Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 583: Kelly Starrett- Human Movement and Athletic Performance Icon

Episode Date: August 28, 2017

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin interview mobility pioneer and superstar Kelly Starrett. Kelly is a coach, physical therapist, author and speaker and has been instrumental in revolutionizing how athletes think about human movement and athletic performance. His 2013 book, Becoming a Supple Leopard has become a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. Kelly’s clients have included Olympic gold-medalists, Tour de France cyclists, world and national record holding Olympic Lifting and Power athletes, Crossfit Games medalists, ballet dancers, military personnel, and competitive age-division athletes. Check out Kelly at www.mobilitywod.com and his YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/user/sanfranciscocrossfit. TONS of awesome and actionable information. What got him into what he is doing now? (3:38) Obsessed with mechanics What got him to writing Supple Leopard? (14:37) Kids aren’t enriched enough Why are we training in the first place? With kids starting sports at early ages, is there a fear of creating imbalances early? (20:24) Need to make a generalist to make a specialist later on Strive to develop good athletes Train year-round What do you do with athletes already established, with these imbalances from years of cheating? How do you change patterns and not change the athlete’s mechanics? (27:20) Strength and conditioning Position transfer exercises Getting athletes in more functional positions How important is the priming of getting ready for a workout? (36:06) Find a program that you like Shift in mentality Ability to maintain a position How did he get involved in CrossFit? (46:46) Mobilizing for position How do you train Olympic lifts to fatigue? (52:48) Cross purposes around the patterning Treat it as a practice When you look at CrossFit as a whole, what are the things you love about it and what can be changed? (59:00) How much of a role does individual variance play into training? (1:01:25) What are some of these foundational positions that you have identified, what people should be able to do? (1:04:52) Categorize movements What is some of the common knowledge you see now that you think is bullshit? (1:08:04) Sold people that think things that look difficult are real fitness Do you have any predictions on trends you see? (1:16:28) Coaching is the most important thing Believe in the home gym What are you currently struggling with in business? What are you currently happy about? (1:21:41) Ripping each other off Would you like to be coached by Sal, Adam & Justin? You can get 30 days of virtual coaching from them for FREE at www.mindpumpmedia.com. Get our newest program, MAPS Prime Pro, which shows you how to self assess and correct muscle recruitment patterns that cause pain and impede performance and gains. Get it at www.mindpumpmedia.com! Get MAPS Prime, MAPS Anywhere, MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, MAPS Aesthetic, the Butt Builder Blueprint, the Sexy Athlete Mod AND KB4A (The MAPS Super Bundle) packaged together at a substantial DISCOUNT at www.mindpumpmedia.com. Make EVERY workout better with MAPS Prime, the only pre-workout you need… it is now available at mindpumpmedia.com Have Sal, Adam & Justin personally train you via video instruction on our YouTube channel, Mind Pump TV. Be sure to Subscribe for updates. Get your Kimera Koffee at www.kimerakoffee.com, code "mindpump" for 10% off! Get Organifi, certified organic greens, protein, probiotics, etc at www.organifi.com Use the code “mindpump” for 20% off. Go to foursigmatic.com/mindpump and use the discount code “mindpump” for 15% off of your first order of health & energy boosting mushroom products. Add to the incredible brain enhancing effect of Kimera Koffee with www.brain.fm/mindpump 10 Free sessions! Music for the brain for incredible focus, sleep and naps! Also includes 20% if you purchase! Please subscribe, rate and review this show! Each week our favorite reviewers are announced on the show and sent Mind Pump T-shirts! Have questions for Mind Pump? Each Monday on Instagram (@mindpumpradio) look for the QUAH post and input your question there. (Sal, Adam & Justin will answer as many questions as they can)

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this episode of Mind Pump, wow, we get to interview... What a great... One of the Mount Rushmores of Mobility. Great. I said it. Mine. This, you know, a lot of the information that I share in regards to, like, hip mobility,

because this is where I went. And he was one of the few guys I found on YouTube given really good information in regards to mobility. So he's kind of like the Godfather of band distractions and resurrected in a period. Inventing it, it is. And just mobility work period on YouTube. He's one of the first YouTube guys

to start showing mobility. Yeah, if you're having guests by now, we're talking about Kelly Starrette. This guy is very, very well respected in the fitness world for his work and contributions to just mobility, functional flexibility, movement. He has a huge influence on the world of CrossFit in that particular regard as well.

And we talk about that. We talk about how he started in fitness and what his passions are. And he's not a hard person to interview. You kind of give him the mic. Oh man. He likes it on fire. And he goes for it. This goes.

His book, becoming a supple leopard is one of the, I mean, it's like, if you want to learn about mobility a supple leopard is one of the I mean it's like if you want to learn about Mobility and flexibility. This is one of the cornerstones This is like one of the books you should absolutely have in fact when I walk into a you know Movement specialist office if I don't see this book. I'm always like wondering how good are they because it's like one of those In the second one of those bibles right and that regard How good are they because it's like one of those in the second one of those bibles right and that regard You can find his website is mobility wad So mobility w o d.com again. I mentioned his book becoming a supple leopard

Speaking of mobility. Yeah, if you are coming over from the Kelly start family and just tuning into mine pump You definitely need to look into our maps prime and prime pro, which is those programs were specifically designed to teach you how to individualize your priming sessions. So like what you do before your workouts, that'll maximize your your CNS recruitment, your muscle, you know, muscle recruitment patterns, your performance, your results. We also have Prime Pro in that bundle, which is a correctional program that focuses on the neck, the shoulders, the shoulders. It really simplifies the process like crazy. It is. We put the most effort. Well, you think of Kelly as one of one of the many brilliant minds that we pulled from to actually create this. So a lot of his readings and videos and

stuff that we learn and we stand on the shoulders of giants. Right. Absolutely. So this so if you're somebody who appreciates a lot of that, you'll also appreciate because we've also combined things like animal flows, some kin stretch type of stuff. There's a lot of different modalities and different types of types. Oh, if you if you have pain or you just want to move better, I mean again, you know, like I was saying, the neck the shoulder, shoulder blades, the wrist, the hands, the feet, the ankles, the hips, the lumbar spine. We go into all of them and we design it in a way to where you could go in there, do the

assessment and then identify what you need work on. Believe it or not, sometimes you have pain in one area like your knee, but it's not your knee, that's the problem. It's your hip or your ankle and Maps prime and prime pro will help you identify those you can find those two programs at mind pump media Dot com and without any further ado. Here we are talking to the great Kelly star at I grew up in Germany. Oh, did you? Yeah. Oh shit. No. How old were you when you came here? 15? Okay, you speak German fluently then. Huh?

Well, you know, I speak German well enough to find the train station and flirt with the girl. I don't think I could discuss good to- Which all are battered. Politics. So yes, I'm fluent. Yeah, but technical German, I was just teaching in Munich just like a month ago we were out there working

and German is the greatest language. So I have a good accent. I sound like a group in Germany, right? And people are like, wow, you're German. And then I left when I was like 13, 14 and that's when my vocabulary stopped. So I sound like a really dumb German. We just doesn't have anything interesting to say. But German is the greatest language where you can take, like here's a word you guys appreciate, the word for nipple. It's brustvazza, which means breastwort. So, oh my.

If you have two words, you can put them together and create any new word. And I was working with some guys from the German national hockey team. And I was trying to explain, hey, we need to see in this plank is that when you were recruiting your glutes, I wanna, you know, what I'm looking for

and I was like, ashclam, which, clam is the germore for gorge. So it's like ash gorge. And they were like, yeah, ashclam, yeah, I go, okay, it's, you know, and so like, it's really, I wish, I mean, if we have that level of precision, no one would ever get confused in that state. So we would just be clear about what we need.

It's not too niceties, you know? That's right. Germans want to learn languages, like, you've got languages like Italian, French, great for romance and stuff like that. But if you're pissed off and you want to scare the shit out of someone, German. German's a good time.

It works for me. But it really did. When I go, like, we teach in Paris or France, people like, Gilly, don't try. I sound like an American who speaks German, trying to its terrible stuff. I grew up in Europe. I tried. So what got you into the world you're working now? American who speaks German trying to its terrible I grew up in Europe

So what got you into the world you working now? I want to know what started that all off for you. Oh, man Well, um, have you guys seen the Usain Bolt documentary? No, I have it. Let's just watch his last race that he lost though Well, fair enough. I mean he killed it for fucking 10 years. I mean whatever right? Well, and you know, I mean yeah, right it for fucking 10 years, I mean, whatever, right? Right. And, you know, I mean, yeah, right. He's amazing. He's such a likeable athlete and he's such a good human being. But he talks about, I'm not gonna make this comparison, but he says, hey, if you're great, you're always great.

No one becomes great later on. Like, you're just, in a lot of athletic talent, people merge very quickly and very early, right? And he's like, you just, someone just doesn't show up in the scene, you know, and just like, hey, I'm here. I have known about my obsession about mechanics since I was like conscious. I mean, like, I remember. Yeah, I was at a ski racing camp in Austria as a little kid.

Did you just say you're the same bolt of mechanics? Yeah, I was like, hey, your words not mine. Yeah. That was great the way you did it. Yeah, sir. We're dissociation. The issue is that, I have thought this way about my own training and the way I had really good coach, really good technical coaches, but this is the thing that I've always

done. And I knew that I was really good at picking up patterns. Like that's my secret skill. Like I have better pattern recognition than anyone else. So like you show me, let me watch something for a while, and all of a sudden I can start to see how it works and what's going on underneath it. And that's how I solve problems as an athlete and how, you know, and allowed me to hack things like,

you know, math tests, right? You know, I really useful skills, but applying, when I finally figured out that this was it, applying that pattern recognition to my love of technical aspects. And the fact that I have one of the highest desires to train on the planet, like we do even do the genetics around it, and the 98th percentile for want to move,

want to train, want to exercise, want to go nerd out. So it really is, I fell into this thing, the universe came around with YouTube and the sort of advent of modern strength and conditioning. And then also I was a failed athlete. I was injured athlete and that ended my sort of aspirations to be a high level paddler. And all of that confluence ends up here. And it's expressed in the things that I do every day because I like it. Like there's no edge to the friends I hang out with

or the people things we talk about professionally or what I do for work or how I train with my wife. I mean, it is the same aspect of the same thing. When did you start to harness that though? Was it when you got injured in sports? I mean, you recognized it early, but when did you start to like feed into that? What did you?

Well, I think, you know, when I was paddling at high level race ski racing, and the same, you know, you were inherits, so you had some point you inherit some old system, right? Like, you know, we all, one of the things we're always trying to remind people of is that someone comes from somewhere. So if they don't know something, it's not their fault, it's the fault of the system that they were in.

So if there's a deficit in someone's training or they didn't know how to eat, it's not because they're assholes and they don't know how to eat. It's because no one ever showed them this is what human beings do and this is how we eat, right? And we have this, this reframing that I think is conceptually important because it's easy to poke like, you know, what are you doing? You know, you're, what is all this kind of wasting around? Well, people I think are working at the limits of their understanding. And so it's important to frame that, you know, people are coming from somewhere.

So when I came through, you know, training, there was some good strength in conditioning and associative skiing. There was some good, you know, training with the national team. And so you inherit, it might not be the best system, but you get a little bit of that. And early on, we recognized, I think maybe, because we just weren't the most talented, natural,

or had been doing the longest, that we had to outwork everyone. So our little secret card was we were fitter, we were stronger, we put in more reps, we did more volume. Like that was what we knew would get us there, because we just weren't the freaks. We weren't freaks. We were just middle-level athletes. We got to play at the big game, but

we weren't ever going to go the distance and so in order to play there. And then the world has changed radically. Do you guys remember Donald Chiu? He was from Stanford. He wrote some of the first books on plyometrics to remember this. He had a book that was the size of 8 by 10 flashcards. It was about medicine ball plyometrics, do you remember this? He had a book that was like the size of like eight by 10 flashcards, and it was about medicine ball plyometrics, and literally it was like, he drew stick figures, and like the stick figure would bend to the side. And you would try to interpret that around like exercising.

You know, and I got that book. I don't know how I found it, but I was like, you know, and I said to my best friend, who I was training with on the national team, medicine balls. And I asked my girlfriend's parents, like, what do you mean for Christmas? I'm like, medicine balls.

So they buy me on 18 pound medicine ball. I'm like, all right, that's the one. I guess everyone has an 18 pound medicine ball. And Jim Colley is rolling over in the grade from Dining Max. And literally, we went to the gym and we opened it up page one and just tried to interpret that and we did it up page one and just tried to interpret

that and we did that for a while and kind of got bored and then worked our way through like 60 pages of this medicine ball thing, trying to figure it out. Like sets, reps, volume, rest, we did it until we blew out. And how old are you at this point? What point of your life in 22? 22. 22. And literally, we had Rabdo, we were crippled, we couldn't sneeze, he was so pissed at me,

like we didn't paddle for three days, and you know, just because we didn't know, but that was the early cequings. You know, we knew that we needed to eat better, we called up metrics, cold metrics, and we're like, hey, like, how about us? And they sent us shakes and those 100 gram bars, you know? Oh, the big 100s.

We lived on the big 100s and their protein shake, and I was like, good enough for Troy. Metamine, my instead of protein. My instead of protein. You know, and like, that was our attempts at trying to do the right thing. You know, I remember sitting down with like, a rainy Olympic gold medalist,

and being like, why are you having a plate of pancakes before like, you know, this race today is like, because I like pancakes? You know, and I've always had pancakes, and I'm like, holy, like the bar is really low. And now, I mean, my 12 year old daughter is more sophisticated about training, nutrition, secret coverage than I was.

There's been a huge revolution. Amazing how much we've evolved. Oh, a huge revolution. It relatively recently in training, I've been in professionally in fitness in big box gym, so like, you know, 24 fitness, goals, gym, those type of facilities for a long time is in management. And training, I've been professionally in fitness in big box gyms, so like, you know, 24 fitness goals gym, those type of facilities

for a long time is in management. And I saw, I mean, I can't tell you how different it is even in those gyms. I mean, when I was managing health clubs, you know, 20 years ago, squat racks had a dust, like nobody did barbell squats, nobody did deadlifts, barely anybody did a standing overhead press, it was seated and it was very limited range of motion.

And Wong came crossfit, right? Yeah, that changed it quite a bit, but it was really a lot of the information that we got was through the magazines, which were then designed to sell supplements and bodybuilding was what we got a lot of these. Muscular development was my magazine. Yes.

Like my wife would literally be like, could you sit over there when you read that because I'm so embarrassed? Yeah. She's like literally she's like, there's a guy in the cover looks like a big V-Cock. And I'd be like, right? Right? So awesome.

And then I had all the research in there and I was like, oh, look at this research. Muscle media 2000 was mine, because I would real crazy. We used to call that muscle-in-fiction. Remember that muscle-in-fiction is what we used to call that. But then you had this huge influx of great information that came from the fall of the Soviet Union.

You had all these scientists come over and that's when you really got to see science applied without these sponsors or whatever to see some just interesting information's changed. Have you seen the TED talk? Great TED talk. God, we've talked about this on the show before a long time ago that totally just shattered my paradigm I would I would be the first to admit that even all my years in experience in the fit this world

I would have attributed a major Reason for seeing the growth or the evolution of sports due to anapolk steroids Like when I used to see an athlete now and if you you compare LeBron James to the, you know, Larry Bird back in the days, I would have said, oh, it's because of all the anabolic. It's an easy thing. But there's a great TED talk that actually breaks down that really it's the science and how much we've evolved

in nutrition and training and the shoes that you wear, the courts that they run on, the pools that they're swimming in, all the different things that we've added that have shaving all this time off and making the athlete better. It's crazy how fast that's evolved in the last 15, 20 years. David, talk about the democratization of sports where athletes are so specialized now. It wasn't that long ago in the Olympics where all the athletes kind of looked similar. And now if you're a shop putter, you look like a shop putter. If you're a sprinter, you look like a sprinter. People look like they're they're born for their positions and then on top of that, you have all

this advanced training. And it's just continuing to accelerate. It seems like mechanics and mobility now is the big thing now. That's what you're hearing a lot of. And obviously you've written some incredible books. Suffle Leopard was one of my absolute favorites. I mean groundbreaking for me at least when I first saw it because at the time there really wasn't much information on that. What brought you to that point? What made you want to write something like that?

No, well, I wanted to give it my weekends. I don't know what I'm doing on my kids. You know, look, if anyone is written a book, you write it because you have to write it. And you also write it because you need to put a stake in the sand and say, this is what I believe. And it's a way of scaling. So, you know, and the YouTube video is vital. And I think we've seen a confluence of Soviet Union training practice, sports science really evolve. I think it's easy to forget that we have been, people have been really strong for a long time. I mean, and people have been running fast for a

long time and jumping fast for a long time. And even when you amortize or remove some of the technology, what you see is that they were really extraordinary humans for a long time. They're just weren't as many of them. And they weren't training as consistently. What is the mountain walk with that log on his back? Remember, he took the 5,000 pound log and he walked three steps. And the old record was two steps that was set 1100 years ago. I'm like, really? That's what we get. One step more.

And that's extraordinary. And the guy was crippled afterwards, and then now the mountain goes on and it's a TV star. But you know CrossFit, but at the same time, Pavel was doing this thing, Dan John was doing this thing. You know, there are so many, the bodybuilding has become so sophisticated. But you're right. You know, what's interesting is there is that notion that you can shortcut your way. Have you guys seen the documentary Icarus just came out?

No. So it's this guy who was an amateur cyclist. And he read about this. He had in his brain, Chris Bell put it up, that's how he became aware of it. And he had in his brain that somehow he could have been an elite, but he missed his window from an accent, right? And again, remember, you were great, you were always great.

So he was never great, but thought he had his brain and then Strava tells us that, the internet tells us that. Right, we think now, well, I can lift weights and I'm so good. And look what I did in my garage. And I'm like, uh-huh. That's cute. Well, like my ding on the modern fitness and strength, condition culture is that we have made this really a gallotarian statement that like, if you work hard enough, you too can be a child. Oh, God. And that is total horseshoe. Everybody is just not. It's just not. I'm glad you'd call that out right now. It is.

It is not the case. And once you've been around real, real mutants, you're like, oh, you're a mutant. And to your point around, something that's changed is that we're seeing that people's training age is more sophisticated, longer. So that may be good and bad. I think sometimes we're losing athleticism, sometimes we're losing capacities because our old model was look play as much as you want Just play a lot of different sports like we were obsessed we turned everything into a game We turned everything into a competition and we did everything we could possibly do off label

You know, I mean like well, let's set it on fire and then see what happens and We came through models were in one year we did 17 sports. You know, we just played and played and played. And for athletic development, we said to kids like that was enough. Then later on maybe you lifted some weights or got some formal training. But I'm seeing all of that generation my age, I'm in my 40s. All of those guys now are having their knee replaced, their herniated, their discs, right? They're having, you know, Chris Davenport, one of the greatest skiers ever.

They just had a hemi knee replacement. And that's because he came out of the system that said, just play a lot, right? But now we have the other thing, which is that these kids are just doing this hyper-specialization, sagittal movements. We only go up and down, forward and back, right? They don't actually throw ball or calculate or surf for, you know, put inputs in that actually make us athletes. Like Olympic lifting is great. It makes you powerful and balanced and it's a movement practice, but it does a develop

your ability to catch a ball or plan ahead or read a defense. No, that's something that comes from a lot of different play. But now we're seeing that the environment has changed underneath us. We are doing way more sedentary behavior. We're engaged in things that look like a lot less movement. We do a lot less play, a lot more kind of formal socialization. And now that we have to go to the weight room earlier because we're not getting it on this other side. So I think the pendulum is swung this other way that kids aren't enriched enough, right? They're specializing

early and they're becoming hyper-specialized. And even some of the CrossFit kids were seeing these kids have amazing work capacities. Their positions are incredible. Does that translate? Because we have to ask ourselves, why are we training in the first place? What's the best way to develop this athleticism? And it turns out mechanics was such a low-lying, you know, bowl of fruit. Like, you know, we were just tripping on people who were having problem after problem, or not setting world records, or, or, or, and, is because they couldn't see that they're in complete positioning. And there, there was no, there was such a gap between saying, this is full physiologic capacity, and

this is how you're moving, and that's why I think this stepped in and, and really ignited in this idea. I mean I mean before so as a physical therapist, classically trained, we say we mobilize a joint, mobilize a tissue, right? Eric Cressy made a DVD called Magnificent Mobility, which is like a dynamic warm up thing a long time ago. That's the only other reference to mobility before we got on the game and started saying mobility. Now if I could take that word back, it's like become the word core. Oh, extreme. Well, we talked about your movement. Yeah, it happened.

It happens in everything in fitness. So you know that we take it and then we go to the extreme with a Leo and all these other. We were the first wad ever. I was like, I'm so clever. I'm so clever. The first one, this is brilliant. And then now there's like gluten-wad.

And like it's so, now so now my business is called like stretching of the day. I'm just like, oh man. Nice name. I have the lamest name ever. And mine, just wait, wait, wait, wait. Oh yeah. You're right, so I'm just, my, my, my.

So you said something about that I want to go back to. You said that this could be good, this could be bad. And I want to lie right on this because I think you're an excellent person to have this discussion. And you got my mind thinking right now. So we've talked to, we've had the ability to talk to millions, or not millions, tons of great minds in this field. Yeah, it's not millions, tons of great minds in this field and mobility, specialist and movement, specialist. in this field and mobility specialist and movement specialist. And one of the things that I never really thought about until getting a chance to talk to a lot of these great minds was, you know, sometimes when we see these athletes that just because

they're super bad at their sport, they have as much, if not more, dysfunction than somebody who's never even played a sport at all. And so if you have these kids that are starting at even earlier ages, is there a fear of, could we also be starting to see meant bad patterns or cause even more problems because, just because they're playing the sport at an early age, does it necessarily mean that they're moving properly

and could that actually be setting them up for even more working? Well, you know, so specialization aside, right? So when we hear specialization, think Tommy John's surgery, right? Like I've overused a kid somehow. You know, this kid got through high school swimming, three shoulder surgeries, never gonna swim again.

I'm like, okay, now that's classic. When you hear specialization, be thinking we've injured children, but now let's say, what is, you know, what's specialization in a way we've injured children, but now let's say what is, you know, what's specialization in a way where we're not developing athletes. So now there's been two or three high-level football coaches who say we don't recruit unless kids play more than one sport. It's a ding against the kid. And don't get me wrong. I'm like, oh really? So if I show up with my six foot three seven, you know, some 400 pound daughter

Yeah, she lived in one sport But as I really think that they're they're looking at You know your ability to change patterns to be able you know even in my daughters my 12-year-old who plays club volleyball which is just It's so great because you because sometimes people think that, I'm in a garage making this shit up, and I'm not. I am a user working and helping working coaches solve their problems, and at this point what's cool is that I get to see

everyone's dirty laundry. I'll be hanging out with the blue jays on, deaf and moral, right? And we've been working with that team for years and trying to support, and not trying to change your team, trying to help them solve the problems of being modern athletes. So, you know, how do we manage sleep better

when you're on the road? How can we get kids warmed up more effectively? How can we, what's a faster way to clean up this mechanic, right? So that's, we do that a lot across a lot of different fields. But the same thing applies to how do I get kids to eat right in between volleyball matches, right? And it's so good because trying to get parents on board,

you can see how there's this beautiful theoretical construct of how we all should eat. And the kids are scavenging for awful in between rounds. And meanwhile, their mom is like given them, you know, caffeinated cliff blocks after like, you know, a match and I'm like, uh, your heart rate, daughter's heart rate is up over 130, you know,

like why does she eating a sugar block? Cause she's gonna, you know, I mean, literally it's the worst. I go around and take photos of what these teams are feeding their kids and it's just poison, it's process poison from the vegetable oils to like the highlight, you know, the bagels, I'm like, what kind of messages are we sending? Then what we see is that these kids who have gotten really good at volleyball at age 12, and by the way, I'm like, no one wins the World Championship at age 12.

You just, you don't know. We can start to see who is the best athlete in the room, but you're just 12. And then those kids come to my house and train and they can't throw a medicine ball. They can't swing a bat. They can't jump in land. They can't, you know what I mean? And we start to see that, wow,

they can swing from the outside on their left hand, and they're really good at that, but they've been sitting in the front row doing this one hyper skill, and they are not good human beings. So we need to struggle to make generalists all the time. And out of that generalist, we will always get the specialist when they're ready. Because you can do that. But we all want to do. We all want to short cut specialized, specialized, specialized.

Even some of the elite level cyclists we've worked with, they're like, hey, look, I'm not squatting now because I don't want to get big. And they're like, hey, look, I'm not squatting now because, you know, I don't get big. And I'm like, well, that's okay. Let's fine. Let's squat to make your hips work. I'm like, ride this week. Don't do any swings or squats. Now ride this week and swing and squat.

They're like, my power went through the roof. What happened? I was like, well, there's this thing called your hip. And when you know how to work your hip, when it works, it generates a lot of power. That's all of a sudden. You start turning those switches back on and that's where we need to think. And struggling because it's not, we didn't end up here by accident. We fetishized professional sports.

That's going to implicate how we think about collegiate sports. Because collegiate sport is a professional sporting and button-dever. So if you want your kids to play at college, you basically are saying to your family, I want my kid to be a professional athlete at age 19. That's what that means. In terms of load demands, travel, et cetera, et cetera. Look at, I mean, everyone who's written about the collegiate sport machine, but of course that impacts high school. And if you look at what's going on, we basically have high school level professional athletes in terms of the training volumes they do in no off time. And, you know, and it is a self-propeachal thing. So

at some point, we have to, we're going to have to culturally, and it is a self-perpetual thing. So at some point, we're gonna have to culturally, and it's gonna be led by the strength of the Asian coaches to say, look, we're gonna train you around. Yes, that's what we do. That's what human beings do. But we're gonna have to make sure your kid is not doing the same little tiny window movement pattern. And we have to continue striving to develop good athletes.

And that means athleticism, and that means not just squatting the barbell up and down, which is a sport, which is fine. But the traps in there are manifest so that if you think that powerlifting is the way, then everything goes through that nail. And suddenly you're like, well, if I turn my feet out to squat to depth, and I'm teaching kids to squat to depth, turning their feet out when that kid tears her ACL because her foot was turned out and she cut land, that's my fault of the coach. So we need to be thinking a little bit differently about saying, what can we learn from

the bodybuilders around weight reduction and caloric restriction in our weights, in our sports that we have weight classes, what can we learn about our endurance athletes about best practice around develop a robot engine, how can we take our Olympic lifting and say, this is great Olympic lifting for sport. And really cobbled together, a program that makes really stable, competent athletes who can be a lifetime. Because people are burning out in their 20s and 30s or injured in their 20s and 30s, 40s and that's not it. That's not it.

Goddamn, I love that you said all that, especially in regards to training children. Because once they get, I think people don't realize, especially once you're an adult and you're a high performing athlete as an adult and you've been training a certain way for so long, you've become so, uh, so good to teach it and so good at compensating. Like, what do you do with that, Kelly? Let me ask you that. What do you do with, I'm a 23 year old, 24 year old professional athlete. I've got, you know, fucked up by on mechanics, but I'm really good year old, 24 year old professional athlete. I've got fucked up by on mechanics,

but I'm really good at my sport. That's just the way I move. I've been moving this well. Welcome to my job. Right. So, I always kid that I'm gonna see you for a couple reasons. One, that you're injured and don't wanna be injured and come see me.

We're gonna talk about it. Two, you're losing. You don't wanna lose. You're gonna come see me. Because you don't have your swing. You don't have your pitch. There's something's going on. So we make it a matter of status.

It's a line saying that we don't address math. It's mechanics. I don't teach you how to throw the ball. That's not my job. I don't teach you how to kick or jump. That's not my job. My job is to optimize and find out where you're dumping torque and compensating. And I use a correlates system and that correlates system is strengthening conditioning.

Right. So when we organize Supple Lepard, it's organizer in these archetypal positions. They are fundamental start positions and finish positions for the shoulder and the hip. And they express as the in range, the full language, the full vocabulary of that. And so if you're, you know, your front squat like this guy, you've got your hands up by your neck and your front squat, and you don't have the right shoulder mechanics,

which means you never get your lad on, which means we're gonna see problems when you throw the rugby ball in at the half, right? The way you bench is gonna be, we can start to see a lot of these things, and we're clever enough to also respect that there have been a lot of really good coaches for a long time and we need to interpret their work.

So when the master coach says something like, I like the bench press, it ties the arms to the body. And you're like, okay, what does that mean? I agree, what does that mean? Well, what it really meant was kids who could bench press could create highly stable shoulders and didn't have problems when they're out in front, right? Because they had an ordered a bench heavy,

you have to learn how to break the bar, you have to learn how to spread the bar, you have to create a stable shoulder approximately. So we can then say, okay, well, what are the root positions we all should be able to have? And it turns out that is the working language of strengthening. So whether you're a kettlebellista or you're Olympic lift, whether you do yoga, whether you

do your impolites, you're going to see that the hip is the hip and the shoulder is the shoulder and the spine is the spine and breathing is breathing. And it's remained so for the last 10,000 years. It hasn't changed at all. Now, how do you train these athletes and create some of these new patterns without compromising their technique. Because we don't talk about technique, we talk about squatting. And the athlete is smart enough to be able to do it. So we don't, so literally we'll get emails and letters, hey, this athlete was so prepared. So that's a false paradigm then, that you correct something and that's good for your

technical difficulties. Oh, no, especially when we are failing to realize that when good, excellent coach, I'm talking about world class best coaches are teaching the techniques that best express the physiology. So it's not an accident that we throw a certain way because we're all obsessed with throwing them really far, doing a certain certain way. And what you'll see is it's rare to we run to a coach, and usually they're a young coach who doesn't see that they're coaching ultimately is expressing a certain position of the physiology. This is because the shoulder works better in this position

and everyone knows it. So when we do certain things with our bodies, it's ultimately about getting the physiology into a position where we can express the most force. That's what good coaching is doing. You're javelin, you turn the thumb down, before you pull, and you pull all the way through, well, it turns out when you turn the hand down and you pull all the way through, the shoulders in a stable position, the coach might not know that, but they knew that when they

turn the thumb down, they had a good finish position, they could get good power, right? So what you're going to see is that all of the techniques that have come through our movement traditions, our movement histories, right? Ultimately, our expressions of good technical movement. So when you histories, right, ultimately are expressions of good technical movement. So when you give the athlete normal technical movement capacity, then they're just able to express it because it's what the technique is doing. So it's not like we do the splits, and then I just hope it magically works, right? Do a bunch of foam rolling and then, pow, you got better. Well, that, no, that doesn't work, right?

What does work is saying, hey, we're gonna reinforce this position. We think that all of the mobilization, soft tissue work, all those techniques we're doing, we call those position transfer exercises. Why do we give a shit about that? Because it's about improving your ability to get into these fundamental positions, which express how the ankle becomes stable, which expresses

how the knee is more stable, which makes the hip work better. And so when we sidestep the conversations about what's the technique that you're using with your coach, A, we don't step on it, some coaches dick, right, and get into some power battle as the coach, because that's really important. I was just going to ask you, our job is to support the coach. My job is to help that athlete be ready to receive the coaching from the coach, right? So they can do what the coach says. And there's conversations about which way you should step

and how, you know, in NFL, we'll see that. But when my athletes can generate stability in all these positions, then at least they can do what the coach asked them to do. And so what we do is we reinforce fundamental mechanics. This is why bench pressing will never screw a bench pressing well or pressing overhead well will never mess up someone's throwing mechanics because it's actually teaching

them how to be stable. It's teaching them how to be in good positions. And then when you restore someone's internal rotation, it turns out that they can punch harder or they can throw more effectively. And that's where we can use our correlate movement language of strength conditioning to find the problems that you really have a difficulty seeing at speed. And don't take my word for it, I work with the all blacks, I work,

I mean, the number of teams we work with where we haven't fucked up a whole bunch of teams because we're just stretching and pulling on shit. It's because we're helping athletes get into more functional positions, which are the expressions of what the coach is asking to do in the first place. And if you drop into any good coach, master coaches are really good at doing a billion drills

to work around a problem. So the first time I saw this, I was down with Mike Berger, down in Southern California, and he was my original weightlifting coach. And I saw, I remember working for him. I would, and this is probably another conversation about young coaches not hustling. But my wife and I, you know, I had a baby and a gym and I was in grad school, and I would fly down on Friday night to go work for free for Coach Berger.

I would just, can I be in the same room as you for two days and like carry your barbell around, sir? You know, and I hustled and scrammed, set on my friend's couch, and I did that weeks so that I could be in the same room listening to a master coach, coach coach over and over again. Try to understand when he was teaching. And what I remember one day, I was like,

I'm in physical therapy school, I'm watching this master coach coach and he had 50,000 skill transfer exercises to get something done. And I was like, how the fuck am I gonna ever learn 50,000 drills for this sport and 50,000 drills for swimming and 50,000 drills for running?

And then I realized I didn't need to. If my athletes could get in the positions, I needed five, so I'll transfer exercises. And so our job is to continue to simplify mechanical literacy so that when the coach asks for something, the athlete can do it right away the first time. Did you ever get pushback when you first did this? Because no, we help people break world records. That's's how that's how we got it like people got into a better position than what faster right away what is that what you do it something we worked on their squatting and what I didn't let them do was compensate while squatting which is the thing we've got to do and and that's the problem with the internet

or the problem with where you know if we're only using the bar as the the weight on the bar or the speed to say this is a good position of that position. And I came out of that tradition. We did something and there was a clock and we went faster. The coach was like, do that again, you went faster. And we're like, I don't know what I did or I was doing it again. And we kind of fit, you know, no conversation about how mechanics carried speed and technique.

You know, who is it? When I work with some of, there's a, there's a pretty elite military group. I'll just say you've heard of them. And one of their training modules is they never say go faster. When they teach a close quarter combat, they never say to the person coming through training go faster. Speed will automatically be there when the mechanics are solid. So they're like, don't make any mistakes. And the personal automatically start to push that boundary, but the

cue from the coach is never go faster. Right? The cue for the coach is, hey, hey, look at your foot position. What's going on? Where's your awareness? Be better. And then the speed starts to come. And I think that's really where it's important to understand why this conversation, it's about sustainability and about output. And we don't talk about, and we should probably talk less about do this because you might get injured. You may or may not, right? You may be able to bench like a chicken your whole life

and never have shoulder problems, right? But what I can say is, hey, when you bench like a chicken, you're not benching as much as you could bench. When you sit in that position, you can't take a full breath. Well, let's talk about that, because we talked a lot about athletes right now. We went that direction, but let's talk because since our average listener is probably somebody who just wants to build some

muscle, wants to lose some weight, how important is the priming of getting ready for a workout? How would you, how would you speak to that for the average person that's trying to just lose body, fat or build some muscle? How important is it for them to set their body up before they go into their gym? Well, you know, first and foremost, you know, if you're thinking about your training cycle as the hour and you're in the gym, you've got it wrong. You know, and, you know, I think we've fallen into

some category where, you know, remember that bass-lureman song, like don't read the girly magazines, they'll only make you feel ugly. That was from like, where sunscreen? Well, welcome to fucking Instagram. Instagram makes me feel like Remember that bass-learned song, like don't read the girly magazines, they'll only make you feel ugly. That was from like, where sunscreen? Well, welcome to fucking Instagram. Instagram makes me feel like I'm a shitty athlete, it's totally lazy all the time,

like I don't have a done meal prep. No, I just haven't. I have a bid still, we're 500 this week. Oh my God, yeah. And I don't have abs, and I'm not tan, and I can't jump out of the pool. That's right, that was what my answer to my misfeet is. It's full of curated superheroes.

And I'm like, and we see this up and down, and there's a good article. I forget that basically Instagram is changing our concept of beauty. And really, and really it's not good for us. You're like, you know, my guess my training partners aren't that strong. You know, I'm like, there you're fucking training partners.

They're counting me. No, I don't know. And I was gonna work out, man. My wife isn't that hot or my kids aren't that smart. But we even saw this a long time ago with, we had this friend here's gonna just show that I'm like a middle-aged sensitive guy now. I'm Sunset Magazine, right? Which is about California living.

We had a friend who she was always comparing herself to Sunset Magazine. And she was like, she's to Sunset magazine and she was like She's like, you know, I'm just a failure as a homemaker and I was like, yeah, look at you fucking I'm like look at your topary giraffe It sucks, you know and I don't know where that came from and you know She stopped subscribing this magazine because it messed her up and I think we have lost what's going on It messed it up. And I think we have lost what's going on around beauty,

capacity, you know, just we've lost it. I don't remember what the original question was. Well, no, it's going back to priming for a workout, right? How important you were talking about the hour. So looking up. So the way we want to simplify is I want people to do less. I want to integrate practices so you get your life back. If you're doing meal prep instead of reading the New York

Times, you know, I mean, is there a way where we can streamline this to give you your life back so that fitness thing isn't a 24-7 obsession, you know, where, you know, what we want to do is we see where I'm doing all my reading these days isn't like a lot in complexity theory. And what we're seeing is that the human being is such a complex system. And that they're, it's really difficult being is such a complex system and that it's really difficult for us to make header tails of all the complex inputs and the complex within the system. So you do this intermittent fasting, but then it turns out you worked out really hard and

then you're undercalerating so you eat at 11 o'clock at night because you're starving and then you get up at 6 and have your first bulletproof coffee. You only just fasted for seven hours. So is that right? You know, is that, excuse me, is that your intention? So how can we create practices that really allow the, sort of that the training is a part of the physical practice, right?

But the physical practice is the way I think about and conceptualize the day. So, you know, whether that may mean eating vegetables or drinking water or trying to move more or take care of my sleep, I mean, we could have a whole show and I'm sure you guys have about sleep. Like people are going on drugs, I'm like,

that's great, how much did you sleep last night? And I'm like, good, you just cancel it out. So now you're, you're like, this mortal is everyone else. And you keep shoving that testosterone you're asked because that five hours of sleep, it's totally fine, it's a canceling effect. And so what we want to do is say, how can we simplify so that when the magic hour comes

and I've done the miraculous heroic thing of getting to the gym, that I'm not laying on the ground foam rolling, right, I'm not doing a bunch of corrective exercises that I'm making forward progress. That means I may need to conceptualize my day a little differently. So for example, yes, the research shows that maybe doing some target of foam rolling can help you with range of motion, but that's not what people do in the gym. So if you have an hour, I want you jumping rope and playing games and warming up and getting out of the barbell and practicing skills and doing gymnastics, then squatting heavy,

right? Instead of, I'm gonna come to the gym and sit on the bike for two minutes and then lay on the ground and roll for two minutes. And then, like, you're not doing anything there, right? The gym should be this intense time. Where do I do the soft tissue or Kelly? In the 10 minutes before you go to the bedroom.

So in that last 10 minutes, for example, nothing good is happening in your life, right? You're not in the bedroom yet, so nothing good is happening. You're on stage for yourself, man. I'm okay, living on. I have kids, so it's your life, right? You're not in the bedroom yet, so nothing good is happening. You're on Facebook. I'm sitting for your self, man. I'm okay, living on. I have kids, so it's the bedroom, right?

So the idea though is, you know, we're not seeing that, hey, if I put that 10 minutes of softish work before I go to bedroom, then I could get off social media or I can be on social media, watching the TV, doing something else, working on a discreet time where I can take the information of the day and TV, doing something else, working on a discrete time

where I can take the information from the day and say, hey, my quads are really tight, or my hips were tight today, I went overhead and you know, or something hurts, and use that as a diagnostic tool, treat that for 10 or 12 minutes of some softish work. And by the way, when you do the softish work before you go to bed, you'll sleep better.

And you'll sleep denser, you'll fall asleep faster. Well, it's a parasympathetic, it's ZMS, it's CNS dampening, which is what you want. So now we've integrated. I've respected your time a little bit more at the gym, right? And now I've also slept better and I've also done some self-touchy work, which has done the day before my next day of training. And so what I think is much more effective is find a program that you like, right?

Where you're making gains, you know, because we laugh, Matt Vincent and I laugh at this all the time, you know, people are like, yeah, you know, I PR by 40 pounds on this cycle and my bench press, I'm like, wow, that's impressive, you know, and they're like, I'm gonna change programs though, because, you know, this program is better. I'm like, you just made a huge gain, like, what are you doing? Like when it stops working, you know,

work it one more time and then, you know, then go. And so, you know, find a program you like in the gym, make sure that if it's about losing fat, that you don't get sucked into not conditioning. You know, you, even if you are a big bad ass strength athlete, you have the right to need to be able to run a mile all out. And if you can't do that, you know, you're going to have some cardiovascular problems, right? And you could probably work hard on the gym. You can do more sets and recover more quickly. And fasted car, I don't care what it is, but like if you're telling me, you can't swing cattlebells and do some sled drags

for five minutes after a hard, you know, deliv session, you're really out of shape. And you're using this as an excuse, you know? Like that guy in my gym who puts on the weight vest so he can be lasting the workouts, right? Like the same thing. But if you're interested in this, what you're thinking is, hey,

I'm going to lift heavy weights, it takes some preparation. So if I've been sitting all day, not drinking water all day, I'm not fueled, I haven't done these soft issues you worked the night before, what are the chances I'm gonna be able to snatch heavy? Or do any of the compound movements we know were acquired for the best up regulation in the CNS?

Exactly. In the neurocronic and access. We have to treat that training very, very seriously. It's a huge shift in mentality because we just had this conversation before we got here, recorded a previous episode. And you know, we've talked about many times of how running outside, how the average person going outside and running is one of the more damaging things that people can do, but it's not the running necessarily.

It's because of the mentality. People aren't going outside to run to learn how to run better. They're going outside to run to fatigue. That's their metric. Their metric is, I'm just gonna get tired. I'm gonna go run until I get tired, which means that they're just strengthening these horrible patterns,

because they never run. So then they go outside and they go run. They create these bad patterns. And they just run. Or remember, that person doesn't know any other way. That's right. The internet and the world is said, if you want to get fit, go run. That's what I mean. So it's, right, I don't want to, it doesn't know any other way. That's right. The internet and the world is said, if you want to get fit, go run.

That's what I mean. So I, so, right, I don't want to, doesn't need a coach, it's free, I can go run. And we saw that same problem with some, the early days of CrossFit where people were going in and it was about fatigue just going there and hammering myself. You see that with regular gym workouts

and I think the shift in mentality is rather than going in to beat yourself up and just get sore and tired because that's not what we attribute a good workout to, let's treat it like a practice. Like I'm going there to learn this. Oh, Heresy, you just shut your little horn mouth. Yeah.

What are you saying that human being, like, is a skill-based thing? So let's put the skill back in here. So like, you know, at my gym, right, we've owned San Francisco CrossFit now in our 12th year, we have seen everything. We've had more rural champions and world record holders and Olympic champs. And we have a lot of people that come through the gym who are very serious. George St. Pierre

trains at our gym, right? So CrossFit, Schmossfit, right? The idea though is I still run a conditioning class Tuesdays and Thursdays and 9.30am. Anyone's open. You want to come to town and condition with me. And it's called skilled conditioning. And what I the central tenant that runs through that is, hey, we're going to breathe hard the end of the day. And then you're going to go through the end of the day. And then you're going to go through the end of the day. And then you're going to go through the end of the day. And then you're going to go through the end of the day. And then you're going to go through the end of the day. And then you're going to go through the end of the day.

And then you're going to go through the end of the day. And then you're going to go through the end of the day. And then you're going to go through the end of the day. And then you're going to go through the end of the day. And then you're going to go through the end of the day. And then you're going to go through the end of the day. And then you're going to go through the end of the day. I'm gonna rush you. That one pound pink dumbbell for a man wraps plus the side, like I'm telling you, you won't be able to keep up. So today we had a really fit athlete who could not maintain position, feet were collapsing,

ankles in, right? And I saw it in kettlebell swings, I saw it in the step ups, we're doing this on the rowing. And I'm like, hey, look, every single time you flex your hip, your knee comes in in your arch collapses, that's compensation. So you may never, for a while, be limited by your lungs, some of you, right?

Some of us are, some of us are just fat and old. But sometimes you're only limited by your ability to maintain a position. We know you can grind on because that is testing and that is competition and that's the world. There's times where look, we're having a world champion in the world and I'm deadlifting for the love of a beautiful woman. You might see some rounding when it gets really heavy and I'm super fatigued, right? Because, but if I'm training it, so we

start to have this conversation, why are we training? What are we doing here? And especially in that conditioning, because we take, because I'll tell you, watch people lift, you're seeing pretty good movement like the sophistication of the CrossFit coach I'll take over any ballies coach any 24-hour fit and like really sophisticated hard core coaches it's hard to find unless you're like training with DeFranco it may be hard to find that you know that genius coach but what I'll tell you is that it's all of the throwaway, bullshit conditioning boot camp stuff

that's causing the epidemic of problems where the metric is intensity. That's it. Orange theory. You weren't even in the orange theory today. You weren't an orange, you know, like you suck. You must have been, I mean, how was that entering into, because you said you've had your CrossFit gym for 12 years.

Yeah, let's talk about the business brain of yours. Because I know for sure, because I've listened a ride. Some of your stuff. I know. I know you saw CrossFit and you didn't go like, oh, this is awesome. I know you saw and saw the opportunity to come in and help it and fix it.

Is that how you got involved? No, not at all. I came in as a national champion, member of the national team, superstar athlete who got his ass kicked on basic skills. The world has changed radically. Do you remember, I mean, Pobl wrote in a book, must have been 13 or 14 years ago, the Kettlebell snatch test, just a hundred Kettlebell snatches for time. Some really good UFC fighters that almost killed me was the hardest thing I've ever done. And like my daughter now uses that as a finisher.

She's like five minutes, that was good, right? Dad, I'm like, yes, pretty good. You're 12, right? And that's how the world has changed. So I came in and realized that I wasn't strong, wasn't skilled, wasn't fit. I had big deficits in my ability to Olympic lift. I didn't know anything about gymnastics.

Brian McKenzie taught me how to run. I had knee pain every time I jogged. Every time I jogged, so I didn't run because I didn't know how to run. So there were just massive deficits. I remember I was working with Jim Schmitz and I was a limp at the time I was a limping before I found CrossFit.

I was working with Jim Schmitz and South San Francisco who was a formal limping coach. And he had me Susan testing him like, I'm like, I cleaned 225. Suck it. And I'm like, I'm here. And he was like, wow, can you do that for me? And he was like, what? And it was sucked.

And I had such gaping holes, the infidels that I got my ass kicked by a couple workouts. And at the same time, I discovered that I wasn I wasn't fit or skilled, I was in physical therapy school. And I was trying really hard to reconcile what I learned as an athlete, as a failed athlete who got injured, with what I was seeing from Dan John, who was involved across it early on, talking about basic barbell training, Mike Bergen or some of the gymnastic skills, Coach Summer, and then what I looked

at as a physical therapist, and I was really like, I was like, oh, these straight art, short art quad straight leg raises really, does not how we trained for the Olympics. So I'm so confused with now, and I really struggled to integrate these concepts. And so obvious now, but it's not obvious. When you take a band and distract your hip,

you know, that's me working out, trying to take all of the techniques that I learned as a physio and needed a physio and teaching myself how to do it to myself, right? That's what the band work is. So if you've ever seen a band, I invented that, right? I'm not saying Dick Hurtzell didn't invent the jump stretch man, he pulled us out. What was he gonna ask you about that?

Like yeah, if you get that. Dick Hurtzell is the man, right? He invented the jump stretch man's, but he was not distracting the young. No, you were the first person to see I've ever you to ask you about that, right? Yeah, if you get that. Yeah, absolutely. That's the way he's the man, right? He invented jump stretch man's, but he was not distracting the guy. No, you were the first person to see I've ever seen you all the band distractions, right? Right, because I was trying to mobilize the capsule the same way I did as a physical therapist, saying that, hey, look, you know, it's got a scale, you know, like the first time I did a rib screw, you know, because when I came to physio school, for example, no one was mobilizing for position. We mobilized for pain. You, like, maybe maybe you flagpole on the bar you hang a little bit, right?

You do some ground stuff some animal flow, right? But like you know No one ever said well, I have a soft tissue restriction Let me fix that so I can go do it better and I remember working with Eva Tordokin who was an Olympic skier and then was actually is Like a national medalist in Olympic lifting and then was actually a, like, a national medalist in Olympic lifting. And she was having a hard time getting overhead one day and I was like, wait a second.

And I was like, and I just mobilized her tea spine. And then she was like, wow, what was that? I was like, I don't know, but that was fucking awesome. You know, and I remember at a UFC fighter in the gym for something or in the physical therapy clinic for something, he was talking about his guard, he worked on his guard, and I mobilized his hips to get into better guard. And then he was like, man, I was wrapping my face, my toes around his face, and I just crushed him.

And he was like, what did you do to that guard? And I was like, I just gave your hips normal range of motion. And that's how I started mobilizing for position. Because that wasn't taught, or wasn't even part of the lexicon, right? So when I came to CrossFit, then started seeing the volumes of people exercising,

but who did not have all the range of motion standards that I was learning, I was like, what is going on here? Like you can do 40 pull ups, but you can't actually hold two dumbbells over your head and you can't put your arms over your head without bending your elbow, right? And then four months later, you're like,

you're my shoulder hurts. And I was like, huh? Is there a correlation? Between these shitty overhead positions and high volume training and incomplete capacity and shoulder pain. I wonder, let me test it. Well, I resolved their shoulder position,

improve their shoulder mechanics, and lo and behold, shoulder gets better and then they give 50 pull ups, right? So, it came out of a necessity of solving the problems that I was seeing as a gym owner But I also happened to be a physical therapist and I also happened to be around when they invented YouTube Which was really useful. Oh wow. Wow. What would it what do you say about so Chris Cross? It's changed quite a bit. Oh man. Did you watch any of the games? I watched some of them

I'm not for a sure but watching these girls crazy like you you know Remember the last time you snatched 300 and you got six plays? Yeah, right. Exactly. I know. I'm like, and then you hit ran a 5K and then you did, like, you know, I mean, what the, you know,

when you're watching these, you know, everyone has become so technically proficient at the top and there's no, there's not very much crappy movement at the top because you're seeing you can't do it and win. Which means we just learned the lessons that we've everyone else learned a long time ago, that it's always about mechanics and mechanical efficiency. So, you know, the world has changed on us radically for sure. And what I'll say is, look at the early concepts of any movement and

you're going to see poorly understood application. Greg Glassman, he and I don't necessarily see eye to eye on everything. But what I'll tell you is that he never said round your back when you're deadlift. He just let you know, he was like, here's your back, keep it flat, even in isometric. So even when you fail, back is flat. And then everyone else was like, woohoo, because I'm cross-fed. I'm more of a... Right, I get to disregard the rules of science. Right? How do you train Olympic lifts to fatigue? right? I get to disregard the rules of science, right?

How do you train Olympic lifts to fatigue? Because that's like, one of my issues with some of these workouts that I see is that you're doing these Olympic lifts, and as soon as your fatigue form breaks down, Olympic lifts are so fucking technical, like your form tends to go out, or is it just constant training? I think it's constant training. I think if you come to my gym, you're going to see 400 people who squat other feet straight. You know, you're going to be like, that's concentrating. I think if you come to my gym, you're gonna see 400 people who squat other feet straight. You know, you're gonna be like, that's weird. You know, and what you're gonna see is that

if you let people get away with slop and value only their time and who won, dude, we're gonna win. Like, you know, if you and I have a pie eating contest, pies go to my shoulder, pies on my face, pies on the, you know, but I'm like, I hate more pies than you did. You know, and you're like, look at all the pie around. And I'm like, I won, suck it. And so the, you know, but I'm like, I hate more pies than you did, you know, and you're like, look at all the pie around. And I'm like, I won't suck it.

And so we, you know, who has said what gets measured, gets managed, what gets measured gets valued. And so it's difficult for us to say, you know, play the long game around this and that's a culture. So if you just turn the music up, you are a shitty coach. If you just turn the music up and stop coaching, like I like a little music, my wife and I are as battle, I would like to coach to no music all the time, time right just because I want my coaches to be able to

You're a technical guy, too But I'm coaching my ass off the whole time and when I I want everyone so a little music for theme for feeling But the other person in the other room can hear my coaching cues all the time, right? And so you know if you don't if you're not a fan of like snatching a barbell for 55 pounds Then you shouldn't be a fan of snatching a kettlebell for high reps You shouldn't be a fan of high rep running. You shouldn't be a fan of high rep pull-ups like oh you did 10 pull-ups in a row You know, so I think the key is what are we? You know some of those movements I think the real error is not we're gonna see more people get injured

But that we're we're seeing cross purposes around the patterning. So that if my, I'm using Olympic lifting to teach stable shoulders and how to jump, and you're pulling off of your toes without your heels and you're doing this high rep kind of aerobic lifting with a barbell, and you're not seeing how that's going to disrupt when we go really heavy. Because practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.

And so you just did 70 reps at a shitty technique. What do you think is gonna happen when it gets heavy? You're gonna default to that shitty technique. And there's the conversation we should have, right? That I'm using load, rest car respiratory demand, speed, metabolic demand, all of those competition to create perturbations in the original status. I can train that up and down.

You come in after back surgery or knee surgery, man, I'm going to put you on the bike, I'm going to make you breathe hard, and then we're going to do box squats, air box squats. What am I doing to make the box squats difficult? Make you breathe hard. I have all of these ways that I can control volume and intensity and demand on the athlete, but if I as a coach can't see the compensation and the different patterns, here's a good example. Watch people jump rope.

I'm like, good, you butted squeeze, your toes are pointed, looking good, double under. And all of a sudden they look like a dolphin on acid, right, a goat is like exploding. And I'm like, what the fuck is that? And they're like, I'm double under it now. And I'm like, so that's different than you're jumping. Cause I'm using jump ropeping to teach jumping landing mechanics.

Now your valuing does the rope go around twice as the only thing that's critical to the room. Oh, fucking brilliant. It's set you here, but I gotta stop you here, though. Are you winning or are you losing the battle when you talk at like the growth of CrossFit and the boxes that are open? Yeah, we're winning.

Because, you know, hurting athletes is a bad business model. Going faster and helping PR is a great business model. It's great, right? And people are sophisticated, the world has changed. You know, I'll tell you, I mean, you know, I watch Instagram and I see, I don't think anyone has a lock on good technique.

You know, the only thing we should be asking about, well, is it dumbbell bench press or, you know, a rebench, twice today or this week or technique. You know, the only thing we should be asking about, well, is it dumbbell bench press or a rebench at twice a day or this week or once, you know, that's what, you know, we overload it, you're forepressing. Those are the convent issues we have as a coaching, but you know, elbow flaring, you know, everyone is beginning to see.

And if people can't see it, it's my fault because I haven't made it clear enough that that is leading down the road of lost capacity. Because, and I think as long as we say, hey, look, as long as you worked really hard and your blood pressure dropped, your healthier, right? As long as we use fitnessing, or we call it fitnessing, right, any high intensity exercise done without sort of,

you know, homage to technique and mechanics is fitnessing, like you just got fit. And we said that that's enough. Or you got shredded, but your shoulders hurt, I'm sorry. You know, I mean, like you still that's an error. So we're gonna be a hundred years old. I think people are continuing to become very, very sophisticated.

And if we haven't made it clear that jumping land with your arches collapsed is a problem than that's a problem in this room. And we will, we will get it solved. And it may take longer than we thought. It's treated just treat it like a practice. Absolutely love that. It's practice. I think you got it right. You know, I mean, I'm sure this has been as an analogy when you were in high school, which is the last time many of us ever competed, right? There's high school athletes are so elite. You know, when you're in your 40s,

you understand. And, you know, did your, did your, your coaches throw a bunch of balls on the court? And it was like, go for it kids, it's a scrimmage. No, it wasn't a workout, it wasn't necessarily to work out, it was to learn how to play to get better. And we did, we did lifting and conditioning so that we could do what, play better. That's right, right?

So that's why we did that, right? And of course my tenants were getting stronger and I was getting more powerful and did it, but why it was all to support the sport? And one of the things that I think I want people to keep doing is when was the last time you actually went outside and expressed your fitness? Because just like Olympic lifting or barbell lifting

can unduly influence the way we view training and that what we should be valuing is in terms of skills and positions and competencies. I think the same thing is happening in sort of fitnacing. We see a lot of programming done where it takes four hours to do your straight arm lever program or your gymnastics, right? And you literally, you haven't been outside,

you haven't done a sport, but you can walk on hands down like a motherfucker, right? And meanwhile, I'm like, well, not a single one of the Olympic athletes, I know can walk on their hands, so it doesn't seem to matter if you can walk on your hands or not. And what we've done is we've, once again, fetishized the gym,

and we've lost track of why we're there. Body composition is a reason to go to the gym, totally. Getting stronger is a reason to go to the gym, totally. Working on mechanics is a reason to go to the gym, totally, so that you can do something else, right? Excellent. When you look at CrossFit as a whole, what are the things you love about it

and what are the things that you think could be better about it? Well, you know, I'll go and record saying I am not an Emissary of CrossFit, I'll work for CrossFit, I license the name CrossFit from CrossFit for San Francisco CrossFit. That's the end. What I will tell you is that as an entrée into a sophisticated complex Cogent strength conditioning program, it's really hard to beat. That was a mouthful. That is What I'll tell you at the highest levels of CrossFit were seeing really incredible

capacities Yummy Teaconin who is a he's the any Tories Daughters coach He's put more people on the podium in the CrossFit games anyone else. He's a finished guy He's a member of the M.W. Staff. He's an osteopath, brilliant. He's the most sophisticated, competent, programming coach I've ever seen. Like he's the most, he's the coaches coach, right? So if that is coming out of this and we're able to see what the limits of capacity are,

oh, by the way, you can snatch 300 and do these other things, that's really, that tells us a lot, right? I think that leads bread crumbs about what's possible, right? And then I think simultaneously though, I wanna ask the question, if don't confuse excellence with CrossFit with your ability to then go translate that to an actual sport.

You have to go do the sport, you have to go outside and play, you need to learn fitness in 100 words or less. Glassman's original manifesto about fitness was learn and play in the sports. Do you do that? Do you go challenge, do you have these skills that you're working on, do you go challenge them? And we hear those old world record like Hammer Throw, and he's like, he said, the more

I threw everything else, the better the hammer got. Because his understanding, the fluency, so to the extent that I think CrossFit was originally conceived as a really efficient way to work on all these skills and get you in and out of the gym. Remember that? 55 minutes your testosterone spiked and you get out of the gym. Remember that? Yeah. Where the fuck did that go? Because now I always see as people spending two fucking hours in the gym every single day and I'm like, whoa, well, you're in and out. You did your session, you got out.

And we've lost that because the gym is really fun. And that's where my friends are. And I can like open up my paleo meal fridge and If you're in and out, you did your session, you got out. We've lost that because the gym is really fun. That's where my friends are. I can open up my paleo-meal fridge. I can do my recovery boots there. We've given every reason for people to hang on the gym except for going out and finding out what your fitness is. Can you be an elite crosser and do another sport?

We don't see that much. You've mentioned quite a few times movement by mechanics, but also just kind of like foundational positions or positioning you were talking about. How much of a role does the individual variance play in that? What I mean by that is, none. Zero. Okay, so a perfect squat should look the same for everybody.

Oh, okay. It's based on principles, right? Oh, okay, very good. Explain that, explain that. Well, I mean, so let's take's take your arch for example, right? Is it okay to slam it completely collapse your arch and ankle in the bottom of the squat? It happens sometimes, right? Yeah. I'm practicing My my feet aren't gonna explode, but it's not it's not something we should re re-produce

So if the only way you can squat is to destroy the sanctity of your joint arch ankle support system Then I'm gonna say hey, there's something wrong with that. You know, I don't think I like that. I mean, you're telling me the only way you can squat is to have a radical lumbar reversal back and forth where you shear back and forth, you know, three or four inches of total delta travel. You're telling the tailbone tuck?

I'm talking about, this is your lumbar spine and you shouldn't shear back and forth. Your butt wink. With 500 pounds on it, right? And so there's something going on there. So are your femurs different than my femurs? Is your length of your pelvis? Yeah, but principles remain principles.

So absolutely timing will look different. Inclination of the torso will look different. Capacits will look different, but otherwise, let's take this language, let's take this conversation and let's apply it to another thing. Does everyone throw slightly different? Does everyone swing the tennis rack? It's slightly different.

If it was the case, we wouldn't be able to teach anyone anything. There would never be a technique to learn a skill, right? The shapes look differently ultimately because how people are expressing, they're training, their history, what's going on. But the size of your feet, but how is it that all of the swimmers swim the same way in the Olympics? Why is that? You know, the difference is the amount of reach

that they have, or maybe their cadence, right? Some athletes turned out on the Tour de France were much lower cadence. Lance Armstrong had a cadence of like 110, right? That worked for his physiology. Did it change? How has feet moved on the bike? No.

So, we want to make sure that when we're answering questions like that, let's take a beat and say, are there variations? Absolutely. Do I see them as a physical therapist? Totally. You have 27 lumbar segments. That's going to be tricky. Your femurs are four feet long.

Okay. Let's give you some blocks. Let's go look at different ways of squat. But we want to ask questions. Does this scale in this language? Is this a plot is this this this statement hold true only in this situation? Because if it's a universalist statement, then it's probably going to hold true across all of these other skills and it has to hold hold true of course all these other cohorts. So does so turn your feet out.

Sliming these and great. you're a Chinese lifter. Fantastic, going from one, one, vent, great. So you're saying that I should teach my 12 year old to turn your feet out and slam your knees in? No, oh no, only when she squats. Okay, so if she jumps and lands, she should anticipate how deep she's gonna land. Oh, but no, this kettlebell swing.

No, it's, you know what I mean? You suddenly started to get into this. What if I have one leg, you know, and I should turn my foot out when I do a pistol? You know what I mean? So the issue is, oh no, you bring your knees in just a little bit, oh, clap your arch a little bit less. So we wanna say, does this hold true across all sports?

Does this hold true across all cohorts? Does this hold true? And so suddenly you can start to kind of winnow down what this conversation is, should there be variance in squat? Absolutely. Why do some people pursue mo and some people vol conventional? Because their body mechanics, their geometry sets them up for bedrock success on one of those lifts.

What are what are some of these foundational positions that you what are the ones that you've identified that people need to be able to To do or should or contribute to everything else? Well, you know, I want to leave it open. You need to basically take the body and force it to do what the body is supposed to do on a regular basis. It doesn't mean all the time, but a push up is really just a way of keeping your torso, stiff, and managing sheer through the spine, and then showing me that you can be into a good front rack position, top of the push up, top of the bench press, and express good mechanics in that press shape when you're finishing that press.

So really it's not a push and a pull, it's what the heck is going on with the shoulder shapes. What's going on with the hip shapes, going with the ankle shapes. So suddenly in that language, well, does rowing do the same thing? Well, yeah, I'm starting, it's the same position as my push-up.

I'm in a front rack shape, except the end stuff, the elbow bent, it's straight, and I finish in that press shape, right? What's a burpee look like? So what's a dip? So suddenly you were changing some of the shapes, shape except the end stuff that elbow bent it's straight and I finish in that press shape, right? What's a burpee look like? So what's a dip? So suddenly you were changing some of the shapes but you can now argue where should we be putting in certain movements.

So I should probably go from a hang shape to an overhead shape at some point. Why? Because this is a position I'm going to see when I swim. I go from a pull overhead to this hang shape, right? That we do, but also that's a kettlebell snatch. Going from this intramurated hang shaped overhead. As long as we think, if you ask me to come and take a look at your program, for example, hey, take a look at your program. What I'm going to do first is say what positions aren't represented in your program. If you never close the ankle all the way down to End Range Dwarfs Afflection

and things like pistols or high step-up unboxes, I'm able to see that. And so, hey, look, here's this capacity that you're missing. A lot of different ways to train that, let's not get into an argument about who's got the best soy sauce. Let's just say that you're doing it or not. And ultimately, that's the conversation where that's the art of coaching,

where do I start layering in these complex movements? So one of the things that we try to do is help people sift through this. So we categorize movements based on speed and sort of direction. So category one movements, for example, are the root language for every good strength in conditioning program with this weight and gold. I start from a stable position.

I finish in another stable position and return to the start position, right? Bench press, strict pull up, push up, get lift squat, handstand, push up, right? You'll see that all of those things start stability and they're low speed. I'm not saying they're not powerful, but just compare the strict press to the push press.

Oh, we started to add speed in there. Compare the push press to the jerk. Suddenly I have a change of direction, a vector, where I go from open chain to closed chain to open chain again. And all of a sudden, I'm starting to see more movement variability in error and high skill demand as I've added speed, as I've added these direction changes. And then, complexity goes up.

So, mainly, if you ask me to create a program for 12-year-old, it's going to look like someone who's never lifted before, right? It's going to be the same thing. Can you hip-inch, can you squat, can you pick something about the ground, can you put it over your head, can you control your back in space? And really that's what the programming should be striving to do. And then it's up to the coach or the community to say these are the positions that we value. What's some of the common knowledge that you see now in fitness that you think is just bullshit?

Like some of the stuff that people are saying, like, oh, this is what you should always do before you work out, or this is the best movement, or is there anything like that now that just rubs you wrong that you just everybody considers true? I'm gonna be careful here. You know, all fitness professionals are professional friends. I got that.

Oh, good. In my Instagram feed, recently I saw Tia Claire Tumey, who won the CrossFit Games, who also was an Olympic lifter in the Olympics. She's not a bad athlete. She's a beast and she moves beautifully. Like, like, clean 255 or something and like a clean. I just know big deal, casual, full clean. You know. And then underneath it, I saw a skinny guy

with a bungee on a stick doing a lunge and like a twist. And I was like, that says it all. There's so much silly waste of time bullshit out in the world. Here's a girl who literally can clean 250 and run and swim and buy you can climb and do all these other things. And here's a guy pretending to fitness with like, you know, five pounds of resistance on a stick

doing rotations and a lunge on the beach. And I was like, how do I know? How do I know you're talking about? I'm like, that is the thing that's fucking killing me. Is that where we have sold people that things that look difficult, I believe it's hard, you know, but is that in fact real fitness or real capacity? And what you'll see is-

Oh, but it's functional, man. Well, you'll see is, as soon as you, I'll take anyone of my 12, my daughter can deadlift. I'm like, fuck yeah, of course you can deadlift. She has to pick shit up all the time. But I'll take any athlete in any division one collegiate program over just because I know they're gonna be, they're gonna, someone's teaching them how to how to sprint. We back up for a second. So Harry Mara is the greatest de-cathlon coach of all time. He's a good he's a maid of ours right we've

interviewed him or friends. He literally is coached to like more Olympic gold medals in the de-cathlon and I'm like hey coach what is it about the de-cathlon that's so amazing. He's like, you have to run short and fast. You have to be able to jump. You have to be able to throw. What are the other questions? You know, I mean, like, those are the fundamentals. And he's like, if you train kids

to be able to be competent to decafly under decaflon, you would build these basic capacities as human beings. So are we doing that or not? Or have we fetishized fitness again and made it so complex? It's not that complex. I mean, I appreciate someone like Dan John who says something like, pick it up, carry it around, put it over your head.

Next question. No. And then there's a lot of variation and it's okay to mix it up. And it's okay to have fun in the gym, right? But if you're not squatting, we're gonna have a problem. If you're not lifting something off the ground, hey, we don't dead-lift, we clean.

Create, high pulse, great. Down, that's fine. Easier on your athletes, whatever. If you can't do a pull-up, you probably have a hole in your fitness, right? So I really appreciate that you're so fit, but you can't do a pull-up. So for example, one of the things I'm a huge fan of right now

is the Spartan race, right? So Amelia Boone is a good family friend. Happen to be a world champion, Super Stubb. And she's lean and looks like a runner. And then she can deadlift and squat and carry her weight, her carcass around and jump over walls. And you're like, oh, like that girl has biased her train to be an aerobic grayhound, but she still has competence in all these things.

Not only because it makes her fitter and stronger faster, but you have to be able to manage all that stuff. And so let's at least establish some benchmarks of capacity. I don't care how much you did lift, do you do lift yes or no, you know? Right. And if you don't do it, if you swing a kettlebell on the grate,

check the box, you're still good for me. You know, I'd like you to do it a little more. You know? I just think a lot of people don't realize that it's not gonna take a way, because people get so stuck in their box that like the bodybuilder's like, well, no, no, no, I can't do,

I can't do these yoga positions or I can't do these kettlebell stuff because I'm not gonna build my- I can't deadlift because I'm gonna build my waist. But yeah, they don't realize that they all, you can take a little bit of all of them, and not only will they contribute to you being well-rounded, but they'll probably contribute to your specialization.

Yeah, to stand efforting doesn't deadlift. That's all the Rhino does. He's amazing. I mean, look at how strong really strong people are. And remember that old bench press your body weight? It wasn't bench press your body. It was strict press your body weight. That was the old one, yeah.

Right, how you doing? A long time ago, I, Dan John, I was on the brain right now, he's like, overhead squat your body weight 10 times. Or a head squat your body weight plus 50 pounds. Can you do that? Then shut the fuck up. You have work to do.

And now I think that overhead squatting is the end they'll be all like, I know. I think overhead squatting is a skill transfer exercise for like warming up and for conditioning. At some point, if you're over at squatting 300 pounds, we have other issues. We should be heaving snatch balance and snatching and doing other things. But if you can't do that at all, it doesn't mean you're not going to lead athlete. It means, hey, there's some capacities developed here.

I've talked to so many coaches, even over at Cal, one of the old strength coaches is saying, hey, look, I'll take a kid who can snatch 225, which is a very reasonable snatch for collegiate to individual and athlete, over a kid who can half squat 500 pounds, because of the athleticism and the coordination, and the efficiency, and it takes time. So, our job is to continue to help people sift through. You know, I remember some interview with an old Russian throws coach and he's like, what should I do for conditionings? Like, well, if you don't have a hill, I don't know what to tell you. I mean, like, like, you need to go sprint up the hill. That was like, it's that simple. You know,

go push a sled. Go drag a sled. Do you feel, do you feel a little vomittist could do one more? Right. And then tomorrow do two more. And, And keep it simple. We can simplify way back, make progress, but it is the compound movements. And I think you can say things like, we can do it this other way. But if we have to look at that, the original thinking around the scientific method was induction, which means we take large data sets.

Sir Francis Bacon 101, we take large data sets, and we derive principles and patterns out of those large data sets. So let's look at the best athletes in the planet. Let's look at the most successful running programs, coaching programs, sprinting programs. Oh, they all deadlift. Oh, they all have some kind of Olympic lift invasion in there, you know. I saw on internet somewhere recently someone was like, I think Brett Bartholomew retweeted it.

You know, he's like, look, some coach was saying, we, yeah, we hang, we go from blocks, we power, we snap, he's like, their variations, they're not gang affiliation. Have you read his book, Brett? Yeah. Oh yeah. I just bought it, I've got it. Oh yeah.

So what Brett has done is he said, look at this group of teachers, the biggest group of teachers maybe in the world, strengthy addition coaches, who don't get any information about how to teach. You know, it's about communication, right? And so not an accident that the best coaches out there are really inspiring, really can communicate,

have clear goals, they maybe have had some formal training in college, maybe they stumbled into it, right? But he has really codified that and formalized that. And I'm so proud of what Brett's doing. And more importantly, Brett, it's about to take that program and put it online so you can teach your coaches scalability.

Oh wow. You have to do it. We need, why? Because we should always be striving for efficiency in the system. My ability to communicate to my athletes, maybe the limiting factor. He's on the list to get on the show, so that's really good.

That usually is the limiting factor for most people, it's just being able to communicate. You can have all the knowledge in the world, but if you can't communicate that to someone, it's absolutely, it's worthless. Well, you know, the allegory is that, you know, the way we do one thing is the way everything, right? But, I mean, you should be reading in all of these other fields around, you know, neuroplasticity and you're reading nutrition and you're learning of behavior and all of that is gonna help your training and your ability to coach. I read everything else except training books.

I mean, I read training books too, cause I'm like a deep nerd. But, I mean, the idea is like, people are solving the problems to make me a more efficient athlete and coach communicator all the time. You know, I just picked up the TED Talks book, like shoot me in the head. You know, I don't wanna do a TED Talk. I coach communicator all the time. I just picked up the TED Talks book. Like shoot me in the head. I don't want to do a TED Talk.

I think that's become a meme. My favorite TED Talk is why TED Talks suck. I was like so meta, so meta. But those are really the essay, the podcast is the new form. And if you can't speak your ideas in a cogent rational way, then you're not going to be able to communicate in the toy for such being in fitness as long as you've had you've seen trends come and go and things that you know good information get just blown at a proportion. What do you see? Do you have any predictions for some things to look out for like, okay, everybody watch out for this new mobility trend on this or is there anything like that that you see right now? Well, I think we're seeing finally a normalization of people doing soft tissue work and distracting. I was like, yeah, it takes 10 minutes a day.

What are you doing? You've been doing that for 40 minutes, so I said, like, stop. People made mobilizing a hobby. And that's not where intention was, all position transfer. The first half of that book, first winter page is about movement theory. The first half of that book for Center pages about movement theory,

the second page of the second is about how to get into those better positions. And so I think people are coming back to training. Belakiroli used to let his athletes warm up playing indoor soccer. So his male gymnasts, they just didn't like the traditional warm-up. So they just played soccer and then they were hot and sweaty, then they did their focusing win. I think putting the fun back into it, simplifying matters. I think we're seeing a normalization of the paleo phase, that carbohydrates you don't

have to fear always. The fetishization, the worshiping of keto, I think that's a very powerful tool. It's hard to have your heart rate at 170 and be totally keto all the time. You just can't do that carbohydrate. So people are starting to live low, train high on carbohydrate, using carbohydrates as a tool again.

Okay, that makes sense. I think we're getting better at getting back to basics. And I think, unfortunately unfortunately basics aren't sexy, but we've gotta get sleep, we gotta sleep denser. We've gotta learn how to down-regulate. I think right now we're caught in this huge depressant stimulant cycling, where people are having seven bulletproof coffees

and then THC or alcohol or ambient to go to sleep and it's out of all the morning. And we're not helping people turn off. We have figured out how many pre-exercise drinks you can take and how many, you know, red bulls, you can slam to be all your best self, but we've done shit about, you know, chilling out, down regulating.

So, you know, the tie is gonna continue to raise. I think we should all be wary. You know, we have, in our gym for long enough, we see trends, we have a lot of athletes who came in massive progress, got really strong fit, crushed their sports, and then kind of like, I'm looking for the next thing, so they go on, and they're all back because it turns out coaching is the most important thing. So are you in a coached environment, yes or no?

And someone on their phone watching you lift is not coaching. So my best recommendation, and I think you're going to see it more and more. Even something like Peloton, right? Training in a group, creating a small environment where you belong to people, where you show up and they know you and they know your tendencies and a coach knows you and knows your name and knows how you lift and you can make progress. That's the relationship human beings are supposed to have. Have you seen that, like even from the CrossFit community, more in-home training and more gym setups,

where they still try and recreate that as far as like streaming video or whatever in a group setting? I don't know, I haven't seen much of that. It's probably, the real interesting thing is, well, how do we serve people? If I can't get to the gym or live in nowhere where there's not a gym near me where I can

Olympic lift, what I do. So there is a need, I'm sure. We've got to, we've got to, again, think, we're not leotists. These are the ways that we're solving problems and they can help you. Can we believe in the home gym? You've got to have a home gym

and it doesn't take many pieces of equipment to be in the home gym. Do your fancy stuff at the gym, but like God, for some, say, have a barbell in your garage. You know, and just, you know, my simple rule for my friends at home I'm like, you can't lift off a rack at home. Just don't do it. So if you can't power clean it, you can't front squat it.

You know what I mean? Because if you think that's the limiting factor to your fitness having to power clean it before your front squat it, welcome to the game. You know what I mean? And on, and- That and welcome to the game. You know what I mean? And on... That's old school, man. You know, hold on, it sucks.

You know what I mean? That's a real, you know? So, you know, I think making sure that every person can get to a place where they have basic competency, what do you mean you're afraid to lift a barbell? We have so many people who have never lifted a barbell who come to our gym still, and they're terrified, right?

I'm like, you were failed as a child. You were not loved as a child. I mean, that's just a thing. You're afraid of going up and down with this thing. Like, you know, that's just crazy. So, you know, we're getting better. We have a lot of work. Because what's interesting, I think, is we all need to continue this. Is that that expert who's listening right now, who, you know, a home expert, not a pro, an expert. Like, you know, they do this because they love training. They love to talk about nutrition. They love body composition.

They love that stuff. They're the expert and they're the node in their entire community. And that, or their whole family asked them about their shoulder pain. And how should I eat? And hey, I want to gain some weight. What do I do?

You know, there are some core competencies that we all should have. And it, to the fact that the matter of that, we're having to train and teach such fundamentals to so many people all over again, or for the first time in their 20s and 30s, really says that we've shit the bed entirely in their development as human beings. Horribly, and it's getting worse, man. Kelly, I want to make you take a left real quick. Before we got on here, we are talking a little bit about business, and I know we have

a lot of entrepreneurs that listen, and I'd like to talk a little bit about you and your business, and what I want to ask you is, what are you currently struggling with right now in business? A feeding the Insta Social Monster. Just, you know, there, what we see is that you don't have to be first in business anymore, especially in the way the world works. You can be 27th and just not add anything to the conversation. You can just rip people off.

You know, we got this, you know, our voodoo floss, voodoo is a trademark thing. It's on the internet. You go to the Amazon type of, you know, voodoo floss, our pattern attorney is like, you know, hey, this guy's using voodoo floss. Like, great, there's floss bands to go for, but you can't use voodoo floss. And so we gave this person like three months

to, you know, sell out your stock, we'll be reasonable. And then we call them up three months later, so using voodoo floss, they're like, well, as soon as I took voodoo off the website didn't sell. You know, I'm like, well, that sucks. But it turns out there's a lot of people ripping off other people.

And we really do sometimes I personally struggle with the dickhead assholes who are shouting and taking people down. Cause you just don't feed the trolls. I mean, people have said that forever. You know, we always strive to point positive. We like to point to the things that we love. And we just, if you, you know, all roads lead to Rome.

But if the only way you can get attention is by throwing some tantrum, shouting at someone else's methodology, you're actually a lie. You're a total, it's a, you're bullshit. And everyone's gonna see it eventually. So, you know, I think, you know, the number of ads I see using our stuff and claiming it's their own, like, the couch stretch. Like, what do you think it's fucking called the couch stretch? Because I did it on my couch. That's's their own like the couch stretch. Like why do you think it's fucking called the couch stretch?

Because I did it on my couch. That's not like I inherited the couch stretch and I was like, oh, this is something that's gonna Solve that's why it's fucking all the couch stretch and so people like you guys we use this thing about opening the hips called the couch stretch And I'm like, where's the attribution? So fitness people are ripping each other off like mother fuckers like they're pretending It's it's a separate business. It's like saying, because I'm doing with intensity, I can round my back. No, you can't round your back, right? At some point, this business has to become like every other thing. Show your work, show your attribution, show your relationships. And I think that aside, the business piece, that's always business. But helping ourselves streamline, simplify,

communicate, because we have all these pieces of data about people using our stuff for a decade. Now, once we can get rid of the things that are less effective and repackage and repurpose the things that we know are more effective, so we can give people better bang for the buck. What are you currently doing right now that you're proud of,

that you've accomplished or that you're doing in business right now? I am happily married to my badass wife. I spend a ton of time with my kids. No, seriously. No, that's a very fucking great statement because I mean, tell you what, most success launch for Newers have a hell of a time. May I manage that? Well, I'll tell you, I'm lucky that the first thing is that my

Juliet is my business partner. She's an attorney and a two-time world champion, so she's a pretty good athlete, right? And great dancer, but she is the CEO. And so she has a CEO brain, like she sees things that I can't see and don't give a shit about or didn't even know existed. I'm like, oh, that's a good idea. And I'm so lucky that I have that.

I ask for help. She quit her law firm to take over our little fludging business and the fact that it's thriving, she lets me do what I do. We work together as a team. The fact that I'm nailing my wife, that's so good, I'm nailing a relationship with my well-frored, you're in the flip right there. We'll use that. JSTAR, I talked to a lot of my four years, four years. He's right there.

We'll use that. You know, Jay star. I mean, I talked to a lot of friends and people were like, well, how's it working for you? What are you doing? I'm like, well, I have this girl named Juliet. Maybe you've heard of her. But the fact that we run everything,

you know, five years ago, I was on the verge of just burn out because I was traveling so much and start up face. Just like everyone else's in start up face who's out there listening. And fitness and strengthening is no different than the other thing. Where literally I'm like, wow, I'm not having any fun, my training sucks, I don't see my friends,

but I'm working like a motherfucker. And like for the first time in my life, I'm not critically poor, I'm being able to like pay my mortgage and not stress about that. That's a real powerful thing. But, you know, we had to hit reset because it was insustainable. And we said, okay, let's do this. Let's run everything through one filter. Does this get our family more time together? Yes or no?

Because what's the point of training to spend more time in the gym? What's the point of turning on a successful business and doing all the business thing and pulling on the headaches of having what we have 27 employees, right? So that we can spend more time together as a family. So that I can do meaningful work so I can come and hang out with my friends. Like that is the goal. And I don't think you can be an entrepreneur

and have as much downtime in the man cave as the other guys, but that's not you anyway. You know, so, but keep in mind what the fucking point is and the point is to be able to feed yourself in a way that makes sense to you and your family so you can spend time with your family. So that's the most important thing, but there's, I have, we have so much work, there's so much work. I got another edition of Supple Lepard coming out, which is way better.

Oh, hell yeah. Three point oh, what we've been able to add and conceptualize, I think it'll be make a lot more sense to people. You know, I have two other books written already, you just did it, like we're just laid the foundations for our third book. We realized that we just, because we have seen so much data and so many skill sets and so many different groups, and one week literally last year I was like teaching 12, 112-year-olds volleyball how to squat and hinge, right, and move. And then I was at the NFL combine.

So that kind of stuff is happening, which means that I get to see and I can solve problems more efficiently or help people solve their own problems more efficiently. So there's no end of work. We're not going away. We're not going away. Excellent, man.

It's a pleasure having you here in our facility. Big fan of your work. I'll also wrap this up. I appreciate you many times. Thank you very much. I really appreciate that. And what you guys are doing is difficult and important. I tend to underestimate sometimes because I'm busy.

The only podcast I listen to, the ones that my friends send, you need to listen to this. So I have like my friends are like, you need to listen to this. I listen, right? But I just don't have, the podcast daily isn't, you know, Tim Ferriss is a good friend, but I don't listen to him unless one of my friend, Tim is called and said, listen to this or when my friends have said, but it's really important. This is the magazine, the news magazine of the 21st century. This is how we share ideas in this conversational tone. This is how people understand. It's vast, important, and you guys taking it on

is a big, big deal. So thank you guys. Everyone who's podcasting out there, we appreciate you. It's a big deal. Much appreciated. Check this out. Go to YouTube, subscribe to our YouTube channel. MindPumpTV, we post a new video every single day.

Also check us out on Instagram. MindPump Media. We all have personal pages. Mind is MindPump Pump Sal, Justin is Mind Pump Justin, and Adam is Mind Pump Adam. Last thing, I don't know if we're still on. Kyle Kingsbury, I love you. That's for Kingsbury right there. 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 Superbumble at MindPumpMedia.com.

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