Mark Bell's Power Project - Why Every Human Should Sprint Again Ft. Graham Tuttle

Episode Date: May 25, 2026

Graham Tuttle, aka The Barefoot Sprinter, joins Mark Bell’s Power Project to explain why sprinting isn’t just for elite athletes — it’s a fundamental human ability. Graham breaks down how pain, fear, distraction, strength, rhythm, movement, and play all shape our ability to move fast, feel free, and reconnect with the body.Get Graham’s new book:https://barefootsprinter.com/pages/btsSpecial 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/markbellspowerprojectFOLLOW Mark Bell➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybellFollow Nsima Inyang➢ Ropes and equipment : https://thestrongerhuman.store➢ Community & Courses: https://www.skool.com/thestrongerhuman➢ YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=e

if you take sprinting off the pedestal and just make it a normal thing, I believe it is the standard for a healthy human. Every healthy human body should be able to sprint. The thing that keeps people from sprinting is pain, fear, or distraction. They physically don't have the tissue capacity. They're in pain. Their joints hurt. They can't load. If I can get you to move different, you will change as a person. Your political beliefs, your religious zealotry, whatever it is. Those will lessen slowly with surely as being your body to shift. And I can talk about sitting on the ground all day and no one's going to get upset about it. Your greatest potential is limited by your willingness to edit. And I think that's where most people get stuck

is because they're not willing to look at themselves. At some point, the call to this is just to get back to a basic level of human expression, which is I see that. I want to go there. I go there. All right, Graham Tuttle, welcome to the show, buddy. Thank you for having me again.

You have a book coming out. Works it out already. I guess as of this recording, it's probably available. It will be available for pre-sale, which is important. You should pre-sale. Pre-order it. Anybody that pre-orders, it gets a free program, lots of free stuff, it goes with it.

You can buy the book. You won't get it physically until it, releases officially on July 21st, born a sprint in case you can't see it. But you don't have to wait. You get access to all the content ahead of time because you're awesome and your early adopter. How does someone get started sprinting? You know, I think people maybe think sprinting is easy, but people see me sprint. They've seen Larry Wheel's sprint and they've seen a bunch of other people who maybe haven't sprinted in a long time, go out and try to sprint and maybe it doesn't look as smooth as it could or it should. So like where does someone start?

Okay, so I believe sprinting is a fundamental human ability, meaning we kind of look at it and categorize these things as, oh, it's an Olympic activity, which gets thrown up there with people that do triple backflips off of a vault or their water polo or any other, you know, downhill Olympic skiing. And so we kind of categorize those things as very niche, high excellence pursuits, which, true, you can turn it into that. Like when we watch the 100 meter Olympians sprint, they're beautiful. And it's something, it's a work of art. but at a basic human level no one would argue that sitting is you can make sitting beautiful but it's also a human expression so I think sprinting is the expression

of a healthy body meaning a healthy body can just move forward as fast as it wants to and that's a sprint now you can get logistically like what's your cadence how fast you're doing and that can kind of get messy yes you can look at if you're looking at the sport but it's important to not mess the

not mix the human ability with the actual thing so what I look at is the thing that keeps people from sprinting is pain, fear, or distraction. Meaning they can't, they physically don't have the tissue capacity. They're in pain. Their joints hurt. They can't load at a certain force.

They are afraid, meaning they have passed injury. They, you know, there's too much fear or uncertainty about what they can actually do. They don't have trust in themselves as an individual. Or they're distracted, which is more of an anxious mental. They don't really know how to channel their attention and to create actual force and stiffness to pop off the ground. Does that make sense? If I was to ask someone to say, like, throw a ball, right?

Just a baseball, right? I think everyone would just say, yeah, I could throw the baseball. But they're not thinking of throwing the baseball like Nolan Ryan, you know. But when you say sprint, people have in their head of what a sprint looks like because of what you mentioned, the Olympics. But everyone has the capacity to go as fast as they can. It's just that their capacity for how fast they can go right now might not be that fast. And it might not look that good. Yeah.

But it's just because it's unpracticed. There's a refinement that happened. And so the first question is like if you're looking at the block of stone that's the statue, it's like what is that? And this is an intimate personal question because if I said, you know, why can't you sprint? Or could you sprint as fast as you want to? They go, well, yeah, well, there's a caveat, meaning it's either, yeah, but my knees or I pulled my hamstring last time I did it. And it's heel, but I haven't gotten back to it or, you know, like I was never very athletic.

And so you see these kind of reasons, the rationalist people kind of filter through, like, why can't I do this? And then he gets to the important, which is why I lead is like, I think it's a basic human ability, which is it's basic in that it is not special. Like you look at any indigenous tribe or like, let's say people before socialization or society or culture or whatever, they can all do it. It's not special. And I think if you take sprinting off the pedestal and just make it a normal thing,

it's I believe it is the standard for a healthy human. I mean, every human should be, every healthy human body should be able to sprint. And I think once you look at it that way, then your training should be able to like pass driver's ed, or maybe a car that's, road ready. Could the car turn in, you know, in shitty streets and back roads and can it go fast enough

you're on the highway? If it can hit those two extremes, generally is good in the middle. Problem is when we start to put spending as a pedestal of you have to be a super athlete and you have to look this way and have this speed and have this tissue capacity. It's like those things may be true as directional aspects and aspirations, but if they keep you from actually trying to train this foundation, then you end up kind of backing into something. You think, well, I'll sprint later. that's where I think you get in this issue of running out of order. I believe sprinting is a foundational thing you do before you run, meaning you learn to walk and stand, which is basic gate control balance, and then you sprint as an expression of

your speed, your strength, and your form to set the in ranges of your ability, and then running is just choosing a pace within that. Otherwise, you're constantly working at the edge of your ability and saying, well, I think I can manage this pace, and then it just becomes a measure of more, more miles, more distance, more calories, more heart rate, and then you're never actually like feeling the thing. or owning the movement. What do you think about the idea?

You know, sometimes you'll see somebody training in the gym with like some traditional resistance training, focusing on isolation, maybe even bodybuilding style. But people will say you're not a bodybuilder even though they train like a bodybuilder. And then you'll see somebody they'll go and they'll sprint at a percentage, right? They'll have the intent of I'll sprint at 70%.

But then you'll have people say, that's not a real sprint, Sprint needs to be this percent. You're not really sprinting. What are your thoughts there? Because I think that like with what Mark mentioned, when people think about sprinting, they think they have to be going at like 90, 100%.

Sometimes it's kind of difficult. What are your thoughts? Well, I think it needs to be taken seriously, meaning anything done. The challenge of sprinting is that you get on the other end of leverage, meaning you can build up speed where now you have to deal with the decisions you made five minutes or five seconds ago or five steps ago, right?

And you do have to honor that, which is you want to be able to make sure that your body can handle that. that forces you to pay attention. And oftentimes, you think about the way you pose the question, which is I want to go at 70%. What is 70%? It's a conceptual idea, it's the number.

Okay, so I basically, what's 100%. It's like when you, like my elbow hurts. Well, it feels like 80% better. Like, how are you making this judgment? It's an approximation of your intensity. In a conceptual abstract number-based thing, which is true in some capacity, but it's also made up. And so I think the hard part is what we've done,

by phrasing the question is we've taken a real-world thing of could you run as fast, as you need to, and we've couched it in, well, I'm going to guesstimate what I can do, which is what I did, my 70% effort. And then there's an conceptual aspect of, okay, but there's more I could have done. And then that's an open question because it's like, why are you thinking that way, as opposed to just, you look at kids. You got to meet my infants, remit them. But it's like, they don't think at all in terms of concepts. They just think, I want to go there, I want to do this. And it's just an expression of their physical presence in the world. And that is really the

call back is like, because let's even even go to say, what is 100% of your sprint? Okay, it's the fastest I could go right now. So then the question is, why didn't you go as fast as you wanted to go? Maybe it's not part of my training plan. Maybe my knees hurt if I get a little bit too much. Those are the exact questions that I'm looking at. It's like, well, what is your training plan putting you towards? Because you may have reserved. Yeah. I could rewind. As fast as you need to go. Okay. Let's think about this real quick. Okay. If you are, somebody who pulls out a knife on me. I need to run as fast as I can need to go to get away from you. Does that mean I have to run as fast as I can? No. It means that I need to get from point A to

point A to point A with enough intensity and enough speed, right, where I don't gas myself out. So, again, let's just rewind for sprinting. How fast does you think that a beginner may need to try to go to be able to start building the input of going faster over time. Because the base level thing we're thinking about here is safety. And when somebody tries to go at 100% of their actual ability, when they haven't done it before, it's not ideal. So how do we build up to that? Let's focus on that.

Yeah, totally understand. But that seems to me, maybe I misunderstood the first question. You do what you can do, meaning you build into it. which I don't start people sprinting. We start sitting on the ground. I learn to stand and then to walk. And then you learn to skip and develop capacity. And then you go at 60, 70, 80%,

and you build into this capacity of like, okay, I can feel more confident and you express that. Okay. The issue I had, I guess, maybe the misunderstanding I had was, if you were thinking about this, why am I, I'm going to go train at 70%?

Meaning you're trying to create a framework to go backwards. Like, how do I hack this with a certain percentage of this? And it's like, but you just said 60, 70 and 80%. You build up to it. But again,

that idea is 60% of, of what? And it's like it's kind of a made-up idea just to get you comfortable moving a little bit faster, a little bit faster, a little bit faster. The idea is you are bored, the idea of being able to sprint is being able to have command over your body to be able to move as fast as you'd want to. And it, to the degree that you can't do that, that's where the question is of why not. And so I don't think that you necessarily get to that. We use percentages. And when I, if I ever tell people I'd do this, I'd say, oh, we're going to go 70%. I don't know what that means to you, because you don't know what that you, but like the person I'm talking to, if you haven't sprinted,

how would you know it's 70%? If you don't know how fast your car could go, you don't know what 70% of that is. It's an unknown number on both ends. But I use it to give you an idea of like, move a little bit faster. I move a little bit faster. Move a little bit faster. And eventually you will be able to feel that, yes, this is as fast as I can go. But it's not like me trying to push harder than I can.

It's just an expression of what I'm able to do. Gotcha. So like, it's hard because we use numbers, but the numbers are just made up. And made up thing gets you to do a thing and to believe in yourself more. Which is really. So I think the hesitation I had to try and maybe answer that more clearly at the beginning is because if you start thinking about it like that, meaning, okay, I have to have a training stimulus. I needed my sprint. But my sprint in order to be a sprint to check off the box for this week has to be at this percentage, which means I got this pace and this time. That disconnects you from the feeling, which is, is that actually true? Is it actually hard? Is the thing you're doing? Is the training you're doing when jihitsu? I realized this earlier about like a year into it. I would go and train and be sweaty and tired. But I'm like, am I actually tired? Or is this just me like, do you? doing a thing going through the hoops because it's what I think I need to do to or to feel like I got a lesson.

Did I actually learn? And so the way I flip out of this is, would I want to be in the situation if it was a real fight? Well, no. Then why are you, like, why are you accepting that just because it's comfortable now? And so it's that kind of thing of like, how do you put movement back in the context, back in the real world, back in a real situation of, yes, someone's behind me. And I need to go faster.

But that's beyond my, I'm not that fast. It's like these weird ideas we talk about. And it's just at some point, the call to this is just to get back to a basic level of human expression, which is, I see that, I want to go there, I go there. It sounds to me like you're almost like questioning like why people have inhibition. Like why is their body stuck to the point where if we mention a sprint, why is their first inclination to think of having a percentage associated to it? That's what I'm interested in is it's like the pain, it's the fear of distraction.

One of those general broad categories is the reason you can't do the thing. And to me, that's the point of training. It's like if you could do it, great. go do something else, play, have fun, do sports. It's your life. If you can't, then let's actually attack that. And if it's a, well, I could do it at this level, then it's like, okay, are you in pain? Meaning you don't have tissue health in this certain joint. You are afraid or you just don't know how to channel your focus into a certain aspect of tension in your body. And like that to me is the whole point of training. And so the reason you can't spread today will be the reason you can't do

the things you love tomorrow. Like that is, it says that simple. And I want to attack that. It's the point of the whole training. I think one of the things about sprinting, I think it ends up being dangerous because people haven't maybe spent much time doing it. So like a seven-year-old or a nine-year-old, probably on command can probably sprint pretty well, probably jump pretty well. They might not be like super fast. They might be faster than some of the other kids, but they can do what we would define as like, we would say, okay, that's a sprint.

You know, they tried to go as fast as they could at some point. Maximal intention, yeah. Yeah, they're really, they're going after it with everything they have. but that's because there's like so many things going on when we're younger. There's a strength to weight ratio thing going on. There's all kinds of things like that where you're lighter at those ages. Your body's not even fully formed, but it's getting there, you know, as you get to be 9, 10, 11, so on.

As we get older and we get bigger, you see a lot of people start to get stiffer. And stiffer by meaning like the way that your infants are now compared to the way they're going to be when they're 11. Like they have no choice. They will be stiffer. They just, you cannot maintain the way a baby can move around, right? Yeah. So as we get older, the more distance that you start to have between some of the things that you did when you were younger, the more dangerous, this proposition of like, hey, go out and run like hell becomes. And I think, you know, part of the reason why you wrote this book is that I think you've kind of been scratching your head going like, oh man, I think everyone should have this capacity. This would be amazing if

people could have this capacity. And so you were mentioning like sitting, uh, walking. Like, how do you, how do you get some of these people to kind of onboard this idea of sprint? So they cannot have that inhibition to, uh, be stuck with just thinking like, well, uh, you know, I got to, I got to run slow if I'm going to run fast. Yeah. There's, there's, honestly, it came from watching these kids move. Like, you see them go through very predictable things and actually just like getting on the ground and doing it with them. But there's this concept of athletic range, which is most People are stuck in, like, if you can imagine a dimmer switch where it's like, you're just kind of stuck in the middle. It's half on, half off.

You're never really there. It's like everyone in jiu-jitsu, the first white belt. They go in a lot of attention and they're stuck in the middle, but they're never actually fast nor relaxed because they're stuck in the middle. So you have to work both sides of that. And the best way to train before you add more tension in is to learn to let go of that. And so by sitting on the ground, interacting with the floor, meaning it's an unyielding thing that will just always be that. And so you have to, there's no choice for you to change. So laying, sleeping, sitting on the ground and start that.

for competency. The best way to open up hit mobility, best way to improve your joint dexterity mobility stat. And then you build up just like an infant would. How do I learn to roll from my back to my stomach? Okay. I learned to create the tube and the ball shape. And I'm able to create tension and relaxation in these. And I'm able to get spinal competency. Okay. So I can basically move my spine to curl up and roll and move my body around. Then you learn to stand up. And that's basically active feet. Can I balance on different parts of my feet? Can I roll through all my toes, can I get the, whatever, 21 bones of my forefoot to be able to, like, articulate effectively? Can I have, so that creates the foundation for posture, how I connect to the ground, how I roll

forward. So that's walking. Then you add in some strength training, and that's stabilizing, basically. Can I put my body in different positions, find my center of mass, and add force, that forces, it gets my body to create tension in different areas. And so sitting on one foot, meaning I'm shifting my focus and attention to one foot, and then vice versa. I think most people, what we can come back, both people get stuck there. As the progression goes is, can I then learn to add rhythm. So I do this with a metronome. I was, I was learning to play guitar about the same time. He was like, oh, use a guitar. And then actually, the training guy that we know, but he could not skip the save his life. And I was like, at a loss for words, I'm like,

okay. And then it popped in my head of metronome. I was like, so I just put it beside him. And then he just started to go and it just solved all the problems because it gave him beat. And what is interesting, if you look at any, I'm not just looking at you, but any ancestral tribe, like you look at them, the Hadsah, any of these people, they chant. They sing around. They sing and they bop, and they do this. They create a beat. And what do you do with? Like this group is like you start to learn how to hold a rhythm and create stiffness and it's skipping. So basically escaping and playing. And then you look at kicking and swinging or kicking

and throwing because those are dissociating your arm from your torso and your leg from your torso to allow those to be separate entities. Then you start to add in intensity to the rhythm. That's plymetrics. So you're bouncing on command with intensity. Then you're learning to use your muscles a different range to absorb and produce force, which is jumping. and then finally you're sprinting, which is just can I manage the force of all gravity and my own intention on top of one leg to create a pillar? You look at the best sprinters,

they float along top of the leg and they contact the ground and the stiff pillar that absorbs maximum amount of force multiple times of body weight and they just repurpose that in a meaningful way. And so that is the progression. And I think of those as just, can I build from the base of,

can I, once I can stand, can I then add greater levels of force, add rhythm, add intensity, add intention. And then at the end you're actually, you like fall in. into sprinting. It becomes a thing that like, it's fun. I'm flying. I'm moving forward. So that's the progression I move people through. But it's just what kids do. What happens, and I think that it's not controversial. I don't think any of that is controversial. I don't think anybody would

be surprised to see a 16-year-old sprinting. What I guess we're controversial is as we become adults, and we choose different path for our lives. And some, that may be sedentary, maybe ultra-running, maybe powerlifting, maybe whatever, that our body starts to shape in that. And then when I say something like everyone should be able to sprint and you've chosen a path that has disconnected from that ability. Now there's a moral choice of, are you saying that I'm a bad person? I did something wrong and I'm not like, like, I need to change and be different. People don't like that. And so they'll say, well, I can run. I don't need to sprint. Or I can lift the Larry Wheels conversation. I thought it was beautiful that he started to work on sprinting and he's since

taken more seriously. I mean, people feel all sorts of ways about that man. I don't know why. But they're like, well, he gave up this to be the best of the wrong. Sure, absolutely he did. I don't necessarily know if he had to sacrifice sprinting in order to be an amazing power after it. Maybe he did. Maybe he didn't. Who knows? But the point is, like, that's where people start to get more hair raised because it's like, well, this is just, I had to do this this way or else I couldn't. And I'm like, how much is this tradeoff is worthwhile? That's an open question. But I think that's where people get more pushback on the idea that like everyone should be able to sprint. The layer wheels thing is a really interesting thing because, again, you did mention, right?

when you go down any specific lane, it's one of those things that I think nowadays, more and more people are realizing that, hey, you know, if I do choose to do this, maybe I can have certain things that allow me to hold on to a little bit of my ability, maybe to sprint, a little bit of my ability to do X, Y, or Z, rather than letting all of it go in pursuit of a specific goal. So I think the cool thing we're probably going to see, because like you've seen Colton Engelbrick, he started doing some Hill Spruitt. Prince, you know, sometime last year. But I think we're going to start seeing, you know, athletes who have to create high amounts of tension, right? Some of them are going to start potentially also being able to do things like Spence because, I mean, look at football players. You'll see a lot of, like, guys who are insanely strong in the weight room, but they still have the ability to propel their body through space

with a level of precision and relaxation. So, you know, the Larry thing is you're talking about a guy who has spent since he was 16 years old, focused on lifting. So the past 17 years focused on that one thing. And Ashton is, I think, a prime example of somebody who has also gotten very strong because Ashton can deadlift 500 pounds plus. Ashton can bench four plates.

But you look at the way he sprints. College athlete, too. He passes the look test, even though he's extremely muscular. And he passes the look test. So I think that's all one needs. I think you're an amazing example of someone who's been able to, the look test is, there's so much there. Go, go for it.

What are your thoughts? Think about acting. What do you do? And I think you're interested in acting doing this stuff. What do you do? You've heard of the idea of method acting before? Yeah. What is your understanding of that?

You take your character and you take what they are into, like, outside of the screen. So you bring it into your daily life. You bring it into how you're interacting with everyone else. You're taking your characters, their back. and you're implementing it into your personality and your psyche so that now when I'm interacting with Mark, it's not me interacting with Mark, it's my character that's interacting with Mark

and I don't have a camera on me or a screen. Yeah, that's methodathing. So now, if you think about the actual physical expression, what happens is you are moving as though you are somebody else, which means you're inhibiting the perception of someone else, which changes the perspective of the way you see the world and the way you actually engage. So you're backing into what I would do,

what I just talked about going sitting, building up, That's position, perspective, perception. So that's how I get people to have a different change. I don't want to talk about anything inside. Just move a little different. They're literally getting on the ground changes the way they look at things. They change their perspective

and their perception automatically updates. The other way around, and this takes, this is why actors are oftentimes very intelligent and very sharp, even though you'd think that, oh, Seth Rogen just plays smoking pothead on there, but like, oh, they're actually really smart because you had the ability to perceive what it would be like to be someone else.

You can then use that to change the perspective, which shifts how you move. So you can think of method athleticism of saying, okay, Ashton knows what it means to look like a sprinter because he's done that. He's played that role, therefore he can step into that at a moment.

But he also knows your example. You know what it means to play black ball jiu-jitsu, powerlifter, bodybuilder, I don't know, sex god, whatever you're doing for your time. The other point is, but that to me is when I see the idea

of hybrid athlete, it's not this, like, I just happen to find two different things that are somewhat related that I'm going to call myself that. I can be a yoga person who can juggle. Like, are you a hybrid athlete then? It's like, just because it's running on a treadmill

on lifting weights, sure, it's hard to do, but is that actually athleticism? And so I look at say, the core tenets of athleticism, can you sprint, jump, throw, roll, crawl, carry, walk, like basic things. Like, should be no surprise that 16-year-old could do it or some indigenous tribe 500,000 years ago. No surprise.

Any of them would be able to do it. That's just your basic alphabet. Then you can go and use that alphabet to create different words, which are sports. And there's an immersive experience that you get by being in jujitsu or a surfer or a distance runner or a powerlifter or a volleyball player. And so I think the point of all that is it develops you as a full person to be able to step in these roles and realize that I'm not just this one thing. I'm not Mark Bell powerlifter.

I'm Mark Bell athletic individual human. I'm athletic body first and I can step into these roles. The amount of mental flexibility and willingness to let go and shift and move is so challenging. But that to me is the point of sport, the point of training. get stuck because of a fear. We're moving on this thing to get 16, on this progressive ladder of development when we're kids. Somebody says, hey, you're small. Your arms are small. Now, I immediately ego hurt because I'm 16. I have no identity. So I'm going to go to the gym. I get stuck in step four of the strength training. And I'm going to do that. I'm a binge press. I can't think. And you get stuck in these things. And then becomes a thing. And sometimes it's because we're good at it,

whatever it is. You know, the coach really like that. I want to get that support from coach again. But the point is like, it's not about spreading things about being able to spread. So you have access to go do all these things. And then you can step in and be powerlifter. You can step in and pass the look test of a bunch of different things. But before you can, as Mark said, you're talking about relaxing and sprinting. Before you can do that and look that, you have to learn the skills. So you kind of have to like go method athlete on these different things. But when you realize that you are the thing within that, then you realize that there's a core tenets of basic competency that if I can't say that letter B, a lot of words are off limits. That's the argument deeper. This is, I'm trying to

advanced. I got a few books worked out. But like that really is like let's start just basically getting back to the point where you have your athletic alphabet. So you're using a sprinting almost as like a psychedelic to have people let go of their preconceived notions of what's good and bad that they have in a way, right? Yes, because when you sprint, the number one thing people tell I'm when I have these events, they come back. I felt like a kid again. What does that mean? I felt free of obligation, free of necessity, free of this like person I have to be. I could just be. And all of a sudden, the wind and fly by me. It feels good. You're the closest thing humans get to fly. And I think when you connect with that, it's this moment of lightness where you've let go of everything.

Because the cool thing about sprinting is what makes a sprint to sprint? Think about attention and focus. There's a thing here. When you sprint, you are locked in on one stuff. You can't take in a lot of other, you know, day to do it. If I'm running slow enough to take in data and think about where I'm going or what I'm looking at, it's a run. You know, that's a middle pace. And walking is me just basically bouncing and pondering. I can be lost and thought on a walk and and run, you can take another data. But if you think about what happens in the sprint, I'm locked in on something, my eyes are constricted, I'm focused in this state and I'm going after it.

That's limited by your visual field. How far you can see something clearly in order to go 100%. And that's why you prepare like a space, like a track or something, people can go and just be present. And it's hard to do that because there's a lot of stuff you have to go around that. But can you lock in on something and go all in for this period of time? And that's like, can I fully express myself? Because what is the most expressive?

What's the biggest muscle in the body? Not a trick question. Is it like... You're VMO? The glutes. Yeah, the glutes. Maybe not for some people. I know some people get no glutes.

The single largest muscle in the body is the glute. So the most expressive movements would be jumps, would be sprints. Maybe you could argue for throws. But these are big expressions. And if you want to think about what kids do, they want to run. They want to... If you realize that there's no difference between your physical expression and your psychological understanding of yourself, then you start to realize that the way I can express myself

self physically prepares the way for my psychological development. You see this with kids. Their personalities develop in stages of what they can do. They start to have more competency. Now you can imagine that what happens with people at low back pain? Oftentimes their glutes get disconnected. They're not able to do it. Well, oftentimes they're sitting too much. Why are they sitting too much? Because they're stuck in a world where they have to be a certain way and to sit down, shut up in school. If you're a police officer, maybe you do or don't agree with the laws you're enforcing. So you have to shut off this emotional expression of yourself versus dancing, being really open, being able to scream and yell and chant.

These things are kind of fetishize in some sense as a modern world looking at these like ancestral tribes that go into other stuff. Oh, look how great it was. They could just go yell and do my ancestral voice. You give up some of that, right? But then when you have your training, what's the point of a practice, a movement practice, a training if not to connect with this? I see you do it all the time.

You come, you play your music loud. Sometimes you play a little stuff. But like, remember you put this post up a while back. It's like, why you love having a private gem. You had this music was going loud. You're throwing the sandbag. You're just being you fully out, uninhibited, not worry about it. people think. If we can't, there's one thing is access. So if you don't have access to that,

you're not even going to think about it, right? So that's where the first version of all this stuff is like the backyard athlete because I wanted people to have a way to do their backyard away from shame and people looking at them and judging them. But the second is willingness. And if you're not even willing to step in and just let some of these things go, you don't actually feel yourself. And then there is no other movement that channels the glutes and the hip flexors in this contralateral movement right after one after the other. Because if you're right, if your hip flexes on one side don't work, it doesn't matter what your glute does on the other side, you're going to go sideways real quick.

And it's both sides, right, left, masculine, and animus. It's like all of this together in one movement that is the purest expression of you as an individual just going after something. And if you can't do that physically, there's no way I want to think you're going to do it psychologically because you're inhibited. You see, I mean, I can just go on and on about this,

but like you see what happens to people when they become bedridden, when they become locked inside because of shutdowns. They go crazy. It does not, look at animals in captivity. We're just animals. And what are just in captivity, even if it's of our own design, what happens to your brain?

And so I think that like the closest you get to making people have a true spiritual experience is to start by getting them moving and then the rest can follow. But if you don't have that, very hard, like, it's one of the reasons that I have a lot of respect for you is the way you're able to step in.

Both of you actually, especially watching you go through your sprinting. I mean, like, it's tremendous to watch. And we've talked about this recently. It's like the amount you've been willing to give up because like obviously everyone has heard challenges but you've developed an entire business model like a personality based off of like I'm the guy with the big traps and I do bench press and how much you bench how much a bench it's itched into the front step of your house as the slingshot and then

for you to be able to step into like I'm going to do something the different like people can't fathom that that because they've never even been successful enough to have to get rid of something like that or not get rid of but like step aside so yeah you know one thing that you mentioned And I'm curious about with sprinting is the focus, right? And what you mentioned there was really interesting because like when I think about soccer or like football, when athletes do this at a high level, you know, they sprint. And there is a focus, but there's also any athlete

who does anything at a high level has the ability to process multiple pieces of information while doing the difficult thing, right? So I get that when one is sprinting and they might be new to it, not even new to it, but when you're starting something, you probably need this very focus on goal thing. But over time, you probably will build the ability like you, when you go on a field and like you're sprinting around and doing stuff, you don't have to be hyper focused on that one thing. You can sprint and broadly take that your proficiency. I think you developed such a beautiful example. When you develop your athleticism so that you could sprint

100%, it makes 99% a whole world. You can literally, like, you can, the better you get at jujitsu, the more you can just take one degree off. Like, okay, the guy that can run, the broke the two-hour marathon, you know, he's doing this. That's aerobic, anaerobic threshold. If you think about all of this stuff,

we look at blood lactate levels and all this thing, it's just your sense of self-measuring threat. I like maybe there's some scientific numbers you can back into this but all it is is your heart as a sense of self saying I'm not okay the closer first off you have to be able to set the height of I can actually sprint and do this much and then all of conditioning is working to being I'm okay all the way up to right there and the closer you get I'm okay to 99% those are the guys that can run and just say I'm okay I'm okay I'm recovering emotion I'm okay I'm okay I'm okay and it's just we can even fathom how a guy could do 105 laps at a 17 second you know at a 108 pace all they're doing is

I'm okay, I'm okay, but you put them at one or seven, it'd be different. That is, so that's the proficiency where you look at someone who's so skilled to what they're, they have so much command of their body that they can be texting while driving in a drag race or like, so to speak. But, you know, there is, even in that person, there is one tiny ounce more effort to give and it would require more focus. So that's, that's the training. The training is to slowly put yourself in these conditions and say, what is copying me here?

That's why it's not just pain. Sometimes it is strength, although we do that. But I think we do a disservice when we disconnect the physical. from the psychological and say, hey, what was your experience? Because whenever you do this, you always start with your right hand. Well, you know, my left hand, I got this weird thing. Or I got made fun at one time as a kid. Whatever it is, those are inhibiting the muscular expression of your movement.

And that changes how you're able to do. But that's the point of training is to affect that. I'm curious about you. You know, in the past, I think one of the interesting things about your journey here, you've been doing jiu-jitsu for a few years now, right? You've become fairly proficient there. you've been sprinting for a while. You've increased your athleticism

in so many different ways. But in the past, when I first met you, right, you would say things like, you wouldn't say I'm not athletic, but you would say things in the air of like, I don't have athleticism or I didn't have athleticism, right? So I think a lot of people are in that place

where they're like, I'm not coordinated, I'm not athletic, I probably can't, like there's all these beliefs, right? Yeah. And you've made, able to churn through those for yourself, right? And you're fucking, you're doing jujitsu with your bad shoulder. You know what I mean?

Yeah. So how would you tell, how would you help somebody get out of these belief systems? So this is why I think it's multifaceted because in part of it, it can become a real physical thing that becomes a real thing you can manifest that. Personally, for whatever reason, maybe genetics, maybe whatever. All I know is that when I was born, my parents were, had their own things. things going on. Personal struggles, some alcohol, mama would work a lot. And so like I was a container baby, did not get much. It was very rambunctious. You know, I just like, I don't think

there was a lot of food. There's a lot of things that kind of created a scarcity. But with that, you can think of eyesight. I think the ultimate expression of like calmness and nervous system state is your eyesight because there's two parts. One is the physical shape of your eyes, which is controlled by the muscles around your corny and retin and all that stuff. And there's the, the shape of riboble, which can, yes, to people out there. So they set a genetic predisposition make it harder to do to certain things. But there's the perception of that, which is the mental neurological.

So if you close your eyes, if it's not pure black in there and you see anything photo around or fuzzy or stuff like that, it's like dirt on your windshield of your bugs. That's all generated by nervousness and stress. So people like when their eyesight gets bad, when they get older, when they get stressed,

it's all very common because we're kind of like two notches above chill. And so for me, it's like if you can think of an anxious childhood, you're always trying to make everybody happy and see like, okay, if I get everybody happy in the world around me, I'm okay. What is that?

I mean, thinking, cycling, going over and over and it's my brain always runs a million miles an hour. That creates a stress where like I can't actually focus on anything because you can't focus on the thing. Your attention is dispersed. What is at tension? At tension. I can't create tension in my body in the right spots to move like an athlete,

meaning you can almost think of dispersed consciousness of like if I'm doing a bicep curl, what are you doing? I'm just bringing more tension, more concentration, more focused to this to create maximum outcome. But it's basically I'm just people that are unskilled at Jiu-Jitsu for a great example are tense everywhere. People are really, like Cascio gets one spot where he's going to just pass with this thing.

And like, that's just being able to quickly move your intention to be at tension with different areas. And you keep your breathing and check, your physiology changes. So that's my, the process. So for any number of reasons, this feeling of like I'm not okay can manifest into certain beliefs. And so for me, as eyesight, there's no joke. I had, I were really thick glasses. You don't develop any peripheral vision. I don't if you ever wore glasses, but like you can't imagine you have blockers running outside of that because it was such, it was.

plus nine and plus 8.75 far-sidedness, so you couldn't even do LASIC to do that. Like it was basically like I could see everything like it's underwater here, three-x magnification and then everything was blurry here. So like you just don't see things coming from the sides. When things start moving fast, what that means is that I just didn't get a lot of chances

to move and develop physically. And so the sports I did get to do because my mom was always worried about head injuries. So no baseball when I started pitching, no basketball when it started going to hard courts, no soccer when they started ahead, no rugby when it started to touch. tackle no football ever you know so it's track and cross-country yeah and look I'm not wrong I'm so

football thing is a good call I'm on this podcast I haven't failed that much in life thanks mom but my point though is that like you can see how those things create a lack of exposure to be able to feel this and all I feel in the inside is uncertainty insecurity and fear and a lot of that because my mom well-being was always don't do this you get hurt watch this and I with my babies I feel very very hard to not you want to protect them you want to make sure but that will be careful, be safe. It's all of a sudden you're directing their attention to all things that could go wrong and then it distracts them from what they should do.

So that's the hard part is that like knowing that about myself and becoming aware of those things, but all I could do is correct the movement. And I had this thought the other day I thought it was profound, maybe not, but everything you want is on the other side of a regression. Because I was doing push-ups on my knees. I'm with a parallel just finding all the different ways because in a sense, the reason I kept running into these roadblocks athletically was because I was trying to jump too far ahead because I would see something I want to jump straight into Drewi 2 or I want to straight

trade into a backflip or something like that and it was like dude you missed the whole part of your childhood where you crawled more and rolled and I think this is important because a lot of times you see on social media people talk about all you got to go crawl these ancestors for patterns and it's like it kind of makes sense when you say it having like thought about it for a while but for the lay person they're like what do you mean how does crawling make me more confident as a person and improve my patterns I don't know the answer to this stuff but I do know that watching kids they go through a process of learning to have confidence and maybe it's just the shoulder getting

to the back of the socket that improves the coordination of the muscles there. Who knows? Because maybe those muscles start to improve your posture and get your head up right, you get more oxygen. I do not know exactly the pathway, but I know that when I started to go back to gymnastics and just learn to roll and realize

I was trying to compete at like level seven when I'm really like level three or four. Now, the caveat to that is that you have to have something is aspirational, which is why I think jujitsu and team sports are so important because they pull you out of yourself. I credit so much my development the two jujitsu because you never do jiu-jitsu alone. You're with somebody else. And even,

I mean, I was terrified to roll with you for months, if not, still now. But like, at this point, like I know how to... You've never been a hurt rolling with me. Yes, but a lot of that is because I was so conservative in what I did that I would never put myself out there. So there's a level of, like, being really open and confident to, like, actually, like, reach and pull and, like, put yourself at risk. And I think that's... So it's a two-part thing. One, I too trust that you always, you're conscientious about that, but there's a level of do I even put myself out there. And so the willingness to put yourself out there comes a direct step to how to how to how strong, physically capable you are, and you build into that with, like, stepping and,

like, saying, okay, I don't actually feel strong in the shoulder. Let me just train that. I don't feel like my calves are capable to sprint. Well, let me train that. And so, that's where I think, back to the book, is having a, like a visual, like a representation of what's worth training for helps organize all of all of fitness. Because it's so messy. Is yoga important? Is yoga important? Is it going to get my zone too cardio? What about my muscle mass? I don't want to start croupini. And I need to get my bones loaded, but what do I mean? range of motion do all the way or 90 degrees or short range. It's so confusing.

But just focusing on the movements. Well, can I jump? Well, no. Okay, well, then you don't have the muscle connection to be able to do that. Well, if I can't jump, then I should maybe step and work on ply metrics because, okay, that's some force. Well, if I can't do ply metrics, I should probably step back and skip. Well, if I'm too locked up on my skipping, maybe I should just swing my legs and kick a little bit.

And my shoulder's pretty stiff. Maybe I should throw those two. Well, I don't even have any core strength. I'll just pick up a sandbag or do some gymnastics to find my center of mass to bounce. Well, let me know how to use my feet. Let me stay in the walk. Well, actually, I can't even get my spine to organize. Let me roll.

And then you get back sitting on the ground. And so that's kind of the progress. But like when you were stepping back and willing to just start at the very, very beginning and just, I mean, I can't tell you how many people like, oh, my back hurts me to sit on the ground more. I had a guy to call a guy today. He was having thoracic outlet syndrome. His arms are going to sleep. And he was considering surgery defuse his neck. We talked a year ago.

I told him to sit on the ground more every day. He did it. He actually set up a workstation on the ground and just sits on the ground every day. He's like, fixed it. And it was like, yeah, it's that. it's just you just look at the regression you're not willing to do because it seems beneath you. So that, to answer the question the long way,

is that like it was slowly getting injured. Because every single, I've dislocated my shoulder almost 30 times and had to separate AC joint, pinched nerves, disc injuries, sprained ankles. I mean, you name it. But it's every single one of those has helped me kind of create a more clear understanding

of my body, which is position me as the perfect person to write this book because if any of this came easy, I would have missed the obvious thing. but by easy I meant natural normal like meaning I just I truly believe that like if you get kids and just let them move and let nature take its course so to speak obviously your parents to keep them safe but it's a lot less of that

a lot more of them just letting them move having a space to go like this is the natural course of the body that's healthy and can sprint and it's like if you don't have that then it's like let's step back that's your moving practice of training to do that and so I do think that as your physical capacity expands you become more creative or competent or confident and you, your personality dust. I so truly, to my core, believe that change is possible,

and it starts with movement. So that's why I'm so passionate about it is like, if I can get you to move different, you will change as a person, your political beliefs, your religious zealtery, whatever it is, those will lessen slowly as surely as being your body to shift. And I can talk about sitting on the ground all day

and no one's going to get upset about it. Then that's the goal. But, you know, sprinting, but all in context, sprinting gives you a point to work towards. If you can't sprint, work on that. you can do that, play sports, do whatever. I see this a little differently, and maybe we can go back and forth on this a little bit.

I believe that everyone can sprint. I think everyone can sprint. Okay, tell me more. Oh, I know what you're going to go. Go for it, yes. Well, Larry Wheels is sprinting. Yeah. Right?

I mean, or is he not sprinting? I think a look on his face. If you pull it up, I think the look on his face will show you everything you need to know. But is that determine whether someone's doing a sprint or not, the face they make? I think it shows this limitation. You look here, it's pain and uncertainty. For sure. He's not present.

For sure, there's some limitations for him in comparison to somebody else, but that's maybe just where he's at right now. Like with you and Jiu-Jitsu, thinking that you were, you know, trying to roll at a six or a seven, right? Kind of bring this back to this 60-70% idea. Larry Wheels, like, I'm very confident that if Larry Wheels was here right now, we could have them go run outside and we could have them run in a way that would look a lot better than that because I would not even ask him at all to try to sprint.

Well, so let me finish this point here. Ryan, pull up a couple of videos of like some sprinters, just just sprinters like warming up or something. It could be bolt, but I know people don't like to use bolt because he's like he's the greatest ever. But like, no Liles is good. A lot of these guys are, they're just trotting. I know, I know that they're, I know that they're unbelievable.

I know that they're flying. I know that they're running really fast. But if you were to communicate with probably really any of them, I don't know. maybe I'm wrong. But I don't think any of them are trying to run fast. I think they're just running fast. And what in Seamo was talking about earlier, how, you know, when you get good at something,

you don't have to think about it as more as much. It's so bad that when you're new at something, you can't even hold the thought. So you might say, hey, use your arms more when you sprint. And I'm like, okay. And I sprint. And then you're like, well, you didn't really use your arms anymore than you did on the other set.

and you show me in comparison of one video versus the next one. And sure enough, I didn't use my arms more. What you're experiencing with throwing some striking, throwing some punches and stuff. Man, it's like you go through a void or a warp zone. Like the guy just told you what to do and you didn't do it. So if you were to tell me like, hey, you know, just run smoother. Don't even, yeah, like Chicago Richardson. Just run smoother.

Don't even try to run hard. If you told me not to run hard or not to try to go fast, that might be a good enough cue just to open me up enough to where I maybe look a little bit better. I don't know. That's some of my thoughts, but I still think it's a sprint. I think somebody being able to run as fast as they can,

that's as fast as they can go for now. And yes, it would be ideal if they looked, could open up their stride more. I mean, maybe we can get into like, you know, per someone's height, like their stride has to be this. I would agree with that. Like if we were to say someone's got a, you know, clear like three or four feet or some some sort of manageable distance, right? Or someone has to run certain speeds. Like all that would

make sense to qualify as a sprint. But I think for some people, they're just where they're at. And so lastly, you know, if we're asked someone to jump and they just barely slightly got off the ground where we could slip a credit card underneath their foot, they jumped. Yeah. Yeah. That's why you use the word expression. It's like it's trying is almost the exact opposite of expressing, because expressing is to allow to come forth, whereas try is to, like, force. I think you get the work-first play. So if we're looking at a real-world person, it comes out, like, let's say, there wills, sir wheels himself comes, there's a, the biggest mistake he made right there is comparison. He's racing and somebody else. Therefore, he is no longer paying attention

to what he's doing. He's, now, he's motivated by a fear or a work anxiety to just like to perform to do something, right? Versus to be inspired by the potential of what's there. So, I 100% agree with what you're saying, which is that everybody has the capacity to express some form of forward motion that is a run, that is fast, that looks towards like a sprint. For you right now, this is your sprint.

What I'm interested in is if you set that as, okay, if you start to say that, well, that's not a sprint because it's not this, this and this, this creates, I have to be this before I'm good enough versus I could do that, which is, hey, do you see you just got faster? Do you see how it just came easier?

Now you're inspired, okay, let's start to look at like what you could. And so that's where I think being able to maintain your attention. in being able to have a reason and rationale for it. Again, that's where you start to look at like percentages and send the number things of like, okay, well, how do I get someone to? It's like it's comparing to a standard or not ideal, which then creates a lot of like

uncertainty and then people tense up because they've been used to being judged the whole life. And so core to the message is that like, you know, it doesn't really matter. You know, in some sense, it's of two minds because on one hand, you do want to hold a standard. You do want to have the perfection of jiu-jitsu that you're working toward, right? You do want to have this thing that is like pulls you to aspire to be greater. but if that becomes a I'll be happy when it will never happen and so the question is saying how do I get a real conversation with you right now which just pulls away all the monitors

heart rate count or ring and stuff like that just to feel right now and just to feel your body you press in this moment and go from here to here and just just just see what's possible and if there's something that limits that then like that's going to be our inroads to train you have to work on those because if we start to pull these things away you express yourself more naturally and that like it's um i don't think that nuance gets translated on social media much because people want to talk about the best talking about how it's you know because then it's it's gatekeeping eye of the secrets versus like oh no it's a very human thing but it's just not going to look sexy and there's a very personal capacity it's a very personal journey for you to be able to do that so yeah like that is

fundamentally what i'm trying to put forward in the book and if i haven't explained that well so far i'm failing no i just like i like the discourse i like going back and forth that's all well i do i think that's the judgment the racing is the hard part because you rarely do you see When you see sprinters that run by themselves, they always look great. They always look so beautiful and smooth. Then it's the second. Did you guys watch that sprint show on Netflix? I did, yeah.

The Italian guy who won the Olympics in 2016 or something. Are you familiar with this? Yeah. He just like, Gab having hamstring, hamstring, and he couldn't push, and he couldn't push. And he was just such a clear thing of like, dude, you just are so, the pressure just, and it's like, it's that, which is like, how do you break out of that? You know, you almost have to, like, pull back to the basics, the regression. What were you saying was his issue? He kept, he would have like,

the injuries, but you're... The pressure. It was like, he clearly, once the spotlight got put on him, once he won, and he wasn't, he was in lane one, I think, and he won the Olympics, which is like the fastest ladies of four and five. And so like, lane one, lane eight is like, you're the underdog, and no one...

So he did it, but the second that the pressure got put on him, and he was the national media spotlight, everyone went, he was famous, making more money, getting attention, and all of a sudden, he's like, he's nothing to gain, but everything to lose. And I think that's the hard part. It's like, you can't,

that comparison that that that that that's my competition and comparison are really challenging because they are competition is incredibly healthy it's putting energy it's caring comparison is is is is a measuring against but it's like comparison is a necessary part of competition but if that becomes the if that seeps into you at all it like completely derails it's such a hard thing to get right well what are your thoughts on getting it right because it is one of those things that if you can learn how to harness comparison and if you can learn how to you know yeah if you can learn how to harness comparison it can be very I'm going to stop there how do you think one can do that what is comparison mean to you well if I'm looking at my own specific context let's say like I'm not good at striking I put it up on

social media so people can see I'm not good at this I'm trying to get better but the reason why I do those things is the same reason why I put up my first jiu-jitsu videos getting beat up. So when I'm pretty decent at this, you can see what happened. And I compare myself to how I was before, but I also watch people who are really good at the thing that I'm trying to do. So I'll watch Tyson videos. I'll watch different strikers so I can see how their body moves. I can see how the lack of what I'm doing. And I can start to slowly piece these things together by comparing myself to people who are actually proficient. For me personally, again, I don't take this comparison as being a lack on my end. I take it as being something that I can aspire to. So that's how I see comparison.

But when a lot of people think of comparison, it's typically, there's a phrase, comparison is the thief of joy. And I don't necessarily buy into that because I think it's how the person, it's how they interpret it. There we go. I was thinking about you. I was like, it's how they interpret comparison. What do you think about? that. It's tough. I think this goes having a good mother and father. A mother tells you you're good enough. Father tells you could be better. If you don't have that balance, then it's like I would be hard pressed. I mean, you could put up videos. Like, people who meet you just think that you walk on water and you're like everything breathing. You naturally do all these athletic things. So for you to put things up or look, I suck is almost a way. Since he's 16, he's been not jacked.

But that's my point is I think he's had this jiu-jitsu the whole time. He didn't have to learn it. He didn't have to go to class or anything. It creates a level of just been built this way. That's why the bad videos are up, man. It's pizza every day. But you see how that's a level of like, that's a different game. That's not necessarily like, what's a different game? Meaning putting that up there almost shows people like, look, I don't want you to have this preconceived notion of me. Like, I also, like, I am a human and I feel these things because when you get treated, like, I see when people come in and the coaches that give you guys workouts to do, it's like, they just assume Mark Strong is doing this and seem as superhuman. So I'm going to put five times as much weight on there. I'm like,

they're not able to actually, I'm watching because I always get to sit on the sidelines. Like these guys, because I know you two, aren't able to actually get the benefit of your coaching because you're trying to impress them by giving them more weight because you don't want them. And it's this whole negotiation. People come out here. Oh, I'm on the show. I want to make sure they think I'm a great coach. I really want to challenge them. I want to feel something.

And so we get so worried to try to feel something that we end up like screaming instead of just talking romantically in a date. And like that's the hard part. And so like, I don't, I will not say that there is, I think what you. have. I don't think what I'm saying is necessary special to me though. I think it's I mean personally I do think it's an interpretation and it's an uncomfortable one because when you see your lack you have to be okay with how much you currently lack. So that's where I asked you the question earlier. You're talking about how you want to strike. What makes a good punch? Because every single punch you throw on that back would have knocked me out. So what's the context?

Comparison without context is always that's comparison without context. Okay. It's not redeemable. Okay. I will never go to a doctor ever again about my general health. All they want to do is put you on pills. Really well said there by Dana White. Couldn't agree with them more. A lot of us are trying to get jacked and tan. A lot of us just want to look good, feel good. And a lot of the symptoms that we might acquire as we get older, some of the things that we might have high cholesterol or these various things. It's amazing to have somebody looking at your blood work as you're going through the process, as you're trying to become a better athlete, somebody that's somebody that. that knows what they're doing. They can look at your cholesterol. They can look at the various markers that you have and they can kind of see where you're at and they can help guide you through that.

And there's a few aspects too where it's like, yes, I mean, no, no shades of doctors, but a lot of times they do want to just stick you on medication. A lot of times there is supplementation that can help with this. Merrick Health, these patient care coronators are going to also look at the way you're living your lifestyle

because there's a lot of things you might be doing that if you just adjust that, boom, you could be at the right levels, including working with your testosterone. And there's so many people that I know that are looking for, they're like, hey, should I do that? They're very curious. And they think that testosterone is going to all of a sudden kind of turn them into the Hulk.

But that's not really what happens. It can be something that can be really great for your health because you can just basically live your life a little stronger, just like you were maybe in your 20s and 30s. And this is the last thing to keep in mind, guys. When you get your blood work done at a hospital, they're just looking at like these minimum levels. At Merrick Health, they try to bring you up to ideal levels

for everything you're working with. Whereas if you go into a hospital and you have 300 nanograms per deciliter of test, you're good, bro, even though you're probably feeling like shit. At Merrick Health, they're going to try to figure out what things you can do in terms of your lifestyle. And if you're a candidate, potentially TRT. So these are things to pay attention to,

to get you to your best self. And what I love about it is a little bit of the back and forth that you get with the patient care coordinator. They're dissecting your blood work. It's not like if you just get this email back and it's just like, hey, try these five things. Somebody's actually on the phone with you going over every step and what you should do.

Sometimes it's supplementation, sometimes it's TRT, and sometimes it's simply just some lifestyle habit changes. All right, guys, if you want to get your blood work checked and also get professional help from people who are going to be able to get you towards your best levels,

that's AmeriHealth.com and use code power project for 10% off any panel of your choice. Because context gives you meaning a reason. So comparison is like but in order to have that as a result meaning, okay, I'm comparing a result I intended to have. There's an intention. So I went to punch

and the context of any punches to inflict harm and knock me out because I'm talking nonsense about your mama. Something I don't know. Yeah, that's the intent. That's a context. And so you want to hit me. If you didn't knock me out. I don't even think you can kid about in Seema's mom at all.

You want to see a strike boy? The waves are too much. If you, if your intention is to do this and it didn't happen, then there's a reflection. So life is a mystery moving forward and the science moving backwards. But to create this like, it's like I'll be happy when my punch looks like this. But why? Because that mythical punch doesn't have context or context. And so like that's why I would look backwards and say, yeah, reflection editing, self-reflection and being able to say, you know what?

I had this intention and like you can reflect in the thing and then they move forward. That's the point of an eye, like the brain to think. Can I make a comment on the, I'm happy one? I think this is another thing that can be helpful when learning new things. Because in this video where I'm throwing these punches and I'm, I love some of the comments here are super helpful because I didn't realize how tense I was, right? But I was happy when I was doing that. I was happy when I watched the video.

And I was happy when I saw the feedback. I'm happy even though I'm not close to where I was. want to be. And I think that you can adopt that. You know what I mean? Like you don't, what you said is exactly right. You don't want to have the idea of I'm going to be happy when I'm able to sprint. But you want to learn to love the practice right now because that love right now was going to say, I allow you to be consistent with the practice until you get to your ideal goal. Yeah. And when you get to your ideal goal, you're still going to be as happy as ideally you were when you were starting it. But that's, this is the mind games that you kind of have to learn.

to play with yourself. And then you got to be careful. You don't mind getting yourself into like forever moving the goalpost. I have a little bit of an example. I had a friend the other day tell me that they came over to my house and they saw something that I had

and they were just thinking of themselves like and they didn't think poorly of themselves. They just thought, I'll never be able to have that. I'll never be able to afford that. Like, holy crap. Like that's really impressive for Mark. That's cool. But just that's never in the cards for me.

And this person, you know, since that time has skyrocketed in popularity and they make a lot of money and they've been able to afford those things. But to your point, they still are striving. You know, they still want to get better and they still are probably maybe a little bit in comparison with other people. And so I'm not saying that it can't, you know, I think it can go both ways. I think it can go the way you're talking where you can have a reinterpretation of this idea of comparison and it can rob you of joy perhaps. but it also can be a motivator, but we do need to be cautious or conscious of like,

you know, things will be better when I get to here, things will be better when I get to there, because they won't necessarily probably be better unless they're better up here. Here's a question. You win the adult black belt world championship, but it was disgusting. Her technique was horrible.

You just muscle through the whole thing. Or you lose it, but it was beautiful, and he had an excellent technique, but the guy was just an absolute, he just muscled through it. like, meaning you got the outcome, but you didn't get the pursuit of perfection. If you had to choose between those two.

Oh, I'd lose. So that, to me, like, you, there's the art of it. And I think that's important. That's, that's the thing. But that's, again, I mean, anybody who's a focus competitor, you know, they would disagree with me. And that's the thing. That's just how I, that's how I like to do these things.

Like, when I'm doing jiu-jitsu, I'm in the pursuit of better jiu-jitsu. I'm not always in the pursuit of winning. I'd like to win, but I'd like to win while, also having good form. When I'm throwing these punches and I'm thinking about, the reason why I use those whack pads because people keep telling me

to use gloves is because I want to be able to throw a punch with my bones through that bag and handle the pan pack. I want my body to be able to handle throwing a punch, right? So that's why I'm not using that. But that means that I have to be technically proficient. And at some point, I'm going to get better and better at passing that look test.

Right? So I think it's it's the pursuit of technique, right? I don't know if that clarifies anything. No, there's the look test is an external example because of the closest to the field test, which is like did you embody it? Meaning you look there, that core, the bracing, like that has a lot to do with the control,

the six-pack apps, so like I don't feel safe in this sense, meaning that's safe, but like, I don't mean you don't feel safe because it's just a bag, but like there's a part of you that we can train ourselves to know that we're always reflection, this is something that matters, and I have to be able to do this right. So even if you are the one judging yourself, you're stepping overlooking your shoulder,

you're always making sure you're good. Like, there was a reflection you had. It was like, I didn't realize I was flexed my abs. I think the hard part is without context, you kind of lose the, you lose an evaluation, have a solid intention, meaning like, what's the goal? What's the outcome?

What am I trying to get here? For example, here, no one's fighting back. Yeah. Like, contextually, I'm doing so many things that I probably shouldn't be doing because I'm not having to think about dodging or moving. But maybe that would be the thing where you roll against somebody that, like, I remember watching volleyball players.

And it was like these really high-level college volleyball girls were, like, getting beat by these guys that didn't know how to play volleyball because they're doing unexpected stuff. So, like, if the point of the fight, the point is to win. So you kind of see, like, it's the Dow that is the written Dow is not the Dow. It's not the Eternal Dow. It's like the thing that you, that's the life is eternal suffering, which is just it's a dissatisfaction. I mean, you will never have the thing.

And so in some capacity, you have to realize that, like, you will die with email, emails unread in your inbox. Like, there is a, there is a fine in this and in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, So the degree that we don't accept that creates suffering in our body. But to the degree that we aren't willing to push into that creates this kind of like just numbness, where complacency, mediocrity, where we just disconnect from life we don't engage. And so the stoic pursuit is like all these things that go through to try and train that or trying to do that capacity.

Train what? Train what? Train the ability to stay on the nice edge. Meaning you're just, you're present in touch with this thing. you're not too distracted by your ego, your fears, your uncertainties, your anxieties, but you're also not caught up in this like, you haven't given up,

you haven't become a victim. And it's very difficult to stay on that. It's like, and I think this is why there is no answer to it because it's that yin-yang, this constant back and forth, and you're swinging back and forth. I just think it's very easy and noble to say,

I'm doing this because I know I can be better because the alternative is to say that I'm good enough. I don't care. I can knock you out. The confidence to what I'm, walk up. I don't care what my stride looks like. I'll beat you in a sprint. You know, like, I show speed online. I don't really know if he's technically proficient, but he's going to walk up and say, I'm, and so you see some of these guys, and in some sense, it becomes a thing.

Mike Tyson, Muhammad Ali, all these guys, they express so much that you just end up like, if he believes that that much, then I guess he's got it, and then they become the standard. It's like, well, what came first? The self-belief or that, and even if the self, and it's this back and forth because, like, are you saying they have doubts in their mind? And I think that's the pursuit of it. If you were driven by that, the 90, so there's this idea of procession, which is every, the learning happens at 90 degrees of whatever you're paying attention to, which is why if you're into, if you are, the context matters, right? Because if you're focusing on the intention of beating, fighting some guy,

then learning happens 90 degrees because you realize I have this, the reason you let go of the tension immediately put some arms in that thing that could swing back, you're going to have to move. And that, just like when you push hands, like you adjust because there's immediate context. And so if you don't have a context, then it's like, you know, it's whatever goes. And so that's where the learning happens in relationship. So this is why I think we've missed the mark with training because we get stuck there. This is like the outline for the future book, but there's this idea of returning to sport,

which is I'm going to return back to these immersive experiences that put me out of my mind and into something. Like I want to learn Spanish, I'm going to go to Spain. So I return a sport as a concept to be able to open yourself back up to that. Then I play, which is just what you're doing. You're playing. There's no consequence. You're able to explore all along a full line of possibilities without having a commit. We can roll jiu-jitsu and you can strengthen you,

strangle me without killing me kind of thing. And even if I like managed to get a good move on you, it's not like, oh, I, you know, like we don't have to attach your ego to it. Then you train, which is we played, we got some feedback, we learned some stuff, with this little consequence. Oh, I want to work on it. So I'm going to expose myself, my tissue to repeated, repeated conditions where I'm going to train iron to make a sword.

I'm going to train pizza dough to pull it to reformulate the proteins to make it like doughy. We can train connective tissue and muscle. That's training. But if we don't compete, if we don't put energy into it, don't really care to try like do that with someone else in context. We don't get any feedback. We don't learn. And I think too much of people get stuck in the training middle where they never

compete, they don't get real context. And then they just, they just think internally. And they just spiral because they're just like, I'm never good enough, I'm never good enough, never good enough.

And then it turns into, that's why I think endurance athletes, athletics are very toxic for most people. So you use that loaded word because it's like, there's always more miles. There's always better. And even something like, you know, working on this by yourself.

If you never put yourself in context, it's like, there's always better. There's always better. There's always more miles, always more weight to live. You'll never be happy. But it's like you compete. But why are we, okay, there's a lot.

Why are we still bringing happiness into this? Because the reason why I ask you that question is, let's use this example. In the pursuit of getting better, I'm going to use this myself an example because this is the way I think about these things. And this is the way I am with these things. I'm happy.

I'm happy with where I am. I'm happy with the practice. And as I see improvement, I'm still happy. Why are we connecting the pursuit of getting better with not having happiness? How does your body feel? Do you have pain, joint?

That to me, tells you everything. I don't think you're wrong. At no point is this to me saying you're doing anything wrong. No, no, no, I know you're not. But the link with the happiness is where I'm wondering. Peace is a better word for it. Okay. Happiness is like your happening, which are very topical. Happy is very loaded. A piece is what I'm looking.

Piece is a better word. Can you sleep all at night or your relationships happy? As Mark said, the first time we talked, walked around a bodega, it's like what he cares about is who someone is at the dinner table. Do your family? Does your kids? Do your wife like you? Do your colleagues respect you, like the people that you care about? Are you healthy? Are you happy? If those are, I do what people who are in pain. They come to me because it's manifested in their body physically, as it always does. It's like, what's the gap here. And it's also, this where we'll focus on what we can do with sprinting. If you're not, that's why I would never say you can't do this thing. I mean, you can't use comparison as a meaningful thing. Because obviously, like, what do we have?

If we don't have comparison, all we have is subjective experience. So, like, you can think of, like, first person is just pure experience. Third person is pure observation. Right? So if all you have is a computer's observation, then you just have stats. You don't, there's no reason to care. Like, why the stars in the sky? I don't know, I can tell you how many there are and why that one's bright.

But there's no, you don't care. But if all you have is your first person experience, you get Orion's belt and, you know, Jupiter, rising, whatever. it is and whatever I want to be because it's whatever I want. The second person interaction where you get experience plus observation, that's what allows a supercomputer brain to the ego to observe

the identity, the eyes, so to speak, to observe and it can be a teammate. Hey, watch this, do this. Maybe we can work on this and you're always getting better. But then if that's also disconnected from the body because all we have is trackers or rings and say, am I doing good and bad, because my brain is going on loops, try and get that thing I didn't get as a kid to be happy, to be peaceful, to be loved,

to be engaged in something, to feel belonging, that oftentimes runs a show in this modern day and age. And then you just plug into something, someone finds something they could do and they could just beat themselves in suffering. It's conflated with struggling. And then training is just where they live. So, like, it's absolutely, the comparison,

if you don't have comparison, what objective feedback are you ever using to be? Do you know that you're not just smelling your own poop? You know, it's like, like, you do need that, right? I think the hard part is the context is missing in almost everybody, meaning they're not engaged in something. And then if it's proactive or retroactive,

meaning people say, can I sprint? Well, I couldn't sprint like this. That's a proactive comparison. That's useless. I couldn't do it like that. Therefore, what? Therefore, what? Have you tried to give any data?

Retroactively, what you're doing right now is looking disembodied because that is not a thing anymore. That's a concept. You in the past, you in the video, right? You are the only thing that exists. So I'm going to go look at these abstract concepts, which is this version of summit punching

and this is what I did. Okay, how can I make these two a little bit closer. That's you playing mental things in your head. That's different than now. And then if you, to the point that that becomes exciting as an aspiration, I could, ooh, that'd be a fun game to go and try it. Let me try it this way. Like when we go to push hands, you push me over 10 times in row and then it's like, oh, if I try it, that's life. That's engagement. That's fun. That's the struggle, right? So I think to caveat your statement, comparison is a thief of joy, if it lacks context and if it's proactive. And I think those two things are big different. But if you can use it

backwards, then that's self-editing. That's how you create your greatest potential is will limited by a willingness to edit. And I think that's where most people get stuck is because they're not willing to look at themselves painful. They're not able to disconnect themselves from things that happened because they feel like,

he broke up with me, that's a reflection to me. I failed a job. You know, like they can't separate themselves as a person. So they can't ever look at themselves as a science. They're caught up in their ideas.

And because of that they don't learn the skill to be able to say aspiration, to move, to be pulled forward by something bigger than themselves. What's going on with your sports ranch? So the goal of all of this is to be more IRL. I think of the idea,

so Noah's Ark is to use an example from the Bible. If you just think about that outside of the context of any, like, you know, biblical, spiritual narrative, some guy just got this idea like, you know, never really rains here. But if it did rain, there's some mountains there. We're kind of in a valley. We'd be really screwed.

So what if I just started to do something as like planned beads, the backup, like in case it did rain? And I'm not saying the social media thing and stuff is not, like, forever or whatever. But the internet seems a little iffy. And one of the things that I do know is like it's having an arc to build something that is like I want a place that I can live,

I can train, I can do this stuff to like really use any type of social media exposure to bring people back to real life. But I also realize that all these things I talk about are great, but there are two things. There's willingness and then there's accessibility. And people can have willingness, but if they don't have a place that allows them, like you guys came over and saw the spring floor and the soft carpets and the mats and the whole plan is to build that track area, which has got turf and it's safe and soft. I think the idea of sacredness is like It's anytime in the Bible you see just to use another example, but any religious text, anytime there's an encounter with God, take your shoes off.

You're walking on the ground. You're walking on the sacred, which means take your shoes off. Pay attention. When you're barefoot, you pay attention. Now you walk. So the idea of creating a place that is like you guys have created a place that can come and have ideas and express them and be a little messy because you're willing. We're playing.

It's some jiu-jitsu. The number one rule is of any jihitsu mat is. Take your shoes off? Yeah. Don't walk. If you ever saw a kid, you would like that. It's the idea of this is a safe place to really try. And so I think my goal is to create a space where people who've been disconnected from the body,

they're in pain or whatever, they want to come and let's feel this thing. I'll guide you, allow you to express this, create a safe spot. And then I think sports are the most fun. So the first step is to create a space. People can come learn a sprint. The next step is to create sport field, sand volleyball court, basketball court, because people can go back to some immersive experience with sport because that's how you change. So I'm in the process about halfway through there.

I think I don't know, I sent random pictures before, but I got the gym set up. So it's been very cool. Yeah, I saw you had all kinds. You had a football in there, tennis balls, volleyball, soccer ball. That might be before. Yeah, so this is before it was a dairy barn. Basically, there are walls in there, a lot of metal pipes for water because cows would just get milked and they poop and then they flush it out. So there's a big divot in the middle.

Ripped out the whole floor, took out those beams, replaced them, put trusses up, took out the walls, redid the whole foundation. And now we've got a, it's a spring floor. So it's like 38 feet by 22 feet of this. gymnastics floor yeah yeah with some carpet bonded foam and then there's an area of um uh a jihitium mat so you can roll and do that stuff there and it's just a monkey bars it's just like an open space spring floor is so fun just a tip for everybody you know like if you know what graham's talking about you know that's in this book and what we've talked about on the podcast before is have some of your resting positions change and you'll notice your body will change and so getting on the ground is great but you may have to like introduce yourself to the ground with something softer than just the ground despite especially if you have like wood floors or, you know, so you might want to look into carpeting or some sort of go mat type thing. We have a muscle mat for the babies.

It's like the two inch thick and it's really soft. It's funny people like, whatever you can find. That's soft. Yeah. You're not in prison. If you're not in prison, you can arrange a spot on the floor.

Right. I mean, in Seema is a great example. I was at the hunkering stool. Like just, you know, came you're sitting in the parking lot today. But it's like,

make it accessible for yourself. And it doesn't have to be barbells and dumbbells. It could be a soft mat. We got a, for the, a cool gift, somebody got us for twins they just turned one, I don't know, two days

ago, they got these like big pillows. It's like a roll, like a, there's a wedge and there's a cylinder and there's a little like, you know, wavy thing. And it's like, wait, what day is their birthday? It was Friday, the 24th. Oh, okay. April 24th. But that idea of like, make it, it's like, I don't think, I thought about this

in a way, whatever, why do babies not get knee pain? Because they're not too, they're not too proud to kneel down. You know, they're not too proud to get on the ground. Every single baby. Because, you mean, the stiffness that happens wraps around your knees is like if you just are willing to get on the ground and move. But if you make it easy for yourself to get on the ground just to like pop down. They do it. Yeah, babies do everything in like steps.

Yeah. You know, they, sometimes they'll, you know, they'll miscalculate and they'll hate their head or something. You know, something happens sometimes they'll fall. But for the most part, once they get to be like around one, two years old, they start to kind of figure out which way their body can move. And they don't end up with a typical injury that you might hear from, you know, an adult. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And this is, so we go every Thursday. My wife is a gymnastics coach.

These are the babies that I steal, by the way. So if people are wondering why there's random babies on my feed here and there, it's because of the, these are the Tuttle Twins that I steal every once in a sense. Very fortunate for that. One of a recommendation, if you have any type of gymnastics studio nearby,

see if they have adult gymnastics, an open jammer classes. Gymnastics studios are literally just meant to be as safe as possible for any level of progression. They have pads of very shape, size, and color. It's literally a perfect place to have visual, and physical novelty. And we just let the kids...

I mean, we go to the... I've been going to an open gym for like two years now. I'm slowly working on some things. But just having a space that feels okay to just fall. Like, that does so much for you and allows you to feel safe

and kind of more trusting. And like, it's really powerful to see that. And so we bring the kids there and, you know, first they kind of just slapped and now they run out. And I have a mat that you guys suggested to me that's an air track. Yeah.

So you got... That's a little bit what they were... Ryan was just showing you. It's probably not. cheap, but it's amazing. So you see that thing on the, that's the spring. It's like a trampoline, a runway trampoline.

That thing, the air track resembles that. So basically you can do, you can try to look it up, Ryan. Floor trips. Yeah, you can do like, you know, tumbling passes and stuff on the air track gives you more bounce. And mine's just like a big square and I can, I actually like put it in my living room sometimes. Did you get that? People have seen that for like jiu-jitsu and stuff. But anything you can make, and I think Mark, you had a really good thought about this is like,

dude the thing's comfy as hell. I'm so going to buy this. What's the price on this thing? Is it crazy or is it not that bad? There seems to be a few different ones like 200, 400. Oh, okay, good. Good. It's not like 1500 bucks or something.

Okay, good. This is a great, anything that allows you to, like a trampoline is a great way to develop more, like this big word, facial integrity, but basically like the balance of the connective tissue that holds your bones and muscles in an alignment. When you do a trampoline, you notice how the trampoline is like a flat mat

and then when you land on it, it isolates and drops at that one spot, the gravity kind of tells your organs and tells your body, you get you moving. So the rebounders are a great example of this. Anything that allows you to bounce and get a little bit of jump

and gives you a little bit of support, so all the guys were on the spring floor and they're just bouncing, bounce, bounce, bounce. And it's like, it just makes it easier. And now all of a sudden, you start to feel a little bit more of this lightness and then that starts to shake up everything from like, you know, I don't know,

we can get all the way into like, oh yeah. There's some amazing stuff you can start to do with this stuff. But even if you're not doing backflip, and you can do forward rolls and tucks and roll sideways and crawls and it's just it takes a if you can allow if you've had years of not doing things your body has gotten stiff and the way you do that I mean yes you can go start doing everything on concrete learn real hard rip the band-aid off but it doesn't feel good yeah and that resistance that you feel from emotional pain or the like physical pain

the stiffness is going to slow down your process so like you will get where you want to go much faster if you meet your body where it's at and I think being oh that that's an example of like everything you want is on the other side of the regression of regression is like yeah it's okay this are people the minimalist shoe thing i i've taken a different course on i think toe separate of shoes are fantastic uh the paluvas which we're all familiar with with a little bit of padding if it's under like i think having a little bit of padding makes movement a lot more accessible for a lot of people and it still keeps the toes spaced appropriately but the idea of this minimalist shoe that's like no padding underneath it's super flexible but it's still cone your toes together it's like

it's this weird thing where we think because the ground hurts it's better but it's like the whole point of feeling the ground is to relax and not make it like not be distracted by that so having a little bit padding under your feet goes a long way it just it's and again knowing the contacts if you're walking on urban stuff like that but a little bit of both but it's the idea of like meeting your body where it's at not having to like force everything all the time because that that turns into a comparison of like I should be like that why am I not like this I suck I'm the worst and then it's just you know what are some what's some of the sexy science that's that you know what's some of the sexy science behind sprinting.

Like what will do for somebody? We'll help them get leaner. We'll help them look stronger. Like, what have you seen? You know, because you've helped a lot of people and you've written a lot of e-books and now you have this book coming out. So the thing with sprinting,

and I think this is really important, because you can sprint on a bike and in a swim. You can go all out. But gravity is the big thing. So when we look at something like visceral fat and we look at the way that there are organs and our bodies held together in this kind of like container,

we need impact. So the bones, for example, and then Sima, I know you did a big video about the bones and talking about this stuff. Osteo-calcin is, the bones are hormonally active part of the body. They're a hormonally active organ. And when they get bent with enough force, they release this electrical stimulus,

Piazo electricity that then tells the body, oh, let's release this osteocalcin. And so there's an electrical signal and then a hormonal indigrant signal that comes. And if you don't get that, your brain loses the organizing signal about what matters. So when you start to see neurodegenerative disease, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, things long term. Well, which went first, the brain of the bones? because always in those circumstances, people stop loading their bones with what matters. And the same, with the striking,

what you're trying to feel, the other side of using those is you want to actually get as much, why would you waste? I want to throw my bones through the bag. Exactly. And so you could say, this is why I talk people, you need to sprint and be ideally barefoot

or a minimalist shoes before we start running because let's just say you're going to go do 10,000 steps. Why would I waste all the input not building my bones to be stronger, my connective tissue? Why would you waste the first 10,000 punches? Well, your hand's going to be soft. Okay, then use that as your feedback.

But like when you start, you should be as sober as possible to get as much feedback in your body to get, otherwise you're wasting your reps. And so this idea of loading your bones, getting your body organized itself, gravity is doing that work for you. And to the extent that you go low impact or remove gravity from that circumstance, you're missing out on those opportunities to actually improve your system. So the other thing is that gravity lets your body know real quick, what weight is helping and what weight isn't. And so if you have too much muscle, too much fat, neither of those are contributing to your overall. overall forward motion of what matters here. And again, the muscle tends to stay a little longer in these activities. But the body fat, that's why you can kind of walk and people get on the treadmills where they

kind of remove all the stuff. They're just kind of like waving their arms. And maybe it works in kind of some caloric burn thing. But like, if you really want to speed that up, you tell your body with some impact, this is not helping me. And we want to go here. So I think that obviously you can look at the numbers, load your hamstrings and your adductors multiple times your body weight.

So there is nothing that's going to get the intensity and the quickness. the impact of pyometrics is more than enough to basically your connective tissue, your tendons as one example of connective tissue are crimped. And so that crimping pattern needs enough impact to pull it apart. And so that pull apart is what remodels them to be stronger. So you get more bouncing, more elastic, which means that every fall you take, every impact you have is less of a strain on your body. The speed of movement when you hit the ground. So you can imagine a bungee jumper jumping off. It's the the bridge acts more like your calves. So when you hit the ground and a strike, your calves contract as quick as possible.

And the faster they can contract, the quicker they can stop the down motion. That's where the bungee cable of the guy holding, connecting the guy to the bridge, is your Achilles tendon that stretches. That's where most of the work goes. So the stronger you are, and you mentioned earlier, the relative strength of these guys that run distance, they're small, but they're really strong compared to their body. Not necessarily objective strength, but relative with when you combined how stiff. I remember I've met some of these endurance guys.

It's like, they are so. so stiff. They're like, they're rigid. So when they hit the ground, it's like a little feather, pop, pop, pop, pop, and it's like nothing. So every step they take versus someone who's got maybe 150 pounds excess weight, the amount of effort to get through that is so much. And so it's not even a fair comparison to say that.

Like they're just like driving a little Prius floating along on top of a laser river. So that kind of thing really makes a difference. So then obviously your calves contract on the ground contact, your kely stretches. And then the second you have that combination there, which of those two muscle and store potential energy. and your connective tissue, when that can counteract the downward force, you re-contract the muscle, co-contraction, and dry back up.

Obviously, there's muscles around the whole lower leg that contribute to, so it's not that simple. But you need speed for that, you need load for that, you need momentum for that. And then all of that goes into just telling your body the expression, the desire, the want, to be in the hunt, to actually care about it. And I think that's the point of a sprint. I have trained with some, I did what I thought was sprinting. And then, like, as we talk about, you get some feedback and you compare,

you're able to work with people and you be around other people and realize, oh, there's levels of intensity. Like, almost like, what would it take for me to feel like Noah Lyle stepping up on front of that and be able to go out and do my big jump or you're saying bull just to feel like it? It's like, okay, there's a personality expression that happens to that is not possible if you do not put yourself in a situation where it requires all of you. So I think that's the other thing too is the attention. How many times are people couch to 5K?

This is why I think sprinting is an essential part before you go running because you're building the strength, speed, and the form to be able to manage it. Otherwise, it's like you never train a high. weight, low volume to be able to set your scale like a bench pass or a squad or deadlift. As you continue with this actually, because this is a very interesting thing. I think I think some people will listen to what you're saying. They'll be like, sprint before I can run. What? Yeah. You know, I think there is something about cushioned shoes because it allows you to not have to learn how to handle all this ground reaction force. You do sprinting in vibrance or barefoot.

right? And when people see you do that, they're like, what? How? And then they just like dislogic because it's not even for them in their opinion, right? So I think there's something missing here because a lot of people are like, I can run just fine and I don't do a lot of sprinting, but it's what's happening with that? What's happening with that force? And what are they missing if they want to now go sprint? The, you're always training at the edge of your ability. So imagine you wanted to, let's say you're going to go to a high rocks, for example, where you're going to do a million kettleball swings or a million wall balls or whatever it is. But you've never actually seen what the upper limit is.

It's no different that you have a car. Is it fair to say, because people say I'm gatekeeping running when I say this? I'm like, okay, is it fair to say that a car shouldn't be driven freely by the public if it isn't able to go at a highway speed? It's like, no, it's safe. We know how fast it can go. We know what the tires are speed rated for. We know what the chassis.

We know what all they. So why would it be different for you as a body? If we don't know what you could handle, then why would I just randomly assign some in the middle? because it's a guess. Well, I guess if I go about this, I'm okay. But then when you add in volume and fatigue, now all of a sudden, you're buttoned up against repetitive injury that's small, small, but there's no accident. There's just consequences unfolding in slow motion. So guess what your Achilles tendonitis that's always plaguing you is because your Achilles is not strong enough, and you're constantly pushing right at the threshold of that. So you're telling me what's more dangerous,

constantly playing with, I don't know what the dose of this drug is versus I know the ranges and I know this is a safe spot. We don't do anything else like that. And there's no RDA for supplements or anything else we know what the tolerable safe dose is. That's what sprinting does. And if you think about, because this is the boring to run. Obviously, there's born to sprint. I want to take one step forward. Because born and run was very influential for a lot of people, as was from me, got people thinking about running, right? Because it paints this idea of like, we're from people who could run. What I don't think people understand is that running is an off, distance running is an offensive technique where we can outpace other people. But before you think offense, you need a defense.

You need to be able to develop. You need to walk and crawl and throw. So, we're out hunting. We're not chasing things down with a logistical complexity of going from miles and miles on different territory and risking injury and having to carry it back and do all this stuff. No, we're going to go smash grab. We're going to play safe in numbers and do this stuff like a teammate. We're going to work together. But you can teach a kid how to sprint within the confines of a very small, like imagine a football field. If that's your tribe's area, you can teach you on walk, dance, sprint, throw. We can play games, competition. We can do a race here there. You can do all of these things to be you're ready to go out into the world now. And I think people miss that

point when I think, I'm going to go run because it's good. We were born to run. No, no, you're born to sprint. Running is an option for you. You could do a million other thing. And so the sprinting brings you back to that capacity. It is your foundation. Otherwise, you're always asking for injury because you don't have the capacity to do it. So the shoes thing is hard because a lot of companies just want to sell your product. And so they're incentivized. Hey, you just need this new pair of shoes. Your owner of a pronator, you know, heel striker. Don't worry about any of that stuff. And it's like, no, can you actually do the thing? And I think it's not that hard, as Mark said. I think it's very easy to get people to connect back with that.

Then you can build on top of that. But, you know, it's just part of making your body road ready, so to speak. What do you've been thinking about some of these older people recently with these pretty amazing times? I don't know if you've seen like some of the 100 meter sprinters. I think I saw a guy do like under 15 seconds, but he's like 81 or something like that. There was another guy who did a 200 and that went pretty viral. people are calling it trackflation and they're not sure if it's like track becoming more popular

or the shoes or the training or really what's going on but it's impacting even the elderly as you see these people that are around 80 years old sprinting well and I think part of this whole age thing is like who told you that you died when you're 30 anyways it's like people who didn't really take into account more to infant mortality and so you know there's this what is a this is why I was really tried to isolate in the book as like, what was the speed that guy did that in? Did it say? 15.5. Yeah, that's cool. That's legit.

When you lose sight of what matters for a healthy physical body, you then get co-opted by any number of things. Well, that's flexibility. And so you get numbers. But it's like in a real context where you need to be, even grandma, I expect you when you watch my kids

to be able to chase them down if they're 20 feet away from you. Otherwise, I'm not letting you watch my kids. And you think of the context, that's human. And that's, we all have a dispersed role in a society to be able to manage that. So you have an obligation to be healthy. And what does that mean? You should be able to have access to your full human abilities.

And if you start later, you're going to be, a lot of these people, they start, maybe the, a lot, I know a lot of people like that, they just never stopped. So that's one option. You just never stop. And because it's track where there's, you can kind of go and pick and choose and you can, you can sprint and sometimes you stride. You can be smart by how you do it. Strength training is also important.

People understand that there's more going on than just like a thing. But I think also there's an interest. People who start later are still interested in it. They're excited. They're racing. And a lot of these people you'll see I start when I was 50. It's like, yes,

because your fire is so excited because you just got this thing. I think that's so cool. Yeah. Some were like, I started when I was 65. You're like, holy shit,

but they've been doing it for 15 years. If there's anything close to a universal gospel, it is to me that the body can change and heal and remodel no matter when you start. People in their 60s, they start jump roping. You see real time connective tissue changes. Your body is just a man in a cave.

It just responds to what you do with it. And if you are willing to bring the intention to try and to care, anything is possible. And I, like anything relative within like, you know, whatever caveats. But like it's, it, this is the expression of a human body. And I do think, well, you said this earlier.

It's a man, really just run a 10,600? It is amazing. That was, 60 something? Oh, did he really just run a 10, 600? It looks like he's going fast enough for that to be true. This is where the controversial aspect. We don't always know what's true on the internet, but that's amazing. Well, you had said this while, which is that people like,

that don't have any training often or better off than people that do. Because people that go and train to be endurance runners, the least capable person that's going to be able to sprint is always a distance runner. Like when I see anybody shows up to a seminar, I'm like, oh, you do ultra-marathans, you're going to have the hardest time because, like, your body has trained and you become sedentary in this one locked-in-position.

And that's the hard part is as adults, the idea that it's a natural expression means not something you have to really work hard. Hard as an emotional term, I could talk about that. But, like, you don't have to work hard to do it. it's just a happy, healthy, like a teenager can just run, jump, and spread. It's not like they have to work hard to do it. And that ability, if you just keep doing those, basic touch with those, doesn't change.

The thing that people reject is when they get older and they say, I did the fitness game right. I lifted weights. I did my elliptical. I went and did my running, my V-O-2 max, my zone two. I did it all. And you're telling me I can't do the thing. You're telling me I'm not an athletic.

You're telling me I'm, like, that's where people get, you know, I can run all this stuff. What are you saying? It's like, dude, like, I just know that I can immediately put you in a handful of circumstances where you have no access. Like that to me, you missed the point. One of the reasons why I say that, what you mentioned about how trained people might have less success than untrained people

is, you know, like just to give it a little bit of context. And there's many different scenarios, but the person that mainly is only lifting, you know, if you walk into a coffee shop and say, hey, we're doing some 40-yard sprints out here. I'll give anybody, you know, $10,000, cash, whoever the fastest person is. It might be someone that's pretty unlikely.

It might not be the former football player that stopped playing football and, you know, gain 30 pounds when he went to college and stuff like that. So a lot of times we see the trained people. We see them kind of, we say them fall, especially if they stop, right? Obviously, that's a big one. But it's odd that the person that really never even played in these sports and barely trains or barely, maybe they just go on some walks here and there, might have, they might be more successful than the person.

person that was putting all that time in years previous. So it, and obviously like randomly, you know, having everybody sprint, you know, maybe that's not necessarily fair, but it's an interesting conversation. You walk in gun threat, okay. Like, you know, it's one of those things where like we just don't think about things and yet they're real. It's like, what makes it not fair? It's like, well, we want life to be safe and that's not nice to say. But that doesn't mean it's not fair. It's very fair to say, hey, I got a gun. Whoever doesn't, like, I'm going to shoot the slowest person here kind of thing. It's like, where the third, That'd be interesting.

I'm going to shoot the second slowest person. Who does that be? But I think that's where, like, in cement to our conversation earlier, the method athlete is like, it's one thing to train to be great at something. But it requires a whole level of flexibility to step into a different thing.

To be able to step into, oh, I can sprint. But so I did this. And also to leave other things behind. Like you might be leaving capacities behind. Yeah. And you're, okay, so I did this 5K the other day. And the point of it was to prove that,

like, I haven't run anything more than a 400 meter in years. And like we do, you know, these walk runs on occasion. But the point was like, all I do was, spreads and my system is strong. But what I didn't really put in there, my goal was it's up 20 and I barely barely squeaked it out. But, you know, caps are still sore from it. But the point was that like, hey, you just need to train your system and this like every step gets easier when you have the

overall system rigidity and capacity to do that. But what I didn't say is I was not skilled at running. I was a mid long distance runner in high school and middle school, which meant you're just the kid that didn't get cut because they don't make cuts. And I stopped. I didn't do it, a road in college and put on some weight and did stuff like that. So I'm like six. 50 pounds heavier than I was in high school for this shot. And my fastest time in high school was like 1756, which I got like my senior year, which again, for some people, it's like whatever. But like that was like seven years of running in a row.

What I didn't say is like you look at the splits is 138, 138, 138, 138, 138, 1.38. I know how to do it. I can step right into that because I'm like, hey, this is going to suck. The first time I was going to be this. I just step right into it. And because I mandates my basic ability, it's like I know how to play this role. Very relaxed. okay this where you're breathing is you're going to say and it's just like over and over and it's just like butter

that's what i'm talking about is like once you got something how into imagine imagine imagine in seem and i in a relationship and i say he's like i'm gonna go to gym hey no babe i love you babe i love you okay i love you you didn't say it you know imagine i was so insecure that you had made you say every single time that you know i love you reiterate this and it's like don't you don't you yeah don't you have any trust in this relationship like we've been together for i've never cheated don't cheat on me. I love you. That's how we are with these past things.

It's like I pulled out just as a simple thing, but I pulled out the stopwatch. I went to the track yesterday and I pulled a stopwatch and I still had that time on there. And I was like, oh, I like that time. It's a good number. It makes you feel good. I'm like, okay, I'll delete it.

Because like I don't need to hold on to it. I just did it. It's that, that to me is the point of minimalism, is the momentum more you thing to bring. It's like when you let things die as they go through your life, you allow we're able to move into bigger things. But to a point for you, and maybe this has no correlation

whatsoever but you made a post announcement saying you weren't going to be doing back squats anymore and I know that they directly countered all these people who are like well back you gotta do the back squat it's like you're not and it's like but you said about that time you felt your spine start to open up how do we know that like for Encema the bodybuilding like you have an impenetrable apac at all times but that bodybuilding pose rewarded you for that is now going to be the thing that like okay does that actually hold me back in this other thing I don't know just as an example like how do we know that like if you're not willing to move forward but like it takes trust that because you think about why would you be able to move forward is like because if you don't actually

think your body can maintain these capacities and like dude I know I can at least do this you're going to hold on your strong suit and I think that's the hard part is like that requires a faith and let's say a bigger reflection of how we're created that our bodies actually aren't if you don't use it you lose it like as you always rant against it's like I don't know man I think you could keep some touch points and like step back into that pretty quick maybe it's a week or two of like just getting the rest off, but like, I'm pretty sure you could get some heavy weighted real quick or the barbell if I gave you four weeks, you know, maybe two weeks. You know, I like, I really like this, this whole conversation, what you're talking about

there specifically. Because, you know, at the end of the day, it comes, of course, it comes down to your interests, right? For example, Larry now is interested in sprinting. And he's going to, like over time, he's going to be learning what is the body that I need to create that's going to be able to be good at sprinting. You know what I mean? And as if, you know, it's not a problem if you are lifting and that is the, that is what you want. If you want to focus on power lifting and that is your personal goal and that is your interest, then you're going to have a body that is good at power lifting. But the way that I look at this for myself too is like, you know, as I'm throwing more strikes, as I'm throwing more kicks, as I start to expose myself to these new capacities,

my goal is to build a body that can kick, that can punch, that can sprint, that can do these things. And the body may need to shed aspects of potential muscle tissue or certain things to be able to achieve that. But when I have the body that does this, it's not that I've lost everything, but I might not be at the peak capacity I had of those other things. And that's okay. Yeah. Because I'm seeking a body that can do said action. And if it can't, that's not currently what I want. And it's good for us to be able to change that if we want to, just like you, not back squatting.

Well, I think there's something really cool about what you said. And I think it also is an important difference is like, you might have to shed muscle mass. Why is that a problem? There's only a problem if you're a bodybuilder, which the goal is to be a certain thing. But that's really not a skill about you. That's a fact about you. Meaning if you said, I'm a, if you, whatever, like we're in the, I don't know, the overweight Olympics. and it's like the goal is to be as big as possible,

then anything that loses, like, if you treat your body like a car, well, we lost some of the horsepower because we trained the muffler, it's like, but you realize that has nothing to do with skill, movement, athleticism, your person. And so what I think in some sense is,

like the person who wants to train to that, not always, because there is a beautiful thing what the body can do, but it's like the old school body bills used to have like, you know, ability as part of their show and it was really cool. Jujimufu.

It's like the guy is jacked. He's a great example of like, okay, you're telling me you can't do backflips and all this kind of stuff. Like he's got his own challenges with, you know, some movements and athletic skills. But like, by large, I believe living proof that you can still manage this stuff. You just have to train it. But I think the cool thing is like the power lifting, meaning I think we often conflate muscle with strength.

They're related, but I don't like you look at some of these guys that are. Fineries. Yeah. Unbelievably strong, these calisthenics guys. And then like, you know, I've lost 15 pounds and moved out here, but I'm stronger. I can pick up sandbags now that I couldn't back then. So it's like how much of this is we build muscle trying to like, you know, okay, we're making this clay figure.

We're going to throw stuff on there to make it bigger because it's bigger or stronger. But it's like when do we actually go back and say, can I chip away, chip away, chip away, chip away, could I do the same with less? And I think that's an interesting. That's the chiseling, the refinement to use the practice. And I think that's a really cool way to look at it, which is not part of the in the current bodybuilding sport as it is, which I say that because that's the single biggest influencer of the supplement world, the training world from most people is like, yes, to put muscle on is because the sport

is to have muscle. More muscle is better because it looks bigger, et cetera. But for that, to like move past that sixth grade mindset of training, so to speak, which is like, I'm bigger than you. It's like, okay, what does it look like to have this in your 20s or 30? Is this a refinement, which is, can I be as strong and have, because if I'm as strong and I weigh 10 pounds less, I will be faster, jump high and do all the other stuff, which ability comes in. And that to me, I'm not saying that endurance running isn't like impressive because it's hard, but it just means really nothing. Maybe it's because I had a period time where I did long distance running.

You did that for years. And I'm like, okay, I've done it. I've done the suffering. I've done the wrong. I'm like, it's just great. You ran a marathon. I could do it too if you put your kids like 20 miles away. I just like I just am so much more interested in engagement, context, skill, ability,

personal development. You talk about my mom so much. I'm going to have to kill you now. You're a mom. I'm joking. I said your mom can run. I'm joking. Yeah.

Shoot. I'm sorry to say this, but I'm going to have to kill you. And I will not respect the next tab. Oh, fuck with you. But I hope it's an ankle lock. So, like, that's the point, though. Is it like to me what, and this is the goal of this book, is to inspire people back to what they could do as a person that's underneath that,

which is you as a fully fledged developing human. And I think it's a path back to sprinting sets your standing for a human that then opens up the door to all personal, physical, and emotional development. how can some people avoid some lower leg injuries? What are some things? Maybe you can share a little bit of wisdom or something that's either from the book or just from your own experience. But I know that like, you know, from the knee down,

I mean, people guess I guess they get hammy too. So it's kind of cover just injuries on sprints, I guess. Okay, so there's two ways. One is the same, we'll call the Encema striking method, which is feel the ground, feel what you're doing. Because the shoe, the footwear you wear matters. because if you have something that's thicker that pads it, you will, if you have been,

the reason people get hurt is because they overstride. They reach too far. They, and then they're landing. So let me interrupt just for a second. If you have a grass field or some sort of appropriate area where you can be barefoot, or whatever appropriate area that you can handle barefoot,

go and try to do some of your exercises or activities on there because it's going to not allow you to hit the ground quite as hard as if you're in these big cushy shoes. because you're going to be smashing your feet and doing something that you're maybe not used to. Yeah, you don't want to go too soft because the ground is important feedback. Meaning, like, you want to be as honest as possible

with where your body's at. And so I would rather somebody go to learn barefoot on concrete because we'll do a lot less volume, but you will learn more from those handful of touches than you would. Because there's, okay. When you say barefoot, you mean like barefoot shoe on concrete? Or do you want...

The only reason barefoot... Someone's going to take it literally. The only reason, Barefoot, barefoot is a problem that's because friction with your skin. So if you can't find a smooth concrete or something like that, then you will tear your skin up. Or like the temperature maybe. Temperature, yeah. But those are like those are secondary things than like the actual connected tissue or muscle injury.

So like, sure, a minimalist shoe of Ibrin five fingers. Something else to just mention real quick. The sand is not that soft. Like when you, if you go to the beach and you're near the water, it's actually like way harder than you might think. Yeah, you just got to be mindful of the slant and, you know. So yes. And there's different types of sand. So there's a, there's an overall quote.

I think this is a helpful thing for people to understand. There's your muscle, your body has to have a certain number of stiffness so it doesn't crumble. And so there's what the ground gives you and is what your body creates. So what your body creates is two parts. There's connective tissue and there's muscle. So you get these three things. So the surface you go, this is why people can go. To sprint, you need 100%.

There's like a hundred percent ability. And so that's come up, like how much muscle do you have to do to hold a position? How much connective tissue rigidity do you have to be able to kind of bunching cord and like stretch? and then how hard is the ground? So if the ground is giving you maximum, then you basically have to be strong enough. The softer the ground is, the more you sink into it. So if you walked across a mattress or like a trampoline,

you kind of bend your knees and you have to like create a lot of muscular contraction to create stability. The firmer that is, the more you can stiffen your joints and use connective tissue to support that. So you need muscle to be able to hold at a specific position, meaning if I need to land off of a depth drop with straight legs, I need quicker muscle activation than I do if I'm going to sink other way to a squat. So the speed is important.

But the faster your muscles contract, the stronger you're connected to, the more healthy your connective tissue needs to be able to stretch. If you go on too soft of a surface, basically the ground is so much more yielding that you have to create a lot more muscular engagement to be able to create that stiffness that it doesn't get the speed of ground contact for the connected tissue to remodel. I know that they can make a lot just to listen to, but that's why you would actually opt for the hardest, firmest, flatest surface to learn because that will very quickly start to give you the feedback of this is the same.

speed my connective tissue my muscle needs to work at. More specific, this is the speed my muscles need to fire in order to stabilize my body. You might notice your nervous system gets woken up a little bit, especially if you, especially if what you're walking on is a little uncomfortable. Yeah. So you guys were jumping on the spring floors and that gives you a little extra bounce, which is good. And so that is a great way to help people kind of feel the stuff.

But the hard part with that is because it's a lot softer, that actually is like what it would feel like if you can allow the spring floor to be your connective tissue, then basically that's what it would feel like if your connective tissue was twice as elastic. The people that bounce off the ground, the Maasai tribe, that's what their connective issue feels like. It's just, they're just spring. It's literally no muscle. So that can increase the speed of your connective tissue, but you also have to be,

you can run on softer surfaces, but you have to be really skilled. It's very hard to sprint fast on sand because the ground you have to make up for that with extra faster stuff. So like, there's ways around it. But does someone to start feel as much as you can? It's only that's going to get your connected to your stronger, remodel that stuff quicker, and it's going to get your bones firmer to be able to handle that stuff.

And then once you have that input, the next thing, the only other thing that matters is basic cues. Stay tall. So you're over your legs as opposed to hunch and into reaching further and step up and over. Because if you stay tall. Like you're going over a cone

or bringing your foot up and over your own knee or something? Like what's the cue? Same. Over your own, bringing your foot up and over your own calf or something? That depends on the speed you're going. But all of those, a cone, the calf, something on ankleing, which is basically you step over your ankle, then you step over your mid-cath,

then you step over your knee. But basically the idea is you're stepping up and over. Cycling around. Yeah, and then if you stay tall, then you step up and over, then basically you're staying in front-side mechanics, and then as long as you can feel the ground, you're not going to land in heels.

So you're not over-striding. You're not have no risk for getting hurt. And then because you feel the ground, you're going to immediately get all your connection, you're going to feel like, whoa, okay. That was it. I did too. And you'll feel it.

You want to really feel like to stop while you feel good. So there's, you know, like feel the ground, stay tall, step up and over, stop why still feel good. And you'll slowly build up for that. Where can people follow along and where can they buy your book? Born a Sprint is available everywhere you buy books, Amazon, Walmart, books a million, Barnes & Noble's, something else.

You can get links to that at the barefoot sprinter. Not the barefoot sprinter.com. And I have for people that are interested in learning on this right now, I have a free challenge, which takes you through these 10 steps I talked about, from sitting to crawling, to walking, stabilizing, kicking, kicking, throwing, skipping, bouncing, jumping, to sprinting that is free. It's a 10-stead-hour course in the membership, which you can get links to that at barefootspinner.com. And anyone who buys the book, it's a free program with all these programs and resources ahead of time,

so you don't have to wait. You can get started right now and be sprinting by summer. Thank you so much. Thank you all for the opportunity. Fred Grissel. Strength is never weak. This week, this week is never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.