Mark Bell's Power Project - Why Hard Training is Sabotaging Your Results || MBPP Ep. 1090

Episode Date: August 5, 2024

In episode 1090, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about how continuously beating yourself up in the gym can lead to slower progress and offer an alternative method that can help you progress much faster.   Official Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw   Special perks for our listeners below!   🥜 Protect Your Nuts With Organic Underwear 🥜 ➢https://nadsunder.com/ Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 15% off your order!   🍆  Natural Sexual Performance Booster 🍆 ➢https://usejoymode.com/discount/POWERPROJECT Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!   🚨 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   🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save up to 25% off your Build a Box ➢ Piedmontese Beef: https://www.CPBeef.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150   🩸 Get your BLOODWORK Done! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel, and use code POWERPROJECT for 10% off any lab!   Sleep Better and TAPE YOUR MOUTH (Comfortable Mouth Tape) 🤐 ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject to receive a year supply of Hostage Tape and Nose Strips for less than $1 a night!   🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!   Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained:      ➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!   ➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!   Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject   FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell   Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Become a Stronger Human - https://thestrongerhuman.store ➢ UNTAPPED Program - https://shor.by/JoinUNTAPPED ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en   Follow Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Podcast Courses and Free Guides: https://pursuepodcasting.com/iamandrewz ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz/ ➢ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@iamandrewz   #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

We've built up a pretty good tolerance with the lifting that we do. And we could have some of the lifting and some of the exercises that we do be actually really like modest where the workout leaves you feeling better. Instead of having six days that continue to beat you up, maybe in between that, you have a workout that,

like I call it a flow workout. You can do a full body thing, get blood flow everywhere, but it's much lighter weight and you're just driving blood to your tissues. Ideally, you would love to be able to work out and almost forget that you worked out. You could still be a meathead. You could still go in and train with a lot of intensity. It's just that like, you might want to pick and choose your battles, pick and

choose how hard you want your workouts to be. It's a long game. The easier that it is for you to be jacked or the easier that it is for you to be shredded, the longer you're going to be able to maintain that. So Falgor was, was pretty messed up. It's crazy you remember the names of the stuff. When you're terrified. And then also Atreyu losing. Dude, okay, and Seema, this is within the first like few minutes the movie starts. The characters are like starting to get announced.

Atreyu is the hero of this movie. He has a dope ass white horse. Atreyu. Within the first like couple scenes, the horse dies in fucking quicksand. Oh man. This the most devastating thing you could ever think of and that's yay kids let's watch this. So this is for kids. Yes. And we're already killing animals. Yes. Yes. Cool. In quicksand, no less. Yeah, a slow, and he's crying. I don't know the horse's name, but it's the saddest thing ever. It's sad. Yeah, dog.

And there's a weird rock guy. And, oh, dude, it was very disturbing. I don't know if that was claymation or whatever it was, but super disturbing stuff. You know, recently I watched, because there's a new Chucky child's play on Amazon. So recently I actually was like, you know what? Let me try and face my fears and just like watch the shit. And I did. I actually feel proud. I'm still deathly scared of Chucky.

And if I ever see a Chucky doll, neither of you guys fuck with me. Do not ever buy one and bring one to this gym, because I will never trust you for the rest of my life. But with that being said, I felt good that I actually watched. But you're not, you don't like it, but you're not like, who? Yeah, see, I'm, me, Chucky, ventriloquist dummies, we don't mess.

Under the bed? Fuck that, bro. Achilles tendon? Oh my God, yeah. Was that in the original child's play? Yeah, I think so. He slices the Achilles tendon. No.

Oh God. What's wrong with that doll? Yeah, I think so. He slices the Achilles tendon. Oh, God. What's wrong with that doll? That's a rough injury. All dolls just generally make me uncomfortable. If they're very human-like, they make me uncomfortable. So it's just a thing. Yeah, the more human they get, the scarier it gets. Here's the lizard dog thing.

That's kind of cute. That's on the front or whatever, like on the fucking VHS tape back in the day. Wait, that's scary. That's kind of cute. He was a good one. OK, OK, OK. Yeah, but there's some flying thing, though, too. Or is he flying?

He flies. Oh. When he flies, he looks just like kind of like a turd in the air. Oh, my God. It was cool. But yeah. I did a run today and it wasn't great because I just kind of got out for my run at the wrong time. It's just like 7,000 degrees outside. Yeah.

It was like 103 when you were out, right? Yeah. It's supposed to be like even hotter tomorrow. I heard like 112. Oh, I love it. I love it. I love it. Heat shock proteins, I guess.

Yeah. It's your own sauna out there, man. It's weird when you're running and you're like, is this too dangerous? You're like, I don't know. I feel okay. I got to carry the boats. Yeah, but there's a difference, right? Between like feeling okay and then all of a sudden, like, and then you hear about people all the time, you know, passing out, or this happens or that happens, like, oh, he was fine. And then all of a sudden, and you're like,

is that me or am I doing okay? And it felt okay, but it also felt a little sketchy because of just how hot it was. But running the Arboretum is really nice because the trees and stuff, you get some shade here and there. So it wasn't too awful. And I ran with Ryan and with my brother's girlfriend.

So it's always good to have, you have a little crew with you, it makes it a lot easier, you know? Let me ask you, Mark, how do you feel out there getting all that sun? How do you feel about that? Yeah, I'm gonna send something to Andrew that I want him to pull up. I'd love to talk about the sun for a little bit

before we get into some of the other stuff we're gonna be talking about. But, you know, first of all, to say, I love the sun. I love going out there and getting the sun. And that's different for me than years ago. Years ago, I didn't really like getting the sun. But part of the reason why I didn't like getting the sun is because I was super pale and I wasn't used to the sun.

I never, I didn't like take any time to build a solar callus. But years ago, when I started going to Bodega Bay a little bit more and going to the beach and stuff like that, I wanted to get outside a little bit more. And I just started to kind of quickly learn that I could actually,

and this is before I even learned there was anything wrong with like sunscreens and stuff like that. I just started to kind of learn like, oh, like the sun feels too hot. I need to like go inside. I need to, you know, get shade. I need to, you know, get shade. I need to, you know, go under an umbrella.

Or maybe at that point, maybe I would need like a sunscreen or something like that. But anyway, over time period, I got myself more used to the sun and more adapted to the sun. But I don't believe that the way that we treat the sun nowadays, I don't think is healthy. I don't think that the way that we treat the sun nowadays, I don't think is healthy. I don't think it's smart. I think that most people,

they're not out in the sun often enough, right? And then the summer comes along here in Sacramento, and then people start laying out like by their pool. And that's not really smart, especially if you're very pale and you just haven't gotten used to the sun yet. It's like, it's literally like, you know, you're very pale and you just haven't gotten used to the sun yet. It's literally like, you never squat and then you're like, I think squatting is great.

And then you put 315 on a bar. That's what it's like. You go in, you push way too hard and make yourself way too sore. And it's not great to damage your skin, but even something like, people thinking that even something like a modest sunburn is super dangerous. It's just not. That getting a sunburn is just a natural reaction to the sun pounding down on you for maybe too long.

And if you were to think about it, like in over the years, I'm sure that people just, whether they are white or black or any other color, they probably got the sun. They're like, oh, that's too much. It's way too hot out today. And then what'd they do? They like went in for shelter or they like went in the shade.

It seems pretty simple. That's what the animals do. You look at cows that are outside, like they're all huddled up like under a tree a lot of times. So I think humans kind of need to do the same thing. And I just, this idea of like sunbathing maybe isn't the healthiest thing in regards to the way that we do it

since we're not normally getting much Sun exposure the rest of the year I don't want to the reason why I brought this up is because I saw this from Brian Johnson and This man is very pale I wonder what his bike 23 and me and where he's generally from but he says a suntan is not a sign of health It's a sign that your skin has been damaged and will sag Wrinkle and discolor faster. Get just the right amount of sun,

not too much and not too little. Plus earlier in the day and later in the evening and when the UV index is below three and four. And that's probably a good thing for people who don't get much sun to do already, right? But. Yeah, again, when you're pale and you haven't built any sort of tolerance towards the sun,

but I would just say that he's 100% wrong. Some of the strongest, some of the strongest kind of anti-cancer properties that your body can produce actually come from the sun. The melanin and things like that are super powerful. So obviously, yes, the sun, can the sun make you look older? Yeah. I mean, we've seen that time and time again with many people where they just look like

they got overexposed to either the actual sun or like tanning beds, you know, that kind of like aerobic instructor tanning bed kind of look that's a real thing. And, you know, for myself, it's hard for me to like judge stuff because I was so big. I was 330 pounds. And so my skin, I do have skin.

I do have skin that kind of hangs a little bit from when I was bigger, but it's very minimal. It's not like some of these bigger people when you see them lose weight. And so yeah, I mean, my skin, as I look at it, it definitely looks aged, it looks older, but I don't care. I think that's good. I am I am older Mm-hmm. I don't mind it and just like your ability to handle more Sun and do more out there It's like it's reaping a health benefit. You know what I mean?

You're not going out there without a callus that you've brought right now. So it's one of those things where it's like I Don't know why be more delicate But at the same time, for any of our listeners that are brown, Mexican, black, get out in the sun more. Because I think like my ancestors, I'm first generation here. So everyone before me was in Nigeria bathing in sunlight all day long.

So it's even more important that I make sure to get out there. So if you're black or you're brown, your ancestors got a lot of sun, don't sit inside. All right, try to get out there and get some sun. This is, I think, what everybody thinks when they're like, oh, if you get out into the sun too much, you're gonna look like the girl from

There's Something About Mary or The Neighbor. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah, she's like, I don't remember where like the set was, like where the, you know where supposedly that movie took place, but she was just a retired Miami person, always in the sun, so her skin was just always super dark. And I think that's what people think will happen to everybody.

But I don't know, it's sort of like when people think, I don't wanna get too muscular, I don't wanna lift weights, it's like, well, it's gonna take a long time. Gotta build up a tolerance towards stuff, and that's some of the subject of today is that, we've built up a pretty good tolerance with the lifting that we do and we could have some of the lifting

and some of the exercises that we do be actually really like modest and as you were mentioning, saying these could be like a flow workout where the workout is an input that leaves you feeling better than you did when you started, which is amazing. Cause like, I don't know, I don't think we think of exercise or fitness that way a lot of times.

You're thinking like, I'm gonna go in the gym and I'm gonna like, I'm gonna kill the weights and I'm gonna like destroy myself on it. Or you're thinking like, I'm going in and I'm trying to like break down a bunch of tissue. And that can be the goal sometimes, that can be what you're actually trying to do, but it doesn't have to be that way all the time.

Absolutely. And you know, the thing is, is one of the biggest aspects of recovery, it's just a concept that we talk about all the time, is the idea of just blood flow, right? So if you're someone who you are bodybuilding, right? You're trying to actually, you know, tear down tissue to build more, or you're powerlifting, or you're someone who you are bodybuilding, right, you're trying to actually tear down tissue to build more or you're powerlifting or you're doing jiu jitsu, one of the things

that can help you recover better between each session is doing things like walks, right, which help get blood flow everywhere. Or instead of having six day workouts, like six days that continue to beat you up, maybe in between that you have a workout that, like I call it a flow workout, you can call it a D-load, whatever you want, but it's a workout that is meant for you to get into the gym.

You can do a full body thing, get blood flow everywhere, but it's much lighter weight and you're just driving blood to your tissues. That's just gonna help you the next day feel better and feel more recovered. And even after that session, you'll probably feel better and less sore than when you went in, because you didn't beat yourself up and you got blood flow everywhere.

So it's a really easy thing that you can do to easily age your recovery. But in SEMA, I'm already tired and you want me to work out a little bit more. Why? Yeah, there's a lot of things that people can do and this is the one of the things we'll talk about. But I think that getting a bit of movement in is better than sitting around sometimes. So like sometimes sitting down and resting is good. I'm not going to say it's not, it is. But I know that if I were to do a hard workout, like I went to jiu-jitsu today,

right? And then came here, right? If I didn't do anything, I'd still feel a little bit of tightness and soreness in my back afterwards. But instead, while I was in the parking lot before this, I did quite a bit of rope flow and rotated my spine, and my spine now feels like it's decompressed and better post jujitsu than if I didn't do anything. So the main thing to figure out is what practices do we have at our disposal that can help us feel better after hard exercise or a hard day of training, what do we have access to?

And we here, we have a lot of access to a lot of different things that we're gonna talk about today. But like energy wise though, like how does your energy level feel after that simple rope flow? Better, because this is one of those weird things. You'll feel tired before a light movement practice or a walk.

I don't want to do it. Right? Exactly. That's how you feel. You feel like a big baby, right? Yeah. Before a walk or before doing some real flow. And then you're like, I should do it though.

And then after you do it, it's low intensity. After you do it, you actually end up feeling like you have more energy than before. It's a weird thing, but it's like, it's, it's, uh, that's how I feel generally with a lot of this stuff. Yeah, you get more energy from doing stuff. That's how Cam Haines runs like a half marathon for lunch. That's how those people get to those levels of being able to do that kind of stuff

because over a period of time, they build up to it. I think in SEMA, you were talking about your friend, Chris, that is he a police officer as well, right? Yeah, you were talking about your friend, Chris, who you're like, man, he seems like he does so much in a day, but we've talked about it and we're like, well, that's amazing that he does all that in a day, but it also is something that he built up to over time.

And also as a police officer, it's like, he has to show up a very particular up to over time. Right? So he, and also as a police officer, it's like he has to show up a very particular way every single time. So he has got to be pretty diligent with his sleep and with the management of his training and everything. Right? Yeah, no, across the board, like, I haven't really met anybody and I've told them this before.

I'm like, dude, like you see the people I'm around cause he checks out the podcast too. I'm like, you work just as hard or harder than pretty much everybody. Like it's crazy what you're doing. He's like, Oh, you know, I'm just, you know, I'm trying to do my thing. And like, you are not just trying, like you're doing really well. The thing that, um, where I like, for me personally, like I need to understand is like jujitsu for him, he's so efficient with it, right?

Just like you and Seema, like a hard session for you is like, I'm like, for me, like I'd be floored for the rest of the week. You know, it's like really hard on me. So really hard on. The other stuff though is where like I can kind of pick up a little bit of the slack, you know, like for the training stuff and all that. But because I give so much to Jiu-jitsu right now,

it's hard for me to continue that same effort everywhere else. And so like, I have to pull back until maybe I become a little bit more efficient with the jujitsu side of things. Yeah. Yeah. Being in better shape, you know, a lot of the stuff that we had Josh Settledge on the show recently talking about your general physical preparedness

and just having like certain stuff that you do, other people viewing it as being like a lot or it being crazy. And it's just Tuesday for you. It's just par for the course. It's normal for you. It's just part of what you do. I think that's what you wanna be able to get to.

And before we started, and Seema was kind of saying, oh, I should maybe hit up a little bit more running. I think for somebody to get themselves, I guess it would depend on what sport you're doing and so on. But I think it would be wise for most people to be able to string together a few minutes

of being able to run, maybe for a power lifter, if you can run for three to five minutes and then take a little rest and do a repeat of that for a set or two. Maybe that would be, that would probably be more than most power lifters would even want to do, but that's low hanging fruit, something very easy for people to get to. But I think in general, I think it'd be good for people to work their way to be able to run for about 20 minutes straight. And it's just, just a jog. You don't really need to associate any sort of, you don't have to go two miles in 20 minutes or anything.

You just cruise. And I think what you'll find is that over time, like at first that will suck. At first running for eight minutes is gonna suck. At first running for 10 and 12 and so on. It's gonna be a little difficult and it's probably gonna make you pretty sore all the way to the point where your feet might be sore, your calves might be sore,

your ankles, everything might be really sore. But if you were to ask any of your friends that, you know, run more than 10 or 15 miles a week, which isn't anything crazy, we heard Pete Rubish recently talk about running 100 miles a week. So, you know, once you build out a capacity for it, then it feels like nothing. So if you were asked one of these people, like, hey man, do your build out a capacity for it, then it feels like nothing. So if you were asked one of these people like,

hey man, do your feet and ankles and calves hurt? And they'd be like, well, yeah, a little bit. Cause I ran 12 miles yesterday or something, they might say, and you'd be like, what the hell? Like that seems like a lot of work. Your feet should probably hurt way worse than they do, but the body adapts, you get used to it. Yeah. And just the big thing there is try to do it in a way

like you just mentioned, just not to let it, don't let it beat you up. Don't try to go for a certain pace. And when you feel like you need to stop, just stop and take a walk, right? But like the way I'm gonna be doing that, because I do a lot of sprinting now and I love that, but I don't do a lot of running.

So for the running thing, I'm just gonna try to just make it a morning habit, right? When I wake up in the morning, I'm gonna try to maybe just go for like a 10 to 20 minute, just a light run that doesn't take anything out of me for the rest of the day. And over time, I know I'm going to be able to increase that time naturally as I just get used to it. As technique gets better, all these things improve. It'll just be something where I'll be able to do 30 minutes, maybe five or six weeks from now. And then maybe I'll be able to just do consistent

40 minute light runs three months from now. I think unfortunately when we're young, no one really tells us anything. You know, so it's like, you had a great test when you were a kid where you run two miles, like that's a test that they do in soccer, right? The Cooper. Or I'm sorry, you run for X amount of minutes

and you see how far you can get or? No, I think the Cooper is like- I forget I'm losing track. Can you look up the Cooper real quick, Andrew? Yeah, the Cooper is a test that we do in soccer and it sucked, it fucking sucked. But yeah, when he finds it, we'll be able to- Yeah, yeah.

But I think sometimes your coach just kind of yells at you to go do that shit. Yeah. And they're not maybe necessarily explaining, like guys, listen, this is gonna help give you the capacity that you need to be able to play the game the way you need to play. And to be able to recover,

like recovering from a soccer match is gonna be brutal. All the stopping and starting, and I think I've heard people say that you might run, depending on your position, up to like seven miles. Midfielders, yep. And it's not just like, it's not like a little casual run. You're like, you're really hauling ass when you're out there.

Yeah, so the Cooper, according to the old Google, says that it's a test for distance for 12 minutes. So how far you can get in 12 minutes. Yeah, the goal is to try to do two miles. Right. The goal for all the guys on the soccer field is to try to do two miles in that, for the the guys on the soccer field is to try to do two miles in that, if you're the Cougar. Flying, six minute mile paces.

Yeah, that's wild. I can't believe I actually did that. That's amazing. That really is amazing. That's the thing, it's like, I couldn't imagine running at that pace at this point in my life. It's great how coaches are too.

They're like, they don't size anything up. They're not like, all right, well, you're a little heavier than everybody else in the field, you know? Yeah. They make no adjustments. Being able to handle the stresses of your day, the stress of exercise, and being able to stick to your nutrition plan takes good rest

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when you're asleep. And to enhance the way you breathe through your nose, they also have no strips. Head over to hostagetape.com slash powerproject where you can get a three-month supply of tape for only sixty five cents a night. On top of that, you're going to receive a free pack of no strips as well as a bedside tin. Again, that's at hostage tape dot com slash power project. Links in the description as well as the podcast show notes in the in the past. Mark, you have said like when somebody want if you want to

have like a successful fast, you have to act like the fast didn't happen Because what we do is like oh I fasted today So I'm gonna just freakin go nuts and eat all of the food at night or whatever it may be Should you treat some of these lighter runs the same way as in like I worked out today So I'm not gonna do the run or I'm gonna have a rest day So that's what I'm gonna do the run Or can you just kind of throw it in whenever and then just act like it didn't happen so that way you can still have your regular training session?

I think ideally you would love to be able to work out and almost forget that you worked out. I actually think that that's like a pretty good goal. Like yesterday I was like, oh man, I was going to lift and I totally forgot. And I'm like, no, I did like eight sets of dead lifts. What are you talking about? But it just didn't, it didn't hurt.

It didn't bother me. It didn't stiffen up my body. And I was handling some pretty good weights and stuff. It was, it felt really good. But I think that's the point that you want to try to get yourself to, to where you can just shake off, you know, some of these workouts and stuff. I've actually just kind of as a superpower,

I've always viewed when I go home and I take a shower that I'm just like washing everything away. And I've always viewed it as like, once I take this shower, all the pain, all the, and all the recovery that I need, it's happening right here. I'm washing all the bad shit away and like fucking starting over. So I've always kind of had that, that mindset and the shower just feels good to me. It's like, it feels, it feels like rejuvenating. It almost feels like coming out of a hot tub or something like that.

So I've always kind of viewed that that way, but to kind of answer the question more directly, I think that your workouts, especially if you're trying to implement like some running or you're newer to lifting, just really just understand you need to take your time on stuff. I know we repeat this all the time. We say this over and over again. But I think it's like one of the attributes of the podcast is that we do share with people that this stuff does take a long time.

We're welcome to like use many different protocols. Like why not, you know, rather than freak out and be all mad about whether the science is correct on cold plunging, why not just use some cold plunging where you think it's appropriate and if you enjoy it and if you feel it's working well, why not use the sauna that way? Why not use particular workouts that way? Um, but you should be putting in inputs that are new should be very, very modest, very light, very easy. And no matter how many times you say that,

anyone that you would advise, anybody that you would try to assist with starting to run, starting to jog, they're all gonna run too fast, almost no matter what you do. Like you just can't, that's why I tell people sometimes just jog as slow as you can. Literally go out and do something that represents a jog and jog as slow as you do. Like you just can't, that's why I tell people sometimes just jog as slow as you can. Literally go out and do something that represents a jog and jog as slow as you can.

That has its own challenge to it, by the way. Like it has a different rhythm and different bounce to it than like actually just running. But I think it's really easy to go out there and get hurt. It is really easy to go out there and get hurt. To go and like, just cause you have the capacity to maybe run at like a nine minute mile pace or a 10 minute mile pace.

You do that for more than like a mile or two and you're not used to it. You will most likely have some big time regressions. And then you're not only gonna mess up your running, you're gonna mess up whatever else the other things are that you wanted to do, whether it be lifting or jujitsu or whatever. Yeah, that's why if you want to do

more like multiple of these things, you just, you got to give the progression at that thing time. You're probably, most of you are probably really good at lifting. And maybe right now, you know, a light session of lifting doesn't take much out of you. So you got to think of like,

if I want to progress at this running thing, and I don't want it to take away from my lifting and I want running because for me, my goal is for a light run just to be like a recovery thing that it doesn't take anything for me. It actually helps. Right? That means that I have to actually just take it super slowly. So it doesn't really take much away from lifting and I might have one run every week or one run every week and a half or two weeks, that is a bit hard, that I'll feel the next day. But for the most part, those runs won't be like that.

Because at this point even too, sprinting, when I do sprint workouts, it doesn't take much out of me at all anymore. It actually feels really good. And for what, maybe three weeks, it made you kind of sore? Yeah, but more so when I was progressing my sprint workouts, I wasn't putting as much intensity into those sprints. Like I was going at like a sprint pace, but it wasn't 100%.

It was like 50%, 60%. And over time, I started feeling more comfortable in how much I could put into those sprints. So now I could do like multiple hill sprints at like an 80 or 90%, and I won't feel wrecked the next day. I can still go to jujitsu and do other things. I won't. That probably would have wrecked me for weeks. It kind of feels fun.

It's soup. No, it's it absolutely feels fun. It's because like I can put everything through my body. You know what I mean? And I didn't used to be able to do that. I used to think I'd like pull a hamstring or something. I think pretty much every time I run, maybe not every time I lift, yeah, not every time I lift, but most of the time when I lift or run, it's usually really fun.

Almost every single time. Every once in a while, just for random reasons, I still might go out and run and breathe like a fat kid. And I'm like, this is the most, but I'm sure that happens in like jujitsu and stuff where you have a day where you're just like, huh, I've been doing this for a couple of years and this sucks today.

Sometimes you're the nail. Yeah, like I'm going backwards. But man, you know, and also I don't have like a ton of running experience, you know, I'm still getting used to it. So I'm still new. Like it's just gonna take a while. And you know, to your point in SEMA talking about just building

capacity, be able to do a recovery run. If that's someone's goal that's listening to this, then yeah, just take your runs and, and do them really modestly. Like it's a great opportunity to get outside, to go and like look at some cool scenery, like go run somewhere that's like cool or motivating or exciting rather than just running on the track. Like I personally hate the track.

Fuck the track. I don't love running on the track. It's the worst. So, you know, find somewhere that's a little bit more motivating than that, but also maybe just jog slash run-ish for like two minutes and then you kind of realize like, I'm pretty tired, like I'm breathing pretty hard.

Maybe hold on for like another 30 seconds and then just walk. Literally just walk for a while. If it's all new to you and you're not that, you don't have a great capacity for it just yet, you're gonna get better doing anything. So why not let's just take a nice slow path with it. You know, two, three weeks,

you'll be running for 20 minutes easily. But if you start out faster, you're never gonna really have that opportunity. Like, yeah, I tried running a while back. I just fucking hate it. And ask someone, oh, will something happen? And more often than not, it's their back, it's their shin splints.

And I don't care who the person is, no matter who it is, anyone that talks about having shin splints, you have shin splints because you're not in shape. You have shin splints because you're not in shape for what it is that you're doing. And some people are like, but I run a six minute mile pace. You're not in shape to do that speed.

If you went slower, you wouldn't have shin splints. That's true, actually. So it's, you know, people get really frustrated, but take your time, get better at it, build out that capacity. And then once you start to build out that capacity for running and for lifting, now you can get into doing all kinds of stuff.

I mean, I think what Bones Jones is doing is fucking awesome. I see him like swimming, I see him like on his bike. I just see him doing like a good variety of stuff. And to me, it looks like he's having fun. That's the whole point though, right? Right, it doesn't look like, you look at some of his stuff and even the heavy lifting, I know that that's something that he loves to do.

He's doing these like heavy squats and stuff. He did 525, I think, for a triple the other day, box squat. I mean, he's handling some really good weights. And then he's also mixing in, doing all this other work. And it's not like, you know, I'm sure that, yeah, we could say like, oh, you know, if he worked on things that he had, you know, if he worked on his weaknesses, that maybe he'd be better. But it looks like he knows what he's oh, you know, if he worked on things that he had, you know, if he worked on his weaknesses, that maybe he'd be better.

But it looks like he knows what he's doing, you know? It looks like he knows what he's doing. And it looks like that's a really good route for most people to go like, especially if you're not trying to be the highest level, you're not trying to be the greatest of all time in stuff. Why plague yourself with doing tons of shit that you really honestly just don't like to do?

That and like, you know, the big thing is trying to have fun with this physical stuff over a long period of time. And, you know, a lot of people want to build muscle and that's great. Lean body mass is a great thing to do, but it's over time, it becomes about more than just having muscle.

It becomes about having like the ability to do different things that you can enjoy. Because if you think about running right now and you're like, oh, I hate that. It's gonna make me lose muscle. It's hard, you gotta breathe hard. It's because you just don't have a capacity for that right now.

But if you did, if you had some capacity to be able to run, you'd really enjoy just going outside. It's simple, going outside, putting on some shoes and just going on a nice little run. That's really enjoyable. And what I think about is like, fuck, 20, 30, 40 years from now, I'd love to continue to be able to do that. I wouldn't want the only thing that I had the ability to do

would be to go into a gym and rip a barbell off the ground. Not that I wouldn't enjoy that, because I still do, but if that's the only type of fitness I truly have access to that I enjoy, because I still do. But if that's the only type of fitness I truly have access to that I enjoy, that's pretty limiting. You could probably be super duper tight too. Yeah. So for somebody that hasn't been implementing running

of any kind, they have been the gym bro, or maybe they're just the power lifter. And then for you and Seema also, what do you think you're gonna be focusing on to make the body hurt less when it comes to running? What should they be focused on? Some of the things, because we think I'm gonna just put my shoes on

and I'm gonna go run. And then they start running and they're even at a good pace, but just throwing it out there as an example, they're heavy on their feet. You can hear them running a block down the road, you know? Like, so stuff like that, like, is there something else that they should be considering when it comes to like,

all right, make sure you try to avoid this, because if not, then by next week, you're gonna be like, you're gonna quit again. And by the way, guys, I do wanna mention, we're talking about some running stuff right now, but we'll talk about a lot of other stuff that you'll be able to do at slow intensity. But just letting you know that.

I mean, Josh mentioned it on his podcast, doing some things to take care of your feet. He mentioned that that's actually something that really helped him out, right? I know, Mark, you probably have a bunch of other things, but maybe after each run, do some hand foot glove, decompress the foot a little bit, get yourself a soft ball to rub on the bottom of the fascia of your feet, right?

That'll help also release some tension, but it'll also help drive some blood there to help your feet recover over time. There's a bunch of other things you could do for your ankles, but that's just a few things you could do to take care of your feet before and after runs. Can you pull up Sean Baker's IG? He's been doing a lot of cool stuff lately.

I've seen him doing pogo hops. I mean, that's what I would recommend. Of course, you can jump rope. Jump rope is great. Jump rope's getting the shoulders in there and stuff like that too. The coordination of jumping rope is awesome. But if you don't feel coordinated

or feel like you can't get the right rhythm going for jump rope, you could literally just jump in between sets, just little pogo hops and stuff like that here and there. And when you go to do these things, some of it might feel embarrassing. It might feel weird. Your body might feel tight.

You might look a little funny or silly doing it, but you gotta get started. You can't really worry too much about some of that stuff. But yeah, all this stuff we're watching Sean Baker do in this video, he's doing like bounding. He was doing some pogo hops. He was doing some single leg, just hopping up and down on one foot

is pretty damn taxing, especially when you do the same foot kind of over and over again. And these are all things you can implement fairly easy, kind of anywhere or anytime. You could do it on a walk, you can kind of mix in different hops and different jumps. I know I've been on some walks with Encima where you jump up and like grab a leaf on the tree type of thing. Those are all like really good disciplines. When I run around Davis, sometimes when I,

like where I end, there's actually, the Davis Farmers Market has all these like pillars and I'll actually like run between all the pillars like doing these like figure eights and then there's a basketball hoop there and I'll just, I'll jump up as high as I can and try to just touch up in the net as high as I can get. And there's a couple of posters that sometimes I can jump up and hit them,

but they're like a little at a range for me. So I, that's still right. Sometimes it's sometimes it goes good and sometimes it doesn't, but uh, Sean Baker, you know, he's, he's uh, I think he's 57 or something like that. So, um, you know, he's, I think he's 57 or something like that. So, you know, it's great to see him getting into some of this. I don't, I think that he's always loved like explosive movement and stuff when he's been here before.

He's a beast. You see him doing, you know, four or five deadlifts for sets of 20 and all kinds of crazy shit like that. But your strength to weight ratio is a really important factor. And it's something that if you feel light and you're strong for your body weight, you'll most likely, I mean, the feeling of feeling light, you hear like fighters and stuff say that boxers and stuff say that they feel light, they feel quick, they feel good. That's usually a good

sign that they're really healthy and feeling good. Andrew, and this has actually motivated me a lot. I'm going to send you a link right now. If a lot of people haven't seen it, there's young Mike Tyson jump roping. And I don't think many people have seen how impressive he was with the jump rope. Not just like normal jumping. And Andrew, I just sent it to you. This motivated the hell out of me to like really increase like my speed and my skill and even squat jumping.

I don't know if you've ever seen Tyson squat jump with a jump rope. Boy, all right. Yeah, nah, this is wild. It's amazing. you'll see. So there's some simple hopping right there, simple coordination, right? Some side to side stuff, he's so smooth.

But just wait, man. I think one thing that gets underestimated about jump roping is people get frustrated that it hits them, but the coordination aspect is a very big long-term benefit. Because anybody can become more coordinated. It takes time, but anybody can become more coordinated.

That. That. Right there. That ability to be that low, but continue to stay low and produce that type of force off the ground doing double unders and triple unders. Yo. That, when I saw this yesterday, I was like, okay, I need to learn this.

I need to build that ability because it can be built, right? But it's just, ugh. So amazing. I can't stop looking at how pigeon toed and go to he is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, his toes are like almost glued together. He's just perfect for the sport and perfect for what he was doing.

He got so much muscle mass on him, it's fucking wild. He's jacked. But his ability to be that low and pop off the ground while staying bouncy. He doesn't lose that aspect of being bouncy. He's not jumping at all. Uh-uh. He's just...

It's like a tiny little like... And that's one thing you learn when you jump rope. You're not actually jumping off the ground. You think that you need to jump, but you know, and your timing gets way off. Yeah, cause initially... That's my problem, yeah. Initially, when you start jump roping, you will feel the need to jump. But then as you start doing it more, you'll start to feel the pop. Like you'll start to be able to like...

It feels like you pop off your bones. You know, because like you're not actually planting your whole foot on the ground and whatever. It's like there's this bone that you kind of just pop off the ground with and you get used to that part of your foot hitting the ground and popping up. That's what you get used to. And then it just feels like it doesn't feel

like you're jumping anymore. You don't feel like muscle stress. It's all... Even watching Tyson do this is kind of scary, which is kind of funny, because he's like just hopping over a rope. But it looks like he's about ready to like just go nuts on somebody.

You know? It looks like he's about ready to like, you know, snap into something. And that's what, you know, hopefully some of your training, hopefully that's some of what it's helping you do is to become more explosive. I think being more explosive is a huge factor. I wanna just say like,

the impact of cold plunging is just so remarkable. I mentioned kind of the mindset of like having the shower sort of wash away the day type thing, but a cold plunge almost literally does that. Cold plunge will change your mood right away. It's gonna change the way you feel right away. You know, running and stuff like that, and just the different stuff that I do,

sometimes the back gets tight, the body gets a little tight. You feel like a completely different person after you get a cold plunge. And I don't think, to me, it doesn't feel like it's something that just wears off. People are like, oh, it's very temporary. But for me, it lasts for a handful of hours and feels good. And a lot of people are like, oh, it's very temporary. But for me, it lasts for like a handful of hours and feels good and a lot of times is something

that helps me to feel a little bit better for the whole day. And because I feel better for the whole day, then that's a little bit more motivating. Like there's nothing more stifling than pain. There's nothing more stifling than having an injury or having something slightly wrong with you when you're trying to set out to do all these things

all the time. I want to mention one, like, is the cold plunge is amazing. I'm actually in a cold plunge when I get home. So that's another thing that can be helpful for recovery. But I think the cold plunge, and there's one other thing, it's called a shock T-mat. I know if you ever heard of it, Andrew, it's a mat that has these spiky things on it.

It's almost like a, it's acupressure, right? And they have a pillow and they have a mat for the body. I look at these things as ways to train your breathing to regulate your nervous system. Because the thing that people struggle with when they go on the cold plunge is they'll start breathing and then they can't control their breathing.

They can't slow things down. But as you get better at it, you learn to actually just get it immediately and come to a place where you can be immediately calm, even though your body might be screaming, but you can calm yourself down with your own breath. Which when you take that into combat, you take that into life, that's actually super beneficial. You can't panic when you're doing Jiu-Jitsu.

You can't panic when you're fighting. You needJitsu. You can't panic when you're fighting. You need to get back into your breath and learn how to calm down. And on that shock demat, I use that thing a few times a week, usually before or better at some point during the day. I don't know if you want to put it back on the screen, but when I use that, initially, the initial feeling you feel is like you're being stabbed.

And you want to see, you want to- Is it kind of like needles? It's- Or nails? It's- Or nails? It's kinda like nails. Like every single one of those circles has multiple like sharp, they're very sharp, right? When you get on there, your initial thing is to seize up your body and you wanna take small breaths,

but if you just breathe and let your body sink and relax and slow down your breathing, it starts to just kinda dissipate. And then like I'll be on there for like 30, 40 minutes before I go to bed. And it helps me calm down before bed and I actually have a great night of sleep. But I look at these things as ways to train your breath to regulate your nervous system. That's what they can be super helpful with. And that is a very, very, very useful skill. I actually think that your breathing and stuff like that is very much connected to your sleep.

I think, cause like my sleep has improved quite a bit. It's still something I'm still working on. I think ultimately what I've sort of discovered is that I don't like to sleep that much and I don't maybe need as much sleep as I thought. Maybe I'm fine with six hours or something like that. I don't know why, but maybe that's just the way I'm wired. But I've learned that by doing more cardiovascular

style stuff and making myself breathe or pushing myself to breathe harder and then building out the capacity now to breathe way easier with hard intense exercise has made a huge difference in my in my sleep and then also my go-to now when I'm when I'm getting really pushed or really pressed you know with like sprints or being on the bike that we have here at the gym or you know doing the tank or even doing sprints and stuff

like that is to or even in, is to breathe more and more in and out of my nose, which is interesting because when I first started messing with nasal breathing, I was like, I'll never get the hang of this. Like this is never gonna be a normal thing for me and I certainly am not gonna be able to do it that well when I'm running. And now it's more rare for me to get breathing hard.

I guess with some exceptions, like sometimes when I'm lifting, there could be particular reasons to get tight and to hold my breath for certain things in certain ways. But yeah, it's been amazing. It's been amazing to really just challenge my breathing. It was something I mentioned to you, Andrew, like a while back.

I asked you to do like some three minute like bike things, but then we had a, Pano, what's his first name? Julian. Julian Pano, when we had him here, he was showing you some stuff on the bike. And I think those things that help you during the day with like stress mitigation and a lot of that stuff,

I think go in line with what you were saying about laying down on those mats. It's like anything that we can do to really mitigate and just bring down stress, even if it's just mental strategies on how to deal with life stresses, I think is really critical. But in this case, you know,

we're pointing to like a handful of physical things that might be able to help. Yeah, it allows you to, uh, to just, even if it's for a brief moment to take a break from those intrusive thoughts, that, that anxious feeling and you know, and you know, just like you said, like, Oh, the, the cold plunge, some people think it fades away. Let's say it does. Why is it bad that you can get away from it? Right? Like there's a freaking trillion dollar industry that sells you stuff to get away from this

anxious feeling. Here's something that can do it. Now I'm not going to say it's free. It's very expensive, but it can be, but it can also be very cheap. But like why disregard it? Because it still works, you know? But what we're saying is it will work long term as well. And even if you don't look at it that way,

if you look at it as, all right, shit, for 30 seconds, I'm not gonna be stressed out about that thing that I am super stressed out about. Or in my case, I was using the stealth bike to help mitigate some of the stress from an upcoming competition. For those 10 minutes, I was worry free about the competition because I had a goal for that next 10 minutes. And then within those 10 minutes to up things, I thought about the competition.

And then that made things a little bit more difficult, right? Especially the week of the comp, man, it was really hard to get through that workout. The very next week after the comp was over, I had a conversation with Mark almost the whole time and I was good. So it's just really cool to have a tool that's not in a bottle, you know, that nobody can, obviously the equipment costs money, but nobody's like making money off of my anxiety in that moment.

And I think that's really powerful because like I've said this before to other people, like we're kind of on our own. We have to figure this stuff out on our own because it's not going to come from anybody else. One of the best things I ever purchased in my life is a hot tub. Hot tubs are amazing. They're underrated. No one ever really talks about it. But, and it was a great, it was great for my family. Like there's like a lot of bonding and a lot of, you know, moments in the hot tub where we're just chilling and talking and relaxing. But what a great thing just to not have your phone with you

and just to relax and spend, like, you know, whether the research is there or the chlorine is causing problems with your balls or like, you know what I mean? Like, it's like, there's a lot of give and take with these things, but I think that whether we're talking about cold plunging or going to do yoga or any of these practices that we might be discussing, what a great thing to have, you know, an hour, a half an hour

of just something different, you know, where you're not as connected to social media and maybe all the other distractions and all the other things that are going on. It must be nice, Mark. So the thing is though... I want to say like the first hot tub that I bought, I want to say it was like 2,500 bucks or maybe a little bit more. I mean, that's not cheap.

But that's not like crazy. No, and even better, I got one from Costco. It's inflatable. It's legit as a hot tub can be. And in some cases, I would say it's better because it's, you know, if I sit in it, I could sink down and be like neck high. But because it is pretty shallow, I can stretch out.

Like I can put my body in like some really cool positions that I couldn't in a like a legit hot tub. And this thing, I think it was like 600 bucks. Nice. And it, it only goes up to 104 degrees, but that's good. That's as hot as they get. Really? Okay. See, I wasn't sure. Um, it doesn't stay there very long though. That's the thing. You know, once it hits that, that temperature you get in it, you know, you move around, you get comfortable and then you look over it's like, Oh, it's already at 102 or whatever. But dude, I love this thing.

It is so nice to get in there. And again, you're outside, right? I'm staring at the trees and my neighbor's backyard and it's so calming. It's nice. And again, I mean, sure, it wasn't cheap either, but it wasn't thousands of dollars and you get the same benefits as that other thing And you know some of the give-and-take because yeah, I do have to put chlorine in it and all that stuff But dude, I have a hot tub in my backyard

Like I never thought I'd be able to say that but it's nice to have that like after a long training day or whatever You get in there and just like oh dude, and then the sleep Oh, especially if you have kids my three-year-old gets in there, he's like yawning within like 15 seconds. It's amazing, yeah. He probably loves jumping in with you, huh? Oh, he goes nuts. Yeah, he bobbles, bobbles,

because it has little jets everywhere, yeah. There's no shame in wanting to have great sex, and there's no shame for wanting your member to perform the way it should be. A lot of us sometimes have some issue with blood flow, but that's where Joy Mode comes in. Let me read you these ingredients because it's not gonna be very long.

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60 minutes beforehand, put some Joy Mode in some water, drink it, and then when it comes time to perform, and you know what I mean by perform, you're going to be ready because you're going to be flowing. Joy Mode's going to help you do that. Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, that's over at usejoymode.com slash power project. And at checkout, enter promo code power project to save 20% off your entire order.

Again, usejoymode.com slash power project, promo code power project, links in the description as well as the podcast show notes. All right, so I got to get the praises over right now though to Rope Flow. We haven't talked about that on this episode yet, but we were talking about jump rope and how beneficial it is for the ability to do light hops.

You can keep a jump rope with you and you can go anywhere with it, right? It's a skill that you can improve. You can improve your coordination and we all want to be able to jump when we're older, which is something you don't see people doing. But rope flow is particularly special because you're able to work all the rotational capacities of like your wrists, which you don't really think about initially, your shoulders, your

spine. I'm doing a lot of fancy stuff here, but honestly with rope flow, you don't have to do fancy shit. You can just literally do the forward patterns and the underhand patterns and you can, your body can get a lot out of that. But the thing I love about rope flow is like, yeah, it's a skill, and over time, you're going to be able to open up your shoulders,

your rotational abilities of your spine, and as you can see in this video, it's a full body thing. Like, your body is working together to help you move that rope around. And it's just like, it's one of those things that I seek to, I seek it every day because it always makes the body feel better, especially the rotation.

You know, like we'll do a lot of things in the gym that have to do with rotation. Like there's the landmine work, right, which work your strength in your rotational pressing. There are med ball tosses that you can do in a rotational aspect. But the rope is a dynamic way to work fast rotation. Whether you're using a lighter rope, which you'll be able to go faster with, or a heavy rope, which

I like using, I look at it like being like movement Tai Chi. And if people know what Tai Chi is, it's that martial art that you see like 70s, 80s, and 90 year olds doing out in parks in China and sometimes here in the US. And some people are like, what are they doing? Well, they're moving smoothly through ranges of motion. Paul Cech loves shit like that.

He loves movements like that. And for years, I don't know if he still messes with it, but he used to stack rocks. I don't know if you've ever seen anyone do that, but like just interesting practices I don't know if there's like particular techniques to it But just basically have a bunch of rocks in your yard and you just stack them up in different formations And it's like that's gonna give people like a form of movement. That's a great way to micro dose Movement in into your day-to day. And some of the movement that we're showing in Seamadu

with like the rope flow, this stuff is really very, very simple. It's very simple to start to do. And yes, it can be complicated in trying to pick up the more complex movements, but really it just all takes time. Can you go to the first video on the page, Andrew? Anyone can learn how to twirl these ropes around

even just a little bit. I was showing my wife this morning just some stuff to do with the rope because her shoulder bothers her here and there. And I was like, I think if you just twirl these ropes around a little bit here and there, I'll just leave this one rope in a living room, just use it here and there. That'll probably leave this one rope in a living room, just use it here and there,

that'll probably help your shoulder quite a bit, because I was noticing that when I was doing the rope flow stuff the other day that my shoulder was like lighting up a ton, and I didn't even know that that shoulder was kind of, you know, I didn't even know there was like anything going on with that shoulder, but I could feel it, you know, working like the rotator cuff quite a bit, so it's going gonna address shit that you probably don't even really know that you have. If you look at the single arm movements here, the cool thing is that all of us have one side

that we rotate better on, and we have a weaker rotational side. That's with our spine, that's with our shoulder, that's with our wrists. And you saw some of the single arm movements there. Well, you notice when you're trying to twirl the rope behind you, probably for a lot of people, your non-dominant side might be the side where you find a lot

of like tension in your shoulder. And that's the thing. It's like you'll practice certain specific movements and you notice, oh, I can't get my body to move in that direction. But it's like one of those puzzles because it's like, you're not just like when you're doing one of those throwing patterns that you see me doing there, you're not just using your shoulder. You also rotating your spine like you were're doing one of those throwing patterns that you see me doing there, you're not just using your shoulder. You're also rotating your spine like you were gonna throw a ball. Because if you throw a ball at somebody,

you don't just go like this. Right? You rotate, create power, and you throw, like a pitcher would. And you'll notice when I do that with a rope, there's a rotation of the spine and the scapula, and then it throws a rope. The rope is an extension of your rotational ability

and that's why it's so powerful. It's one of the beautiful things about a golf swing. I don't have a beautiful golf swing, but it's one of the beautiful things about when you watch somebody who does have a beautiful golf swing is, I think you have a tendency to pay attention to that, to the golf club coming forward.

Yeah. You have a tendency to kind of see that and like, and the guy, it made this noise and the guy smashed the hell out of the ball. And he drove it 300 yards or 400 yards or whatever the hell it is. But really there's so much going on in that part where they're twisting back.

I know the guys have like different clubs and different shit nowadays that some of the old timers kind of complain about, but they can kind of wrap their body around their own body so much that the club itself will coil and kind of almost wrap around their body, almost like something you would see in like a cartoon. They like are able to really like pretzel their body

into these crazy positions. And if you see, you know, a lot of golfers, more modern golfers are in pretty good shape, but they're still like just kind of run of the mill, average Joe guy with a little bit of a pot belly who can rotate the shit out of his body and still smack the hell out of that ball. So a lot of this stuff, a lot of this rope flow stuff

and some of these things I think are great because it's addressing some issues of the spine that lifters may not have really noticed or hopefully for some lifters, they're young enough to where their body hasn't calcified quite yet. Their body hasn't gotten super stiff just yet and they can really avoid a lot of this. Cause it'd be great to see people like our friends

like Kenny Williams and some of these young people coming up that are jacked as hell. How great would it be to see Kenny be able to keep that athleticism that he has, which is like, his athleticism is pretty wild. So I'd love to see him to be able to keep that. And for anyone interested in this stuff, I have like a full foundational course.

It's on school by the time this podcast comes out. So literally within four to six weeks, you'll be able to be pretty fluid with the rope at the end of it and it's free. So does it make you sore or stiff or? So this is the thing. I think when, when people start out, especially people who are either your sedentary and you don't lift much or you always lift and that's the only thing you do, having a rope help move you into these rotational patterns

might make you a little bit sore, because most of the time, your spine is stuck in a neutral position with almost everything that you do. Most people don't rotate much, but that's the thing. You want that rotational capacity back. You wanna be able to rotate well on both sides. So you might feel a little bit sore because your spine is starting to move in ways it hasn't. But as you improve that spinal ability,

then you're not going to, like for me, I don't feel sore at all. I just feel like I got a great amount of blood flow and movement throughout my whole upper and lower body, right? And my coordination, because again, the rope is a, it's a mirror for your rotational ability Right if you can't rotate with your shoulder here and throw you're gonna see the rope loose slack and it'll it'll slow down Yeah But if you can you'll be able to put everything through that rope and it's a mirror of your rotational ability from side to side

As that improves you're gonna notice that the things with the rope looks smoother, right? And the last thing I'll say about it is, it's with what we do in the gym, generally we get a lot of compressive effects. And axial compression or the compression of the spine is good because over time that'll help us build bone density. But if we're constantly getting compression,

then we're not getting a lot of things that let us move and bend the spine and the lateral and rotational capacities it has. We're always compressed. So what do we have that can allow for some decompression? Some people like hanging off the bar, some people sit in traction machines, but the rope is a level of light decompression

because whether you use a heavy rope or even a lighter rope, that slight momentum you're getting from it, allowing you to move and rotate your spine from side to side, is gonna be providing you a light amount of traction for your wrists, shoulders, and back. Which is why a lot of people end up feeling really good afterwards because when you get, when you become more fluid in these motions, it'll help you decompress your spine on your own.

There's a lot of weird hidden, there's a lot of weird hidden amazing things in some of what we're talking about today. And I think that the cool thing is, is that if you treat your body well, your body will be able to, it's gonna be more efficient a lot of things. If you treat your body really well. And then if you're thinking about it from a meathead perspective of like,

I don't know, you know, what are they really talking about? If you listen to Mike Isretel's most recent video where he talks about, you know, how to kind of hyper-focus on getting jacked, one of his requirements was that you do the exercise better. You know, you do the exercise with better form and technique. Well, what's the limiting factor in your form and technique? Maybe your limiting factor is

that you just bench press all the time and your shoulders are stuck forward. And then so therefore it's hard for you to get your arms back on the squat and and your shoulders are stuck forward. And then so therefore it's hard for you to get your arms back on the squat and do your squat with better form. So you can kind of even look at some of this from a meathead perspective and say, you know, this is gonna make me a little bit more fluid

for some of the other movements that I'm doing in the gym. It's gonna help with recovery. It's also gonna be something that is, you know, gonna help you from like a longevity perspective in terms of, you know, keeping your back mobile and stuff like that. But when you're trying to do your your RDLs and you're trying to do certain movements that have they do have a certain requirement and skill set to them where you have to learn how to, you know, put your spine in a certain position. You have to learn how to get your spine in a certain position. You have to learn how to get the maximum stretch from your hamstrings. And I was watching Insima the other day.

I was in here doing like a few different exercises and Insima was doing a couple different exercises. I think you were doing like a box squat and you were doing some other stuff in between. But he was saying when he was doing his box squats, he's like, I could feel like different compartments of my back and I can kind of flex them and brace my body in a certain way,

which maybe without the rope flow, maybe you would know how to do that anyway, because you learned how to flex all different kinds of stuff from bodybuilding. But a lot of what we're talking about here today can help you get more in tune with your body to the point where you'll be able to precisely be able to not only flex, but to be able to stretch or to be able to move some of these

things. I think sometimes when the body gets stuck, you move in a range of motion and you go to move your arms, say forward, and you forget that to move your arm forward, you can actually just start to... There's so many different things that happen with moving an arm forward, you can actually just start to, there's so many different things that happen with moving an arm forward that you could move it way further, way faster, way stronger if you're able to coordinate your entire body into it. So in SEMA, can you let us know, right, because if I want to get into rope flow, I can't just grab any rope.

I guess I could, but what would you recommend people look into when it comes to wanting to start this rope flow stuff? So that's the thing, it's like, I went to Home Depot the other day because a lot of people have been saying, oh, you know, these flow ropes can be kind of expensive. Like some of the cheaper flow ropes are on like 40, 50 bucks.

The heavier ropes can be like 80, 90, 120. But the thing is, is like, they're very thick ropes and you can't buy those types of ropes at Home Depot. So if you do want to just start trying to do some stuff with Roeflow and you don't want to buy ropes, go to Home Depot and try to get yourself some braided ropes, maybe as thick as you can get. The problem with those ropes is that they come apart very easily.

They fray. They fray super easily. And because they don't have a lot of like, they don't have a lot of structure to the rope. When you're doing it, like the rope is really light and it almost is kind of floaty. It has no heft to it. So I mean, I obviously sell ropes at the my website. But you can, you know, what's your website, the stronger human dot store, I sell ropes at my website, but you can, there's the strongerhuman.store. I sell ropes from winding rope. I partnered with them. So there's flow ropes, heavy ropes,

all those types of stuff over there. But I would say like, just try to get yourself the cheapest rope that you can find. You can get the cheapest rope on the site, which I think is like 35 bucks. If you don't wanna get yourself another rope, but just start practicing the foundational patterns. If you want to try it too,

you can just try it with a jump rope. If you have a jump rope already, just, I mean, that's a decent thing to start with. Exactly. It's not going to have all the weight and everything that exactly the way that maybe other ropes might have, but it's a good way to start. Beach towel.

I've seen some people start off trying to use this kind of a long beach towel and holding both sides and doing that. If you get that thing like kind of wet too, you're fucked. It's really, it's actually really challenging. It's really hard. Actually, that'll make it heavier. So that makes a lot of sense.

Dude, it's, it's, it's crazy too. I mean, there's all kinds of stuff. You know, when I get out of the cold plunge, I'll still mess around with the towel. But dude, bring that fucker out. Like get, get that thing submerged in the water, ring that thing out. You'll never have done anything stronger for your grip. Like that shit's fucking awesome. And I think like just to start the practice, it doesn't need to be an intense thing.

I love doing it every day for like, like I do it every day a lot. But when you're starting out again, it's just something that can help you learn how to rotate well again. And like I said, the course is free so you can get yourself a towel, a rope or whatever and just start doing it. But you do it more and more, you're going to start noticing little tiny things in your wrist when you're moving your wrist around and doing some of these things. Because there are patterns that have you using your wrist. There are patterns that have you rotating the scapula. You notice that you probably can't rotate as well one way versus the other. And again, I've noticed it play a big role in helping even my Jiu-Jitsu improve

because now since my rotation is so clean on both sides, when I do certain sweeps, I'm able to feel the momentum of my opponent better because one of the things of getting better with the rope is feeling the momentum of the rope and following the momentum of my opponent better because one of the things of getting better with the rope is feeling the momentum of the rope and following the momentum of the rope. I'm sure the people you roll with are listening and they're like, God, no. Stop, stop getting better.

Yeah, like please. And seeing him sitting here talking, like working on his extensors, just laughing. I know, I'm gonna shut up about this, but again, man, it's so good because it's low impact. It's like we do so many things that beat ourselves up, that when you can do something that brings you benefit without beating your body up

and actually helps other things progress, that's just fucking, that's money right there. That's like making gains without having to spend energy. Literally. I think also too, from like a flow standpoint and trying to like figure out how to maybe just treat your body a little bit better and to give yourself some tender loving care.

We go back to the idea of trying to figure out a way to have your workouts make you feel better. I think that there's all kinds of different workouts that you can do to help make you feel better. They don't necessarily have to be what we're discussing today with the rope flow and some of the recovery techniques and even just like going on like a light run,

you could still be a meathead. You could still go in and train and you could still go in and train with a lot of intensity. It's just that like you might wanna pick and choose your battles, pick and choose how hard you want your workouts to be and when. And you know, like the other day I was just like, I just feel like training my back. So I did, I probably did like eight sets of rows.

You did a lot of sets. Yeah, I did a lot of sets of rows. It felt awesome. I kept changing the weight. I kept messing with it. I did drop sets. I did all kinds of different things it felt incredible I was stretching my lats in between just trying to like learn how they you know Learn how to flex them better learn how to like I don't know be on that Machine that we have out there Differently and posturing myself in some different ways I know not everyone is like completely obsessed with lifting maybe the way that we are, but you know, I love this stuff.

So I love like learning new stuff and trying some other things out. But in between, I was also doing the reverse hyper. And in between that, I was grabbing the Wek Shakers and I was doing some like Pogo hops. And that workout made me feel awesome. We had a day where we were doing some podcasting and some other stuff.

And I just find the breakup of the intellectual with the, you know, the soothing of the beast, kind of like a lifting type stuff and almost like. Soothing of the beast. Yeah, yeah, yeah, nutting. Yeah, I went in the gym, I jerked off, it was fucking great. That's what that was. Yeah.

Oh, I touched that handle and I was like, what the fuck, like why is this flying me? It smells like bleach in here. The, you know, sometimes lifting to me feels like hitting like a heavy bag. You know, sometimes it feels like that. Like you just kind of went in there and you, there was like, whatever this stuff is that's in your head,

this fog. As Mike Isertel called it. Violence. He's disturbed. Maybe we shouldn't have him on the. Violence. He's disturbed. Maybe we shouldn't have him on the show again. He's starting to scare me. Real talk though, we actually need a heavy bag, man. The effects, the beneficial effects it has on bone density,

I've been trying to think of like maybe I should just get a membership at a boxing gym so I can just go hit a heavy bag. Because like that constant poundage as you get older, fuck, that's actually super useful. What a great kind of extra workout too. Something just different. For people that don't always love to lift the weights the way that we do or jerk off in the gym. Everybody likes to do that though.

Yeah, but kind of blending these exercises together, I think Andrew, I've seen you kind of more recently just hopping on the bike and doing some stuff like that. And it's just, for each person, it's probably gonna be a little different for them to find the movement or the things that help make them feel better. But, you know, keep exploring, keep poking around

and kind of see, you know, see what those things are. Again, there's so many options when it comes to lifting and so many options when it comes to the gym that there's just no reason to really pigeonhole yourself into kind of one thing. I do understand there's a lot of people are like, yeah, but I want to be jacked or yeah, I want to be shredded. Again, it's just a, it's a long game and the easier that it is for you to be jacked or the easier that it is for you to be shreddeded or the easier that it is for you to be shredded,

the longer you're gonna be able to maintain that. Cause who really cares if you just got like in decent shape for August or something. It's like, that's kind of cool. Oh man, hey, remember when I was, it's like, no, no one cares about that. You try to stay in good shape all the time so that you feel good about yourself.

You feel confident and then on top of looking good, you're able to move well also and you're able to be strong. Yeah. Imagine being the, uh, you know, the jacked dad, right? The jackedist, but that doesn't necessarily mean they have to be jacked for August, you know? But what you were getting at with me on the assault bike is like, I, I hated that dang thing. Like I, if I could pick anything, like I'd rather do burpees than that. Like, you know, like it's like the worst core or worst form of exercise I could think of.

You'd rather do burpees though? In that moment, yes. Now, now I actually, I really like it. I love the fact that, you know, 10, 12 minutes later, I'm completely thrashed, but I got in so much work. And that's how I feel about jump roping right now. Like I don't enjoy it, but maybe exposing myself a couple of times here and there,

I might learn to enjoy it. You know, here and like the benefits that you talk about all the time, especially like with the feet, you know, like I need stronger feet, especially after how swollen my right one's been. I need to expose myself to that. And I think we need to do that more often, right?

Because like you said, we get stuck in these pigeonholes and we're like, no, like this is what I do. I squat bench dead. I don't do that other stuff. That's just lame. But it's like, well, dude, what if that's the thing that unlocks so much more potential, right? Because I know for me, my cardio, my gas tank

is gonna go up exponentially with the assault bike. So I'm going to be doing that on a regular basis now. But I had to try it because I hated it. Now I love it. I love it. I like it. All these things hurt a little bit at the start, man. I remember when I started jump roping, it's like the ankles, the ankles for that, that

thing that was just like a limiting factor. Even just like right now, like my legs are like stiff. You know, I just ran, so like my feet are, they feel uncomfortable. But if I was to actually just jump rope for a few minutes, they'd actually feel better. The start of it would suck. You know, I'd be like, ah, like it doesn't feel great,

but the start of it wouldn't be comfortable. But if I just did it for a few minutes, my recovery would probably improve from it. But you know, this, okay, this is why, like, I just did it for a few minutes, my recovery would probably improve from it. But you know, this, okay, this is why I like I love all this. I love all the people who are able to talk to you because there's certain things that just like reap benefits for a long time. That little balance drill that I learned from Brian McGinty to do on I do it on top of the WEC deck because the sand isn't crazy when you're on a single leg up

on your toes, right? And you have something like doing that, I do that every day because like it literally helps me like get my ankles working to stabilize through the whole foot, right? So if I ever had any ankle pain, immediately after I do that, the ankle pain's gone because I like, I just saw you like you're driving blood to the ankles by balancing, right? So it's one of those things that like that,

that thing right there has made, has helped to strengthen my ankles, my balance so much I'm like, let me just get like more range out of this. Let me just get more range out of this. I mean, I'm not gonna be able to do that. I'm not gonna be able to do that. I'm not gonna be able to do that. I'm not gonna be able to do that. I'm not gonna be able to do that. I'm not gonna be able to do that. I'm not gonna be able to do that.

I'm not gonna be able to do that. I'm not gonna be able to do that. I'm not gonna be able to do that. I'm not gonna be able to do that. I'm not gonna be able to do that. I'm not gonna be able to do that. I'm not gonna be able to do that. I'm not gonna be able to do that. I'm not gonna be able to do that. other things during the actual workout. So for example, I did some sumo deadlifts the other day. I just did a sumo deficit deadlift. I'm like, let me just get like more range out of this.

Let me see if I can kind of move better. And it was actually pretty challenging for me to like squat down and get my hips kind of in the right position. So I did a few sets where it was kind of more like a sumo deficit stiff leg deadlift. And then I did a few where I was more upright. And then I did a few where I was more upright. And then I did a few where I did reps and I kind of held my posture from the top

and then tried to squat down and keep my upper body like super upright. And just by doing that, it's like that small change of just lifting while standing on some plates made a huge difference in my posture and just made the exercise challenging in a completely different way. And that was the exact same thing I was doing

with the rows the other day. I was just letting my shoulders, letting my arms really almost like, feel like they're coming out of socket almost, you know, almost pushing them forward. And then I've been doing the same thing with dips. I've been doing the same things with like dumbbell bench pressing,

just letting those dumbbells just really just almost like pry everything apart, just sort of try to ways to ways to just try to try to open up everything and it's feeling great. So I think these are really easy things to implement into your day to day, into your workouts, you're doing you know lunges and all these different movements to see if you could rather than always just adding weight, maybe see if you can get a little deeper range of motion. Cause again, in this instance, in this case, for this show, we're talking about having your workouts

that are kind of making you feel better than when you started. And I don't know if every workout should be that way all the time. Maybe they should be. But I don't know if every workout should be that way all the time, maybe they should be. But I think that probably more often than not, a lot of your workouts should be that way. And if I think back to even just like

some of my most intense workouts, even the percentage of the, if I was to look at the percentage of what I did for a particular day, most of it would have been pretty comfortable. There only would be like a small, I would be like, yeah, I did two sets of three and like that shit was, that was pretty intense, that was pretty hard,

but the rest of it would have probably felt pretty good. And what you're talking about there too, like even just like that extra range of motion during your lifts, what's that doing for your soft tissue? Like you're not like scraping or putting pressure on your tissue, but you're opening that tissue up. And when we, again, when we think about people that don't move much in their sedentary

or people that only lift, they end up having pretty stiff tissues around these areas, right? Their lower back, their spine doesn't tend to move well. Right here, this tissue here, they don't get much stretch there because they're always benching with force so they can't move into that end range.

So using weights to push your body into those end ranges is actually great for your flexibility and great for your soft tissue. And it's not surprising that you feel great afterwards. I was just thinking you would probably dig this in Seema. It's from at reinvigorate.co. It's basically a skateboard with like balls instead of wheels. You do that inside.

Yeah. So you could skate inside, but it would be so good for ankle mobility and just recovery. I would love this. Yeah. It just came out. I don't know. I think they're pretty expensive just because it's like a one man show. But like, I thought this was really cool.

I know in Sema would love this Reinvigorate.com. Yeah. Yeah. So shout out to the guy I don't he just looks like a skater and you just like put something together and but like check this out Look at the way he's moving on the on the deck there It's like dude that looks like it would be so much fun. That's really cool. Yeah, it's probably It's probably way safer, right? Oh yeah, you can get indoors. You're also trying all this crap all the time,

like on a skateboard, it's got wheels on it and sliding out from underneath you. Oh, that's really sick. That's really sick. Yeah, this guy's, he's onto something for sure, so hopefully this thing takes off, because I think this thing's genius. Who, I want the guys to comment by the way.

Who's Instagram has been ousted by the fucking new additions to the algorithm? Because Instagram, like you'll scroll and then they'll show you four videos that they'll think you like in succession. And I sent this screenshot to Mark and Andrew the other day and I was like, I'm filled with sin because I'm scrolling and then it's just ass, ass, ass, ass.

I'm like, whoa. And the thing about these things that they do on Instagram is like all the videos are kind of playing at the same time. So you get a medley of different sounds when it does that. I'm just like, God, I'm spending a little bit too much time with my eyes on asses that Instagram's now like, send him more ass. It's fucked up. It's fucked up.

I don't like that when I, just when I open Instagram, it'll go to just some random reel. I'm like, literally like, full like screen. I was like, what the fuck? Like, I don't even know what this is. At least it's probably wholesome. It's probably like some dad content. Yeah, I was going to, it's usually like dad jokes and shit like that, right? Yeah.

I'm pretty proud of how responsible I am with Instagram. I'm a dirty man, bro. Fuck, I'm such a dirty man. So Instagram has kind of turned into, like Instagram figured out like Pornhub basically, like where the images are moving and... Is that what it is? Dude, you know what?

Let me just do an experiment right now. I'm going to do experiment. Let's see. What are the first four? What? That's awesome. So who else is afflicted? Cause I am.

And then mine's a lot of Jujitsu. I'm more shocked about something we'll discuss off the air than I expected. One that you sent in the middle of the podcast. Please do not send that. She was four feet. That could be a thing. I can see how that could be a thing. Pocket rocket, man. Stuff her in your carry on maybe type of thing. Definitely could fit. Yeah.

Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye. I'm like, oh, maybe it's something he wants me to pull out. I'm like, oh, maybe it's something he wants me to pull out. I'm like, oh, maybe it's something he wants me to pull out. I'm like, oh, maybe it's something he wants me to pull out.

I'm like, oh, maybe it's something he wants me to pull out. I'm like, oh, maybe it's something he wants me to pull out. I'm like, oh, maybe it's something he wants me to pull out. I'm like, oh, maybe it's something he wants me to pull out. I'm like, oh, maybe it's something he wants me to pull out. I'm like, oh, maybe it's something he wants me to pull out. I'm like, oh, maybe it's something he wants me to pull out. I'm like, oh, maybe it's something he wants me to pull out.

I'm like, oh, maybe it's something he wants me to pull out. I'm like, oh, maybe it's something he wants me to pull out. I'm like, oh, maybe it's something he wants me to pull out. I'm like, oh, maybe it's something he wants me to pull out. I'm like, oh, maybe it's something he wants me to pull out. I'm like, Oh, maybe it's something he wants me to pull up and I'm like, what the fuck? That's great.