Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 421: Ben Greenfield on Myths & Lies in Fitness, Words to Live By & Motivation in the Face of Failure

Episode Date: December 19, 2016

Kimera Koffee presents... A special Quah with Ben Greenfield! In this episode, Ben Greenfield, biohacker and fitness expert extraordinaire, comes to Mind Pump Media headquarters to answer Pump Head questions about gurus promoting pseudoscience based products, words and philosophies to live by, motivation, where it comes from and how to deal with failure with Sal, Adam & Justin. Now available, MAPS Prime! The only program that teaches you how to accelerate the benefits of your existing workout program by "priming" your body pre and post workout. Get it at www.mindpumpmedia.com Have Sal, Adam & Justin personally train you with a new video on our new YouTube channel, Mind Pump TV. Be sure to Subscribe for updates. Get MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, MAPS Aesthetic, the Butt Builder Blueprint AND the Sexy Athlete Mod (The RGB Super Bundle) packaged together at a substantial DISCOUNT at www.mindpumpmedia.com. Get your Kimera Koffee, Mind Pump's first official sponsor, at www.kimerakoffee.com, code "mindpump" for 10% off! Please subscribe, rate and review this show! Each week our favorite reviewers are announced on the show and sent Mind Pump T-shirts!

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, please only one place to go. Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. We got one of my favorite guests in the studio. Ben Greenfield is in town. Super pumped to have him here. He's one of your favorite guests? Yes, I love Ben. Ben is probably one of the smartest dudes I've ever met. Hence why he's more than my favorite guest.

Every time he comes I feel like I learned something. He's like Captain Knowledge Bomb. He knows a lot of this. He's like a fitness eccentric dude, you know what I mean? He's like, and he walks the walk, that's the thing. He embodies it. He literally does everything he talks about. Yeah, all of it.

Okay, so he has that. I want to meet people like that. Before we formally introduce him on here, I think I've had a quite a few people that were like, you know, you guys are like kinda anti-sudo science and he's kinda like the king of pseudoscience. And I'm like, you know what though? If there's anybody who's going to be testing and pushing and biohacking, like he's the guy,

like his under his- You live it. You've been to his house, the dude. He came into our studio to record this episode that you're about to listen to. And put on, I'm not joking, he put on like this electrode- He was like hell-man- He was like hell-man- And then he put something up his nose. I did it

Yeah, Justin post it. He put something up his nose and and it's shooting like laser being he'll do John public. Yeah, oh he did he doesn't give a fuck. Oh, he wears Jesus sandals to dinner the other day To ones with the with the copper the ground to the ground. Yeah, the copper in so it grounds. I love it He does everything though and and let's be honest So he starts with taking care of his body. He's got everything. Yeah, he he does the he's done all the big things first. That when I get annoyed by the pseudoscience people is when you have somebody doing like like if he was wearing these these copper shoes to stay grounded, right?

Like, he's doing donuts. Yeah, but he rolls up with McDonald's. And he's, you know, I'm saying, and he's like doing drugs and he's not working out. And he like, you know, I'm saying like, that's the stuff that annoys me is when people are like so and about, they're not doing the big pieces that are going to make him. No, he does everything. Yes. Like literally everything and then everything else. Which makes him a great person to listen to his experience when he, when he introduces

some of these things because I feel like if there's ever somebody I can ask like, hey, man, when you introduced, you know, like the Wim Hof method, right? And started doing like the hot cold thing. He'd give you a very descriptive. Yes, like tell me, tell me what a difference that made in your life. Or, hey, when you started sticking the laser up your nose

and are listening to binary beats before you went to sleep, like, what a difference did that? Like, he's a perfect, like somebody else tells me that, I'm like, well, how do you know that had nothing to do with the stress, your stress levels, your poor sleep, or the shitty food you ate yesterday? Like, you're so out of whack everywhere else, but that dude is dialed everywhere. No, he's dialed. He's also a podcast veteran.

He's, I think his podcast was a Ben Greenfield fitness. It's been on the air for maybe 10 years, 9, 10 years. So which makes him ancient in the podcast world. Like Apple to E. He consumes information like a black hole. He's just just voracious appetite for learning. Great guy to hang out with and talk to. He's a fitness, like I said, a fitness expert.

You can find him online at BeyondTrainingBook.com or Ben Greenfield Fitness.com and his podcast is called Ben Greenfield Fitness. So without any further ado, here we are interviewing the great Ben Greenfield. The man. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I can't even hang with that Stop now Great yeah, we're gonna have to edit that that's gonna. I'm gonna lose my job Dude these in my seat over there He's just took my job Adam listen if it was as easy as my supposed to be in that seat. Yeah, no We wanted you to sit right there if it was if it was as easy as my supposed to be and that's it. Yeah, no, no, we wanted you to sit right there If it was if it was as easy as singing better than you Adam you would have been gone a long time Easy

No, now fucking it you guys have been you guys been trying to get me to get like they get like that and respond and he just write in right into right on I love it man, you know you fit right in yeah, right in yeah, that's why I grew beard Hey, you know what can we talk about your beard for a second? It looks fucking awesome. I don't, what, don't shave it. Thank you. Yeah, leave it as you beard. It's like you got extra manly off of your whole oil.

Yeah. Are you putting beard oil in it? I put, uh, uh, speaking of promoting product, I put the green filled anti-aging skin serum on it every day. Oh, you have it, you have it. Yeah. Actually, it's like a whole bunch of different essential oils. It's like a regga-now on your yoga and, you know,

all these things, but it's been chocked. It's like you're rubbing your beard in a pizza. Yeah, it kind of a regano on your yoga and all these things. But it's been chucked out. So it'll be rubbed your beard in the pizza. Yeah, it kind of does smell very, very good. Tell me a little bit about this because I've been... So it smells delicious. Oh, and blue spruce oil. Which actually, like the idea behind blue spruce oil used in like Eastern medicine and essential oil practices or that it increases like confidence and boldness and testosterone.

So it makes you smell like a pine forest a little bit too. it. You're gonna have to do it. You're gonna have to do it. You're gonna have to do it. You're gonna have to do it. You're gonna have to do it. You're gonna have to do it. You're gonna have to do it. You're gonna have to do it. You're gonna have to do it. You're gonna have to do it.

You're gonna have to do it. You're gonna have to do it. You're gonna have to do it. You're gonna have to do it. You're gonna have to do it. You're gonna have to do it. You're gonna have to do it. You're gonna have to do it.

You're gonna have to do it. You're gonna have to do it. You're gonna have to do it. You're gonna have to do it. You're gonna have to do it. You're gonna have to do it. You're gonna have to do it. You're gonna have to do it. You're gonna have to do it. that, and what else are you here for? I know you got a full plate while you're here. What else you got going on? Well, I'm on my way down to San Diego to speak at the Unbeatable Mind Summit. Oh, awesome. With former US Navy SEAL Commander, Mark Devine. Explain what that is. So I mean, I just like to call him former US Navy SEAL Commander. No, X, X,

US Navy SEAL Commander. I don't know if you ever, I don't know if you ever enact. Yeah, anyways, bad ass. Yeah. No, it's a conference that is geared around this idea that you should train your mind just as much as you train your body. And US CrossFit and Incinitas and Mark Devine's whole organization called SEALFIT is based around this concept that you do everything from holotropic breath work to box breathing to what they call warrior yoga to a lot of mental prep work in addition to workouts that just completely crush you.

And this is for everyday people? Yeah, they have programs for everyday people. And like I'll lead one of their workouts. So I'm like one of their SealFit certified coaches or because I've done their, you know, Navy SEAL hell week for civilians and they have another thing called a 20X, like a 12 hour training beat down and they have an academy where you go and just feed through the fire hose there in insinitas for for five, six days. And that's part of the certification or whatever. Yeah. Oh wow. But the idea is that, for example,

typical seal fit workout and a lot of Navy seals are doing this, the train for buds, like you'll have your movement prep, right? Which is honestly like when I showed up at Mark Devine's Academy did movement prep with him, we were out on what they called a grinder for like an hour doing everything from bird dog. That's not like the app bird dogs.

No, bird dogs, the clam shells, the jumping jacks, the backwards barricade, you know, just getting worked. And after like an hour of that, he was like, all right, let's start the workout. Well nice. So, so you have movement prep, and then you go into strength. So they do, you know, strength will just be a typical

five by five or, you know, whatever, typically a few complexes. And then they go into Metcon, where you've got anywhere from a 10 to a 30 minute AM rap, and then after that you go into Endurance, where you've got 30 to 60 minutes of low level endurance, and that's the workout. So I mean, it just goes, like a typical workout,

we'll take two, two and a half hours to get through. So you have to, they teach you how to train people or whatever their method, and then on top of that, they're like, but you also got to pass these tests. Yeah. And the seal fit, I did their program called eight weeks to seal fit. I wanted to doubling it and doing it for 16 weeks to get ready for their hell week. It's called Cucoro where you show up and they basically treat you without, you don't

get a boat or a gun because they can't give civilians the boats or the guns. But everything else, like the deep water torture and the Cold and you know getting the sand cooking in the sand and doing 26 mile night hikes and all this jazz like they people are just saying that for the ship But yeah, like like the workouts were so tough But what I would do is I would take a typical workout and I would do like half of it in the morning half of it in the evening Cuz I couldn't even do the full workout. Wow. Wow. Wow best shape. I've ever been into my life though What do people pay to come do this? People pay to come do this?

What do they pay to come do that? I don't know, but honestly, when I finish, I've never asked him money details, he never fucking does. I think he's been like five different times when we've asked him something, so I had to have him. No, let's get back to that actually. There's a reason for that. The idea is that what we're talking about before you just completely derailed

it. He does that to a few times. So I finished doing the Cacoro and after I slept like 16 hours, I crashed in somebody's couch, just passed out, woke up, gotten a plane to go home, but walking through the airport, you just feel like a god among men after doing something like that. So you look at other people who are sitting there complaining about the fact they got up to 16 ounces instead of the 12 ounce for Appuccino and you're just like, you have no fuck. What I just went through. Like, it's so easy for you. Yeah, but it puts everything in perspective, like things seem easy after that.

Of course, I think Adam wanted to know the class because he's probably thinking, well, fuck, I think we can put some crazy shit together. Yeah. Which I know exactly what you think. No, I'm gonna line everybody up and just kick him in the nose. I know the class, because he's probably thinking, we'll fuck, we can put some crazy shit together. I know exactly what you think. I'm gonna line everybody up and just kick him in the nose. I know, I know. I mean, we did one at my house. We did, we did, I had Mark Devine and some of their, their, their US CrossFit and SealFit guys come up to the house

and we had 25 people go through what they call a 20X, which is like a baby version of that, but it's still pretty tough. It's a 12 hour beat down. And I mean, you talk about programming, like part of it is not complex physical programming as much as like a brain fuck. So, for sure.

Like at one point, I just had people put 50 pound sandbags and they're back pack and we walk for 19 miles. Just up the road. And that, and half the people were just dead after you know Yeah, just just walk anybody drop out blisters and foot care. Yeah Yeah, you always get people dropping out of those things. Yeah That man, so I want revisit when I interrupt you and derail you Because I have noticed this about you and I've asked like a couple different even about you even some of your own business

Like I feel you really disconnect yourself With the financial part of a lot of things you have to deal with. Explain that. Well, first of all, it can suck the enjoyment out of things in life when you're analyzing how much you spent on a particular activity, whether that activity is a flight or a movie or a meal

or even something like, what was it that you would just ask me about? Was there training you did there? Yeah, like a conference, like education. You know, the most successful people I know will sign up for conferences, seminars, educational experiences that will cost tens of thousands of dollars.

You know, they'll spend 30 to 60 thousand dollars a year just on educating themselves. And they're successful because they're60,000 a year just on educating themselves and their success will because they're constantly learning and constantly not just learning but also networking at events. And so for me to to analyze cost of a lot of those activities, particularly like education, conference seminars, stuff like that, I will get an invite to something and if I look at who's there and who invited me, I, I will. I will forward that to my assistant who manages all my cards, my bank accounts, everything.

And just tell her, send me up for this one. And in many cases, I see they compartmentalize it. See, you always don't just won't look at the price tag. Well, they do say that in terms of return on investment, one of the best returns on investment is just educating yourself. Have you gone and done, George? Which is crazy, because I'll stand in the grocery store for like 15 minutes trying to figure out which of the oatmeal brands is like 79 says cheaper So or which kombucha is 399 today instead of 499, you know, so yeah, I'm super duper

We're fascinating creatures. We're fascinating creatures with stuff. Have you done? Have you done Jordans business? We talked to him last night. Have you gone through his academy? Go to LA and learn how to seduce women. Yeah, he hates it when I thought that was, because that's not what it's about. You get an adjusion about being charming, or like whether it's in business or relationships or life or whatever.

I haven't gone down and done it. My brother's done it. My brother's at, because I've gone down there and done it. And it's booked pretty high, but yeah, but no, I was just born charming. I've never seen it. Yeah, it was El Natural. You don't want to become more charming.

Seeps off me with all that blue spruce oil. Yeah. You keep singing like that. I don't know, man. That was hot. Yeah. We got questions. We wanted to answer it.

Yeah, we're going to do something a little bit differently. We don't really like it in a room. Just full of whiteboards jam-packed with questions. Yeah. Well, here's, I really wanted to do this because one, all of us have a lot of respect for Ben as far as his knowledge and fitness. I mean, it's rare that I feel.

Yeah, it's one of the smartest people. Yeah. I think we've, I know. So typically we wouldn't even allow some nice shine laser lights on my balls from my hand. It's crazy. He's, by the way, he didn't make that up. That's the secret. He literally, I gotta make sure that everybody knows. Literally before we on my balls from my hand. It's crazy. By the way, he didn't make that up.

That's the secret. He literally, I gotta make sure that everybody knows, literally before we started recording. We got pictures. Yeah, we got pictures he put on. So if you remember the movie back to the future when Michael J. Fox was back in time and then the scientist dude opens the door

and he's got that big ass thing on his head. Great Scott. Yeah, and he's like trying to read his mind. It looked like that on his head with a something up his nose. I'm sure he's a big guy. Doug will post it's a double post. It's about 810 nanometer wavelength of light.

And it was developed originally for neurological decline and for Alzheimer's patients because it acts on the mitochondria in neural tissue. So you have a component of your mitochondria called cytochrome C oxidase. It up regulates activity of that. So you generate more ATP in your brain. The other thing that it produces when you shine that specific spectrum of light is nitric oxide.

And nitric oxide can actually cross the blood brain barrier and wind up in other tissues of the body aside from just the brain. So you get increased blood flow, increased nitric oxide production, alpha brainwave production. They have, if you go to YouTube, you can find an E-EG analysis where they look at the actual brainwave production and changes in brainwave production, they have, if you go to YouTube, you can find a full EEG analysis where they look at the actual brainwave production and changes in brainwave states when you put a laser on the brain and it's been shown to increase

alpha brainwave production as well. Do you think that they'll be using stuff like that? No, it's interesting. Because it's still, it's pretty fringe, right? You don't see many people using it that accepted by means from your mind? I'd wear it in a hot like fire. I see it completely disrupting things like Alzheimer's treatment.

Really? Now, Alzheimer's treatment is multifactorial, right? There are all sorts of things from ketosis to infrared to different, uh, neutropics like, you know, who perzine for example. Well, they, I mean, they think it's a glucose issue. I think it's a, it's like diabetes, almost like type three diabetes. I've heard some, some, some, some, that's a big part of it too, the amyloid plaques that can form as a result of glycation in neural tissue.

But there was a very interesting, it was three or four years ago, a case study with 12 individuals that they put through a very comprehensive program to reverse neurological decline that a couple of these Alzheimer's. And it really was everything in the kitchen sink. I mean, they had the laser lights and they had all the different herbs and supplements.

They were in ketosis. They were pulling out all the stops. And as you guys know, if I hurt my shoulder, I'm not just gonna slap ice on it. Usually for me, it's like topical magnesium ice, electrostam, deep tissue work, retraining of them. Like all these things that you throw at an issue. They work better together, they do.

They do. They do. They do. They do. They shock me to quit. Yeah, so coming full circle, the idea behind something like that, like shining the lights on the head, it stems from Alzheimer's research, but it's really interesting how it can help with not just staving off neurological decline, but helping with neurological function. This reminds me a little bit of what you, last night you said to me a dinner, and I bet we will see, and we'll probably start seeing things like this with like your professional sports teams. And I thought it was a really good tip that you

gave last night when we were having dinner and you mentioned like, you know, one of the ways I've recommended chiropractor in the past is you know, go seek out the professional who's got the local sport team or whatever they're helping. Right. Is there probably on the exactly whichever professional sports team or whichever chiropractic physician works with a local professional sports team, that's typically the guy that you want to see who's not going to be the guy or the girl who has that cheesy little gun thing. My apologies

to the chiropractic docs, the clicker, which has never worked for me, or like the little body scanner that you stand next to and then the computer spits out the $300 worth of supplements you're supposed to get in front of you. Yeah, I'm by. That's like the same television. I go to the chiropractic doc, like I want freaking like ART, I want my sick Rilliac joint adjusted, I want traction, you know, I want the neck popping thing just because it feels so damn good. Yeah, so you look for the person who works with the local professional sports team.

No, I think that was great. Everybody on the local pro sports team looks like they're, I don't know. At a whack. Yeah, like I walk it, walking cricket and dragon one like that. No, they're in the, I mean, and sports has evolved so much with things like that that they're in the business of, you know, how do we keep these athletes healthy for this entire season? So there's a lot of money that goes into keeping up. Give a lot of money. And I love seeing it now because what we see,

and a lot of people don't realize a lot of the evolution. A lot of people think it used to, a lot of people used to blame steroids and things like that. But a lot of this is the science, how much we've evolved with being able to repair the body and take care of it, why we see some of these super athletes. And we've talked a little bit about, you know, semantotypes and understanding like what body,, what bodies are best for what sports,

and that has a big role. But a lot has to do with that too. Like, you see, I remember when the championship game last year with the calves, and they were showing LeBron's, like, his whole breakdown, I was like, oh, shit, this guy's using cryo. He's doing like, he's doing like all the right things for like maximum recovery and like, there's definitely there's definitely team teams that have got the guys on there that are putting them through. When you got he's jumping on the rebounding trampoline with the training mask on. And grounding shoes. Yeah. Perfect. Excellent. Shall we do the first question? Dude, read it way, Sal. All right, so one of our forum members, one of our buddies, Zach Harding wants to know, why is it that the fitness industry seems to have the most

amount of myths and lies floating around with gurus promoting their products with pseudo science back in up their claim? So I guess in short, why is the fitness industry seem to be just inundated with so much crap in my opinion? Yeah. I mean, this week and I'll go around. Yeah, we'll go around. But yeah, let's fire off with you first. Well, by being into fitness, generally, that means that you

for some reason have high aspirations for your body or for your mind. In many cases, you have like a deep curiosity about ways that you could make yourself better. And in many cases, you are gras deep curiosity about ways that you could make yourself better. In many cases, you are grasping at straws to live longer, to not lose your sex pack, to always have your boobs staying perky, and folks get desperate to do just about anything that they possibly can do to not lose their fitness, or to build their fitness, or for

the skinny high school kids, look bigger when they flex in front of the mirror or for the girls to look good in their swimsuit. And it's very, very easy for fitness professionals to pray on that and make claims as folks have done since snake oil times to really pray on people's fear. I think it's just fitness is so motivated by our insecurities and I think that's kind of along the lines what you're saying that when people go when they're buying

something based on that type of emotion, it's easy to it's easy to pray on it and it's not it's not it's not it's a chicken and the egg thing right the consumer demands it. So the producers produce what you want to hear which is you know getting shape in 30 days lose weight real fast. This is going to give you all the results that you ever wanted with no work. This pill is going to do everything for you. Then on top of it, so much of it is subjective. This is why snake oil looks like the original bullshit supplement. I mean, there were literally men that would drive around town to town selling these remedies for cough or this will make you feel younger

or whatever. And there's that whole placebo effect. And people buy things and they take them and they're like, oh, I think I feel it. This feels better. And it's a hard cycle to break. Yeah. But I mean, look at other industries too. Look at the financial industry, right?

That's got lots of fraud and promises that things are going to grow at, you know, 6, 9, 12% when they're growing at negative 3, or, you know, people who are essentially just laundering money, you look at, you know, the entertainment industry and the fact that most reality TV shows are fake and manipulated and not really what you're seeing. Like, every single industry, what you have to do is dig through the crap. And in many cases, you need to realize that there is no one perfect diet, and there is no one perfect exercise, and there is no one perfect supplement. And if somebody has like whatever low-lutinizing hormone production and their hypogonatism or low libido is due to that,

and a supplement that assists with lutinizing hormone production, like say, or like, or like, or like, or something helps them, that doesn't then mean that if you go out and buy it, it's gonna turn you into a sex god, because maybe you make luteinizing hormone just fine,

but you have poor circulation to your gonads or something like that. So, I mean, you always have to analyze things. It's a little hard. Actually, yeah. Well, I like that you, you can't answer too tight. I think that's true. It's just a little hard of actually. Well, I like that you, you know, you can't answer two types.

I think that's true. It's not just a fitness industry. I think almost every industry is corrupt. And I think, well, I think it's the ones really driven by ego. He talked finance, entertainment, fitness. These are all people like, you know, I'm insecure about something.

Let me give you, you know. Well, and I guess that's another thing that would make it really difficult for somebody who's in fitness is, we have all this, you know. Well, and I guess that's another thing that would make it really difficult for somebody who's in fitness is we have all this, you know, data or people before us, I guess you could say, that have gone and kind of paved the way. And this was, this is kind of the formula, right, was to, I remember when we first got going and we talked about like, man, the hardest thing for us was really the formula was get, build up a network of people.

However you do that, whether you're pretty and you do it, you're smart and you do it, you're entertaining and do it, whatever, you build up a network of people. Once you have enough people, you sell them a product. And whatever that product is, it didn't matter. It just mattered getting the network of people. Then whatever product came along that was willing to be the first one to take a chance.

That's kind of the formula that so many of these guys kind of fall victim to. And part of it is the whole system, right? It's like, it's kind of, it just continues to promote that because it's how everybody makes money. So to come out, to step outside of that is, I think it's really challenging. And I also think like, I know who Zach is.

And you know, some of these guys are some of our hardcore mind pump people that have been from the beginning. And I know we came out really strong and hard at the very beginning and started, you know some of these guys are some of our hardcore mind pump people that have been from beginning and I know we came out really strong and hard at the very beginning and started you know prodding and picking fights with people and so we still have some of our hardcore people at that that like literally like just I feel like want to just like want us to smash everybody and I'm like well no that's never that was never the message of mind pump. We kind of want to be a filter and like kind of what Ben was saying we're not trying to say there's a one way of this and these people are wrong and these

people are bad. No, it's like we're trying to help teach people on how to filter it themselves and understand that process and what that looks like. And, you know, it's some, and just be better informed overall. Yeah. That's what it is. It's like, you know, information was a lot harder to access as far as like proper information, you know, unless you were going to school for these very specific topics, it's like you kind of relied on the guy that looked the best in the gym. And so, you know, a lot of

times, you know, it was either hormones or something else that was contributing to their results, but even then it didn't apply, the way that they trained didn't apply to that person that was asking them. Yeah. I mean, you could extend that to bodybuilding forums too, right? Like, there are a host of any equal one case studies on bodybuilding forums with everybody on their specific cycles. And this is exactly what you need to do because this is what worked for me. And yeah, you have to cut through the crap.

You know, one industry though that I would say probably has zero fraud is completely clean is the clothing industry. Because I've spent a lot of time in Thailand and the number of real authentic Gucci bags and Nike shoes that you find there on the beaches. It's flabbergasted. Like, real that quality persists worldwide

with zero fraudulent products whatsoever. That's crazy. So the clothing industry is so clean, thank God. At least from what I've seen in Asia. Oh, shit. Yeah, I'm, I'm, the bottom didn't fall out my Gucci bag, so it must be real. It looks the same, it cares.

No, what another great puppet you are. There they all are, it really is. And I think, I think the, the training one, why people are so passionate about it, because it's like, it's you, it's your body, it's something like that, so you feel so, like, angry when you, when you got suckered, right? Yeah. When you bought that thing that you thought

was gonna change you and you're like, fuck. I spent all my summer savings on that and it was a gimmick and I had no idea. Yeah, but there's also the information that comes out that supports eating a certain way or working out a certain way. It's so, it can counter itself all the time. They look like they change. One minute, it's not good for you to do too much fat. Now the next minute, oh wait a minute,

fat's not the enemy. I thought, what about cholesterol? Now they're changing their mind on that and sodium, what about that? I thought I was supposed to work out and just beat myself up, no pain, no gain. Now you're telling me that, you know, I can train differently. And there's just, I mean, it's an industry that's just full of information that counters, it's against itself. It's not a hard science, right? So if you look at really like we're a meat sack, right? And we, and technically, we might be a little bit more than that, but we're a glorified meat sack.

Full of bacteria. There's a whole bunch of stuff floating around inside of us. And it actually isn't as clean-cut as, say, like the publishing industry or the financing industry, or any of these industries where things are specific and measurable. When my accountant looks at the monthly P&L statement for my business, those numbers aren't lying. They're hard reflections of exactly what occurred. But when you're looking at the human body and you're looking at soft science, there are so many confounding variables that it's, you know, sure you could say

it's pseudoscience, but it's also just soft science. It's not hard science. I mean, physiology and biochemistry, and you can even argue to a certain extent, you know, biomechanics are really soft sciences. Now, when you're, because you're somebody who is, I feel like always flirting with those boundaries. And I know you've been said that before and I have a feeling that's why Zach even brought up the pseudoscience thing. And whenever I talk about you, I explain to people like,

you're in a perfect example of someone I love to see test all those things. Because I believe you really walk the walk and you are always searching for biohacks and things to improve your life versus somebody who is latching on to the the next newest gimmicky thing and yet the rest of his health and fitness is so out of balance and fucked up. It's like you're eating like shit, you're doing processed foods, you're not working out, you're not sleeping correctly of all this stress, you're doing drugs, but then you got this thing on your head with a laser

up your nose. I would be like, dude, you come on, you're a crock of shit this stress, you're doing drugs, but then you got this thing on your head with a laser up your nose. I would be like, dude, you come on, you're a crock of shit. Like get out of here. Like fix all these other things first, but I really believe that you do all the other pieces and you really are like applying these things and saying like, man, is this really worth, you know, is it worth the money?

Is it worth the time that I do all this and apply that? So I think it's really the mode of the person and I feel like you educate your listeners and you explain about it, the science behind it. And it's, yeah, well, the world needs guinea pigs. That's what told my mom that it won't be my girl. It's gonna be the president or just a guinea pig. It's due relentless self experimentation on myself.

See if any parasites come at the eyeballs or a ball falls off. Yeah. Still in one piece. Still in one piece. It's actually worked out pretty well. I haven't really messed myself up. I got that question on a podcast while I go like, what's the, like I have I messed myself up,

have I done these biohacks and just like completely destroyed myself? Yeah, what's the worst biohack you ever did? Yeah, and that was a weird thing. I mean, I swam in the cold river if that's a biohack, just to see how long my body could last and wound up shitting my pants and losing motor function for the day.

Like, so it's like, so it's like, so it really happened? Yeah, but I mean, that's not a biohack, that's more like swimming in cold water. Like you could say it's a biohack, but it was, you know, it's cold thermogenesis. No, I was swimming in a cold river and being idiot. Someone had to pull you out,

because I just wanted to see how long it could last, because I heard 19 minutes was what it came out to. I was just on the shore and I drug myself on the shore and sat in my car shivering and shitting my hands. I love you, bro. How long did you make it? It's like a random weekend in Ben's life.

He's like, you know what I'm gonna do today? I'm gonna go fucking trance. I'm doing 20 minutes in the room. Yeah, embarrassingly it was well under 15 minutes. It was a minute, also a pretty cold river. I'm gonna be talking about jumping through the ice and the snow to go get in the rivers. Oh my God.

It's cold. But I, you know, I haven't really had many, most of the bio-ax have worked out pretty well. I mean, even, you know. Well, you've vet them pretty well, but you know, well, okay, so one that I did, I wrote a story on this. Have you guys ever used the penis trainers?

Like, it's pumped, I mean, of course. No, Adam's like, oh yeah. It's called the private gym. And they sent it. It's called the private gym. The private gym. And it's a full workout routine. And they have to wait.

It's just like that, that old, you see this in a lot like multi orgasmic books or tantric sex books, where one of the exercises that you do is the towel exercise, where you get an erection, you lift the towel up and down, as you can track like the pelvic muscles. I've been doing that since I was three. I have been doing kegels, and then eventually you go to a bigger towel and then you get the towel wet.

But this is actually this little magnet. I'm up to two beach towels, in case you guys are wondering. It's a little magnet that you wrap around your penis, and it basically is supposed to increase the strength of the muscles. And like my dick would get exhausted. your penis and it basically is supposed to increase the strength of the muscles. And like my dick would get exhausted. It'd be so exhausted from the training early in the day

that it's so it kind of defeated the purpose, but still it made sense. But that made me think of this next time, actually I'm going on to Costa Rica to a yoga retreat next week. So I'm down speaking of yoga retreat, but on my way back I'm stopping in Florida for this protocol called Gaines Wave, where they actually do,

and they've used this as a treatment for erectile, this function in men, but they've also used it as a treatment to improve erectile quality. And the idea is that you blasts, almost like ultrasound, your crotch tissue with sound waves. It's called Gaines Wave.

So I'm just gonna stop stopping it for a little while. So yeah, I mean, speak of pseudoscience. I'll come back. I'll report on how it worked for me. If it worked well for me, I'll probably talk to those guys and say, hey, if I want to hook my audience up with this, if they're interested in it, will you give them a discount code?

And usually I'll get some kind of a kickback or a furl or a affiliate income from something like that. But I am never going out and saying, this is going to work for everybody to get rid of a reptile dysfunction, change your life forever. Is that typically how that works for you? Is you get a product sent to you or you reach out looking for something you're interested in, you try it out and then you reach out affiliate-wise and see what it's like? Exactly.

So, the model in our industry in many cases is that fitness Pros or personal trainers or bloggers in any industry really you go to affiliate networks like share a sale or commission junction or click bank Or any of these websites that exist where people have products that they're gonna split revenue with you on for you promoting Their product whatever their abercizer or their supplement or their ebook on your, and you're getting 10%, 20%, 50% kickback. And you go to these networks, you shop for the best deals, you look for the ones that seem to be converting high, you go back to your blog post, you post the blog post that is promoting that product, and you may have never laid hands on it in your life.

You might not even know who created it, you might not know where the raw ingredients come from. It's nothing like that. But that's how a traditional affiliate network or affiliate-based business would operate. And there's a diamond dozen websites out there doing just that. My model, if I'm going to partner up with somebody

on an affiliate-based relationship, is I'll get a product. I'll try, like what I'm doing with Halo right now, right? They wanted a partner. They want me to do a blog post and a podcast with them. So I've got this little, you know, it's right in my feet right now, this little TDCS, a cranial stimulation unit that I've been using for my workouts

to actually assess whether or not it does work. If I do TDCS for 20 minutes before I do a workout program. Can you explain that for everybody? Because that's something that's cool and that the warriors I know just used it this last season. Can you? Yeah, I'll tell you a funny story. Have you guys ever heard of the goat man?

I have not. No. This guy named Thomas. Yeah. He's yeah, he's exactly. He's a UK based, like a designer. I think he's more like an architectural designer, possibly a mechanical engineer. But he wrote a book called The Goat Man, which you can now find on Amazon. It was just published this month. He created a series of prosthetic limbs that he attached to his body and he went out to live with goats out in the field to experience what it would be like to be a man goat and to see life, the eyes of an animal.

And you can find pictures of him. He's got this silly looking helmet on that looks like he borrowed it from a triathlon, like an arrow helmet. He's got prosthetic limbs, strap to his arms, strap to his legs, and he even created a prosthetic room for digesting food. And I don't even know how that works.

It actually was connected to his stomach or if it was a fake room and that he just put things into it. So he would come out. He was like, I'm all in. Anyway, as though in addition to that, he used something called TDCS, which is TransDirect. It's either TransDirect, CurrentStimulation, or TransDirectCranialStimulation.

I'm forgetting whether the C is current or cranial. But anyways, yeah, crazy. So he did TDCS on his motor cortex, which if you target with specific frequencies that you can influence To cause changes in anything's from like motor patterns use of the arms and legs in his case He wanted to lose the ability to speak the human language So he shocked himself. He wanted to lose the ability. He didn't want to be able to communicate He could be that for cheap because he just

Just in case he got to shoot at it. So he shocked his motor cortex to help him become a goat and to lose the ability to speak for several days, well, he was out living with these goats. It's an example though of how our motor cortex can be stimulated. There's another guy named Dr. Samuel Marcourt and he does research in cyclists and athletes, specifically with TDCS to see what happens when you shock the brain to see if there is a reduction in your rating

of perceived exertion or the quality of your workout after you've done something like that. There are other researchers who have looked at your ability to be able to learn fine motor tasks, like using TDCS for 20 minutes prior to working on a two handed backhand versus a one handed backhand in tennis, for example. And that's the idea behind this newer unit, this halo, that the golden state warriors were using during basketball. Now does it inhibit that part of the brain that it's stimulating or does it stimulate?

It's got three settings on it. And I haven't played around with two of them. Once for right hand coordination, once for left hand coordination. I would imagine those would be something more for pictures, single handed athletes, maybe like e-gamers, people who would want to enhance like hand-eye coordination. I haven't yet done any sessions for that.

I've done six sessions so far with TDCS for 20 minutes prior to a hard workout. And it does indeed lower your rating of perceived exertion. Like I will crush myself. I'll stone you guys this earlier for like an hour and look at my watch and it's been an hour. I feel like it's been like 10, 15 minutes. So the workouts go by extremely fast and everything feels lighter.

And as far as skill acquisition, I really haven't made a hardcore attempt to like learn a new skill, but I've thought about putting it on and trying it prior to like playing guitar or ukulele. So is there a particular setting that you're doing for what you're looking to do versus what someone else is looking to do?

Or is it always there's only three settings on there like prime me for my major activity which in this case we work out scrimmage game whatever or the left hand thing or the right hand. Oh, I see. And then you put it on and it's like this really tingly sensation on your scalp. You got to get the little electrodes that come with it wet these attachments and then you put it on you leave it on for 20 minutes as you're warming up like you go ride the bike to get the muscles warm, you could put it on during the first round, if you're doing a circuit or something like that, and then have your subsequent two rounds, you know, be post TDCS, but it induces a priming effect that lasts about 60 to 80 minutes. So if you've run it for 20 minutes, it's a 60 to 80 minutes, you have like enhanced functioning of the motor cortex. Wow. Fascinating. It's just stuff like that is fascinating to me, but it's also worries me a little bit, right?

Because the brain is so influenced. It's so complex. And the early science feels like they're targeting these major areas and how specific can they be? And one part of the brain might affect memory in a positive way, but if you stimulate the wrong way, then you lose your memory. Oh, yeah, I mean, that's the other thing I'm doing right now.

I don't know if we talked about this the last time that we podcasted together, but I went on to LA and did a QEG brain map to see which areas of my brain were extensively producing beta waves where I had increased distractability, decreased attention. That's when you were flying the spaceship

with your brain. Exactly, so I stayed there for several days and learned how to use all their equipment How to fly the spaceships with my brain? That basically it's all based on reward cues right like the spaceship stops making sound the music stops The exhaust stops coming out of the back of the spaceship when you straight out of the reward zone that you're trying to train So the neuroscientist down there. He sends me my rewards zone for each day So it might be you know four to seven hertz if we're doing like an alpha brainwave frequency training session.

And you'll go through these sessions, but the idea is that if you don't know how to use it to return to you, we're saying, so if I just say like did a 30 minute session where I up-regulated beta brainwave function and taught my amygdala how to be super stressed out and get rewarded for being super stressed out. That could be a bad thing. Yeah, that could be a bad thing. So, yeah, you have to know how to use these tools and you also have to recognize

that you can kind of fuck yourself up. If you don't know what, I place the electrodes in properly and passed out for like four hours after training session because I was so exhausted from producing fast beta at a way faster rate than I normally produced it if I were just say, you know, talking to somebody or reading a book. Well, you'd be careful, man, because you got sound waves

blasting at your balls, you got stuff coming after brain, you know what, though, it'd be careful man because you're going you got sound waves blasting at your balls You got stuff coming after brain. You know what? It's a fucking blast I have so much fun with it and it's another reason why I continue to say that about him He's the right lock. He's the guy that he's the guy to do that because he's also fully aware of the risk and that That's the problem I think with a lot of things out there too is the the pseudoscience that people will put out and then Everyone just jumps on, and you're like, wait a second, just because this person said it was good,

you haven't even researched it, or really figured out how you're supposed to use it, where I feel like that's one of the things that's great about Ben's podcast, if you're not a listener already. I mean, he's definitely always pushing those limits, but then he also breaks the science down for everybody, I think that's so awesome.

So, should we go in the next question? Yeah, Michael Vue said that about me after I just out saying Biddy and the Jets. I know, dude. So should we go in the next question? Yeah, Michael. We said that about me after I just out saying Biddy and the Jets. I know. So good. So Michael Vue wants to know if we have any words and philosophies that we live by and implement daily. Hmm. A lot. Have you guys seen Theodore Roosevelt's Man in the Arena? Come on man. It's one of my favorite quotes all time. I have a coffee mug. I made a coffee mug. That's the best. So every morning when I'm drinking my coffee, I look at theodore Roosevelt's man in the arena, which actually returns what we're just saying, right?

Like, who cares if you're like, whatever, you know, in your mom's basement with a neck-beard blogging away about fitness, you wanna be in the trenches in the arena, you wanna be gladiator out there getting your hands bloody and dirty. I like that one, but the other, the other very simple one that I go by

is I make art every day. Like every day, whether recording something and chanting for people or new or intriguing or writing an article or even learning a song on the ukulele or whatever, every single day creates something. Because that's one of the things we can do that a lot of other creatures like can't do so well. A beaver can make a dam and a bird can make a nest, but human beings can create a lot of cool shit. And I think that if you're just working every day,

you're not actually creating every day, then you're missing out a big part of what it means to be a human. I like that. But that's my favorite quote also. I probably read that I'd say once, once a month, the man in the arena won. And I mean, the message behind it basically is you,

you know, it's better to be the man in the arena than to be the critic. You know, the one that experiences the successes and the losses and it's just that it pumps me up. Actually Roosevelt himself, Teddy Roosevelt, interesting character, I don't know if you've ever read about the guy, but I mean he was a, you know, my favorite. He was a, he was a, you know, kind of a sickly child. Is he the crime fighter at night? Like, I heard some story about that. I mean, he was a skinny sickly child always having asthma and just trained himself and, you know, did judo when he was as a president. He would train every day and, you know,

he led the rough riders with, and he was just a tough son of a bitch. Just, I think he was giving a speech at one point, got shot. Yeah. And he finished the speech. He's a drunk on his upper lip. Yeah. Yeah.

He looks like he's the one that looks like a walrus, you know, the one they always make the cartoons about. But yeah, I expect the goals. That's one of my favorite quotes. And I think for me, just the philosophy is I like to remind myself of just how fortunate I am. I think sometimes it's easy when you're driven, a driven individual to get down on yourself

if you're not at the goal that you wanna be at. It's easy to say, you know, God, whether you're working out or even in business and God, I wanna be over there and I'm not there yet, why am I not there yet? And so it can make you forget about how awesome right now is. And so I think every single day I try to remind myself of just how great things are right now.

The journey is, it's so similar to what I mean. Being mindful is like so important to me. And it's something that I feel like that we always have to work on, especially if you have a entrepreneurial spirit or you have that type A personality where you're like, we're always focused on the next thing and we're going and being mindful and being present

and learning to enjoy the journey. And the struggle too. Like, you know, I used to always say like, if life was easy, it would be no fun. It really wouldn't be. If life was just easy and handed to everybody, the struggle is part of the fun. The struggle is part of the, and that's really tough to wrap your brain around and actually learn to look at it that way when you're in it, right? Because when you're perspective on the struggle too, though, is super important. Because if you wake up and you're like, oh, today is the struggle.

Yeah, today, I think you bring on this struggle. I fight to get on the manifest. You'll be in maybe a die. But if you look at that struggle and you jump out of bed and you click your heels together and you rub your hands together, they say, all right, time to go slay dragons. I mean, that's a cool way to live life. If you recognize that, it's not going to be easy, but you embrace the struggle and you enjoy it and you freaking love to go out and get your hands dirty and fight.

Yeah, I agree. And one quick thing that came to mind, by the way, just so it doesn't slip my memory was, when you're talking about mindful, I read a book on the plane ride down here called the Distracted Mind. Excellent book. and my memory was when you're talking about Mindful, I read a book on the plane ride down here called The Distracted Mind, excellent book, from the out there who wants to work on Mindfulness and see how living the way that we live now is human. Kind of have a whole new library

after hanging out with you dude, destroying our mindfulness. Yeah, the distracted mind, I think it's pretty new. Do you know who it is or no? No, I mean, it'll pop up in Amazon. Yeah, very interesting. Yeah, I would echo all those things, but then I also like, I'm always seeking better ways to improve and create that balance.

So I'm always like assessing where I may be somewhat dropping the ball. And so every day is like a new focus that I could sort of prepare myself for to make a little micro improvement as far as like building up the overall experience and balance in my life. So that's something that I'm always like, I'm constantly thinking about. I'm like, you know, there's an area here I can make a little bit of an improvement and then, you know, and I'm going to revisit something else that, you know, needed attention. But that's always like this constant, this constant scale that I'm sort of managing.

You know, it's funny when you talk to very successful people, I've known some very successful people in my life. And when I asked them about how they became successful, or what it was like building their business, or what it was like, doing what they, you know, working towards their success, they always refer to those times. I almost get a sense that they're nostalgic. You know what I mean?

Like, oh yeah, those were the good old days, man. We were grinding and, you know, I had only, you know, $1,000 to my name and I took that and we built this business from nothing and we did this and then I had this small office with this real small team and you hear, you know, you hear what's coming out of their mouth but you feel the energy and it's almost like they're thinking back to the good times. But what sucks about that. Yeah, deep down inside if you send them back and tell them to be like, oh, give me out there right now.

Get me out of here. Where's my Porsche? Yeah, yeah, right. But that's what I mean. The first room means to go back to that. But that's what I mean. When you're in it, you're so like, ah, but then when you leave it, you're like, God, that was, that's what it's all about.

I mean, I could go to the store right now and buy myself a trophy. You know, won't mean a goddamn thing to me. But it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, well, I have, I have another philosophy. I feel like I kind of live by too on in come kind of piggy, piggybacking off of that is, you know, once you've been through that grind and you've kind of, you've reached

and you've been successful and we kind of talked a little off-air with Ben about this about like, you know, education and money, like you don't even pay attention to that because to you, it's invaluable to like, be able to do those experiences. I also think the same thing goes for like, once you reach this point in your life.

My focus has changed a lot. Now the growing aspect and learning becomes so important to me above other things and then also to give to others. I think that I didn't care as much about that in the past. I've always been a very selfish individual. I know that stems from coming up poor and stuff and not having a lot of things, so it made me want a lot of things and that drove and motivating me. But later on, now I want to give back one of the things that really gives me a lot of joy in life is, and it doesn't always

have to be a monetary or it doesn't have to be something that's tangible even. It's just, if I can leave every day where I've impacted somebody's life in a positive way That they'll be like, man, I whether I like that guy or man I can't believe he took the time to help me with that or do that like to me like if I go in each day like I'm gonna I'm gonna help somebody today or I'm gonna do something for something today and sometimes it's grand and sometimes it's unbelievably rewarding to wear almost brings tears to your eyes and then other times It's just simple as like hey, you, help someone open a door today or something. But having that mentality of going in every day that it's not

about you, it's about how you can impact others is definitely something that I think I've evolved into as I've gotten older. All right. So the last questions from Garrett Gratling. I think I pronounced his name right? It's a beautiful name. It is. I would take Gracieling. Gracieling. Or you can pronounce it like it's German. I think I pronounced his name right? It's a beautiful name. It is I would say Graceling Graceling or he could pronounce it like it's German

I think it's actually A-E I think it's what it's great. Oh, is it great? Yeah, I think it's A-E. Oh my bad. I look like a C who wrote that So the question is motivation motivation. Where does it come from? How to deal with the effects of failure on motivation? Having the right mindset. That's right. Come from your gut. You just learn, you don't have to motivate, you just need to shock your head.

Motivated. That's it. Blast some sound waves at your balls. I think this is probably the most common, honest to God guys, if we were to analyze all of our Q and A questions, one of the more common questions we get is this, right here. How do I stay motivated?

That's such a hard thing for people to deal with, especially when it comes to exercising activity. I think- Don't you think we were literally talking about this with what we just said? I think is embracing the struggle. I disagree. Oh really?

I think that you have to embrace the struggle, but from myself, and for any clients I've trained, everybody who has fallen off the bandwagon, who has gone through a period of time where they weren't motivated, have gone through a period of time where they didn't have that resistance

to say whatever intermittent fast or avoid the sweet potato fries in excess, or whatever someone's failure was, where they feel like they derailed themselves and they some have to climb back onto the wagon now, it always stemmed from there not being a source of some kind of embarrassment, extrinsic motivation or event that that person had signed up for. Whether that event was a 5K or a 10K or a triathlon

or a fitness competition or weight loss competition or photos that they had to post publicly, anything like that. And that's why I have enjoyed most the work I've done with folks like triathletes and marathoners and adventure racers and cyclists and people who have a freaking event on the calendar. Right, three months down the line, you know you're gonna be

towing the starting line of XYZ event. You have no choice but to get out of bed and be ready or else you're gonna be frickin' embarrassed because oh, by the way, everybody knows based on your Facebook calendar, whatever that you've actually signed up for that and committed to being there. Now, it is a very powerful motivator, but I'm gonna differ with you a little bit,

because when you have a particular, when your motivation is, I have an event I have to train for, I have this race or whatever, when the race is over, and there's a, I can't remember the term, but there's actually a psychological remorse. There is, actually, I know what you're talking about. There's a psychological term for it, when you're over that, and I've been there, I've done that, where I've competed, and I was so- The Post-R so the posters blues you just it's like okay now what and you need that in order to get And so then you get then you get these people who are you know these these soccer moms and these business guys in their 40s Who sign up at for marathon after marathon after marathon and race after they stand and line the morning after an iron man

With a $1,000 check to sign up for the next iron man Yeah, and they do it because that's how they keep their motivation. And then a lot of times they hurt themselves, they over train, they beat themselves up. I think the important thing, and this has to do with really your, we talk about this all the time on the show, your relationship to exercise and activity and your relationship to food. If your motivation is performance or the way you look or something you don't like about yourself, that will motivate you to a certain point. But then it will get you will find yourself

in a situation where let's say your motivation is that you don't like something about yourself. Well eventually you're gonna get angry with that and say you know what, fuck it, I'm just gonna, I love myself, it doesn't matter what I look like and I'm just gonna do whatever I want. You connect it to the two of those. You connect your body image to your self image.

And that is not a long-term solution. When the person connects to exercise and food because they care about themselves, they love their bodies, they love the way they feel. It comes from a good place of security and good self image. Don't worry, body image, remember, that's separate, but a good self image, then the motivation's different because you find that you want to do it

because I'll tell you something right now, if you don't wanna do something, you're only gonna motivate yourself so long and fitness is lifelong. Well, if I put a clarifier on what I was saying, I do not think it's a healthy idea to paint yourself into the corner of being like that 50-year-old man who's done 50 Iron Man triathlons

or the person who's a marathoner and all they know is chronic or motion running, because that's all they've done their whole lives. What I believe in, though, is this concept of you retire and then you die, right? Like, these people who retire and give up their jobs and don't have anything to live for anymore and aren't learning new skills or new activities, they just, they die early. They're losing their purpose. I was just over in Finland last week with a guy who's one of the fittest old dudes I've ever hung out with,

one of the most motivating, inspiring dynamic people I've ever met. He's right now in the process of, so he's sleeping with the helmet on so that he can invent some kind of a new pillow that reduces pressure on his cranial artery while he's asleep in bed. So he doesn't cut off blood flow.

So it's like a pressure helmet or a river sensor. He's riding horses, but he's also taking the saddles that he's using when he's riding the horses, he's making chairs out of these saddles to allow the pelvic bones to be split properly. The guy doesn't have an extensive knowledge of anatomy, but he's just figuring this stuff out for himself. He's swinging in kettlebell. He's doing sauna every day. He's learning how to play guitar. He's constantly on this quest to do new things. And that dude, I guarantee it wakes up out of bed every single morning,

motivated to go get shit done. So I don't think that you necessarily have to have whatever event that you've signed up for to motivate yourself to do what it is that you wanna do, be the same event over and over again. But for me personally, we're like, it's not always an Iron Man, right? It's an adventure race,

or it's a hunt, or it's a hike, or it's a skill. Or it's growing, you know, learning to roll the paddle board up and down the Spokane River. Well, the trainer, I challenged the trainer and you to ask yourself, though, what do we come across as trainers

as the majority of our clientele? Like, that guy sounds like he has a good relationship, and it sounds like you have a very good relationship, to ask yourself, though, what do we come across as trainers as the majority of our clientele? That guy sounds like he has a good relationship and it sounds like you have a very good relationship, which I'm certain you do, with health and fitness and that pursuit. I feel that most of the people though that we know that are doing those marathons and doing those things, they don't have a good relationship. I would say a majority, and like, obviously, you know, and that's totally anecdotal. Like, I'm just saying in my experience of clients, you know, normally the people that are signing up for those marathons and those challenges, they have connected that with the best shape of their life. And so they feel that it's necessary for them

to constantly be doing these races, you know, to in order to do that. And without that, because they've never experienced health and fitness and feeling good, whether it be a physical thing or a aesthetic thing or whatever accomplishment, they've never felt that without signing up for these races or without, you know, constantly having to challenge themselves that way.

So, you know, you have a very neat way of an approach. And it sounds like this guy you're talking about too does. I think that the majority of people, though though struggle with this, they struggle with understanding that relationship they have with it. Yeah, because you have to consider like the four of us on the podcast right now, we're all driven individuals. We get off on competition. It's something we enjoy.

We have a passion for challenge, we have a passion for exercise. Most people don't necessarily have those and so I think when people connect the dots differently and what they should do is connect the dots and say, I love the way this makes me feel. This feels good for my business. This is me enjoying life. Then you'll find people become more active. And actually it's interesting when people work on things like sadness and they find the root cause of some of the depression that become happier, they naturally go and move. They naturally go out and exercise. And so most people are not going to be just like addressing posture first. Yeah. You notice a dramatic change in the way that people behave, you know, and their depression and all these things changes based off of just holding and carrying yourself a specific way.

So you're doing a power pose right now. Let me tell you, the white pose. Yeah, so I think, you know, if we can change the way people connect themselves to exercise and nutrition, you'll find more people simply wanting to move more. And that's the thing. You know, your body wants to do these things. It's us that tells our body not to. And it's all starts with our connection to ourself and our relationship. Well, so basically, Garrett, what Salisang is redefine your relationship with your body, what I'm saying is sign up for a bikini competition.

You know, to elaborate on what I meant by embracing the struggle too, is I think that people, I think sometimes, they beat up themselves when they have setbacks in their fitness journey and their fitness goal, and they allow to connect that as a failure. Like, maybe because you tried this ketogenic diet and it didn't work out for you, you didn't fail, you've just learned something new about your body, or maybe self-discovery.

Yeah, exactly. It's more like that, and that's what I mean by that. Or, you know, you sign up for that race and you learn something about yourself. Like, wow, that really motivated me. I felt good. I felt accomplished. I've noticed that my work was better. I noticed that my relationship with my family was better. This is something healthy and good for me. I told Nell's I'll fail off. Yeah. So, you know, you start to connect those dots and, and, and, and, and let's be honest, in fitness, in the overall journey those dots and, and, and, and, and, and I always try and let people know that it's not easy. I mean, I've been working at this for over 15 years of my life and I'm still learning and I'm still getting better and figuring out stuff like, oh, wow, I would have never

thought that that worked so well for me. So I think that's what I mean by embracing the struggle is accepting that it's not necessarily a failure because you tried something or you have incorporated something into your life and it didn't give you these quick results to look a certain way. And that's what I mean by embracing that and then also working on that relationship side.

You know Ben, I wanna, you talked about using the sonas in Finland, I know that culture's huge on that. What's that like over there? Oh, dude, so they've got these big traditional Finnish sauna houses that you'll go to. So the first night that I got there, anytime I travel internationally, I like to find some kind of a bath house because I'm gay.

Oh, no, I actually hear that. I actually hear that. So a Turkish bath or a Russian bath or a Japanese bath or a Finnish bath, if you can find some kind of a cold hot contrast therapy that you can do for the increase in heat shock proteins and brain derived neurotrophic factor and endothelial nitric oxide synthase and activation of the FOXO gene, which is basically like a longevity-based gene. There's all these different beneficial effects that occur when you're engaged in hot cold contrast and especially like the blood and lymphloar part of it when you're jet lagged,

it's enormously helpful. Cold also helps with the tone of your vagus nerve, which, which is important for innovation, mostly organs in your body. So the idea is that I'll hunt down a, you know, some kind of way that I can do like 15 minutes, heat, five minutes, cold three times through for like an hour long post jet lag type of session. In Finland, there are 20,000 sonas, meaning everywhere that you go, everybody has a son in their basement, like a nice son, Like one of those dry nice sonas with the cool rocks in it that you splash the water and the essential oils in. So it smells like eucalyptus and whatever.

And you got like the cedar, I don't know if it's cedar or oak or what kind of wood that they use in those, but they just smell amazing. And you walk into the sonas in Finland and not only do they have these big traditional sonas that are enormous vast rooms, as large as this room we're in right now. These big cavernous saunas that stay hot because the fires are so freaking huge, but most of them are next to the Baltic Sea,

or these icy cold bodies of water, like lakes and rivers, and so you'll stay in the sauna and sweat and sweat and sweat and then just go plunge into the icy cold frigid wilderness and come back into the sauna. And you should have back and forth. And they have like birch barks that you whip each other with and like special like oils that you wash each other down with.

It's all co-ed, which is really weird for me at first, was you'd walk into the sauna and just be a bunch of guys and girls nude whipping each other with branches. Yeah, that sounds awesome. Wait a minute, legit, legit. Everybody's completely naked. Yeah, nobody covers themselves.

Yeah, yeah, everybody's completely naked. Nobody covers themselves. Yeah, yeah, everybody's completely naked. I've gone a few times with Americans who have put on big towels just to, because Americans have this idea that any nakedness is automatically sexually related. But there's, the interesting thing is in Finland, there can't be talk of business when you're in the sauna. There is no sexual activity in a sauna.

Like, all it, is just relaxation and being like an eight year old kid in there, just big smile on your face, hanging out, soaking in the amazing feeling that your body has with the heat and the cold. And I did it every day. For two or three hours, every day, I was in the sauna, back and forth from the sauna

to the ice and Finland, left Finland just feeling. For you, amazing. You know, since when we met with you last that one was it when we were up You impacted all of us all of us have been doing it so I've been doing Steam very very hot steam and then I'll do just a freezing cold shower So nothing like what you're talking about, but I have noticed Significant effects the first thing I noticed was my tolerance for hot for hot and cold got much better So obviously something in my body is adapting to that. Yeah, it's some kind of a scene significant effects. The first thing I noticed was my tolerance for hot and cold got much better. So obviously something in my body is adapting to that.

It's some kind of a stress adaptation, right? But I noticed my skin felt better. I felt like I'm recovering better, sleeping better. And at first I was like, okay, this has got to be, I wonder if this is a placebo or if this is legit. And then I would go for four or five days without doing it. And I could definitely tell it different. We didn't even scratch the surface, like the growth hormone release, the increase in the

ability to maintain muscle in the absence of actual loading or strength training. So it's good if you let's say, you hurt your knee and you can't work out. Do that. Exactly. Are you familiar with Dr. Rhonda Patrick? Yeah. I'm not talking about all the time, right? Yeah, so I was over in Finland with her.

It was really interesting because I was doing a lot of the sonnas with her and she's a big sauna researcher and she actually went over there, interviewed the head researcher in Finland. She went to his university and interviewed him for her, her found my fitness podcast about the research in Finland that shows that the direct correlation between longevity and sauna's in Finland that shows that the direct correlation between longevity and

sauna's in Finland is that the folks who are going to the sauna four to five times a week are living a crazy significant number of years longer than the folks who aren't. And yeah, maybe part of it is like the social experience in the sauna, maybe part of it is you're that person who has that two to three hours fear of the sauna, whatever, but there's something going on there. No, I think they're, I think that from a personal experience, I definitely notice a difference when I do, and it's interesting, when you find techniques like that

that seem to be embedded in multiple cultures, especially when it's parts of religions and parts of health practices, like hot and cold contrast, that's a part of every major, most major culture is going back out in the year. You go to Japanis in the malls. That's something I learned very, actually I took my wife to a Japanese mall

when I was over there racing a triathlon and we went into the sauna in the mall. And there's our co-ed, there's like one fur, fur women and one fur men. But in the airport, they have like a sauna with these amazing like cold baths and hot tubs and warm soaking pools and hot soaking pools and sauna and steam rooms.

Her major takeaway was that Japanese women don't shave anywhere ever. That was her. She's like, they have such big bush over here. She's crazy. Any other comments on the Sonic's face? Just that bush everywhere. It's like a tarantula. It was coming after me.

That's Adam's favorite. No, since we hung out with you too, I mean, two big things were takeaways for me that it's almost like a duh too. And like, listening to you talk about, I'm like, God, you know, I need to practice that more. One of the big ones was walking around barefoot more and getting connected.

Like, and right now, like I was currently going through some work with our chiro, Dr. Brink, who we do work with, who's just a brilliant mind and is like broken me down like with all my poor connections I have and you know I have a really poor connection with my my feet my toes like I found it very fascinating that I can't even get him get get them all to move the same on both sides and everything I thought wow that's like so you need to do more TDCs. That's a problem. So yeah. The goat man.

So I've been doing that and then the cold showers, the freezing cold showers in the morning, I mean, and I notice like nothing gets me, I mean, it trumps the coffee. I mean, nothing gets me like wired and wide away going after that the freezing cold shower. You guys saw me and my Jesus sandals right here in the restaurant last night.

So these are when you can't go barefoot because it's socially unacceptable. These have speaking of groundwater in those. Speaking of Zach's earlier question about pseudoscience, actually grounding in Earthing has a lot of very interesting science behind it based on the natural, very low frequency magnetic field that the Earth produces.

It's seven something hertz, like extremely low. I mean, it's a pulse magnetic field, similar to what a cell phone emits, but at a much, much lower power than a cell phone. And this actually produces an electrical charge that you absorb when you're standing on earth. It's a concept of earthier grounding where you talk about walking barefoot.

It's good for jet lag. It's good for for normalizing your electrical balance after you've been out with appliances and Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and wireless, it's way it feels so great after you've been camping, you know, among a host of other reasons. But these shoes have copper built into the laces and these copper plugs in the bottom of them. So even though my foot isn't touching the ground,

it's still conducting the negative ions from the ground up into my foot. And they're patterned after the tar mojara Indian tribe for that book born to run. So they're technically like barefoot running sandals, but I wear them when I'm traveling because they have the copper plugs in them. And also they're really super sexy.

So besides being as you can see. Because that's what I was just saying. They go great with skits. They're like, I tore a strip off my tire and put some I was just saying. They go great with skates. They're like, I tore a strip off my tire and put some laces on it. You're on the two of my phone. They go great with skinny jeans. Yeah.

You got the new ones on that didn't explode in the back. I've got one pair of skinny jeans left now. That was hilarious. Yeah, you're like the Hulk. Yeah, you like just break, break the ring. I am known for having some pretty powerful hip extensors. Yeah, no, where my stretchy skinny jeans and last night in the restaurant, I stood up and started talking about how skinny jeans

that stretch are so good for workouts and squats. And I turn around and lo and behold, there's a giant rip. Kyle Kingsbury, he was, was a Kyle who noticed that. Yeah, there's a photo on his Instagram. Oh, I saw it. Of just the hole in my pants. I don't, I don't remember his Instagram handle,

but yeah, I stood up and my stretchy jeans ripped. That was great. Yeah. Good times. Listen, listen, if you like listening to Mind Pump, leave us a five star rating review on iTunes. If we like your review and we pick it, you'll get a free Mind Pump t-shirt. You can also check us out on Instagram at Mind Pump Radio. You can find me at Mind Pump Sal, Adam at Mind Pump Adam, and Justin at Mind Pump Justin. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at Mind Pump Media dot com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballad, maps performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically

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