trying to do, which it looks like it, right?

Like he's there pumping iron, he's doing his bicep curls. To me, it looks like he's trying to get his biceps bigger and or stronger. And is that the best way to do it? That's one thing I'm curious about because we could look at it as an idea of isolating, right? So if your only goal is to make the bicep bigger and stronger, then yeah, you might want to isolate so you can move more load and focus on that muscle. But if you're still somebody who's focused on a sport that has movement involved, maybe you'd subtract some load, still get some bicep stimulation, but the body still knows how to work together to activate that bicep through a range of motion. That's just what I'm thinking as far as applications concerned for,

for an athlete in that sport, you know, so he wouldn't be building muscle as fast as the bodybuilder that increases load, focuses on tension on the muscle. So he's just wasting his time. You think he's just wasting his time? Absolutely.

Okay. You focus on the adaptation that you want to improve and you make sure that the exercise reflects that very clearly. If not, it's wasting your time. There's specific ways to get stronger and there's specific ways for muscle hypertrophy and he may not be really nailing down either one of those things. If you want to get a bigger muscle, load the muscle. If you want to get a stronger muscle, practice the movement. They're two different things. Is he trying to get a bigger muscle, load the muscle. If you want to get a stronger muscle, practice the movement. They're two different things. Is he trying to get a stronger bicep curl?

I don't know. You know, a stronger swinging bicep curl or is he trying to actually grow that muscle? So I think first and foremost, I mean, we're making assumptions, right? We don't know really what he is. We don't know what he's trying to do. Maybe for what he's trying to do, that's the right exercise. We really don't know. Yeah. But yeah, always matching the exercise with a goal, making sure that you're differentiating.

Okay, are we working? Are you trying to improve this person's coordination or mobility or stability versus are we trying to improve this person's strength? Versus is it, are we trying to improve his absolute strength or his sport specific strength? Because also those are two different adaptations based on the force velocity curve. Or are we trying to make this muscle grow and how I would approach that is very different depending on what exactly is the goal so I think a lot of people get caught on that kind of just exercising for the sake of exercising and I think it's uh it really is a waste of time you know there's a concept it's called dynamic correspondence and that's basically the ability of a coach to, or choosing an exercise that best fits the person's goal instead of putting

things together at random that like, will they help? Maybe, probably like, will this guy maybe, you know, get rounder biceps? Yeah,

probably. But is that the best exercise to get a rounded, a more rounded bicep? No, there's always good. There's always good and better you know what i mean so it's like as an athlete i think that we have an unlimited unlimited amount of willpower and an unlimited amount of like time that we can spend at the gym realistically

speaking like for most of us is our full-time job but we have a limited limited amount of energy and a limited amount of ability to recover from workouts. So that's why it's so important to be super stingy with your exercise selection. Like that was something that at the beginning of my powerlifting career, I just didn't care about because I was young and invincible. You know, I could do a workout that was four hours long that had powerlifting and bodybuilding, both to the most extreme. I could do like strongman shit at the end and run afterwards and get stronger, bigger, faster all at the same time, you know, because I could recover from all of that. But, you know, as you get older, not only just like age wise, but you have things in

your mind, stress. That's another stress outside the gym is another thing you also have to recover from. Then cumulative effects, cumulative damage of lifting, your body starts changing and you have to start becoming more and more intelligent with what you're wanting to include in your training because there is a limited amount that you can recover from, you know? So that's why like now the way that I approach my training is very different in that sense. I'm like, okay, what do I want to get better at for the't know, I want to be better at, I want to have a higher amount of rotational power. But I don't want to go in the gym four times a week or work on my rotational power and then have that conflict or interfere with my boxing training. You know

what I mean? So that's why I feel like it's so important, especially at the highest level to be so selective and careful with what you do. And in terms of like athleticism, you know, you could say like, okay, well, we can try to like do athletic maneuvers in the gym. And there's certainly a lot of things you can do in the gym other than just lift weights. You can throw around med balls and do all kinds of things that are maybe a little bit different than powerlifting, weightlifting, bodybuilding type stuff. But maybe for you, you kind of think it's better for somebody to lift specifically for hypertrophy or lift specifically for strength. Maybe you are doing some of those dynamic movements, but have them be specific towards whatever particular goal

and try to pin that down and try to have a good basis and understanding of that. And if you need to be athletic and need more rotational work, probably the best place to do that is probably more so with the sport specifically than anything else. Absolutely. But it's separating the adaptation. So mobility, stability, strength, hypertrophy, speed. What am I working on and what exercises am I going to pick specific to that goal? And not mixing and matching. We can't do that. I think that guy may be like, just, you know, again, we're just assuming he might be, you

know, trying to integrate some of that stuff so that he can stay fluid. You know, like that, maybe that's like kind of what his thought process is or what someone's thought process might be if they're trying to integrate various movements with their lifting. I'm curious for you too because there's two ways. I want to start with like let's say that a boxer, male or female, is listening to this or any type of martial artist actually. And they don't come from a lifting background because you do, right? So how can they integrate strength training, lifting, gaining muscle without losing out on, without actually becoming more stiff, without having an impact their movement? How would you have them integrate

that? I think that as long as you continue practicing your sporting movement in parallel, there should be little to no loss of skill, technique, or speed. I remember when I was doing Olympic weightlifting, for example, I started benching, or I started doing a little bit of heavier deadlift. It's not like my shoulders all of a sudden became tight, and now I forgot how to put the barbell over my head because my body got confused because I was benching. It doesn't really happen that way. I think that the priority always remains a priority and as long as you're doing your sport first and you're prioritizing that all of those movements and

your mobility for those movements and your conditioning for those movements then whatever you do outside of that shouldn't be a worry now i totally agree with that now from the flip side though because we're seeing a lot of power lifters we're seeing a lot of bodybuilders and a lot of people within this sphere go into running, boxing, jujitsu, and they're finding it difficult to move well within those sports. Now, you're experiencing this, too, and you've already had four fights, so you're becoming more athletic over time, right? athletic over time, right? But how does a lifter potentially unwind all of the stiffness that they've built up throughout their specific sport so that they can get better at movement, martial arts, et cetera? Dude, I mean, I think that's just time because, and I remember I had this conversation with Stuart McGill when my back was messed up and he's like, Steph, you just, you have to remember that you have to be careful what you wish for. If you want a 600-pound deadlift, you're also asking to have the stiffest body on planet Earth.

Your ability to move that barbell from point A to point B is directly correlated to your ability to maintain your core tight and stiff. So be careful what you wish for. You can do it, but you're going to be very, very stiff, very, very tight. You know what I mean? And I didn't understand what that actually meant until I started doing boxing and transitioning outside of lifting. Because you were mobile. I was mobile. But I taught myself, my body, my nervous system, my muscles.

I taught them to be in a kind of like chronic tight state. Locked down. Yeah. And it's hard. it's hard to unlearn that you know you just need a lot whatever amount of reps it took you to learn to be that stiff it probably take you twice as many to be honest there's so much movement going on in something like boxing um with every punch that you throw every time you avoid a shot you know you're moving your head back and forth that kind of like windshield wiper type of movement and for somebody that like creates stiffness that actually kind of hurts just doing like a small even just mimic of just bringing your body back and forth just ever so slightly the rotation stuff not nearly as bad but like just this part feels sketchy when you it does feel sketchy that's the best way to explain yeah when you build a stiff body you're like i don't know

about that yeah i shouldn't be moving in this direction because you avoid it so much right like you're because what you want is when you have that bar you want to stay locked in you don't want your body to your spine to be all wiggly right and it does feel so unnatural after avoiding that for so long it feels completely unnatural like yeah like you're doing something wrong and that's supposed to be in our gait in our jump like that's supposed to be in like everything when we throw like it's it's in everything you go to throw something one shoulder you know goes higher and one shoulder goes lower dips back and forth it's a blessing and the curse of specificity you know it is what it is like yeah

you train your body to be super stiff for 10 years and then you train your body to not be fluid and to not be able to move side to side and in different directions, rotation and all the other different planes of movement. There's also an aspect of like you trained yourself to like the highest extent of stiffness possible for somebody your size. Like it wasn't just like, I'm going to go in the gym and do four or five. Cause you could probably still, my assumption is you could probably do still do like 400, 500 on a deadlift fairly easily. But the numbers that you got up to, it's like another level of stiffness needs to be able to be able to achieve

this. Yeah. You know? So I, when I, when I say that, it seems that athletes can learn to create stiffness with those movements, but you just need to be careful at how high of a level you're trying to take this.

Because being able to create that should be good, but if you're trying to do 700 or 800 on a deadlift, maybe you don't need that much. Yeah, it's being able to turn your stiffness on and off. Yes. And a lot of, I, part of what led to my chronic pain, chronic tightness of my back was that just chronic, uh, kind of central nervous system state of just being all the time wired and wound up, you know, from the training that I was doing.

You were also pushing a lot of other stuff to your business was skyrocketing at the time. So there was probably other factors. Do you think there was some things you could have done to maybe avoid, or do you think it's a little bit of a by-product of just being a savage? Cause you broke like 27 all time world records or something like that, right? I trained like a moron a lot of the time, but because I could, you know, I kind of like fast tracked my way to those world records cause I could take it. You know, I was feeling good. I was, man, I was just doing training block after training block after training block.

No rest, pretty much competing every time that I could. If I could go back and just at least if my goal were to be or was to stay in the sport longer would just be to like be more patient with it. You know, not worry so much about getting strong fast, but staying in the game for long, like staying injury free. That would have been kind of my priority. And incorporating other elements of fitness into my training throughout the year, at the very least, like a very obvious off season where I'm doing actual cardio and running and like, you know, challenging my heart and, and staying completely

out of the weight room. I would have done something like that. And if you were having this conversation with yourself, I would have been, I would have been like, get out of here. Yeah. What have you learned from feeling good? Cause sometimes I think that that's what we do as athletes. Uh, we're like, ah, feel great. I'm going to go up. I'm going to, that 500 moved good. I'm going to go for 550 or I'm just going to throw

another plate on there. Fuck it. What have you learned from that? Because sometimes that's not, it's nice to feel good, but sometimes just because you can doesn't mean that you should. You know what?

I felt good so, so little times. Like I felt bad most of the time. So the times where I came into the gym and felt fresh and good and strong, I'd always try to capitalize on. Wait. What do you mean by that though? I felt like shit all the time. I don't know.

Like I just trained. So I was running hot all the time. All the time. You'd still hit your numbers though. Probably. Sometimes. Okay. Sometimes.

I had to auto-regulate a lot. That was kind of the area of strength training that most interested me back then was auto-regulation, understanding when you need to take a step back versus do what's on the program. Should I do RP versus intensity-based training versus percentage-based training? When do you know when you can press the gas or when you can't? It's individual. I didn't come up with any sort of like concrete answer. But for me, it was like I just felt that most of the time I wasn't at my 100%.

So the few times that I came in and felt good, I just try to push it. So from a practical side, because there are a lot of people who are still within lifting right now, they still want to go do meets. They still want to break whatever records that they want to break. Right. What practices do you think as far as movements concerned or whatever you think is important for longevity, would you have them or would you tell them to try to include whether it's rotation, whether it's some aspect of cardio that could help them improve and not take away because no one wants it to take away right from lifting, even though it might just add some time to getting to certain numbers. There's a few things I think for once is

adjusting your training based on your experience level. I think that's a big one because the closer you get to your kind of true physiological potential, like the absolute amount of weight that you can possibly move, the closer you get to that, the less margin for error there is in terms of injury. Like if you're close, if you're flying close to the sun, you're, you're bound to burn some feathers. You know what I mean? So the closer you are to that number, the more, the, the more careful you have to be with your training and how you're programming and how often you push and what your recovery is like. So making sure that you make those adjustments as your training age goes up, as you gain

more experience and as you get closer to your full potential. The other thing that I mentioned to Mark was making sure that you are including a very clear off-season into your training. Like there has to be at least a two month period of time where you're not inside the gym lifting, like stay out of the gym, you know, go run. Yeah, man, like miss it. Nothing's going to happen. You and I learned that, you know, nothing's going to happen with two months of not lifting. Like you'll, you'll come back honestly better than ever better than ever you'll come back your your nagging aches and pains are gonna be gone you're gonna be hungry to lift again you know your nervous system is gonna be rested

you're gonna feel good you're gonna go in like wanting to crush it that's another one um and yeah and i think like also including uh aerobic activity throughout the year to a point where it doesn't, you know, you've got to minimize interference with strength because obviously those are two completely separate adaptations. Your goal is not to improve your cardiovascular conditioning during a powerlifting prep. That is not the goal. The goal is to, legit, it's more like parasympathetic state training. is to legit it's more like parasympathetic state training you know just as hard as you go into the gym you should also go as hard outside of the gym trying to get your your nervous system to be in a in a resting state and walking and cardiovascular training is a great way to do that why why did you switch over to boxing i mean you poured your heart and soul into a sport and became one of the all-time greats.

And then you just fucking left it and tried something that seems to be like it's unrelated. It would be different if it was related, right? If it was like Olympic lifting or like, oh, she did some bodybuilding or she did CrossFit or even World's Strongest Man or something. We'd be like, oh, that makes sense. But you went in a completely different direction starting out as a zero, starting out as a white belt, starting out as nothing. Starting out as a negative one, man. From the bottom.

You know what? I remember right before lockdown, I was so underwhelmed with my life. Like I felt like I had reached the point of comfort, you know, and I hate that. I hate being comfortable. I'm like, oh my God, I'm, I'm going to get married. You know, I'm at a comfortable place financially. Like my business is doing well. I'm not even stressed out about that. Lifting's going well. You know, I got to the very top of this one sport I just felt like there was no no challenge and and I just feel kind of dead when there's when nothing is like making me nervous or making me scared or making me want to or making me have to put myself in

uncomfortable situations and challenge myself so that was one thing I from from that point on so January 2020 or December of 2019 I was already kind of in that mind mind space of like oh should I try something new like do I want to do something else but then going back and forth with like oh man you're already so good at this like ride it all the way you know why would you why would you stop doing the one thing that you're good at and start something that you don't even know if you're gonna to be good at. And all the doubters, like so many people just telling me not to do it because I wasn't, there's no way that I could do it. You know, like being 29, 28 and getting into a new sport, combat sports without having

any sort of like background in it is a bad idea. I'm going to run my business into the ground and nobody's going to care and blah, blah, blah. Which made it even more exciting. Like then there's the proving people wrong component that really, really excited me. And then, man, I don't know. I can't explain. I don't know why, but ever since I was a kid, I remember being six years old and looking

at myself in the mirror and being like, I want to be a professional athlete. It wasn't even I want to be a soccer player. I was playing soccer. I loved soccer. But in my head, I'm like, I just want to live the life of a professional athlete. Like it wasn't even, I want to be a soccer player. I was playing soccer. I loved soccer. But in my head, I'm like, I just want to live the life of a professional athlete for as long as I can. Like, that's my dream. And you know, I stopped playing soccer. I ended up going to school. I became a student. That's not, I'm not a professional athlete. I'm a student. But by the way, when you stopped playing soccer, weren't you on the national team?

I wasn't a national team, but I was still still a student like I'd never got to live that the pro athlete life and that was my goal like my dream always so then this was an opportunity you know I'm out of school I'm financially stable you know I can work or not work I if I so choose to um I feel great like physically so why not try something new and like try to actually live that dream of of living like a professional athlete and seeing where that takes me and i'm doing it now and honestly it's it's so dope even this makes it worth it independently of where it goes like even if it goes absolutely nowhere just the fact that i go to sleep at 9pm and wake up at 5.30 every day and I have a coach waiting for me and I train my ass off and it sucks but it's so good and I'm learning and I'm competing

just that alone is so fucking cool and I'm loving it so much so the challenge, proving people wrong, wanting a change wanting to live like a pro athlete and then the final one is just wanting to, my main complaint with and then the final one is just is wanting to my main complaint with powerlifting was that i always felt like i couldn't really showcase my athleticism you know i'm like this can't be that that this person that can't even stand on one leg you know like doesn't even have the athleticism to stand on one leg. We're going head to head in this sport. Like this makes no sense. I have so much more that I can showcase, you know?

And man, boxing was perfect. You know, it's a combination of footwork, head movement, ring IQ, like being smart and strategic and tactical, punching speed, power, endurance. Like, oh my God, it has everything. like, oh my God, it has everything. And I felt like, even though I looked like a complete mess the first time that I got in the ring, I kind of knew that I could develop those skills because I've had them, you know, it's just, I didn't have them right now. I've had them. And the ones that I don't have, I know how to get because I've been in this, I've been in fitness for 10 years. So while my background is not directly in combat sports, I've been training my whole life since I was six years old.

Like there hasn't been a single week that's gone by in my life where I haven't done some sort of sport, you know? So I don't know. I guess I was just confident that I could do it. I was just confident that I had the health and also the knowledge to be able to take on this the next challenge do you think maybe the money uh at a young age and some of the success that you had just made you almost want to like push some of that off a bit and like try something gritty

for sure yeah I love I it always grounds me you, to be at ground zero. You can't pay, you can't pay. I mean, you can pay some good trainers and stuff, but you can't pay for what you can do in the ring. Yeah. It's just you.

You're there alone. Somebody's kicking your ass and beating the shit out of you. Mommy's not coming to save you there. That's for sure. I wish I could. Yeah. Just real quick. Cause like,

I mean, after being in a fight and facing all these challenges and all the haters or whatever you want to, you know, you, you had just said, did, uh, like the, and I know you're going to love lifting. You're always going to love the gym, but did you look at the gym differently? Um, I asked this because I started jujitsu recently and like, I used to wake up early, you know, before the sun and like, Oh, oh this is my time like i would pretend like there's some fucking music playing in the background as i walk into the gym after going just to like a couple of classes i was like it's fucking boring here like you know and so like my training has changed a little bit but i'm curious like after facing

somebody like an actual opponent in a ring how did did you look at the gym after that? Well, first of all, I never really liked lifting. I liked being good at lifting. I liked going to competitions and crushing it, but I didn't really like the lifting itself. There's a resounding, I hate you, Stephanie, right now. They're like, you're a 25-time world champion and you didn't even like it? I didn't even know.

I just like crushing everybody. Like, look, I got into powerlifting because it was my last option. That's so funny. I'm sorry. That's so fucking funny. God damn. It's like Jordan saying, I hated basketball. I'm sorry.

Okay, go ahead. Louis Simmons said powerlifting is a sport for the rest of us, meaning like the ones that couldn't make it in anything else. I agree. Yeah, no, it was just, it was my last option at that time. I was like, I was in school. I had to be there for eight hours a day and then I had to study for another four. So it's like, what's the only sport that I can do for an hour

and still get better at? It's powerlifting. It doesn't require much more than that. You know, an hour, an hour and a half, in and out. Not much thinking. There's three movements that I have to learn. I go in, I put my headphones on, I move the barbell down and up, up and down, down and up, and I leave. Easy. And then I started getting good at it and we, up and down, down and up, and I leave. Easy.

And then I started getting good at it. And we're humans. We like praise and recognition, you know, and we like winning and medals and gold. Like it's embedded in us, you know, and it's not an ego thing. It's just it feels good to be good at something and to, yeah, be recognized, you know. So that's kind of why I was doing that. Whereas in boxing, this is the first time that I ever do a sport for me like it's not for a world title it's not for to beat someone specifically it's not for to gain praise like i've done it you know i know who i am but this is like

this was my dream of of living like a pro athlete and and doing uncomfortable shit every day and seeing just seeing where it goes like that's how we start in sports when we're young, when we're kids. You don't start playing football like, oh, I'm going to be the next Bo Jackson. No, you start like, oh, I love this sport. This sport is cool. No, I like how it makes me feel. I like how my teammates pat me on the back when I score. I like how the hug my mom gives me afterwards because I did well,

whatever, you know? And we lose that as we, as we get older, we lose that like genuine love for things, for people, for sports. You know?

So this is kind of like me living my childhood dream. This is all it is. Was there anyone even remotely threatening you in powerlifting as far as your numbers at the time? Was there anybody that you were like, I can compete with that person or was it literally just yourself? Mariana. Mariana. Yeah. But I mean, that's, I don't even know how that was, how that even happened.

Like, listen, powerlifting gossip time. So last US Open, right? Mariana just came in for the first time in five years competing at 123. There was a massive purse for that fight, I was going to say, for that competition. And you actually were required by the commission. Who was it? WRPF? Yeah.

You were required by WRPF by Gracie to notify ahead of time if you were going to change your weight class down or up. Because that's part of your strategy. I'm sorry, but there's $40,000 in the line. That's a lot of money. And there's a strategy that is required to figure out what the best Wilks that you can get. Like, dude, if I would have, I cut down to 118.9. If I would have cut down to 117, 116, which is right there.

Like, trust me, I would have suffered in the sauna for an extra couple of pounds. That would have given me like a six fucking 50 Wilkes if I would have cut an extra two pounds. Obviously, I'm calculating based on Mariana's 132. Even I think we calculated at 129. We're like, okay, these are her numbers. Her Wilkes is going to be around this at 129 she has no chance like i'm projecting like a an over 600 uh wilks or at least like around that and she has no chance at that weight class and she showed up at 123 didn't even know wow and that was that was a massive upset for me that was a disappointment

especially because she trains over at uh the gym whatever she trains over at that gym so to me it felt like a setup oh wow well i mean you have to the rule was you have to notify the the the judges or whoever the or the director you have to notify if you're fighting if you're competing at a different weight how far in advance by the way at least notified before the weigh-ins before the weigh-ins that was the rule and that wasn't done no dude i showed up and she's weighing at one weighed in 123 at the dot on the dot and i'm like what the fuck and i found out after i weighed in yeah so that was my to answer your question that's my that was my biggest competition but before her i don't think there's anyone like remotely close and just sorry just to follow up do you i know that you mentioned

powerlifting didn't allow you to show your athleticism which makes total sense but was there also an aspect of not feeling challenged or was there any aspect of that in terms of switching no no no it was no because it's always like you just want to see what you can do obviously like winning is nice but it got to a point very early on to okay i can see how i'm just for some reason i progress faster than the rest of the people and i it's just a battle against myself at this point yeah what uh what were your best lifts like what kind of weights were you moving around what are we talking about here? Yeah. I think I got up to a 5'10 squat in wraps, a 250 bench and a 550 deadlift.

And weighing like 130 pounds? 120. Yeah. Every time I competed, I lifted. That's fucking crazy. You know what's crazy? That I didn't realize I was crazy. At that time, I'm like, I don't get what the fuzz is about you know and like what people when people would repost or when people would show up to a gym to watch me lift i'm like this is weird as

fuck i like that you said fuzz i said fuzz pretty much it's so lame yeah no all that fuzz either way yeah no i i genuinely i genuinely didn't i didn't think it was anything special and you you mentioned like some back stuff like that you had a talk with stuart mcgill about some back issues what happened with that but what other type of potential bodily issues did happen as you were trying to get to that level of strength that you had to deal with her was maybe you weren't able to deal with it until after I'm not sure but I mean I had all sorts of nagging aches and pains like the ones that everybody has like I don't know my my wrists elbows knees hips at a certain point neck the lower back was the one that kind of lingered and kept kept coming back every season every time that I was trying to push the weight. You know what I mean?

Do you know exactly what the lower back issue was or was it just pain in that area? It's such a mystery that I wrote a book about it. Like low back pain in general. Such a mystery, such a misunderstood topic in rehab and physical therapy and chiropractic. Like for me, it was just on and off back pain, unidentified. Like there was no kind of not one structure where the pain is supposed to be coming from. My pain moved a lot.

Like sometimes it would be on my left. Sometimes it would be on my right. Sometimes it would be on my glute. Sometimes it would be debilitating. Sometimes it wouldn't. Sometimes it would mess up my mobility. It would be so uh variable and unpredictable then that that's what made it the most frustrating i felt like i tried everything

i saw every single i was in pt school at the time i saw every single one of my professors at pt school everybody would tell me something different that something else is wrong that i should do something else because you walk like this oh did you know you stand like this? You're like, okay, great. Thanks. And none of it really did much. No, none of it really mattered ultimately. I just, I needed time to let my body recover. But again, it goes back to when the load exceeds the current capacity of the tissue, you get injured. That is as simple as it is. And it doesn't even have to be one tissue it could be you know you're connected you're the entire connective tissue of your back it could be tendons ligaments whatever bone spur I don't know you don't know you can't pretend that you're the Sherlock Holmes of injury

and that you're gonna like exactly pinpoint the villain you know that's giving you the pain I even got an MRI like it got just got to a point where i'm like fuck i need to know what's going on underneath the surface i wanted to find something so desperately so i got i got the mri and there was nothing and that was the most disappointing thing ever i'm like are you serious i have nothing nothing's wrong with me they're like nah like dude but my back hurts so much like i can't bend i can't bend forward so just like during movement life and stuff not just when you were bearing load. No, everything. My activities of daily living were 100% compromised.

Could you still squat and deadlift? With enough ibuprofen, yeah. I always find that interesting. You can still figure out a way to brace yourself under a huge weight, but you can't pick up something off the floor that you dropped, right? Brutal.

And on that note, like you're saying with enough ibuprofen. So, so what are you saying? Like before training sessions? A gram. A gram. A gram. That's a lot.

I would buy my ibuprofen from Costco. Yeah. You know, that one. And that just live in my, in my bag. How long, how long did you do that? A couple of years. A couple of years. I'm lucky my liver is good.

Yeah. Did you fall into any painkillers or anything like that? No. Good for you. Yeah. No, none of that. But, yeah, it's a lot of ibuprofen. I don't recommend it.

You shouldn't do that. Did switching to boxing, did it change a lot of your interpretation? Because you were, I mean, still very strong, but you were so strong in powerlifting. I mean, you're still very strong, but you were so strong in powerlifting. And then to try to have those punches translate over and some of the women that you're fighting not looking athletic, muscular, not looking like a lot, but they can unload on you. Has it changed some of your interpretation of like what lifting can do for people and what it's even done for you? Yeah. I mean, of course course like there's no i used to think that if you know if you have a certain level of strength of absolute strength then you should

have a certain level of like sport specific strength and it really i don't think it's like that it's fairly vague it's very vague it is very vague. I think the way that I would see lifting nowadays, especially for athletes, is just using it as a tool to build resiliency in tissues. push press like 200 250 like you have a much more resilient much more resilient tissues that can withstand the the hundred times that you throw a jab in a workout you know what i mean so in that in that sense that's one of the things that i would use it for the other is for just mental training you know if you go into the gym and you're able to lift 500 pounds 400 pounds like in your head you're like i'm a fucking beast you You know, like I'm an animal. Like I can, I'm strong. What that says to you psychologically, just repeating, like, I'm strong, I'm capable. I can do this. I, you know, I'm stronger than that guy. Like, look at how I look. I'm physically imposing. I think from a psychological standpoint,

does wonders. And I, dude, I started boxing and I was getting in the ring with anybody. Anybody. Like, I'd be like, that girl, what's her bench? Legit. I'd be like, that girl, she doesn't look like, get the shit beat up. And how did that feel though? Like, like you go from being the strongest in the gym with, and for anybody, right? To someone that doesn't look even remotely as powerful as you then kicks

your ass what did what did that do for you did that give you motivation or did that at the beginning at the beginning i was super confused i'm like wait i don't understand remember i was at uh one of those fight fight club gyms one of those chains and there was this girl who was doing a quarter squat terrible with like 25 pounds on each side like barely able to barely able to move it and then she comes over and she's like oh whenever let me know if you ever want to do some rounds and i'm like yeah yeah yeah and i turn around and i tell him i go you see your squats and then she got in the ring with me and gave me the beating of a lifetime and i'm like i don't get it I was so confused for a while. I was very confused. I'm like, I don't understand how this is happening. You know, I deadlift 500 pounds. I can squat. I can, I'm very confused. I'm not able to knock everyone out. I thought I was just going to be

able to knock everyone out. That's legit what I thought with so much strength I had. This is something I've been fascinated by for a really long time. You know, I've kind of known this for a long time. I felt this for a long time. I felt like there's a gap between an athlete that can just turn it on like that and somebody that can lift really well. jacked people and they're on the sidelines. Those are the guys that are like third string. They never get an opportunity to play. They're in good condition. They're in good shape. They look great.

But they don't always have an opportunity to play. And I'm not saying that lifting doesn't do anything for you. I just think that maybe what we've used in the past maybe just isn't nearly as effective as we thought. And Robert Oberst got really criticized very much so when he was on Joe Rogan. And he said, go into any NFL locker room, you're not going to see them deadlift. And that doesn't necessarily mean that no one deadlifts ever, but it's rare. You don't see a lot of professional athletes really focusing in and honing in on, hey, let's get a five or 600 pound deadlift. And I think part of the reason is, is like, I don't really believe

that there's a great transfer of those things. And even if there was, I think that the risk to benefit ratio could be a little compromising. And you can end up in some weird spots. Like for you, you're responsible for so many other things other than just your lifts. That if you go in and have a squat session and you squat 365 for some repetitions or

something, which would be totally in your wheelhouse and totally in your capacity. Well, if it messes you up for boxing the next day and it kind of messes up your run and messes up the rest of your training, then you're probably doing something that's kind of detrimental to the overall process and the overall thing that you're trying to do, which is trying to get good at boxing as quickly as possible.

Of course, and that's what I said. You should always, first and foremost, when you're incorporating resistance training into your workouts, if you're an athlete, you should consider the potential for kind of interrupting your sport-specific training, the interference effect of that particular exercise or workout on this thing that actually matters, which is you on the field or you on the ring. But I think that looking at resistance training from the point of, oh, is this exercise going to transfer over?

I don't think it's the right approach either because it's almost impossible to know if it's because of that exercise that you're getting better at the sport. Like there's no... Like a baseball player trying to attach it to the rack and try to swing with the cable on there or something like that. Probably not a great use of your time. Exactly. I mean, figuring out how transferable an exercise is to a specific sport is, I think it's barking up the wrong tree. You know what I mean? Like it's not even the right question to be asking. I think it's more like what, again, separating these exercises based on the adaptation that you're trying to get, whether it's strength, speed, mobility, or hypertrophy and choosing the exercises based on that rather than is this going to make me throw a punch faster? What's going to make you throw a punch faster is throwing a punch faster.

Like there's nothing else that's as transferable as doing the thing. You know, that is the highest level of specificity is the thing, right? Outside of that is, all right, like how can I, if the goal is throwing a punch, okay, how can I move my agonist muscle fast and quiet down the antagonist muscle as much as I can? That should be like the thought process. Like, how can I make that movement smoother? Is it, am I restricted?

You know, is my, is my shoulder blade maybe not mobile enough? Do I not have motor control of this serratus anterior that's not allowing my shoulder blade to move back and forth in a synchronous way or like in a, in a smooth way? The way the Diaz brothers kind of they throw that shoulder forward quite a bit I don't know if you've ever seen that tactic or even Mayweather he fights like totally sideways and you can't hit him yeah exactly um so yeah it all really depends on on on what exactly the adaptation that you're trying to get is and what are the holes in the person's training? What are the, you know, but not necessarily all like, will this exercise make you better at reflexes and eye coordinate?

Will this exercise make you better at your footwork or your hip power? Like there's no direct correlation for anything and everything is multifactorial and there's no point even trying to think about it that way. I noticed on your Instagram, you do a lot of stuff where you talk about the science of like pain management and some things like that. And you'll refer time and time again, that there's really not a lot of good research correlating, like, I guess maybe, and you just correct me if I'm way off, but just some of the stuff I thought I saw. There's not direct correlation to mobility and pain. And can you talk about some of that? Because I think it's confusing for people.

Even someone like myself, I'm like, oh, I'm pretty tight. So maybe it would be in my best interest to try to figure out how to loosen stuff up. And maybe that will get me out of pain in other areas. I think the most important thing about that is understanding what pain actually is, like what pain is and what it isn't. The best way that I can explain it is using the analogy of a smoking alarm. Like if you're, what is that? Let's call it a smoke alarm. Yeah, smoke alarm.

Okay. So if you're cooking, say, bacon at your house, you have the alarm go off, right? Well, you freak out immediately. If you are cooking the bacon, you see the smoke and the alarm goes off. Like, what are you going to do? Evacuate the building? That's a bit too much, you know? So that alarm is going off without any sort of frame of reference for whether or not there's

actually a fire and whether or not the fire is a threat. Like, is it a candle that you just, that just blew and the smoke came out? Or is it like something's actually burning? Like that smoke alarm doesn't have that information. And your brain operates very much like that. You know, your brain receives signals from the outside world. It goes to the brain and then your brain tries to interpret them as best as it can. And then it gives you like an output, essentially.

So what happens with pain, especially with people who suffer from chronic pain, is that your brain gets so sensitive to those signals from the outside world that it's called sensitization. So it's going to start reacting to any sort of external stimulus, no matter whether it's a lot or too little. I'll put you another example. This guy, his name is Lorimer Mosley. He's a neuroscience researcher and he explains pain really well.

He said one day he was walking through a mountain doing a hike and he kind of felt something on his leg. He's like, oh, what the fuck? Didn't think much of it. Kept walking. Next thing he knows, he walks, he wakes up at on his leg he's like oh what the fuck didn't think much of it kept walking next thing he knows he walks he wakes up at the hospital he's like what what just happened he's like oh you got bit by a snake poisonous snake and you passed out and i took you to the hospital he had no idea hiking is one of his favorite activities so obviously you know after he recovered after a while he went back to the mountain to do another hike he's walking through the mountain and something brushes his leg and he freaks out like full-blown panic attack like starts having

the same symptoms of of being bit by a poisonous snake and then he looks down and there's nothing there and that is pretty much an sensitization his brain being sensitized to those external signals and there's a misfiring and a faulty interpretation of that signal that is coming from your brain right so the most important thing there to to understand is that pain is a is a learned behavior that is based on past experiences, on beliefs, could be cultural beliefs, and that has no direct correlation to actual danger or injury. So the same thing happens in your body. You know, your brain can trigger the same type of response in the absence of anything really going on. And the back pain is notorious for doing that. I don't know if it's because it's just kind of like a very important structure, you know,

so you're very aware. Not only we are aware because we need it for literally everything that we do, but then there's a massive misconception that the entire healthcare system has about it, you know, and how they go about educating their clients and their patients. It's like, dude, people go to the hospital for back pain and they're sent with bed rest and an appointment to a surgeon.

Like what, you know? Or you go to a chiropractor and he has on the table has the spine with a jelly donut inside and they're like, look, your spine is like this. And it squeezes and the thing comes out. You're like, oh, fuck. You know, you're all scared. It's fear mongering.

It really is fear mongering. And it just comes from a very archaic understanding of pain. So then how do you combat that? Then the opposite of sensitization is habituation. So it's exposure therapy. Hey, you're going to put yourself in those situations that initially triggered your pain. You're going to try to trick your brain now to get out of that path of, oh, every time I'm in the woods, it's because something brushes my leg, it's going to be a snake. You got to keep doing

that until you essentially teach your brain that that's not going to be a case. Same thing happens with, say, for example, with me, it was the motion of a deadlift. The motion of a deadlift immediately triggered that pain and led to changes in the structure, the neuroplasticity of my brain. It happens that way. The more times that you get into that cascade or that loop of something pain fear avoidance anytime that you start getting into that you're essentially kind of like digging a deeper and deeper like crate uh like when water flows through like rocks it's a channel canal channel yeah you're digging that thing deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and that becomes the default that you're like the default answer for your brain like you know if

that canal is already there it's like path of least resistance right and those changes happen at the level of your brain and then that just becomes automatic i want to kind of because hopefully we stay on this topic for a bit uh last week i was doing some jujitsu stuff and recently i've been doing a lot of like really extreme range of motion type movements in my body. It's like in twisted positions, right? Once a jujitsu on Monday, last roll, I felt something in my lower back rolled and then I could barely bend down. But with all the things that we've been learning about pain, what I did literally the whole week was I just did my best to brush into where that there was pain and just tried to tell my body, just move through this range of motion safely. I wasn't like moving

heavy load or anything there, but I was continuously brushing up against where that sensation was. And like, that's fine. That's fine. That's fine. Continuously. Um, and now it's pretty much gone, but that approach, like that's totally antithetical to like what people typically do. They're like, oh shit. Okay. Now I gotta, I gotta stay away. I gotta stay away from any motion that triggers that. And then maybe it does go away.

But again, once they do something. Yeah. It comes back. It comes back and it could come back worse. Of course. Right? Of course. Yeah.

You have to, you have to just put yourself in, you have to just train yourself to get back to those movements that were once painful and allow yourself to get to those end ranges, to get to those movements and essentially reteach yourself that they're fine. So what have you been doing with your lower back? Has boxing helped with that? And what have you been doing to help things go away that things have? I'm not sure if you still have to deal with those issues. No, it's totally gone. I think for me,

yeah, for me it was, I just needed to spend enough time away from these movements. Imagine it was, dude, it was almost 10 years. It was almost 10 years of having that on and off, on and off,

on and off. So I had to just completely step away from it. So for me it was time. It's interesting because Stu, when I went to see him, he's like, honestly, Steph, I think you need like 15 to 18 months away from the gym. And I'm like, you're insane. You know what you're talking about? I was so pissed. I was so pissed.

But I did it because I had to. I could just go to a point where I had no option. My only option was to not lift. And honestly, I mean, time heals it all. It really does. It really does. I think part of what made my story with back pain successful or made me succeed against it is the fact that I kept moving. I think that's super important. Just at least, again, building a positive relationship with movement, continuing doing aerobic training, building a positive relationship with movement continuing doing aerobic training just continue moving and again reinforcing that movement is a positive thing no matter what direction you're

moving what's up power project family it's time to stop dressing like you're a fucking preschooler and step your game up by checking out viore clothing now i'm not one to talk i wear a fucking pink hat that has a dog on it but at the end of the day at least my shirt and shorts are popping so head to viore because they have great stuff for your top and your bottom andrew how can they get it yes you guys got to head over to viore.com slash power project that's v-u-o-r-i.com slash power project and you guys will automatically receive 20 off your order links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes let's get back to the podcast what you got over there andrew um because what you were talking

about i think uh dr sarno was mentioning that yeah like the especially like the snake bite thing podcast. What you got over there, Andrew? Um, cause what you were talking about, I think, uh, Dr. Sarno was mentioning that, you know, like the, especially like the snake bite thing. Um, but like, is, is that really like the, the best way out? Because I know for me in my back, like I've had terrible, well, it used to be terrible. Now it's just, it's still there, but my back pain has been there for years. I'm talking like we're almost on two decades now, but when I'm in the middle of a lift or middle of like rolling or something, Hey, Andrew, how's your back? I'm like, Oh fuck. I actually don't even feel it. Like there's no pain whatsoever. Um, I understand

what then Seema was talking about, like brushing up on it. And that's something that I have been practicing also, but it's still always there in the back of my head. So is that simply the answer is just kind of being comfortable with a little bit of pain or is it just like trying to like, okay, my back doesn't hurt right now and then ignoring it or like what's the best approach? You nailed it in the head right now. Like being okay with a certain amount of pain is definitely the first step. You know, the goal should never be to eradicate pain. Pain is there for a reason. Pain is there for a survival reason, actually.

You know, it's supposed to be there to inform you of threats and dangers that you might be exposed to. So getting rid of it is never the goal, especially not if you're a performance athlete, you're trying to test yourself. Like that is, that's what strength training is, right? You're trying to improve or progressively add more weight to the bar over time. And naturally, you're going to accumulate some level of wear, tear, pain, whatever you want to call it, right? So expecting to be pain-free is impossible, really. Like you can't be pain-free. So being okay with experiencing a certain amount of pain and changing the perception

you have of that pain is super important. Okay, yeah, I might feel a little bit tight. It might feel a little bit, you know, painful, but I can still move around. You know, I'm not like getting all locked up. I'm not puking all over the floor. I'm not having ridiculous symptoms down my leg. Obviously, like there's clear red flags that if you experience them, you know, hey, I probably should go see someone or I

probably shouldn't be doing this. But for the average amount of pain or just like, I like to see it as kind of like a traffic light signal, right? Like anything between zero and four is a green light out of 10. Anything between four and seven is a yellow, like proceed with caution. Anything above a seven is like, all right, like maybe like let's stay away from this temporarily. Like let's just give our structures a chance to recover from all the training that we've been doing and then slowly incorporating that back into training. Yeah, that's definitely something that I've been working on too is like, okay, am I injured or does it just hurt right now? Exactly. There's a difference. I've been working on too is like okay am I injured or does it just hurt right now exactly you know like in differentiating those two things because prior to learning a lot of the stuff that we

learned on the podcast I'd be like oh my back's stiff today I'm out like there's nothing I can do now it's like well no there's a lot we can do um like you were saying like I just kept moving so what type of movements were you doing when um Stuart McGill said like you can't lift for basically a year and a half it was on only aerobic training because that's the other part is like i think a lot of people rush to prescribe stability-based exercises when it might not even be a like why are we even assuming that it's a lack of stability what's leading to your back pain there's so many structures that are seemingly unstable yet completely painless your back hurts your abs

are obviously weak yeah your core is weak your spine is unstable like why is that you're like no i squatted like 510 pounds yeah i'm pretty sure that shit's stable you got tight hips yeah so and then so what do people start doing they start adding a shit ton of like back extensions farmer carries um sled pushes over like all sorts of stability yoke carries people with like acute back pain they're like i just need to be more stable yeah yeah when in when in reality you might you don't maybe you don't need more stability I would be comfortable betting a lot of money that if you

are a powerlifter or a strength based athlete or a strongman and your back hurts your back is not unstable I think it's the opposite I think that you have a chronic tightness problem you're always walking around tight and that might be sending the wrong signals to your body

but again look injuries are multifactorial it's not one size fits You're always walking around tight and that might be sending the wrong signals to your body. But again, look, injuries are multifactorial. It's not one size fits all. It's not only just your perception of pain. There's other things that can influence the feeling of pain or the injury if it became an injury. But as a rule of thumb, I like to think about back injuries. One is learned, biopsychosocial. So the education component is massive. Just encouraging people to move and making sure that they that they know that it's not as big of a deal as they think it is or as their doctors are telling them it is.

And encouraging them to keep moving. That's one thing. And the other thing is programming. The basis of any injury is that when the load exceeds the capacity or tissue tolerance, you get injured or the risk of injury increases. And that could be from a kind of whole body standpoint, or it could be a specific structure. So for example, somebody that has an asymmetrical squat pattern, you know, where you see like, oh, one hip is a little bit higher than the other, or like one foot tends to cave. And coincidentally, they're also having pain on that hip,

then it might be load exceeds tissue tolerance on that side. You know, like the forced transmission of like the bar going down through your body into the floor and back up might be more skewed to one side. So that might be a point where you want to correct a lifting asymmetry or where you want to change someone's lifting strategy, like lifting style, if it's putting asymmetrical amounts of force through a particular structure, you know what I mean? And with that is programming programming just making sure that you're undulating your training making sure that you're having periods of lower intensity and lower volume to give your body a chance to recover and making sure that you're also taking into account the things outside the gym that play a role into uh stress and pain yeah and then um so like even

though like you did the mri like back pain can be extremely elusive. Like even for my back, like I didn't even know exactly what triggered pain. I just would say like, Oh, when I bend over like this, it would hurt. But then after reading Stuart McGill's book and going through his like a diagnostic stuff, I was able to figure out a couple of things, but like in your book, um, or if you have any resources for people like to determine exactly what they can do to diagnose themselves. Because once I did, it was like, okay, I feel a little bit more empowered here. It's not like a weird ghost in my back that just creeps up on me whenever it wants to. But yeah, do you have anything in your book to help people figure out where the hell the pain is coming from? Yeah, and honestly, it's not rocket science. There's two things to take into account. One is the direction of the movement that is uncomfortable so it's like bend forward is bending forward painful then okay you're flexion intolerant or if you bend backwards and it hurts you're extension intolerant or if you rotate then you're rotation intolerant

or if you side bend you're side bend intolerant you know you know just based on what you do which one is the direction that your spine isn't tolerating at that time that's one thing and then you also want to differentiate whether you're intolerant to compression or intolerant to shear so intolerant to compression would be if you're squatting you know that force of having a barbell on your back compressing the discs compressing the back compressing the muscles or asking for too much from the muscles maybe you know that could be you should be aware of that or versus sheer which would be more like a good morning or a deadlift when your your torso is bent forward and your spine is having to stabilize against more against gravity you know with a with a vertebra kind of

like shearing against one another and really all you have to do with that information is doubling down on the things that don't exacerbate your pain and cutting in half or more sometimes the things that make your pain worse. But definitely not avoiding that painful movement. Maybe for a while you have to avoid them. Like I had to avoid them for 18 months. I think it goes hand in hand with the length of time

that you've spent with pain because also remember like we're talking more about chronic pain when it's acute pain it's much more straightforward because it could be and it's just uh you know an acute injury is complete completely different like you did a deadlift and you tweaked your back you felt it it popped like yeah you know that's gonna take you maybe two weeks to just get past and you'll know. Oh, it was a muscle. Like you can pinpoint it. You can show it. You press it. You feel it, you know.

But yeah, with chronic pain, you might have to avoid those movements for a certain period of time. And then again, with graded exposure and graded is the key word. Because what do people do, right? They have an injury. They start doing their rehab exercises. In the case of the low back is like, side plank, bird dogs, dead bugs, right? Like that's the starting point for a lot of people.

And that's great. I mean, the reason why those exercises work, it's not necessarily because they're magical or because they're increasing the stability of your vertebra or anything like that. It's just because you're changing that relationship between that input and that output. You're making your muscles tighten up and do exercise in a safe way, in a way that's not threatening. You're bringing blood flow and oxygen to the tissues. You have that analgesic

pain relief from just contracting your muscles in general. That's why stretching feels good. That's why yoga feels good. It's not because it's magical. It's because it stimulates specific receptors on your tendons and on your muscles that give you that feel-good sensation. The problem is that they go from that back under the bar. Right. And that's the problem.

There's no ramp up, graded exposure to the movement that was once painful. So I think that's where a lot of people go wrong. They go from the prehab exercises right back to where they were pre-injury. And that's a massive mistake because you have to build back that tolerance. I think one of the things that makes the prehab exercises so effective is not the actual prehab exercises themselves. It's the fact that they're not barbell movements. That too. And it gives you a good gap of time.

Time, I think, along with movement are probably the only two things that have any sort of real scientific proof behind them in terms of pain management, right? Yeah. Time and movement. That's it. There's like nothing else. things that have any sort of real scientific proof behind them in terms of pain management, right? Yeah. Heck yeah. Time and movement. That's it. There's like nothing else. There's not a lot of evidence of, there's some empirical evidence of people saying like, hey, I think this helped and stuff like that of myofascial release and stuff.

But there's not really, you can't do like an MRI and be like, oh my God, look how much scar tissue the person had. And you can't like roll it out and then get another MRI and be like, oh yeah, the foam rolling, it got rid of all that. We don't see that, right? No, dude, there's so many things that feel good, but don't do jack shit. So many. And they might help because they might help mentally or it might make you- And that's good enough. If it helps you mentally, that's great. Even if it's placebo, but if you are getting pain relief, that's the goal. I don't care how you get it.

Whether you got a massage, you got cupping, you got ART, you got- But there's not a lot of science to validate some of those things. No. In terms of the actual changes that happen in someone's body, no. You can't measure or see it yet. There's nothing conclusive, no. But if it makes you feel good and if it opens up a window of time where you can train relatively pain-free or with a lower amount of pain, then by all means. And it goes back to

what you were saying about mobility. Like stretching feels good, right? But it doesn't necessarily, one, lead to long lasting tissue changes. It's just, stretching all it is, is a reflection of your nervous system. Like your ability to quiet down that muscle and let the opposite side elongate. Essentially, it's a marker of the nervous system, but it's not really changing anything structurally or protecting you from injuries in the future or anything like that. But if it feels good to you and it opens up the possibility of a training window or even like it breaks the pain signal even temporarily for an hour or two, it helps.

So I used to do a lot of Mark Pro, like the 10 system. I used to do a lot of that. And I was very aware that it's not doing anything long lasting, like it's not necessarily fixing anything that's going on my back. But, you know, for the 30 minutes I had it on and then for the following two hours, I'd feel looser. I'd feel better. You know, my back wouldn't be bugging me as much and I would train at that time. What about like maybe helping correct some imbalances?

Just example, like when I do a pigeon stretch with my left knee forward, it's like, oh, I can get down pretty deep. It feels good. Right knee forward. Oh, my gosh. Like it like it is you know way tighter than the other side but if i go a couple rounds it can start to open up and then as time has moved on it's like the the tightness level has almost like caught up you know they're not as bad or as um as different as they were once in the past so what about something like that where it's like maybe it could be help rebalancing some of my like, you know, differences in my left and right side.

So the same way as, as assuming that a lack of stability would lead to pain, you'd be assuming that a lack of mobility would lead to pain. And it's also not a fair assumption. Like there's, I know so many people who are so immobile yet are not are never injured so it wouldn't be something that you would do to reduce the likelihood of an injury or even to you know for anything like that but for as a rule of thumb i don't like asymmetries especially

if they're showing up in your movement because of what I said about the direction of the force. Now, if you have a tight hip and you're squatting and you're very visibly and you can feel that you're leaning into one leg more than the other and it correlates with the hip that you're having issues with, then maybe I'll be like, well, we have to find a way to dissipate the force into both hips rather than that force going straight into there. I don't know how we're going to do it. Maybe it's a mobility problem. Maybe it's on your hip. Maybe it's on your ankle. You know, maybe your spine is actually like a bit twisted, which would be normal too. I don't know. You know, but always finding ways to make movement as symmetrical as possible in terms of the forces going through joints would be a good thing to do, but not something that you have to do.

With the idea that, for example, there are many different types of stretching, right? But you would wonder for a specific sport, because for example, powerlifting, you need a limited range of motion to be able to achieve these movements with load. So you don't need that much mobility or potentially flexibility. But with something like jujitsu and even something with boxing, you would want to be able to get into certain ranges of motion without inhibition. Because when you do get into those ranges, especially I've noticed this, especially with jujitsu, and there is inhibition, that is places where people do manage to pull something or get injured. So that's where I wonder,

like, you can't say that people don't necessarily say that stretching will lead you not to get injured. But if you are more flexible, not just passively, but actively within these ranges, that will help you not to get injured when you do have to enter these ranges in competition and training, right? Yeah, I 100% agree with that. I think an FRC does a really good job at teaching that and giving tools to people. Functional range and conditioning. Yeah. It's really good stuff. I mean, which is nothing new.

It's a physical therapy technique that we've been doing since forever. It's like contract relax techniques. Yeah. But yeah, basically like if you are somebody that participates in a sport that requires exposing yourself to kind of more unnatural positions and ranges of motion, not only exposing yourself to the position, but also generating force from those positions. Again, like anything, it's like making sure that the capacity of those tissues at that speed in that motion is primed and it's prepared for that. in that motion is primed and it's prepared for that. So for somebody like that, that's training jiu-jitsu or boxing or even Olympic weightlifting, you know,

with a barbell over your head in a squat position, you not only have to have the ability to access that range, you have to have the ability to stabilize that range and to have strength in that range as well. So it's exposing yourself to that range of motion and then strengthening that specific range of motion i always think about it as like if you if you just stretch and not don't follow up follow it up with anything else it's like typing a lengthy word document and never clicking save the same shit like it's just a waste of time in that sense

you know it feels good yeah sure but like you didn't actually do anything you can't use that range of motion yeah i think we're talking about here is just having like a capacity that exceeds whatever it is you're asking the body to do exactly you're asking the body to squat 510 it would be great if you could squat 520 exactly and if 510 is like the absolute maximum uh and or you end up being uh such a thick, stiff power lifter that you need that weight to drive you down to break parallel, well, maybe your hip or lower back is going to get funky with you not having enough capacity to kind of lean on in your times of need. For yourself, just you and I have had some really good conversation. I hope you can

answer some of this because I know a lot of people suffer from anxiety and stress. What are some things that you've done in the last several years to strengthen that resolve and to build a stronger capacity with that? Because that can be a really tough thing for people to build upon. And I think some people don't even know that they can build upon it. And some people aren't in a good enough spot to even think they can build upon it because they just feel so shitty. I love that you bring that up, especially after talking about pain, because I see so many similarities in just the way that your brain operates with pain and with anxiety disorders, generalized anxiety disorders and panic disorders.

Where it's basically, again, it's a mismatch and a perceptual fault that your brain has to certain chemicals in your blood. Like that's what anxiety is. So what happens with anxious people is that you start avoiding situations based on how anxiety triggering they are. And you just start retreating towards yourself, towards yourself, towards yourself. And the best thing to do for that is exposing yourself to the situations that cause you anxiety. Very similar to pain, graded exposure. It's literally the same thing. similar to pain, graded exposure. It's literally the same thing. So just from sports tying into the psychology of anxiety, it teaches you that the only way of getting through these obstacles

is right head on, just facing the thing that's generating anxiety or generating fear or pain and doing it over and over again until you've changed that perception that you have for that particular anxiety provoking moment, I guess. And it might help to have a doctor or psychiatrist or a pharmaceutical intervention to get you to, because I think some people are like stuck, right? Yeah. So, I mean, I'll talk a little bit more about my anxiety more specifically. So I, the first time I ever experienced any sort of anxious thoughts, I must've been like six or eight years old, but obviously I didn't know what it was. And back then, you know, in the nineties, any sort of mental illness, mental health thing, it's like, it's the last, it's not

real. Get thrown off a cliff. You're making it up. You know, you're exaggerating to get picked up from camp or like you just want attention or whatever else, you know? So for mine, God just swept under the rug for so many years. You know, I just had no idea what was going on with my body, with myself. I had these like extreme, extremely intense episodes of fear of fear. Like that's the only way I could explain it. It was fear of fear. It was fear of having a panic attack at school because it had happened in the past. It was fear of what if, what if I have a panic attack at a soccer game? What if my mom's not here to talk me through it what if my what if my therapist dies like i legit used to have those thoughts you know and just had no idea and then with that came all the physical symptoms of anxiety that made it even worse because it's like oh shit like now this is actually manifesting itself in the in the physical world like it's not really in my head like now i also have am i making that up you know and you start thinking you're going crazy I'm going crazy and now I'm shaking uncontrollably um can't eat you know save my life can't eat can't

drink um I'm super hot but I'm freezing and my hands are sweating my feet are sweating but I'm cold just like the weirdest physical symptoms I used to get. And then in combination with a super fast racing mind that just kept telling me that I was going to die, essentially. Or I was going to lose my mind. I wasn't afraid of dying. I was afraid of losing my mind. In fact, I was like, some of those anxiety attacks, panic attacks were so intense. And I remember thinking, dude, if this is how I have to live the rest of my life, I'd rather not fucking live. Like this is way too terrifying. If I have to go through this periodically, this is insane.

And did this happen all your life? That happened on and off. Yeah, it's been happening on and off my entire life. Okay. So then when I was 14, 15, finally, my mom took me to a counselor. It wasn't even a therapist because, you know, if people find out that Reena's daughter is going to a therapist, then that's embarrassing, right? So I ended up going to a therapist and just talking about it and starting to understand a little bit more, again, education, starting to understand what anxiety and what panic attacks really are from a physiological standpoint. Like, where is it actually coming from? Oh, okay. It's my amygdala that's like on overdrive. It's overly sensitive.

It's releasing adrenaline, cortisol in amounts that are not natural. And then this is floating through my blood. Was that really helpful to hear it from a professional who was like, you're not the only one. Other people have this as well. And this is what is going on. It was the most helpful to understand it from a physiological standpoint like it's you're usually scared of things that you don't understand because you don't understand the

consequence of being exposed to that thing right and for me it was so scary not knowing what was going on in my body and and and with anxiety it's like that fear of losing control fear of losing your mind feel of losing control, fear of it developing into something else, you know, and all those things are just based on my lack of, were based on my lack of understanding for that condition, for mental health. And what's crazy is that after that, after I think I spent maybe like two or three years in my teens with the anxiety, then it went away, came back in grad school. What that tells me is that there's definitely an effect that the environment has on whether or not you show this anxiety.

And it's obvious, right? Like if you go through a period of time where you're super stressed out, I don't know, you couldn't pay for your rent and you had to like go work extra hours. Now you're super stressed out. I don't know. You couldn't pay for your rent and you had to like go work extra hours. Now you're working 80 hours, 80 hours, 100 hours a week and you have to feed your baby and your mom's dying of cancer and you're, it's so much, it's an environment that naturally

will make you feel anxious. But for a non, for a person who doesn't have an anxiety, like condition, it's just stress. You're not interpreting it as, as oh I'm losing my mind oh I'm gonna like this is gonna develop into something else you just have you're scared you're nervous you're anxious normally right for a person like me because of that sensitivity and the learned

behavior the learned kind of past with the same feelings I you tend to um kind of perceive it as something way worse than it actually is so i was in grad school uh sleeping very little abusing caffeine taking a bunch of adderall stressed out out of my mind you know like going to studying for 15 hours a day on top of training for powerlifting on top of traveling and competing and all that other stuff. It was just kind of the perfect brewing environment for that. And the scariest part was that at 25, when that came back, I was like, man, I thought I was over that. Like I thought I had beaten it and now it's back.

How long is it going to stay this time? You know, is it going to stay for a year, two, three, five, 10, 15, or the rest of my life? Like, does it mean that now it's going to actually become something worse and that was the worst anxiety I've ever experienced like during during grad school especially because I couldn't avoid you and I might have talked about it we did yeah I couldn't avoid any of the responsibilities I had I went adult I have to go to school I have to pay my rent I have to do my school. I have to pay my rent. I have to do my homework. Like mommy's not there, you know, and I have to just figure out a way to kind of like go through that. And that's when I decided to go to a psychiatrist. You know, I'm old enough to make my own decision at that point. I went to a psychiatrist. I got medication. It helped me the most is leaning so far into that discomfort, like so far. You know, any time that I experienced, I would purposefully go back to that place where I

got the panic attack or the anxiety and I would try to trigger it for myself. I would hyperventilate on purpose until I got that panic attack and try to talk myself through it. You know, it's just adrenaline, The feeling, that whoosh feeling, that feeling that I'm going to die. It's legit adrenaline. It can't kill me. It's adrenaline.

It's cortisol. My amygdala is all confused. It sends signals to my hypothalamus that I'm in danger, but I'm fine. And just consistently putting myself through those situations. And honestly, after my first fight in boxing, it was, it triggered the same feeling.

And after I fought, actually it was the second fight. And after I fought, I remember getting out of the ring and I'm like, fuck this shit. Like this was so terrifying. Like this was fucking horrible. I just had a panic attack on a ring in front of like thousands of people. This is the most terrifying thing ever. And you won. And that was a draw, second fight.

Oh, draw, okay. And I wanted to quit so bad i was ready to just tell everybody like i did it you know i came saw conquered you know that's it boxing's cool but it's not for me i'm out it's too stress inducing you know i'm a bitch basically uh and that's when i discovered what my why why was with boxing i'm like that's when I discovered what my why was with boxing I'm like that's it's part of it if I it's kind of like fighting fear it's my biggest opponent I go in the ring and that's the biggest opponent I have it's the fear the fear of disappointment it's a fear of failure it's the fear of being anxious it's a fear of a panic attack it's the fear it's all of that right so for me it was like man if I can conquer my anxiety and my panic inside the ring, under the lights, with a timer, with everybody watching, if I can do that, I don't think I'll ever be scared of anything else.

That's some fight club type shit. Yeah, but I'm so genuine about it too. I'm not trying to be hardcore at all. It's really how I feel about it. In my last fight, I had another panic attack. hardcore at all like it's really how i feel about it in my last fight i had another panic attack but this one came with um um man what's that feeling when you feel like you're watching yourself from up top disassociation disassociation i was seeing you know uh call of duty yeah bro that's what i was seeing oh shit like it was like how i see it and i'm telling my hands to do things

and they're not doing the thing. Oh my gosh. Oh, like a bad dream. In all I see, like a bad dream where you're being chased and you can't do anything about it. Bro, listen, I'm there, right? I have my hands up and I'm like, I'm going to throw a punch. What the fuck? Okay, I'm going to block this. Like things were just happening at me.

From the beginning of the fight or did this happen? From the second round. From the second round. From the second from the second round why do you think that you don't know i have a question real quick about the putting the putting yourself it was so horrible yeah yeah but putting yourself in those situations that would give you a panic attack did you start doing that first with supervision or did was that something suggesting you're like okay i'm gonna now do this on my own what how did you know from the beginning? No, because at the beginning, nobody believed that I had anything. Like my parents just thought I was being, you know, I wanted attention. So I just kind of had to keep going to school.

There's no other option. Oh, you're shaking out of control. You can't eat. You're going to school anyway, which is good. You know, like I never, i was never uh coddled yeah and never perceived as a victim or like weak or like babied you know and that that made it a lot better because i think also like if if you start um are you good are you okay do you feel good i think that just makes everything kind of seem worse as well was it the case for you i think everyone thinks that this has to stem from something uh some sort

of trauma was there a trauma for you and if there wasn't do you did you feel bad that there wasn't a trauma that these things were happening like for no reason it was so annoying for and again another sherlock holmes situation but this time with psychology. Oh, tell me about your childhood. I'm like, bitch, I don't want to talk about my childhood. Like, it's not a problem, all right? I'm telling you. My parents loved me.

I argued with my dad a few times. Tell me about that. Yeah. He hit me with a belt a couple of times. Bro, like my dad is Moroccan Jewish. All right. He hit all of his sons. All of his brothers got hit.

It's normal for me. I saw it happen. And I was never, it was never like, oh, I'm so, no. Like it was like, you know what I mean? Like I deserve it kind of thing. Oh yeah. Tell your dad abused you, hit you. I'm like, nah, dude. Like you're putting, you're putting, you're putting things in my head.

You're putting things in my head. I'm telling you that is not the problem. And again, the fact that I remember dealing with anxiety at a very young age, six years old. Nothing happened to me before that. Some makeup of your own hormones and stuff like that maybe. That's true. That's a good point. And I'm aware of.

Yeah, who the fuck knows, right? Did you ever get these when you started boxing? I know you said you got them in your matches, but in your sparring sessions or currently in your sparring sessions against other people, does that ever happen? Do you feel any type of anxiety with sparring or is it just in the ring with the lights and the crowd? It's just happened in the ring. Okay. But it happened to me in powerlifting throughout my entire career. I had a panic attack in the back room of every meet the ring. Okay. But it happened to me in powerlifting throughout my entire career.

I had a panic attack in the back room of every meet. Whoa. Yeah. Okay. Did you ever see that clip of Mike Tyson kind of having a panic attack before a fight? No. He's with Teddy Atlas, and he just kind of—he's a young kid. He's like 17 or something. You might be able to find a clip of it.

And he just gets down, and he's like, I or something you might be able to find a clip of it and he just gets down and he's like i don't know man like you can't really hear all of what he's saying i wish you could hear it a little bit better but he just gets real emotional and just starts bawling and the guy's like it's okay mike like you're the strongest you're the fastest you're the and he's like he's what are you gonna do when you get in the ring he's like i'm gonna open up like a motherfucker and then he just starts throwing punches and you going to do when you get in the ring? He's like, I'm going to open up like a motherfucker. And then he just starts throwing punches. And you're like, oh, shit. He goes to the ring and fucking destroys the guy. And he talks about how much anxiety he has. There's actually a clip in one of the documentaries they did on him.

There's a clip of him. He's walking to the ring. And he said he couldn't see very clearly. And it's all in black and white. And then he ducks under the ring. He had a very specific way that came to the ring black uh black shoes no socks black shorts towel no no robe none of that flair legend he come into the ring and and the video it shows it's in black and white and as soon as he ducks under the rope

and into the ring boom it turns the color and he's like as soon as i got in the ring i was the killer and it's like holy i just got goosebumps even thinking about it was so sick so sick yeah he was so scared outside the ring because he had so many issues outside the ring but he became incredible inside the ring that's why i bought the costi amato book yeah i wish i wish they would have done he would have written more put out more of like how he trained mike what did you learn from it not much like it wasn't no just i didn't even finish reading it read a few pages and i was like no that's not for me you know i'm curious about this too because you you've mentioned the nervous system a few times and you know with lifting

you definitely see that there are some power lifters who have to hype themselves up a lot before a lift, especially before a big lift. In meets, in training, they just got to hype themselves up. And then there are some lifters who can go up to the bar, stay calm, do the lift, boom. It seems like they don't get fatigue. You also see that in fighting. And I watch a lot of jujitsu. There are guys that just like they look so chill when they're rolling and they don't seem, it doesn't seem like they're trying.

And then there are some people who are pacing back and forth who are getting really hype. Some of them do well too. But would you put yourself into being one type of bucket of athlete when it came to powerlifting or when it comes to boxing? I feel like I try to be calm, but on the inside i'm pacing back and forth so it's a constant like battle against that you know where i'm trying to stay as cool

as i can as calm as i can keep my breathing as as controlled as i can do you feel that over your career like because like i, you see this sometimes within training, some people still have to get always really hype with lifts. When you were training for your powerlifting meets, when you're having to get ready for your big numbers in training too, obviously it's not the platform, but did you still find that before having to hit a big lift in training, would you still internally be psyched up or were you able to stay calm in training? training would you still internally be psyched up or were you able to stay calm in training i mean i feel like you have to you know what i um after one of those panic attacks before i meet i went to my psycho psychiatrist and i told her about it she wanted to prescribe me beta

blockers that this is how insane the medical system is like i have so many stories like that but yeah she wanted to prescribe beta blockers so basically it's a pill that controls how high your your heart rate gets so she's like okay like if your heart rate doesn't go above a certain amount then it shouldn't that the it should be one less symptom of anxiety that you have to deal with so maybe it won't trigger a panic attack even when your heart is elevated obviously you didn't take it but because of what she said i tried so hard to stay chill, like to be calm throughout the entire prep and hitting there and the weigh-ins and wrapping my knees. Everything was just so calm. And honestly, like I felt kind of dead. Like there was no fear.

There was no nervousness. There was no excitement either. I was so calm, like almost to a detriment. I think, you know, you need a little bit of fear. You need a little bit of that shit flowing in your blood and telling you, hey, you can get crushed by this weight. See if you can bring up a clip of her in the animal cage squatting, I think, 500 for the first time, right?

It's on your guys' channel. That's the kind of stuff that gets you into the right spot, right? Yeah. All those people watching, all those people cheering, and everyone's all fired up, and you're fired up. For sure. You need that. You need that.

100%. A little bit of it is good. Yeah, even if it's, I think for some people, I think they can channel it maybe a little bit more internally. But some people might need to make some noise. Also, what's your weight now versus there? Around the same or? Same.

It must be so hard to maintain, right? Right, guys? Right? Right, Nsema? You want to start off? This muscle just doesn't fall out, man. What can I say? You got to find a squat.

I'm going, Mark. No, this is in another video. This is in another video. I thought they were combined. Rookie mistake. you gotta find a squat I'm going Mark come on no this is in another video this is in another video I thought they were combined rookie mistake but yeah no I've

what been boxing for a year and a half two years barely lifting any weight and I weigh the same how about your body composition brown leaner

similar what how does that make any listen my calves are so large uh huh and i'm not even it's not even a flex okay i'm not even making fun of your calves well my calves have gone so large yeah my forearms and my back have gone so large it's just kind of it migrated you know what i mean like the kind of like muscle left a little bit of the quads and went down to the calves

and then went a little bit up to the back and the forearms. It migrated. That's amazing. It's a thing, right? Muscle migration? I think so. With all that running, it might have slipped down from the quads into the calves. Jump rope and stuff.

It makes it shake downward. Of course. There's no feeling like that. How much weight was on the bar here, and uh jump rope and stuff and being on your makes it shake downward yep yeah of course yeah there's no feeling like that how much weight was on the bar here andrew yeah 495 jeez that was 495 yeah not even 500 what was uh you know i know like the lifting thing it's just like it's almost like another lifetime at this point for you but what were you most proud of or what were you like most excited about or impressed with that you were able to do this squat my back was so fucked i was supposed to deadlift because the prior year i'd done the deadlift it went really well and obviously it was my thing but i couldn't do it i couldn't deadlift i couldn't

even train the deadlift so i just had to work around it and then i figured out wraps like two weeks out of the animal cage i figured out kind of how to use the bounce and and change my stance a little bit to kind of favor a more quad dominant squad and figure out like a bar position that didn't bug my that didn't bug my back too much, a more kind of upright angle. And it kind of like all came together like legit a week before, a week before or 10 days before the cage, I was all of a sudden repping 180 kilos. Like I was, you know, it used to be kind of like my, my, my bet, like close to my best. And then I started repping it for fives just with a slight change in tweak and technique.

And so for me, just like, you know, being able to, to overcome all of that frustration at the gym with, with so much back pain and just not being able to do what I used to be able to and just come here and, and,

and show it in front of people. Like that was a big win oh there's music on it the music cranking i was trying to get the crowd noise in there but it was just like weird music cranking there we go there we go people going bonkers shit see it yeah I don't think I don't think I've ever been that excited about a lift in my life

yeah in that cage too that shit's so like you wanna hear a funny story so I finish this lift right and in my head I'm Arnold Schwarzenegger like I'm the man you know at that point so I take my shirt off and I'm like who wants it I like I'm the man you know at that point so I take my shirt off and I'm like who wants it

I throw it in the crowd like yeah shaking hands next thing you know someone brought me back the shirt like this shirt fucking stinks

he's like oh here your shirt and I'm like fuck that's supposed to be yours just throw it back it just hits you right in the head no one really wanted

it oh man power lifting doesn't get the cred doesn't get the credit that it should it should get more cred it's a crazy sport it's a crazy sport and and man crazy training for it too i want to actually curious about this when it comes to the way you move around the way you breathe now and all of that we've had and we've seen a lot of power lifters who've come onto the show they tend to be here they also tend to be here right and that is their mode of being every single day at rest at sleep etc so I know that know that you're working with a few people now. Is there anything that lifters can use if they find that they're that type of person who's always upregulated? How can they calm down their nervous system outside of the gym?

How can that be beneficial? Yeah, that's why I said aerobic conditioning throughout the year, not with a goal of PRing your one mile run or your three or your 5k, nothing like that. Just long, steady state aerobic conditioning to build your aerobic base so that you have a bigger engine so that you don't get winded with two reps and three reps. So you're not winded just standing here. So you're not winded going up and downstairs. So you're not winded just standing here. So you're not winded going up and downstairs. It's like as powerlifters, and I fell into that trap as well. Like I was just so, so overly or training in a such an overly specific way that, yeah, I got really good at squat bench deadlift, but I got really bad as a human. It's like I'm in the peak powerlifting shape

and I'm at the worst human shape of my entire life. So obviously, yeah, dedicated aerobic work, walk 10-minute walks, like at the very least 10,000 steps a day, at the very least. And then maybe two or three times a week, like where you're on a bike, like breathing a little bit harder, maybe doing some nasal breathing only exercises, maybe meditating a little bit.

But it's like, you know, the same way that you have dedicated times to go to the gym and train and ramp the intensity up and try to go for a PR, same way you scheduled that, you should also be scheduling your wind down time. Whether it's like taking a hot bath, you know, watching a movie, turning a candle on. Dude, just being in the dark and like not looking at a screen like that's that's a step in the right direction. You know, we're so overly stimulated at all points in time that we and we don't we don't prioritize that alone time, that time to specifically wind down. to specifically wind down. You know, how many people do you know that legit get in bed, turn the light off, get on their phone

until they're like asleep with the phone in their hands and then they fall asleep. No, that's not me. It's just I know people like that. And then they fall asleep and they wake up. The first thing they do is the same shit

and then it's just a cycle, you know, of like constant stimulation, of constant arousal. So it's just a matter of making sure that you're scheduling in that resting time. You killed a lot of records during your powerlifting career, by the way. And I want to know with how you are now, is your sleep different now than then? Were you sleeping good then? What's that like? Because we know that sleep is one of the biggest things for athletes to be able to perform at the highest level. I feel like my sleep is much better now because of the amount of activity that i get in a day because with powerlifting you're avoiding

you're avoiding anything besides you barely don't even go to the bathroom because you don't want to get those you know the steps are going to mess up your your squat or whatever so i think i was just in such an upregulated state all the time, like pumped full of caffeine, doing only exercises that heavily excite your nervous system, your sympathetic state. You know, that is what it is. I went max deadlift all the time. So yeah, I think my sleep was garbage, garbage.

And I sleep like a baby now. You have Dan Garner and Andy Galpin helping you out. What are they doing? So we just, it took me like a year to get all the tests done just because I was avoiding playing with my poop, actually. What a bunch of sick fuckers, right? Yeah, Andy, you're a sick fuck, dude. And he would ask me too. He's like, did you play with your poop already?

So what's the process of playing with your poop, by the way? What did you have to do specifically? What really is interesting about these tests, and the reason why I got started talking to Andy about it is because of my anxiety. I'm actually curious to see if there's something else, like there's a connection between gut microbiome and anxiety. I also want to see just how the different systems interact with one another and what is actually leading to certain kind of symptoms that i have even like um just not i don't feel like i've progressed as much in my in my conditioning like in cardio for boxing so i want to know why that is um and also i mean i'm the

type of person that i posted this like a couple weeks ago like what would my last three words be or my last words be before i die and it's i did my best and it it also ties to to this stuff like health you know I I wanna obviously I'm gonna live my life and I'm gonna have fun and and all that you know I'm gonna eat crap from time to time and I'm gonna skip my workouts you know in the new years I don't know you know but ultimately like I want the the average of my efforts to be kind of on a positive trend you know so that when i'm 50 i'm 60 and i'm sick you know because father time doesn't doesn't forgive anybody like we're all going in the same direction you know i'm gonna have something um maybe it's because of my anxiety that i'm also kind of anxious about

illness maybe you know before i used to be debilitating now it's not now also kind of anxious about illness, maybe. Before I used to be debilitating. Now it's not. Now I kind of accept it. But I just want to get to that age and be like, all right, like I have heart disease of whatever. I have plaque in my heart. But I know honestly deep inside that I tried my best. I removed a bunch of processed stuff from my diet.

I exercised every day. I had my labs done by Andy. I was taking my CoQ10 and my Omega-3s. Like I just want to try to do the best that I can while also enjoying my life, you know, not being a hypochondriac essentially. That's kind of how I got started with Andy and Dan. So what's interesting about what they do back to their service is that they sample your blood, your urine, your stool, and your saliva, both for cortisol and melatonin. So there are two different tests. And what they do is that they cross-reference

all the results. Basically, they have all the labs out of the different systems of your body, and they try to figure out essentially what came first, the chicken or the egg. Like, oh, okay, there's one particular hormone that regulates body fluids is elevated. Your aldosterone is elevated. Why is that the case? Oh, okay. Like I'm seeing here that you were taking Welbutrin and Cetraline, which are two anxiety slash depression medications that increase the amount of sodium that you excrete. Okay. That's interesting. You know, maybe you're not, you know, your sodiums. And then he just kind of like puts a note, right?

Your sodium is low in your cells. Your aldosterone is elevated. You're complaining of fatigue early on in the rounds and just leaves it there. Like, it's not like, oh, aldosterone's up. Let's give you something to lower it.

Because that's what a doctor would do. Versus just trying to understand how the entire body works in conjunction and trying to see how it all can be optimized. They even have a formula for it. versus just trying to understand how the entire body works in conjunction and trying to see how it all can be optimized they even have a formula for it your true your true physiological potential your tpp and the whole the whole goal of these tests they even came up with new norm norms like limits so it's not instead of comparing your lab results to normal limits the average american

which honestly is not a lot it's not good yeah it's pretty shit so if my labs are anywhere near to within normal limits i don't want that like that's a red flag and that's exactly what he does he specializes in turning already well-functioning healthy humans into superhumans basically like trying to pinpoint uh areas where where you could improve trying to i hate the word prevent but trying to be one step ahead of whatever could develop in the future you know and it just being being face to face with your mortality too like oh look like you have a 20 chance of developing uh cardiovascular disease or you you actually have beginning stages of Addison's disease.

You know, it's like, oh shit, really? Like what? Can I do anything about it? You know, is there anything that I could be doing now? And so, yeah, it's been pretty cool to work with them and be proactive about my health. Something that I think that when you're in your 20s, you don't really think about much, right? And that was reflected very clearly in my training and in the way that i i was gonna say took care of myself

but didn't really take care of myself so finally being 30 and just kind of coming to terms with the fact that that nothing is forever that this the ride is going to be over at some point and all you can do is try your best do they test for performance enhancing drugs in boxing they do god damn these bastards they don't want us to have fun andrew take us on out of here buddy all right thank you everybody for checking out today's episode wait real quick real quick you mentioned the heart a few times is there anything do you have any type of heart issues no not now i mean my whole family has had heart issues so it's just kind of based on family history um and obviously the activity that i used to do like 10 years of no no conditioning and just

a bunch of lifting obviously the obvious side effect is is cardiac hypertrophy so obviously yeah my heart is enlarged i have a history of of um heart disease. My levels of omega-3s are low. Like my diet isn't like very high on things that are good for your heart. So I didn't do cardio for a long time. All of those were things that could become a problem. And it's just nice when you get checked. So I think a lot of people avoid getting checked because they're scared. They're scared of what they're going to see.

They're scared of what you're going to find. But man, I'd way rather know, you know know be prepared for the future thank you cool all right make sure you guys stick around for smelly's tip before we uh drop off here and uh make sure you guys hit that like button subscribe if you guys are not subscribed already drop comments down below let's hear what you guys have to say make sure you follow the podcast at mb power project on instagram tiktok and twitter my instagram tiktok and twitter is at i am andrew z and sema where you at and sema any honors going to youtube and seeing yin yang and t is at I am Andrew Z and Seema where you at? I'm Seema and I'm on Instagram

and YouTube and I'm seeing Yin Yang and TikTok and Twitter discords below check that out it's pop it in there

Steffi where can people find you? At Steffi Cohen everywhere pretty much yeah thank you so much and you know in terms of your heart hopefully you know that

zone 2 cardio can do quite a bit for it so that's some of the stuff that you're probably messing with now some of the running so maybe that will help a little bit give you a bit for it. So that's some of the stuff that you're probably messing with now with some of the running. So maybe that will help a little bit, give you a little bit more confidence with that. My tip for the day is just to, you know, I think being prepared is something that's very much overlooked.

And being prepared in your diet and being prepared with the many different things, the goals that you have, is going to make things so much easier for you. So we talk a lot in the show about habits, but it's hard to have the habits. It's hard to have the habit of eating properly when you have a house full of junk food. So try to prepare with things that are gonna set you up better for whatever it is that you're working on.

I know some people that have even turned like their living rooms into spots where they have yoga mats and they have a jump rope and they got an area to do pushups and things like that because they just weren't integrating, they weren't microdosing fitness into their lives and it made it easier to integrate that habit. So the more that you can do that,

the more that you can be prepared, the better off you're gonna be. Strength is never weakness, weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye. Bye.