Mark Bell's Power Project - Train the System: Reactive Speed, Chaos Proof Joints, and Real Athleticism

Episode Date: February 2, 2026

Today we get into what “training like an athlete” actually means: producing force, absorbing force, and reapplying it under time pressure, at weird angles, often on one leg. We break down reactive training (ball drops, unpredictable catches, changing stances), why people get hurt when everything is planned, and how open-skill work can build real-world durability.We also get into movement quality vs “just lifting,” fascia and flow training, foot and ankle strength, jump rope and pogo hops for low-cost athleticism, and why sometimes the best move for performance is subtraction, not more work. Plus: EMF talk, red light glasses, and the eternal quest to become “the best runner who’s squatted 1,000.”Special perks for our listeners below!🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWER to save 20% off site wide, or code POWERPROJECT to save an additional 5% off your Build a Box Subscription!🩸 Get your BLOODWORK/TRT/PEPTIDES! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com and use code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off Self-Service Labs and Guided Optimization®.🧠 Methylene Blue: Better Focus, Sleep and Mood 🧠 Use Code POWER10 for 10% off!➢https://troscriptions.com?utm_source=affiliate&ut-m_medium=podcast&ut-m_campaign=MarkBel-I_podcastBest 5 Finger Barefoot Shoes! 👟 ➢ https://Peluva.com/PowerProject Code POWERPROJECT15 to save 15% off Peluva Shoes!Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM?si=JZN09-FakTjoJuaW🚨 The Best Red Light Therapy Devices and Blue Blocking Glasses On The Market! 😎➢https://emr-tek.com/Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!👟 BEST LOOKING AND FUNCTIONING BAREFOOT SHOES 🦶➢https://vivobarefoot.com/powerproject🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast➢ https://www.PowerProject.live➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject

It gets to a point where you need to add stuff, and then it also gets to a point where you need to subtract. Subtraction can be a really great place for some athletes to start. How can we get people moving better and out of pain without doing too many stressful things? It's not like you're just old. You unfortunately are unpracticed. You're untrained. You're not trained for that particular thing. The measure of progress is how can we make this feel smoother and almost look effortless?

If it hurts to get on the ground, that's not a great place to be. It's a good idea to observe and try to figure out how do I get myself more used to these things. Get yourself so warmed up. Get such a pump that you can't get hurt. Do you have your info handle? I know. I need one, right? You should put it on.

It seemed like things got a little stirred up a little bit with some of the commentary on the EMF stuff, the substation being next to the 49ers stadium. But, you know, the guy that's bringing this up, the guy that's putting this on like substack and Twitter and stuff like that. We had David Herrera analyze it. and I'm excited for people to listen to David Herrera's podcast that we did with him recently. But this guy that's on Substack, I think Ryan, you have his name, but he's actually a quantum biologist. He's actually studying this stuff. So he's not like making stuff up.

He's not like just pulling stuff out of his ass. I would also like to say just to give people a little bit of my point of view on this kind of thing. I don't think that the 49ers are next to some sort of like nuclear bomb. and it's like messing everybody up. I don't think it's that simple. I think that it could be disruptive. It could be something that should be looked into. And my thoughts on it are if it was my team

and I had players like that that were sitting out, these are franchise players, these are fan favorites, these are amazing football, amazing athletes. Yeah. They're getting paid millions and millions of dollars. And I would at least just look into it and I would think,

how do we just mitigate that a little bit? Is there something that we can do? That's reasonable rather than just like move the team to like a different state or something. I totally get the skepticism and it's healthy to be skeptical. But it's also, I think, a good idea to kind of not absolutely, you know, pushed off to the side as not being something because even now, like people are starting to realize how EMF's in the bedroom when you're sleeping could be disrupted towards sleep. So you have companies like eight sleep paying attention to the EMF that's coming off of their devices.

You have people paying attention to their phones and the places that they see. You have, you know, we were just talking to David Herrera. You have athletes who are wearing riot headphones because there's a level of concern. I mean, it's just like the idea of like street lamps. You know what I mean? You're like, oh yeah, street lamps and light, this isn't an issue. And then you realize, oh, oh, this is causing me to actually feel and be more awake at these hours. And if this light wasn't present, I would feel more tired and feel sleepier. But it's literally the just the effect of a light at a certain period of time. So pulling that and seeing like, hey, that's not too ridiculous. Why would it be so ridiculous that potentially

there is something close that is putting off strong EMFs that could be affecting the way these because like, don't 49ers have like a much higher injury rate than other teams in the NFL? I'm not sure, but is that the case? That's what I've heard a bunch of times. I've never actually statistically looked it up to see exactly what's going on. But the laundry list of people that are hurt that are really, really high level that are like all pro is through the roof. And then on top of that, it seems like a lot of the guys are having trouble coming back. They come back and they get hurt again. We saw Kittle get injured recently. Both in Seema and I, even though in Seaman didn't grow up playing football, we understand how violent football is. Like it's a crazy sport all the way to the point

where Hall of Famer Marshall Fox said you run the ball, because he was a running back, said you run the ball one time in the NFL. Just run the ball up the middle. You will never be the same. You will never be the same person ever again. Oh my God. Like it's that tough. Yeah, yeah, yeah. According to him that, you know, he played for probably 20 years. It's a, it's a tough, it is definitely a tough sport.

And shit happens in like Kittle, Fred Warner, some of these guys, they're getting hurt where they're tangled up with somebody else. So I'm not going to sit here and say, oh, that's the EMF. It's the other guy that's trying to kill him. You know, the guy's trying to kill the person with the ball or you're, you know, in Fred Warner's case, he's trying to kill whoever has the ball. But if it's also a chronic thing. if it's this chronic output that could be affecting players, why not look into it?

Because, like, you know, these players are, first off, they're being paid a ton of money. The teams want these players to be successful. So why not actually just like, see? Maybe it actually is total bullshit. And everyone that's saying anything about it, you know, can then shut the fuck up. But like, at the meantime, like, let's take a look. Ryan, what are you pulling up over there? Well, right here on this guy's substack and the guy's name is,

is Peter Cohen. But it says that they're consistently in the top five most injured teams from 2014 to 2025. And I think that coincides with the new stadium, with Levi Stadium. The other thing, too, is some people were commenting saying like, oh, you know, it's kind of speculative speculation. But there are people that have gone there and actually measured, you know, the EMF coming off.

I don't even know the terminology of some of this stuff. but the magnetic field. And they measured in the weight room. We pulled that up on the podcast with David Herrera, where he mentions all that. And he went over it thoroughly. So I don't want to like sit here and just have a whole entire other podcast about it again. But it's not just a theory.

Like there actually is EMF. Whether the EMF is actually causing the damage is sort of where the theory comes in. But again, I'm just thinking to myself, can they do better? Can they figure out? Can they put up like a reflective mirror or something that like, you know, pushes off the EMF back the other direction or something weird like that?

Maybe they could because I know electricians and people like that, they wear reflective gear. Yeah. And that reflective gear, you know, helps keep some of the harmful stuff that they're exposed to helps keep that away. Well, you know, for the meantime, for each of us, it's something that we could be paying attention to for ourselves. Like, you know, I'm shifting from eight sleep to a chili pad.

I'm my AirPods in the airport I have a hard time shifting because you're just so convenient I think sometimes sometimes I think you um which is not easy to do sometimes you take the L you know just take the loss you know I was watching football last night and I just didn't know where the hell my red light glasses were and I'm like and Jake was talking trash of course he's like where's your rent light glasses I was like I don't know where they are like he's like oh he's like you're not sleeping tonight I was like I was like oh he's like you're not sleeping tonight I was like I was like I was like you're not sleeping tonight I was like I was Like, I know. The thing is, even right now, I hate to be that guy. Like putting these on while we're in the studio. But, you know, like, I get it in talking to David. I already have plenty of problems with my own image already. Being white and rich and middle age and everything else. Right?

You've got certain things going on over there too. And then now we're throwing in red glasses. It's a podcast meme. If you see somebody with these glasses on and a mic, steer clear. Well, because we're trying to just to sell you on pure, both, everything we say here. Steer clear, is trash. And now we're going to talk about fascia training. Oh, yeah. I can feel. I can feel my fascia. It's so different now because of the rope.

The rope that you gave me to twirl around like a maniac. Well, that's why I gave it to you. What are you thoughts on it? I mean, I think it seems like there's been some good discoveries recently and the movement pattern movement is great. that people are, you know, but we do hear that a lot. And it seems like maybe a word to try to just get people interested in a training system that, you know, might be different than what everybody else is preaching or something. You know, the cool thing, I think I've heard this from you, from Jesse Burdick, from so many like, Kelly Strait OGs in the space that over time, certain things that

weren't fashionable come back. And I think it's really good that, that's whether we call it faster training, or fluid movement training or or handling forces from different vectors or whatever it's I'm happy that that's making a I guess a comeback into people's algorithms for their personal fitness because people like people have been doing stuff like this for a long time but maybe it hasn't been as as much as popular in video or maybe it's been in books like there's this practitioner not practitioners is a famous coach's names Moshe Feldenkrae or Feldencross Feldenkra I don't know how to say his last name.

I've read a few of his books within the past few years. He was suggested to me by David Weck. And then another suggestion from, because I asked I, Edo Portel influences on him. Everyone talks about that book. Awareness through movement. Yeah. And I understand why.

Beas Feldonkrae, he went through everything from a, how can we get people moving better and out of pain without doing too many stressful things, having too many stressful inputs, in a very gentle way, right? So a lot of it came from helping people first understand how they related with their breath through their movement.

And then like when no one, Edo had us doing that thing underneath us, right? Bringing a level of awareness to the laxity in the rib cage and what we were able to do there. So it's like you could then feel that your shoulder was tight, that there's some tightness here and then maybe you could fix that over time

by bringing awareness to that space. There's a lot more to it, but that was a guy that I was doing that in like the 70s. And then like there's a video that I had Ryan, I said to Ryan of Hicks and Gracie, right, doing some bio-hinastica, body weight style flow-type movements. And you'll see, actually, Ryan, if you pull that up, the Hickson-Gracy thing, I want us to see this. Hickson probably didn't really lift often, did he?

Well, he lifted in a way, like in the choke documentary, you'd see Hickson. He had a band or something around his head, right? And he was like pulling against a truck to train his neck. So he did a lot of high volume calisthenics, but you notice here, like, obviously Hickson's a jiu jitzu black belt, but he's getting his body into deep positions while controlling himself through those ranges of motion. So it probably builds a bit of muscle,

but it also builds like physical intelligence to be able to move in many different ways without having to think about it. Right? He doesn't seem that Hickson is very limited in what he's able or like the ranges of motion he's able to access, right? So you see this right here, right? Then Ryan, I think in the fascia training thing, there's a lot of people who say,

hey, do this for 30 days will change your life because you'll get, you know, more hydration and water flowing through your body. And the thing is, kind of using your body to stretch itself, using your body, like, yeah, using your body weight. Like you're using your arms and your shoulders to kind of propel them, right? Exactly. Exactly. You're kind of just like you're moving from your bones in a way.

You know what I mean? you're kind of just flailing. But again, it's a level of body intelligence. It's a level of coordination. It's a level of movement without tension that I think more, it's good that people can discover that. And it's not like people are putting this forward saying this is going to help you build as much muscle as possible or anything,

but it's great that people are learning to use these movements to help free up excessive amounts of tension they're probably holding in their body. It's a net good, you know what I mean? But again, people like to make fun of it. Actually, can you pull up the parody of faster training video? I do hate the fact that you can't argue with Hickson Gracie because he's, I think, I think he went through his whole career undefeated, I think. Yeah, Hickson. So it's like, what can you say to the guy? Hey, I don't agree with that.

It's like, well, I don't know. He's like 200 to know or something like that. This video is actually pretty funny. It's from a strength coach and martial artist. Valdez Strength and Performance. Y'all should check out his page. He's really, he's really dope. toxin your system and rehydrate your fashion digestive issues vanish that's great well i mean that's kind of what we're starting to get towards right is you're getting towards dance you know i've said it before like if you were if you were jiu-jitsuing uh which hicks and gracy was kind of doing on the beach against himself right like against a an opponent that doesn't there uh exist like a shadow boxing right what is shadow boxing exactly yeah it's kind of dancing and you're like no but i'm getting ready

for a fight so you don't have to you know you know know, be caught dancing. But I think everyone has like maybe been to a little event or maybe a party or something. And you'll always see the guy who's like, oh, yeah, yeah. You always see the guy who's like shadow boxing by himself or talking about fighting. And he's just like, you're like, what are you doing, man? You don't really need to. Oh my God.

Like you don't really need to do that right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely awareness through movements a really good book. There's if there's just check out his stuff. if you're interested. I wanna say what I'm seeing in some of the videos we pulled up today and like watching Hicks and Gracie do what he was doing.

Yeah. Like he's using his upper body in some instances to sort of stretch his lower body, right? So like he'll have, he'll be like say like in a 90-90 like he is here and he just lean forward and that puts tension through the hamstring, puts tension through the glutes. And if you were to think about it, okay,

my upper body weighs X amount. Just like you're going to stretch your hamstrings. You're standing up. You bend down towards the ground, put your hands towards the ground, and you're now stretching your hamstrings, right? And he's doing these movements, but he's not like hanging out in these movements forever. He's moving from one thing to another where he is not only getting like a stretch, but he's also getting like a muscular contraction.

There's a good one right there. He's getting a muscular contraction where he, you know, has to like overcome or put himself into like a new position. So one of the things that I really like about some of this stuff is that this is very, very low level, very simple, although he makes it look graceful and he's amazing and he's Hicks and Gracie, but you don't have to be extraordinarily athletic. You don't need some crazy amount of fast twist muscle fibers or explosiveness or quickness or you don't need any of those things.

Yeah. You don't need a crazy resilient body. You just need a body that you're going to try to move and manipulate in some different ways. You know, the interesting thing about what you mentioned there is like, everybody has a body and can do things like this. But for example, if somebody is squatting weight, there's a difference between someone squatting a barbell, 135, 315, and 500.

We can tell that that 500 pound squat is stronger than the 200 and whatever pound squat maybe, right? But stuff like this, the difference in the weight, two people do it is the fluidity at which you see a Hickson doing it versus somebody who is new to it. Somebody new could probably go through those movements, but you're going to notice that there's a choppiness, there's a high amount of tension that they're holding, there's even probably a breathlessness that they seem to be having, maybe a breath holding that they're doing in certain positions where it doesn't look like the way Hickson does it. And the measure of progress is how can we make this feel smoother, look smoother, and almost look effortless, right? Just like

Anybody can do jujitsu, but there's a difference between someone who makes jujitsu look effortless and someone who makes jujitsu look effortful. They're doing the same movement, but one is very different from the other. And he's doing it on the beach, which is brilliant. I've actually done shit like that on the beach before. You were just streaming on the beach. Yeah. And you can actually find, like I can find like something that has a grade to it, a slight slant. And then I can move a little bit more like him.

I'll need that slant for me to be able to, you know, if I was to put my legs out wide and I'm sitting down. it's going to be very hard for me to really get forward a lot. It's going to be hard for me to like he was almost putting like, say like his forearms or his chest to the ground with his legs out in front of him. That's hard for me to do. But if I get on a slant, I can now do the exact same thing and then I can go in those 90-90 positions that he was in. I could do almost all the same things.

It would still look different than the way he's doing it, but I'd be able to perform it for myself. And again, like what's the recovery from something like that? What's how long does that take to recover from? It's, it might not cost. you anything in terms of recovery. Now it could cost you something because you could go into a certain position that's super unfamiliar and you could get soreness or tweak something a little bit. But for the most part, that's as free as the recovery from walking would be. Like it's not

any more strenuous than that. Could exactly. It could be. But I think like the downstream effects of developing those types of movement skills using your body, using a rope, using these different types of tools and developing a level of fluidity comes with. your ability to learn how to not hold on to that tension outside of your lifting or the intense things you do. There's a lot of people who do a lot of lifting as their primary movement practice and their primary exercise. They tend to hold a lot of tension outside of those practices. This is why I think it's really cool. And I think I everyone that watches this podcast knows you Chris Bumstead is. But hopefully more people pay attention to his journey in terms of

reclaiming his athleticism. Because I believe he's, He was a soccer player before all of this. But if you go to his Instagram, you'll see so many different videos of him now doing athletic type movements. I see him doing those some knees over toes type movements. You saw him do like the 40 and the jumps and whatever to see where he was. He's the best person in the world to have doing this stuff because we can't really say like, oh, well, he doesn't have the genetics for that.

You can't do it? You can't do it. He obviously had a prowess of athleticism beforehand. and then his ability, his ability to stack on muscle mass is unprecedented. Like we really have never seen anybody. He really looked quite like him before. It's bad to walking backwards. So he has, he definitely has some unique qualities, especially when it comes to muscle mass.

But he also seems to have some unique qualities when it comes to explosiveness, because I've seen him dunk a basketball before. I've seen him. Yeah, I've seen him do like avert test and he is very explosive with his jumping. So it's very clear that he has a very good strength to weight ratio. He's already very lean, which is not a requirement all the time of all athletes, but it can be because it makes it a little easier to move yourself through space. And then he also looks like he's very coordinated.

And when we saw him like sprint or something the other, you know, a couple days ago, that's like, well, that's going to not look coordinated or not look real clean or crisp the way that a high-level sprinter is going to look because it hasn't been anything he's been practicing. So it looks like he's getting into more of these things that he could potentially get into probably just feeling better because he has mentioned that he feels kind of wrecked from his bodybuilding career. And a lot of the way that he trained, he really liked to go to failure on most stuff. Not everything all the time, but I think most of the time he would push to that limit.

So he pushed his body really hard for many, many years. And then you're pushing your body in a caloric deficit. Not perpetually, not all the time either. but you're pushing your body for many, many weeks out of the year in a large calorie deficit. This is a guy that would have like 1,200 or 1,600 calories for like four or five weeks or something crazy like that. So he, yeah, he's no stranger to like, you know, pushing the shit out of his body. But now he's got to, you know, start to learn something a little different to see if he can get his body to relax. I think that he will have to get rid of.

of more and more. Like so it gets to a point where you need to add stuff and then it also gets to a point where you need to subtract. So I'm not sure exactly what his routine looks like now. Looks like he's feathering in or sprinkling in some athleticism, some athletic stuff. But I think depending on how fast he wants his advancements to go, he may have to abandon some of the bodybuilding stuff just for a bit or back way off to where it's like once a week or something.

I don't know. I don't know if I don't know if he'll want to do that or. how much that will matter for him. But that seems like it's the case for me. Every time I go to like do a workout, I'm like, it's the last thing I need is another like bench workout. Yeah. Last thing I need is another like, you know, arm workout or something.

I should just work on something different, work on something I suck at more. And I mean, if you notice the way that he's, the way that his training is being handled as far as, I guess movements that would stimulate muscle, a lot of those movements are done in probably ranges of motion that he didn't used to train in being a focused bodybuilder.

You know, like I mentioned the thing where he mentioned he had a broken body, but if you're a person that has taken muscle to its highest level for multiple years, there's going to be parts of your body that don't feel great. You know what I mean? Because at the end of the day, he's not just someone who body builds. He was the competitive bodybuilder. So there are probably areas that he feels are pretty, you know, feel pretty rough. But he's worked, like you saw him doing an ATG split squat.

You saw him doing long range peck flies. These aren't necessarily to build more muscle in the pecks. These are to allow them to be able to create force in these super long ranges where his body would typically be compromised. Or maybe he would feel kind of weak in those ranges. Now he's building a level of tendon strength, a level of ability to relax and create force there, which is going to be able to allow his body to open up

when he wants to attack things like aspects of sprinting. you know, which require you to be able to get your arm up in that arm swing. So, yeah, I think the trainer definitely knows what they're doing because they're not probably attacking, building more muscle, but probably filling in gaps of areas in terms of strength that he hasn't really touched throughout the years. Bring up a great point because there's a lot of exercise that you can do that sort of work on things simultaneously, which is really nice.

Lunges are a great one, an ATG split squat type of lunge. might be preferable. Yeah, there he is. Oh, shit, can you? Going for some dunks. See, your boy got up. Yeah, he can hop up there. But, you know, there's a lot of exercises when you start to think about it that do multiple

things. A pullover is one of them. A pullover is going to stretch your triceps. A pullover is going to stretch your lats. A pullover is going to be going to probably help bring your elbow closer to your ear. Even a tricep extension, like a ducrechev extension, like a dachrechev. deep tricep extension is a good way to not just like a tricep push down on a cable or something but you know where you're almost like a French press type thing that exercise is going to open

up the triceps for biceps or and or shoulder you saw them doing incline curls yeah various types of squats you can have one foot forward one foot back you can kind of mix up the different types of squats that you do you can do uh you know lateral lunges these are all exercises where you can kind of get a lot of bang for your buck you can train you're training multiple things at one time so as chris bumsstead's doing this exercise here this at g split squat what might not be recognized is how much training the back knee is getting the knee on the back side of the hip flexer at the back too yep the hip flexer and your feet yeah like if you're not used to that that is a tremendous position to get your foot into and your toes and everything so there's a there's a bunch of exercises that

If you're kind of clever with it, you can figure out flies, as you mentioned, Jefferson Curl, even something like an RDR. An RDR is a great movement where you can express really great range of motion. Step-up is another one. Trying to do a controlled step-up where you don't, there's no like fall at the bottom. You maintain speed and consistency all the way up and all the way down. It's very difficult. Yeah. So there's a lot of these exercises that you can incorporate.

They don't really require a lot of athleticism. They don't really require a lot of coordination. Sometimes they're a little balance to it, I guess. But that's about it. And you get the benefits of potentially being more mobile and being stronger in these ranges of motion. It's like, man, it seems like you're getting a lot of bang for your buck with stuff like that.

And then let's not forget. You saw him using the sled. Like you were just talking about the feet. I don't think we should undercut how important the foot is in relation to the rest of the body. You tend to forget it. sometimes when you become focused on lifting-based sports because the feet are just literally used as a as something you hold on like you create tension on right when you're squatting or

deadlifting but when you're forced to move through space whether it's sprint through space whether it's using your feet as a grappler you you I think people if you watch grappling for example and you watch like a lot of certain Brazilians or certain high-level guys in grappling You notice a bit more activation with how their feet are used when they're being used in certain guards than other people who don't do many things with their feet, especially in like passing positions. Like I'll watch Cassio who a majority of stuff out who's obviously like wearing flip-lops all his life. But you'll notice the way these people get into their toes is very different from someone who has weak feet. You know what I mean? And you'll notice in other sports too.

It's like your feet need to be able to help you the rest of your body handle the force of the ground in different ways. whether it's his he saw him he was moving backwards moving laterally your feet handle different forces so having something that can allow your feet to handle different forces from different positions along with the rest of your body is huge for your feet as the years go by Ryan see if you can find a clip of uh usane bolt with no gravity you were talking about your ability to like react with the ground um there's a video usane bolt trying to run with no gravity and It's really interesting. But yeah, your feet, you know, for myself, like practicing just doing some stuff on one foot.

When I do it barefoot, sometimes it kind of hurts. And then like how fast or explosive are you going to be if it sort of hurts. Is he just going to launch himself? So he's not, he's not himself when he doesn't have that. He has to have the ground. You know, he has to have gravity to be able to make contact with that ground the way he's used to, right? So sick. still beating everybody but but that's one thing like I you know another like running in the air

another thing that we haven't talked about here much here but it's it's important I think for people to have practices that allow them to continuously handle ground reaction forces so you're going to see people doing box jumps death drops etc I love um coach Brian McGinty and the things you see him and his athletes doing in terms of a lot of the cone stuff and that type of work. How I do that is like I do a lot of jump roping in different ways and I'll do a lot of higher hopping in different ways because I'm just getting my body used to be able to handle the ground with the impact, push it forward, push it forward. And it teaches your body how to organize itself so that you you don't, it doesn't hurt, right? It doesn't hurt to jump. It doesn't hurt to reapply that force

and put it through the rest of your body. And then you can do it in a bunch of different ways. But as I age, that's going to be something that I maintain because most people don't maintain that. But a very low level for you to maintain that and have it be fun is the jump rope, which is why I think like that's just, that's just something that people should build into their movement vocabulary or their personal movement practice. It has too much, too much benefit for the minimal cost, you know. Jumping rope, jumping. I mean, even just. Hoping in place. Pogo hops are super safe.

Yeah. You know. Get yourself a rebounder. Yep. If you're heavier or if you find it really difficult to even hop, get yourself a rebounder. It's a great place to start jumping back and forth over like a line on the ground. You know, a crack in the pavement or something. Pretty simple, you know, pretty simple for most people to do.

And then you could get more complicated. You could try to do, you know, where you're starting with two feet and then you're starting, then you're trying to do one foot. And you can get more and more complicated with that. and you can try to go forward and backward. You can go left and right. There's just so many different things that you can get into with that. But those are all things that are going to get you used to the ground.

Those are all things that are going to help build up your ankle, help build up your foot. And you've got to just kind of think about it. Like if you can't, if the ground hurts, if it hurts to get on the ground, it hurts to get up from the ground. That's just not a great place to be. It's a good idea to observe and try to figure out how do I get myself more used to these things? things. Something like, you know, jumping down or getting down from like this podcast desk that we're at. This got some, some height to it. Yeah. You know, um, for me, I don't even know if I have the ability to like, or have the mobility to get up on it. You probably figure out a way to get up

on here. But to get down from here, um, now I could just like jump down and be okay. Uh, a few years ago, I'd have to like, size it up and be like, I think I'm going to put my butt down on there first, like a little kid and then shimmy off the side, you know. So the different strategies that you develop, I mean, that could be something like you're not going to really run into that scenario that often. Sometimes though, you're on a hike. You know, you're going to do something and there's kind of a pretty large ledge or something that you have to sort of jump down from. And it'd be nice to have that ability to be able to do that. Yeah. And that's actually one reason why I like the rebounder a lot because what I do with the rebounder now is like I'll be jumping on it, but then

I'll jump off of it. And land on something. And land on something. And sometimes I'll leave. Yeah, land on the ground. And sometimes I'll just land. Sometimes I'll land and try to hop again immediately. Right.

So it's like it's a great tool for it can be progressed just like all these things that we're talking about right now. Oh, you play this video? Yeah. Let's play real quick. Why not? You got transitioned into this discipline after more than a decade of bodybuilding. I know how hard it can.

be to get into such a discipline. And in Seabom's own words, he's trying to fix a broken body after a lifetime of bodybuilding. So now he's implementing some range of motion-based exercises, and I have to admit he's not looking bad at all. I think he has some genetics to display decent range of motion. Shoulder flexion moves nice and smooth overhead. Then we have the hip flexion raises where we see a little bit of hamstring tolerance and a strong hip flexor to lift that leg. I don't think it's unreasonable for him to develop proper hamstring range of motion. And then in this knee-over-toe's lunge, he's looking quite smooth with proper dorsiflection, knee-over-toe ability, as well as a hip extension to go with it that is not shabby at all.

Secretly, I wish he would hire me for learning proper German hangs and shoulder dislocates to go with it. That would be wild on his frame. This isn't Instagram page Hilderson Joaquin. Is that it? Yes. Yeah. He's good to look up guys for, because he has a lot of scapular stuff on his page.

So if you're trying to unlock certain things with like, go to that third video right there. I saw this the other day. It's pretty insane. Watch these pull downs. Shit. Right? Behind the back pull down. You know, again, when looking at some of this stuff, let's not think, oh,

That's not the optimal way to gain back strength, which I think most people who watch this podcast, know that's not how we're looking at things. But the ability to exude a level of strength at that position, that means that he has a level of stability and control over that position, right? It's not just passive levels of flexibility,

which is really cool. That's pretty crazy. Yeah, I think Chris Bumstead looks amazing in some of those videos they were just showing like with his shoulder mobility. I mean, considering all the, the lifting and all the things that we sometimes even talk about, all the things that lifting can potentially cause, you know, we sometimes on the show will say, well, hey, if you're only lifting,

then here's some potential things that could happen to you. But it doesn't look like it happened to Chris Bumstead because it looks like he has kept good ranges of motion. I don't know if he stretches or if he's been utilizing good, healthy ranges of motion throughout his whole bodybuilding career or exactly how he handled it. But even though he says his body's broken, I think he's probably, he's probably exaggerating to some extent. He probably feels beaten because what he did was very, very hard, very difficult. And again, many, many days and many workouts and many days spent being extremely sore. A lot of mental just, you know, being able to push through, push through, push through, oh, it's only four more weeks.

So it's only three more weeks. That's a lot. That's a lot. So he probably kind of, I don't want to speak for him. but he probably just kind of thinks like, I need something different or I'm going to continually beat the shit out of this body that has served me so well. For the context of bodybuilding,

it's absolutely not broken. That's a fucking Olympia winning physique. But for the context of sprinting, it can be broken. Right. Because he attempted a sprint and immediately pulled his hamstring when he wasn't even going at full speed. Yeah.

He probably, like, even his coach, the coach, his coach was like, don't go full speed. And he didn't. I first started hearing about transcriptions from Thomas to Lauer. And, you know, Thomas is somebody that's an animal with working out. You got a chance to work out with him. I worked out with him. And he's kind of always on the front lines of like, you know,

finding out about these new companies that have cool things. But I didn't really realize that proscriptions was the first company to put out methylene blue. Now look at methylene blue. It's so popular. It's everywhere. It's one of those things. If you guys listen to this podcast, you know, I'm very iffy with the supplements that I take.

Because there's a lot of shady stuff out there. You've got to be careful. The great thing about transcriptions is that when people want to get methylene blue, usually they'll go on Amazon, they're going on with these other sites. It's not third-party testing. It's not dosed. A lot of people end up with toxicity from the blue that they get because there's no testing of it. Transcriptions, they have third-party testing for their products. It's dose so you know easily what exact dose of methylene blue you're getting in each troki.

So you're not making some type of mistake. There's not going to be anything in it. It's safe. you can have it dissolve and you can turn your whole world blue if you want or you can just swallow it. They have two different types of methylene blue. They have one that is, I believe, dose at 16 milligrams. And they have another one that's dosed at 50 milligrams. So make sure you check the milligrams.

I don't recommend anybody start at 50 milligrams, but the 16, I feel, is very safe. You can also score the trokeys and you can break them up into smaller bits. Yes, what I do. And in addition to that, on top of the methylene blue, they have a lot of other. great products of stuff as well. They got stuff for sleep. They got stuff for calming down, all kinds of things. I got to say I use it about two or three times a week. I use it before Jiu-Jitsu. And the cool thing that I've noticed, and I've paid attention to this over the past few months, is that after sessions, I don't feel as tired. So it's almost like I've become more

efficient with just the way I use my body in these hard sessions of grappling. And it's like, Cool. That means that, I mean, I could go for longer if I wanted to and my recovery is better affected. It's pretty great. I know Dr. Scott, sure, we had him on the podcast and he talked quite a bit about how he recommends methylene blue to a lot of the athletes that he works with. Yeah. And they're seeing some profound impacts. And one of the things I've heard about it is that it can enhance red light. So those are you doing red light therapy or those of you that have some opportunities to get out into some good sunlight. It might be a good idea to try some methylene blue before you go out. on your walk or run outside or whatever activity is that you're going to do outside. And this stuff is great, but please, like first off, they have stuff for staying calm. They have stuff for sleep. But remember, this stuff isn't a substitution for sleep.

This isn't a substitution for taking care of nutrition. This is supposed to be an add-on to all the things that we already should be doing, and it's going to make things so much better if you're doing everything else too. And I think this is just a little different, too, than just adding some magnesium to your diet. I think this is a little different than, you know, treat these. things appropriately, make sure you do some of your own research, but... Oh, if you're taking medications. Yeah.

S-S-R-I's, you better talk to your doctor first. Don't, don't be popping these things. And if you're taking any medications at all, it'd be good to double triple, quadruple check and make sure that you're safe. Transcriptions has a lot of great things that you need. So go and check out their website when you have the opportunity. Strength is never a weakness, weakness, weakness, never strength, catch you guys later.

But the fact that you don't feel comfortable enough to put full horsepower through your body and it like, boom, then I can understand it. That's the most challenging thing is you don't know what full speed is. Because full speed, like, you would think like full speed would be the point where you tear something, right? Like, but you're not moving very fast, you know, in the video that he, where he was running, he's probably running like, I don't know, eight miles an hour or something. Like not incredibly fast. And you could still get hurt.

Yeah. And to be such a high level athlete at something else, man, that is really, it's demoralizing. I've had to happen a bunch of times myself where I've had these regressions. had injury and I'm like man I wasn't I was trying to I thought I was backing off a lot it felt like I was backing off a lot but that's demoralizing because that's my tolerance for that activity right now yeah you just got to face the music at where you're at for the moment and that's the thing it's it's everybody comes from different backgrounds when it comes to this like Chris it's not that he needs more more of ability to produce force, right? It's his handling of the force. It's how much

tension he's holding through those types of movements because a lot of people that come from a lifting background. When they go and they do something like sprinting, which requires a level of fluid movement, which requires a level of elasticity and not holding on to tension, it's a very difficult thing when the practice that you're extremely good at requires you. Did I say extremely? extremely good at requires you to hold on to tension throughout like every single movement you're doing, especially as you go heavier. So now doing something that's on the opposite spectrum of that,

but does require you to have a lot of power, a lot of ability to handle ground forces, but low tension, it's a very different thing from what you do. You know what I mean? Which is why a lot of athletes who focus on lifting and don't have these types of inputs tend to be really, really bad sprinters.

You know? So it's just it's it's it's going to be cool to see it like how his body changes because the thing is he was a soccer player. Let's remember that. So he was going up for header his headers and he could jump. He could sprint. So that's encoded in his body. It's just finding it in a body that's probably 50 pounds heavier than what he was. Yeah, I think the worst thing about, you know, sometimes being older is that you think that you have the capacities when you're younger. And it happens to you see it a little bit more with men like men just don't want to accept that they're getting. getting older. And you shouldn't accept getting older. You should continually work on don't die trying to be as young as you can be for a long time. But the problem is it's the absence of these inputs. So it's not like you're just old. You unfortunately are unpracticed. You're untrained. You're not trained for that particular thing. Yeah. I remember in high school, one of the cheerleading coaches was friends with my mom. And she was saying how often the cheerleaders get hurt. And I was just thinking to myself, well, a lot of the cheerleaders are like

untrained. Like they're going out for something that requires gymnastics. Cheerleading requires a lot of somebody. And if they don't have like a base coming in, if they had a base coming in, maybe maybe things would be a little bit different. So it's not like you're just getting old. It's that you are untrained. You're untrained for some of the things that you're trying to do, even though Chris Bomstead doesn't look untrained. He's untrained for that particular activity, just like I'm untrained in some of the things that I'm working on. Before we watch this video, can I quickly just give you guys a quick story of 33-year-old stupidity? So I went into Jiu-Jitsu a few weeks ago. It was like maybe two and a half weeks ago. Very cold. It's really, really cold outside. I was late,

obviously, I didn't go to warm-ups and I missed some of the instruction. So I was going into sparring, right? My toes were cold. So, like, I knew like, um, I should warm up, should do something, but I was like, nah, I've been good. I've barely been injured this whole year. Body's been feeling great. First roll, you know, I'm like moving a little bit slower, but I like, then I did something faster than I should have tweaked my back. It's been so long since I'm tweaked my back.

But it's just another thing. It's just one of those things where you know what you should do. And even when you're feeling great, just do the shit you know is going to be good for you, as in get your tissues warm and warm up before doing shit. Because maybe, I don't know, maybe when I was much younger, I didn't warm up as much, even though I did, I do. But it's just something you forget, you know what I mean. So just a warning. Do the stuff you know you got to do.

It might be a little extreme, you know, to warm up to certain levels. But like I know Matt Wenning is a huge proponent of like hundreds. Yeah, it works so much that you like get a pump. Now that might not be ideal for going to do a sprint, right? Like getting like a leg pump and then going sprinting might not be the best idea. but the idea of let me make sure I'm really really actually like warm working up a good sweat I'm not literally cold right body temperatures up heart rates up like if you only get your heart rate to a hundred and then you're going to start sprinting out of nowhere that's not a good idea it's

like get your heart rate up well over a hundred maybe to 120 140 or so and then have some sort of thing where you're doing something for multiple minutes where your heart rate is going up and down from, you know, maybe going to the 120s, 140s and stuff like that. Yeah. For a little while before, you know, you're not trying to, you're not trying to do like so much stuff before sprint that you don't have the ability to produce force anymore. You're not trying to fatigue yourself. But you do need to get warm.

And I remember when Ben Patrick was here, he talked about backward sled dragging. And again, I'm not saying a backward sled dragging would be a great idea to tire yourself out with backward sled dragging, then go sprint. but he had a good point and he said get yourself so warmed up get such a pump that you can't get hurt yeah and that what he means by that is it slows you down so much because you have all that blood in there again i'm not trying to advocate for wearing yourself down and then doing highly explosive stuff because you could really probably fuck yourself up that way but the point being like for what we were doing for that particular day because we were doing controlled stuff that was all

knees over toes stuff, it was a perfect analogy and perfect way to warm up for that activity. It's important. Get yourself warm before you could do anything intense, like sprinting. Don't be stupid. I just check this video up. He called me, and I say that casually.

You know, like he, Sequin called me and I was kind of shaken. My son Troy, who runs my Instagram, said, hey, I think Seeklon Parkley, can't call you. You know, thanks for the heads up. So he called. And it's a great story. I'll tell it forever. Seiquan says, I love your stuff.

I feel like at the age of 26, I'm a step slow and I'm getting hurt all the time. I'm starting to feel old, and I'm about to sign with somebody. And I said, who? And he wouldn't tell me. I could have made some money. You know, you get that on that stuff, right? He wouldn't tell me.

And I said, you're not going to like my answer. You shouldn't add anything. You need to subtract. I know, I know what you do, and it's way too much. He paused, and then he said, so maybe instead of doing like two sets of 10-hundreds, maybe do one set of five. I go, no, no hundreds. And then the pause was like very long.

I heard kids run around the background and stuff. And he goes, coach, I feel like I've been brainwashed. I go, we all have. Yeah, yeah. We all have. Mamba mentality. You got to get up a four in the morning. You know what happens to like a 19-year-old kid when they started doing Mamba? They get hurt. They break down eventually. And it's bad. It's a crash. Kobe Bryant wasn't doing those things when he was a teenager. He started very late. Sure. So I keep trying to tell people that what you see is what the athlete wants you to see. And none of them want you to see. And none of them want you to see. that they are God's gift to athleticism.

They have phenom traits. There are unicorns. There are things that the three of us could have never been, no matter what we did. They don't want to see that. They don't want us to see that. What they want us to see is incredible hard work. Every single great athlete wants to show you that side of them.

They don't want you to see. you know like the sleep side you know yeah yeah yeah right what's this guy's name uh it says the athlete IQ lab let's see here i see if his name's anywhere steve haggerty and coach a rob you know yeah that guy's that guy has a lot of good points i see a lot of his uh his videos go ahead well i i before we get to the sequan part um the reason why i agree and i would also disagree with the last thing that he was talking about is like he used Kobe's specific as an example. And you have stories throughout the league of players who were like, shit, I was, it was before a game and Kobe was already in there sweating.

You have coaches talking about how he was in his offseason. You have other players talking about how fucking mad he would be at them for not working harder. That guy was really about it, along with like, you know, being very talented. But then you'll also hear the stories of him being a youth. And in youth basketball leagues, he was getting dominated for a period of time. until he worked on, like he noticed, there's a story of Kobe when he was 11. And, you know, he noticed that like,

he was doing a lot of things right-handed, and he realized, like, if I could cross with my left, the way that these guys play defense, they're not going to be able to guard me. So he built a level of left-hand proficiency that all these other young kids didn't have, which any young kid can build left-hand proficiency. But it takes a certain type of person

who's really trying to become a master of what they do to think, let me work on that bad side. And be willing to be frustrated. Right? So the reason why, I mean, the part that I agree with is like, you know, there's no way that a certain person might be able to get to the point of Kobe Bryant because he was 6'6. You know, he was playing basketball since he was a four, three-year-old kid

because his dad was a professional player, right? So there are all these intricate aspects where it's like some people, you know, if you're not in the right place, if you don't have the right height, maybe you could never be a Kobe. but can we look at that can we not because what he just did at the end was totally now negate the work ethic right it's like now it's like he's purely talented but the way he thinks about the game and the work ethic is not important which is like a big part of what he did and who he was as an athlete that and even the recovery side of things you have a lot of players that do talk about the importance of let's not go out and party let's not eat this stupid. stuff like their lebron is in the league for so long people say just because of drugs but he is very he talks about that recovery side of things so that's that i don't agree with that because i think these players do put these things on a pedestal you know he he had a lot of good points there number one i'll

just address the fact that he talked about subtraction um subtraction can be a really great place for some athletes to start yeah um i would say from what we know of sequo Juan Barclay, seems like he lifts often. I don't know if the story's true of him mentioning that he does 20, 100 meter sprints. That's a lot, like two sets of 10, he said. It would depend on the intensity at which you do that and your proficiency.

100 meters, by the way, is... It's a distance. A hundred meters is far. Yeah. Far than you'd expect. It's freaking far. Like, it's a lot. Like, you're running...

If you run 20 of them, you're running a few miles for the day. And I don't, I don't want to speculate on whether I guys telling truth or not or if he exaggerated how much work he was doing. There you go. There's the math. It's five miles. It's five miles of sprinting. And as Sequant Barclay who's heavily muscled, honestly like that would torch. So even if he did half of that, let's say that he ran about three miles sprinting or something like that, 2.5 miles. Yeah, going in and maybe saying, hey, you know, you probably do need to subtract.

I know that Jesse Burdick, I know that Eric Cressy, I know some of these people that have worked with real high-level people. Yeah. They do have to say, hey, why don't we just not do that? Like, there's a couple other side things that you love to do or these couple extra sets that you like to do on your way out of the gym because they're fun. Can we just like not do those for like a few weeks so that we can be healthier, you know? And then somebody reports back and they're like, hey, like I feel completely unbelievable. I feel like a different athlete. And that's when you get the rapport back and forth

between a great coach and a great athlete. But yeah, sometimes subtracting stuff isn't a bad idea. Most of what we know of Sequin is like he lifts his face off. Can squat over 600 pounds. I know many people that have been close to him and they said they have never seen anybody so explosive. He just has tremendous explosive capability. So it does kind of make you think like does a guy need another training session.

Now, if we go to his side of it, the way that his mind and his brain I'm imagining the way that it would work, I was never able to express anything near what someone like Saquan Barclay can express. But in my efforts to squat the most amount of weight I could, bench press the most amount of weight I could, the work that I put in was really important. and if you're like bro those speed workouts are killing you you can't do them anymore i would still i'd still want to find a way i'd probably give you the finger yeah i'd still probably want to find a way to do them maybe i would listen to you a little bit because maybe my elbows are banged up my knees are banged up and i'm like okay well maybe i should cut back on them i would do what saiquan did there is

like hey can i just cut back on them yeah it was important for me to go in the gym crank some music use the bands, use the chains and go pop, pop, pop, and rack the weight and feel like a stud and then do it again and again. And maybe for other athletes, maybe they don't need, maybe they don't need those inputs. Maybe they can just be calm and chill and walk up to the bar because they did their training, they did their X amount of sets, X amount of reps and they got strict protocols with their rest periods. I never really worked well that way.

Yeah. I knew that I had to put in a certain amount of work. It didn't feel like it was like overdoing it. But if some coach pulled me back from that, I wouldn't have the confidence to squat a thousand 80. I wouldn't have confidence to handle 800 pound benches week in and week out. Like it takes a certain amount of like courage just to do that shit in the first place. But I needed reassurance by doing it. I had to, I had to do it.

I couldn't just be like, oh, well, I'm just going to train with these other percentages. Because that's going to save my tissues and save my joints. And then on game day, it's going to be awesome. Like I would have been too nervous, you know, but as it was, I usually had most of my work done and I was able to be more calm and more confident in what I was doing. So I'd imagine that Saquan Barkley and a lot of other athletes probably feel the same. Like if I'm getting my shit done, then on game day I should be able to kick a lot of people's ass. Absolutely.

I think, you know, one small thing to add on to that is like, and that we can apply to ourselves is not NFL players is finding wins in other areas of movement. you know because say Juan's all like he can he can do the intense stuff he can do the sprints he could do the lifting but you do a lot of that and it can it can end up having diminishing returns and potentially even have being a negative feedback loop if you overwork yourself you're somebody who has a tendency of overworking yourself think think of david guggins there's a lot way more to admire david gagins than not but the one thing that you may look at david gonz and say, I can learn from not doing that is, even though he's the guy who puts in all the work,

maybe you don't put in as much work. Maybe you find other areas that you can put in work that don't harm you because he has his distance running as an aspect of his work, but sometimes he may be doing that to his detriment. So think to yourself, could there be just like Bumstead? If he kept and continues to bodybuild style lift and focus on linear aspects of strength, Is that going to serve his movement goals and interests? Potentially not. He might have to back off from that and find wins in other areas that are actually helping him

promote his body in different places, you know? As far as the genetic side of it go where, you know, he started mentioning some of those other things about, you know, never being able to be like somebody else. You know, there's definitely some truth to some of that. But I think that the earlier in life that you think that stuff, I think the more true that it's going to be for you, like, you know, like, you set your truth. And I always, I love football. I still watch football all the time. I've always loved the NFL. When I was a kid, I wanted to be an NFL player. As I got older,

the reality set in that I wasn't necessarily going to do the work that I needed for me to be able to get there. Maybe there's some other people that need less work because maybe they were track athletes or maybe they came from a different sport and they were already quick and already had some good attributes that rolled over well into football. But for me, I was, I was going to have to do more work. I was going to have to figure out a way to make myself quicker. I was going have to figure out a way. And the strength part, I was plenty strong enough. So that, that part wasn't a huge issue. But as I got older, I realized, like, it's not, it's not a lack of talent. Like, I have a, I have pretty good talent within me.

I have pretty good stuff within me. But I don't think I caught on early enough to understand how hard I really needed to work. Actually, question for you on that, Mark. Because you started lifting when you were like 12 or 11. I started young. You started young. Was lifting like the main form of sport for you?

Because you did how lifts early too, but did you play sport early too? Or was it? I just didn't realize. I didn't, I did not realize how much athletic. criticism and how much conditioning you need in football. Oh, okay. Like, you have to be like in really good shape. And as a kid, as like a teenager, I went through a period where I got pretty heavy. Like I was like 240 or something and I think it was like 16. So I was like big, but I was like big and fat. And I was big,

fat and slow for a little while. And then I made myself faster. But it was hard to like, you know, go back and forth, right? And try to manipulate myself into something awesome when I already went through a time period where I probably missed some spots, you know what I mean? Like from the ages of the most important ages for that probably would have been somewhere between eight and like maybe like 16. You know what I mean? Yeah. And somewhere in there I got fat eating like Doritos and shit like that. I have this core memory from eight years old. My soccer coach Brandon Cavett at the time was having our team do hill sprints up and back, up and back, up and back, up and back. I remember being so tired at the And Brandon was like, oh, and Seymar, are you being over here being a prima donna?

And I was like, no, that shit scars. I still remember it was a rainy day. But yeah, that's the, like that stuff is necessary. Gotta be in shape. You gotta be in shape. Gotta be in shape. Yeah, the only like running I did was whatever we were forced to do. You know, meanwhile, here I was thinking I was like, oh, I'm training for football.

But I was kind of lying to myself. I'm being, like, if I'm looking back at it now. Yeah. And I understand the work ethic. that I put in when I was powerlifting. I just, I did not understand or have that when I was young. I had good work ethic. I love doing the stuff.

I was listening to the coaches. I was trying to get better, but I was kind of halfway lying to myself about, you know, thinking that I was doing everything in my power to be better. And so I think the genetic stuff, I think sometimes is too limiting and I don't really like when people talk that way.

I do understand what they mean. You can't be like somebody else, but you can be you and how good of a you can you be. That's what the question is. What can you turn yourself into? Can you know, if you run a 5.340 yard dash, does that automatically mean you can't make the NFL? No, it doesn't.

If you're trying to be a wide receiver, it puts you out of the game, right? You're just literally way too slow. But Jerry Rice, you know, he didn't have the fastest 40 time out of everybody, but he's the greatest wide receiver ever. His stats are just out of this world. He played for like 22 seasons.

He's the cream of the crop because he, because of how he trained. And because of he just got smart with the way that he would run his routes and stuff. He wouldn't even really, he was unbelievable. He wouldn't even really like juke people or fake people out much. He just would run shit so precise that other people couldn't cover him. This was kind of amazing. So you can find your niche. You don't have to always just have like some crazy.

talent that you do a little bit of training and next thing you're in this fairy tale land where you're a mega superstar this video uh let's check it out who statistically the best athletes in the world are recent research analyzed what separates elite performers from everybody else and the answer is probably going to challenge everything you think you know about athletic success big biceps it's not the most naturally talented. It's not the ones who have the best genetics. It's not even the ones who started the earliest. Here's what they discovered. That's probably going to mess with your head a little bit. The best athletes have one trait that predicts success more than anything else. Conscientiousness. Not talent, not physical gifts, conscientiousness. They're disciplined, organized, reliable,

and willing to do consistent, high-quality training even when nobody is watching. This is one of the most robust predictors of performance across all sports. And this is what separates elite athletes from everybody else. They have extremely low neuroticism. That means better stress tolerance, fewer negative emotions, and more stable performance under pressure. Average athletes, they crumble when the stakes are high. Elite athletes thrive because they have trained their emotional stability as hard as their physical skills. But here's the trait that nobody really expects. Grit, not short-term motivation,

long-term perseverance and passion for goals, resistance to dropout, sustained effort despite setbacks. Research shows that consistently persistent athletes with high grit show the strongest long-term engagement and success. Most people think great athletes are born with superior genetics or discovered early by the right coach. But the research proved, otherwise, the traits that create elite athletic performance are all developable. Conscientiousness through discipline training, habits, emotional stability through pressure, exposure, and grit through sustained commitment to long-term goals. The athletes who fail, they aren't less talented. They just lack the discipline to train consistently when motivation fades. They crumble emotionally

under pressure and they quit when progress slows them down. If you guys want daily practices to develop the... Give that guy a shout out. Can you find his name? Yeah, his page is Real Nat Berman. Some very good points there. Some things that maybe you're not thinking of,

some things that are unconventional. One thing I would say is that, you know, there's so many circumstances in order to create a good athlete, we're basically talking about, we're basically talking about people playing sports when they're young, right? We're basically talking about people starting out in a sport when they're fairly young and then,

not necessarily like super young, but we're talking about people having coaches and people probably being like almost like high school athletes. So something that's interesting is that a coach or a mentor can really change your life, just by the words they say just by the you know they might see something in you and say something in you that's like super inspiring or they might uh notice or recognize something in you that that sets you on the path that that guy just talked about yeah they might say hey you're a rare talent i think i think

uh casio when you first walked in there he said i think you have the ability to be a world champion or something like that right yeah or like we're going to be able to get a black belt or something something like yeah yeah and that's like shit that does everything for you you're like well I want to prove my coach, right? Yeah. So I'm going to be here pretty often, you know, working on getting better. And I see, I like the angle that he took towards this versus some of the stuff that

that last coach was talking about towards the end because we can all understand that genetics and talent all, this is all important. But it's, it's most, I think most people, when they look at progression, they look at all the reasons why they can't be great because they lack these intangibles that they have no control over, right? But conscientiousness means that you do your work well and thoroughly. Can every single person do whatever they do well and thoroughly? Yes, but do most people do the things within the things that they enjoy well and thoroughly? Right. Do you do the research needed to figure out what ways you can improve outside of maybe what other people are telling you to do. Everyone can do that.

Not everyone chooses to. And that is what you have control over. And it makes sense that the best athletes have a high level of conscientiousness because there will be in the pros, there are guys who probably can jump higher than some of the best in the league or are faster or have X, Y, and Z traits. But a Nikola Yokic still exists, a guy who can barely jump, right? But he, he, he, he, he, He looks at the things that he can do, his passing, his reading of the court, right? And he makes those things as great as he can. At 41 years old, LeBron is still doing great stuff. And is it just because he's a great athlete?

Everyone has always talked about his crazy athleticism, which is true. But he is thorough with his recovery. He is thorough with the way things he puts his body through because he knows the demands that he needs to place on it. Right? Things that some other younger guys might not be paying attention to and maybe they get injured more than LeBron. does, right? So I really like the conscientious aspect of what he was talking about because that's that's true. I wonder too, like in the study, you know, like who they studied and and different things like that, like how far it went. Because like what are they, what's the measure of success? Is

the measure of success being like a pro or is a measure of success playing in college? Like, not a lot of people play college sports. Not a lot of people, uh, are scholarship to athletes. So there's pro athletes. Like we all know about pro athletes. Like that's an amazing feat. We all know about Olympic athletes. That's amazing feat. But someone to even get like a scholarship is a fairly rare.

It's more rare than what you might think. If you think about the people that you know that are scholarshiped athletes that actually went to that university and carried through, did the things well and thoroughly every single day and graduated. it's usually few and far between of the people that you can think of in your head. But we do have a lot of control over, you know, making ourselves better. There obviously is like a particular, you know, I don't know, there is a particular, there's some particular things that you're born with when you go to do something that reveal that you might be slightly better than some other kids in a particular area. that's why you are encouraged to play many different sports.

Yeah. You know, hey, play soccer, play football, play baseball. You're like, man, I suck at this one. I don't know. I don't really like this one. None of those make me feel like it. Oh, this one, I feel good when I play this one. And I can actually be like a part of the team.

I can contribute. I can help the team win. Whereas the other ones you don't feel as great with. And who knows if that's like nature or nurture, maybe your dad played football or something like that. But a really interesting thing is that in the NFL, there are so many players in the league that have had other family members make it to the NFL. And, and, you know, we are talking about, like, stature.

And there's a lot of things, right? Like a guy being 6'5. Okay, that's a huge help. The Hayward brothers on the, on the Steelers, they're like 11 years apart, which is interesting. But one of them is a defensive lineman. The other one is a, the other one's an offensive player. And their dad was Craig Ironhead Hayward, which famously was part of a commercial for like, I think it was like head and shoulders.

And he made famous the lufa, which a lot of people don't know. A lot of people don't know, but he was in a commercial where he made fun of the lufa. He like did this like high pitch, squeaky voice. He said, hi, Ironhead, what's up with that thingy? He like waved a lufa around. And he was using a lufa. And so this big, strong, you know, this, so Craig Ironhead Hayward was like a 270-pound running back. Running backs are usually 200 pounds.

Why? Whoa. So this was like, this guy was the original bus. Look how big he is. Jesus. Yeah, he was just massive. So here's, yeah, here's the commercial. That doesn't have heavy moisturizers.

But Ironhead, what's with this thing? There you go. That lather builder. That guy made the lufa famous forever. The ladder builder. And had dudes using the lufa. I love my lufa. I don't think of a guy would use one before this.

We have Craig Ironhead Hayward to save the day. Unfortunately, he was a bigger guy and I think he may have had heart disease or something. He passed. But he has two children that are playing in the NFL. And you got like the Watt brothers and you have the mannings and you have, there's like a pedigree. There's just tons of players that have had. There's Christian McCaffrey on the 49ers, and his dad was a Hall of Fame wide receiver with the Broncos.

And his dad was like, hey, like, if this is what you want to do, I'll show you everything, but it's going to suck. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's going to be really hard. You're going to want to cry. Because those people know about the conscientiousness. Those people know that you're going to have to do, this is the amount of work that it's going to take.

And if you want to do it, you'll probably get super duper close, or you should be like at least within reach of achieving your goal. Yeah. But it's going to be brutal. And his dad was teaching them all kinds of stuff. And the time he was like a little kid, I think there's like videos and stuff of him, you know, putting his football pads on as like a little kid. And his dad's like going over it with him.

It's like, no, you want your pads to be small. You tape them down. And like he's pretending like he's a pro already. Yeah. He's like nine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like, you don't want your pads to be that bulky because then it's easier for people to grab him. You don't want your jersey to be all loose.

You want a jersey that's like two or three sizes too small. Like taught him everything, not just the food, not just the skills of the game, taught him like all the little tiny nuances of the game. And now, you know, Christian McCaffrey is one of the better running backs in the NFL and he'll go down as an all-time great as well. It totally makes sense, though. And when your parents there, you also have this belief that you can get in the dad-dated shit. Why can't I?

You know, it's that's powerful. Anyway, I think, Ryan, we can edit what I'm about to say here, but I think some of the other videos we had, we can save that for a second pod. Yep, yep, yeah, with Wenbiana and all that other stuff, right? Yeah, all right, cool. Just make sure to edit that little end part out.

Yeah, cool. Yeah, man, I think there's all kinds of cool stuff you can do to be a better athlete. I think some of the stuff that we showed and demonstrated today, I mean, just some of the mobility stuff and some of those movement things, I don't think. that those are things that are difficult to do.

There's things that are definitely way more challenging and take way more coordination. But even some of the stuff we were doing today where we were just throwing around a tennis ball. And you were like, oh, throw the tennis ball with your left and throw it up against the wall. It was fun.

And then when I tried throwing it far, I lost it and threw it on the roof. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we chucked it on the roof. But it's just fun, man. There's so many things to explore. And I'm excited about, you know, continue to work on these things

and hopefully sometime in 2020. 26. I'm hoping that I can really impress all of you with my running skills and prowess. I hope one day you're like, oh my God, he's the greatest runner of all time. Look at that. He looks like pre Fontaine. Oh my God. And then you show all your friends and you share the video with everybody and so on. You need to make your category. It needs to be like runner who is also squatted over a thousand pounds. Who's the best runner who's also squat over a thousand pounds? There you go. I think even right now, you're are a one of one in that sense. Do we know any good runners or people who have done a marathon and squatted over a thousand pounds? I'm sure maybe a couple other people have done it,

but probably not many. You're already winning, Mark. Strength is never a weakness. Weak never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.