Modern Wisdom - #121 - Brian Mackenzie - How To Breathe Properly

Episode Date: November 18, 2019

Brian is the Creative Director at Power Speed Endurance. We all breathe, but are we doing it right? The breath controls much more than we might realise and today Brian takes us through just how crucial proper breathing technique is to our health, performance, cognition and mood. Extra Stuff: Check out PSE - https://powerspeedendurance.com/ Check out The State App - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/state-breathing/id1449322496 Check out everything I recommend from books to products and help support the podcast at no extra cost to you by shopping through this link - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oh yes, hello friends, welcome back to Modern Wisdom. Before I get into today's episode, I wanted to give a thank you to Michaela Peterson and Jordan Peterson for giving me a shout-out, giving Modern Wisdom a shout-out on this week's episode of the Jordan B Peterson podcast. As you can imagine, that caused a bit of a spike in downloads, so many of you that are listening, maybe because of that, to you, welcome and to everyone who's been here for the last one million downloads and the last year and a half.

You got some new friends. On to today's episode, I'm sitting down with Brian McKenzie, the man behind power speed endurance and art of breath. Today we're talking about breathing. Everyone does it. Some people that do sport need to do it a little bit more and almost all of us are probably doing it pretty wrong. Brian is, he's like, patient zero for understanding breath work. So yeah,

today's packed with some really interesting insights about this. Hopefully we'll change your day-to-day breath use and your consideration of how it can contribute to training and performance. It's really cool. Enjoy. Here is Brian McKenzie. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. I'm joined by Brian McKenzie, the man behind Power Speed Endurance. And today we are talking about something that you will all be familiar with, but I'm probably doing a little bit wrong. Breathing. Brian, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. It's going to be awesome. I'm really excited to speak about this sort of stuff today. We've been talking about endurance a lot recently. Had Alex Hutchinson, writer for Runners World on Analyze, and Elie had Kipchow,

gave recent performance. We've had the Brian Carroll from Power Act Strength on talking about squatting over a thousand pounds. And all of this is enabled by a lot of different things. but I guess principally one of those is breath work, right? Yeah, well physiology and all chemistry is regulated through our breath. So anything and everything, I mean, I'm a, I'm known Alex for quite some time. We've kind of gone, we've gone back and forth over the years. He's a great, he fucking kid, man. I like him a lot. I don't know your other, the other guy, but to squat a thousand pounds

is to understand some things. He really does, he really does understand some things. I mean, Kelly Storet, we just released an episode with him today. We've had Dr. Stuart McGill on. on. So, you know, we've had a lot of these guys. And when they talk about this, even Kelly and Stue, people that are really, really kind of at the top of their game, very well respected within their fields, it's rare that I hear someone bring up breath work.

Why do you think that is? The Kelly? Kelly didn't. Kelly didn't. No, we were talking a bit about the game changes. We were talking about the game changes documentary and veganism. We went off on a rabbit hole down that. Oh, really? Yeah, that was fun. That was fun. No, I know Kelly's very much into the brief breathwork at this point. I mean, I introduced it to him. So, you know, I know he and he uses it inside of his one on one's and one on two courses now. So, you know, from his work, but, you know, in any rate, Kelly's been a very close compadre of Ma'am for a very long time. So we've kind of

grown up, let me end this other bit. You know, it's interesting how I stumbled onto the breathwork and why, even though I was introduced to it quite some time ago, and it just didn't take. And I understand why it didn't take because it wasn't never explained in a way that made sense to, especially a guy who was participating in strength and conditioning was all about performance. Yeah, so I entered into this world of yoga many years ago and how to

yoga practice because I was a triathlete who was getting tight and when you get tight you need to loosen up and so I went to yoga and I ended up enjoying yoga real like a ton and I chased around a yogi in Aastanga that was really good at what she was doing, but I just never paid attention to the fact that we were in, we were utilizing a breath practice at the foundation of this practice, like we were controlling our breathing, we were told to control our breathing, we were told to control our breathing in specific patterns, you know, this went on and on. And I was like, you know, I just remember it

blowing over to a large degree. And that in and of itself is kind of how we all behave to a large degree. And I'll connect all this through this talk. So like, so that it makes sense for everybody else. You know, but I largely just paid attention to the fact that I needed to get more flexible or more mobile at the time. And then I drifted away from yoga for a little bit, really got hardcore into endurance training,

obviously wrote a couple books on that and came to a pretty good understanding of some ways to tweak things for people who are busy and who are injured. You know, that was a big part of my career for about 10 or 12 years. And then somebody handed me a training mask and I laughed. And I was like, this doesn't change altitude. I know how pressure works. I've actually worked on altitude training for quite some time. And this can't change pressure pressure so we're not talking about altitude with this thing. But nonetheless,

you know, you make fun of something and if you're done enough work in your life to understand that, that you haven't, if you're making fun of things or your criticizing things that you've never done, that's called ignorance. And I didn't want to remain ignorant to something. So I put the damn thing on. And I instantly went from like I'm seated now to I sat up and I engaged my diaphragm and I felt my ribs expand out and like my back light up and like I was like whoa like you know it was it was just I tend to feel a lot and because of my background and teaching movement and getting people fixed or helping people to fix themselves I um yeah I was

just like whoa here whoa what happened like maybe we've got something that I could put on my athletes when they're warming up so that we can get them moving properly and using their core correctly, organizing their spine in a way that it should be because, oh shit, like it just so happens that we organize the spine based on our diaphragm. We have to, at the root of who we are and what we do is a system that is dependent upon one thing, and that is life. And that life is

predicated on a deal that was made 500 million years ago in order to use aerobic metabolism. So suffocation sits at the heart of that. So we could remove our panic, our freak out, or not our panic center, our fear center, and you will still have chemoreceptors that will set you off in a panic when carbon dioxide levels raise. So if I'm not organized correctly around my spine, I don't use my diaphragm correctly. So I default into poor breathing patterns. So this is a rabbit hole of movement that really made more sense to something about organization of the spine, right? And there's a lot of minutia around the spine in organization and courseability and everything we want to do, but by and large, we have figured out and theorize

that the only reason you need to organize that spine correctly is to actually take a breath and understand that breath, because the lungs don't do that work on their own. The diaphragm is the primary in that, and then we follow up to the intercostals and several other muscles that end up getting involved. But poor breathing patterns elicit poor responses, including that of the sympathetic nervous system. patterns elicit poor responses, including that of the sympathetic nervous system, or I default into some poor breathing patterns that have me using my anaerobic system more than necessary.

And is that in undoubt as it says? Yes, that is without exercise, my friend. Wow. You are constantly using anaerobic systems and aerobic systems at all times. We're like, this is, we know this. What we started seeing was, like, look, man, we took a look back. So this started with a training mask and it definitely became like, oh, shit, you've got your own training mask on your face. It's called a nose. And holy crap, it like, it has this filter system. It's got this humidification system. It's got,

oh my gosh, this thing mucous. Oh, it releases like immune cells. So it helps my immune system function better. I spend the air differently. It forces my diaphragm to actually pull more because it's not allowing for fast air to happen. It doesn't mean we can't breathe through our mouth or shouldn't, it's just when is it necessary? And we can get into that in a bit if you want. But you know, it's interesting, but we started understanding,

we started looking at the physiology behind all of this stuff and the framework behind physiology and We've missed some big big things and it's all there. It's just the way we've taught it and the way we've looked at it has not been real I would say it it's not a very creative process thus why it's alluded us and even in the world of yoga today it's eluded us. And even in the world of yoga today, they've missed it. And they've misunderstood what it is that pranayama actually means. And pranayama is a word that is basically it's a Sanskrit word. It's probably about 5,000 years old. And there's other languages that use this very similar terminology, including Hebrew, that it means energy control at its root. It also means breath control, odd that they're the same. Odd that we use a

cardiometabolic device in order to measure our breath, which tells us what's happening from a cellular level. So cellular respiration, we understand the only way we can measure that is through the gas exchange of what's going on here. So we said, let's look at this realistically and see what happens. And so we started measuring things and we were measuring things in many different ways, including just a simple breath practice, things and we were measuring things in many different ways including just a simple breath practice or Hey, I'm gonna go for a walk. I'm gonna walk my dog and Rob Wilson who's my counterpart in the art of breath who's our lead on education. He's our director of education Went for a walk with his dogs with his mouth open and then he came back reset his device And we have portable metabolic carts and he shut his mouth and went for a walk with his dogs the exact same route. Turns out those are two different and totally totally

different metabolic profiles. Weird and it's not weird. It's this has been said for thousands of years. We're not actually bringing we're not actually saying things that you know are are that crazy but unfortunately they are crazy in our world because there's so many really, really, really smart scientific people who we look to who've missed the boat on a lot of this stuff. And the simplicity of it, and it's not that they're dumb or that they, you know, whatever, it's just, we weren't really looking at this. And so we started really going after not only the movement and how the mechanics work around

this, but then the physiology. Then starting to see that, oh, wow, it's all chemistry in the body is regulated through our breath, all of it. How we shift from alkaline to acidic is literally governed through how I breathe. How I absorb oxygen is dependent upon how well my body actually plays with this thing called carbon dioxide. And the body, in the blood, it's carbonic acid. And as we exhale, as it gas exchanges, it becomes carbon dioxide.

But I am largely dependent upon how well I actually react to that, and that has other facets to it. I'll go here in a second. But my relationship to carbon dioxide is actually how well I play with oxygen, and how well I'm efficient, how efficient I am at using oxygen. So I may be a freediver who can actually sit here and do breath work and be very very very oxygen efficient because I can hold my breath for long periods of time, which also requires and is a very high level to CO2 tolerance. This is static CO2 tolerance. This is non working CO2 tolerance. When we look at training or we look at human

performance, and I use quotes because performance, I think, is we're about to kind of shift the paradigm on what human performance is. But the idea that if I work, when I start to work out, that shifts. There's a different response or there's a very different play that happens within CO2 tolerance. And so I've been able to observe and take people who are free divers who are highly specialized or big wave surfers who are also free divers in essence to some degree. But they're highly specialized. And when we apply work to them, we see a very different story happen. So we see the specialist kind of come apart, right? Meaning there's a very different like that CO2 tolerance that was really high when I'm static and not a lot of stressors going on or a big wave, things like that I'm very accustomed to. When I start working out, my respiration rate goes up considerably higher than it would

with somebody, let's say, let's call it, you know, leoid, right? His respiration rate didn't go up so high, right? But the interesting thing here is I would bet if leoid's never really participated in any sort of static breathing or carbon dioxide tolerance training. He's probably shit statically, right? And so there's this weird world that we started to see. Now my fascination is in connection with the brain and so the neurobiology of it and the

physiology. And so the neurobiology of it and the physiology I'm I'm I'm I'm now considering what Physiology is more or less our mind our ability that that's what our mind is and our ability to connect to the mind and Understand the feelings and the processes and the things that are going on and so the brain is where the And so the brain is where the circuitry and the information is being sent out. The brain works perfectly fine as long as we're connected to the physiology and understand the physiology. If we don't understand the physiology, the brain will get away from us and start overthinking, right? And so as kids, when we come into this world, we have this thing where we're attached

to a parent and we learn, this is unavoidable, right? And so from a neurobiological perspective, at the top layer, the most evolved part of the brain is our neocortex. And this is where the stories, this is where some of the emotional things like start to trigger, but this is where the storytelling motor control,

a lot of there's a lot of a dedicated area to motor control in the brain, to where we can do different tasks, like I can talk and drink water at the same time or think and drink. You know, I mean, I mean, just simple basic shit that we go throughout our day that some of us confuse ourselves

in thinking it's multitasking of which it's not. So that's the storytelling side of things below that becomes the limbic system. This is where emotions are now concrete and set up in the system. And where I will have a reaction emotionally to something and then the storytelling gets played into there, right? And so it can get exacerbated. Then down below that we have the brain stem where or we could call it the reptilian brain, the oldest part of the brain. And this is where the kind of evolution of everything takes

place. It just so happens that our respiration centers are set up in that brain stem. So meaning they are on autopilot with my system and they can respond to every emotion and every thought that I have. It also can respond to the work that I have because I have dedicated chemo receptor set up in the carotid and the aortic valves which are headed out to the periphery. So that means we're on a prediction system that carbon dioxide levels that are set up in my brain stem react to a prediction of what's occurring in the system through chemoreceptors and barrel receptors that are in my arteries and it's triggering me to breathe.

So my heart rate responds to that, right? So the heart rate's late to the game. And so, you know, there's a whole plethora of things in there, but how I decide to grow up and how I go through my experiences in life inevitably have a Rolladex of things on how I actually respond to breath. So when I actually am working out I can tell with many people where the potential trauma or problems can set up or we can see metabolic issues even from

somebody who doesn't work out as they sit and are doing things. I get you. Yeah. One thing that's just come to me there as you were talking, do you think it's strange that we don't have control over our heartbeat as humans as evolved creatures? Well the only way you're gonna control your heart rate is how? Output movement. Nope. Breath. You got it. I'm just thinking because I can.

So if I just said, hey, Chris, check it out. Control your heart rate for me right now. And if we put you on a heart rate monitor, because that's what you, we, most people would do. They go, all right, let me get on a heart rate monitor. Like, well, no, no, no, no. Can you feel your heartbeat? Right now, without doing anything, can you feel it? A tiny, I'd have to be very tuned into my body.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Took me about three years ago, I was able to like, I can just sit there and I can pick it up anywhere in my body, I really want to. Where I want to do it in a toe, or a finger, or in my neck, or whatever, right? But it's like, my body, I really want to, where I want to do it in a toe or a finger or in my neck or whatever, right? But it's like, all right, how do I lower that? And I literally will go,

and my heart rate will just start to drop. I control my breathing. I understand. I think that obviously shows that the heart rate is at the mercy of the breath to a large degree. I was just thinking about whether it's, I can control my breath. I can consciously hold it, breathe quicker, breathe slower.

But that's not something that we have with our digestive system. That's not something that we have with our heart. You know, that it would appear that from our, the things that are inside of us, the lungs are kind of the only thing that we have that kind of control over. Is that fair to say? Or am I missing something? Your breath, so check this out. This and this might flip your lid. I'm ready. Your breath controls all that.

Okay, breath and digest is controlled by the breath. BKS I anger has a quote. He is responsible for bringing yoga to the Western world. He's one of the last great yogis. What now? He also taught things in a way that was fairly brutal. It would not have gone by where it row well the day. Nonetheless, I'm of that school. Like, I like that. I don't need to be coddled. I want work. I want real work. Nonetheless, the mind is the king of the senses,

The mind is the king of the senses, but the breath is the king of the mind. I like that. Okay, so that was his. It's not mine. My breathing affects how I digest things. How so? Well, my diaphragm pushes down into my organs. I have regulation of my par- I- I- I have regulation of my sympathetic activity due to how I control my breathing. And the inhale is known as the sympathetic.

And for a long time people have said the exhale is known as parasympathetic. Well, it's not parasympathetic. It's inhibition of sympathetic. That's interesting. Yeah. That's where HRV, a lot of HRV stuff gets risk monitors and stuff would come from right to the variation within heartbeats. Yes, yes, yeah. And so the can we we start figuring out a long time ago that you could manipulate heart rate variability through breath control. Easy. So you could change a profile of an athlete who might not have the score or the readiness state that we want. Right? And we'd apply breath work to that person and we could manipulate and then they'd have a green light. What's readiness states? What's the characteristics that contribute to that? You fit into a specific profile. So like think of a spectrum, like think of an arc, right?

Of sympathetic and parasympathetic, right? There's a specific arc inside parasympathetic and slightly in the sympathetic that you can be in order to be ready to train. Let's call it 80% above, right? So we would have, if an athlete fell to parasympathetic, that meant that they were literally, you know, you're dissociative, you're shutting down type of thing. You need more up regulatory things like cold plunge like some you know things to kind of bring you up out of that but From the center and there's there's a lot more to that but from a more sympathetic side This is where most of us tend to fall is where we just aren't coming down I know we're not coming out of that high sympathetic activity.

That's by and large, most of the people ideal with an IC. This is the people who are probably listening to here. The overtrain is the people that have decopinated, overworked. Yeah, I like coffee. I like to work out hard. I like to work hard. I'm very passionate about what I do, I'm type A, you know, maybe not so type A, but I do like to train hard and do things hard

and do all this. And by and large, what we end up getting with those people is an inability to understand actually what they're training for, like they, you know, and this is why breathing is so important is because I can actually get you to understand a lot more through that process of training and understanding your breath. It's also why we created a gear system around training and how you can actually manipulate the one variable that is actually responsible for the rest of the variables that you are training for.

Yeah, that is right. It does make sense that you have this direct control over one of the internal processes that's going on. We have, I suppose, a quite diluted control over the thoughts that go through our mind, but I have a lot better control over my breath than I do the thoughts in my mind. And that's after three years of pretty consistent meditation. So, I think, I think, focusing on the breath seems like a good place to start. So, if we were to do a breath M-O-T, Brian,

where would you start? If you lay someone down, you're gonna look under the hood, you're gonna look at the way that they breathe either in or out of a training situation. Where do you start? Is it the cycle? Is it the cycle? C-O-2 tolerance test.

I get a C-O-2 tolerance test down with one of them, a max X-Hail test. That tells me literally what's going on. Like, I mean, look, so my, my, Rod who I work with, he's in Virginia Beach, which is the largest hub of special forces. So special warfare in the world. It's really how it's, you know, the dem group, it's still team six. You know, there's another team over there too, but there's a lot of high level dudes over there.

A lot of bad hoses. Yeah, but these dudes like to train a certain way too, right? And so, you know, like you get these guys and they've got problems going on and it's like, all right, you know, Rob got called in yesterday For no this morning. We were on the phone this morning. It was his afternoon and he So yeah, I couldn't finish training. I got called in to go over to this This place to go meet this guy who seems to be a pretty problematic and he's got a lot of issues and

Can recoveries got these injuries going on and blah, blah, blah, blah. Just, I'll host a shit and he's a team guy. And he, you know, he, Rob went over and he's like, guess what, it's CO2 tolerance level was. And I was like under 20 seconds and he said 17 seconds. And I was like, yep, get it. And, you know, he is cooked. And most of us are cooked.

If I've got somebody who's training like that, if I've got an operator, especially an operator, who's got anything under a minute of a CO2 tolerance test, I've got somebody who's reactive, I've got somebody who, their system is reactive. They may not be emotionally reactive, but there's suppression of things. I know that the tissue isn't responding while meaning they're tight. They're probably got painful tissue. These things start to compound, and they're all signs. So carbon dioxide is the metabolic stress messenger of the body, of the system. Don't even need an amygdala, man. You know, so it tells me what's going on with the person. So, it's like

when I have too much going on upstairs, I push that CO2 tolerance down, right? If I'm over-trained, if I've been training too much and I haven't let my body recover enough, I'm pushing that CO2 tolerance level down. When I think, when I do too much, I'm pushing that CO2 tolerance level down, meaning when CO2 raises, it doesn't have to raise as much in order for me to react to it, respond to it. And the first respondent of that is your breath because I have to offload that CO2 in order to feel better.

So my aerobic efficiency, capacity, threshold, whatever switches based on how well I tolerate CO2. It's also telling you what basically is going to be happening cognitively. So if I get a person, the first thing I'm doing with them most likely is a CO2 tolerance test to tell me exactly where they're at. It's a three-fold test. So, you sit down for a couple minutes or you lay down for a couple of minutes and you just do some slow control breathing that you're comfortable with, not fast, you can't hyperventilate. Then we go into a four breath pattern to where we breathe up for like three or four

seconds and then you relax, let it go for about five to seven, you know, five seconds or so. So it's a little bit longer than exhale, but let's relax, let it go. Then inhale, fourth breath, you pull it in, start the timer, the moment it hits the top of the breath and you start exhaling as long and as slow as you possibly can. So you have to control it. So there's a three-part test and it, so it tells me on the negative how well I have control of that. So there's the mechanical aspect of it, right?

Then from a physiological perspective, it tells me how well your physiology is responding to carbon dioxide. So how aerobically efficient you're going to be just calm, okay? Remember the dog walking the dog story? How well do you respond in a very simple fashion to carbon dioxide? Cognitively, so from a state perspective, in a rousal state perspective, how you react to carbon dioxide? So the panic switch, so when you're going to be reactive, how you're going to be reactive,

anybody below 20 seconds and we have a very reactive volatile environment that we need We've got to be able to do that. We've got to be able to do that. We've got to be able to do that. We've got to be able to do that. We've got to be able to do that. We've got to be able to do that. We've got to be able to do that. We've got to be able to do that. We've got to be able to do that. We've got to be able to do that.

We've got to be able to do that. We've got to be able to do that. We've got to be able to do that. We've got to be able to do that. That allows for a gap to start to occur and improvement to start to cure in the CO2 tolerance So then we start to administer some breeding protocols. Hey, let's figure out and this is why we built the state app was so that we could actually get people Some protocols to use to actually work on breath control to increase Their CO2 tolerance, but also allow them to kind of get into this more focused or calm, clear state or downshift them prior to after training or prior to bed. That was the whole point. And so we'll set protocols up for people based on where they need the most

help. How much of the breath control that we're talking about there is simple ability to avoid discomfort because someone who is in a good place who might feel like I can control this gasp reflex for longer, that will contribute a little bit. But as you've mentioned as well, the CO2, the CO2 tolerance appears to be like the master of this. Is that right? Yeah, so what's the question my refrigeration, you're bringing that back again? So how much can be trained in terms of someone's ability to breathe that is

separate to the way that their physiology is put together at that time? So is there someone who's very good at controlling their breath but still might be in this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's the interesting thing. And this is where my work really diverted because I was running around with guys like Wim Hof. I was literally pretty close with Wim Hof. And there's nothing like Wim's got a great thing. He's doing great work. There's other, like I've gone and participated and learned about Tumo, many of the, you know, yogic practices, et cetera, et cetera, holotropic, like the butteco, like there's a lot of methods out there, right?

And unfortunately, each and every one of these methods is making claims that it doesn't do in some fashion. In some fashions, they do and other fashions. This is the problem with getting caught up in and understanding our attachments to things. Thinking that we've got an answer and the answer is you, you're the answer, you're the only answer there is. It's not your breathing, your breathing is not an answer either. It's just an indicator of something. Right? And so

our ability, ability biologically is, is, is not even close to being tapped. And I, I think that be true, even with something like, you know, what happened with the heliode. But going back to this is it's, I started seeing that not everybody reacts to the same protocols in the same way. seeing that not everybody reacts to the same protocols in the same way. And so it became a, there is not a one-size-fits-all. There's a, you know, there's a more or less kind of a fingerprint, some degree. And although we can bucket people and categorize them in specific ways or, you know, things that are going on, like, hey, this guy is angry about stuff. And that guy's angry about stuff, this guy is angry about stuff, and that guy is angry about stuff, and she's angry about stuff, and she's more emotional, and he's more emotional about things,

like, meaning, depending on how you emotionally handle things, there are going to be certain patterns that are going to set certain things off and connect you to certain things. So we had to, I had to start, I was literally running around finger printing people with breath protocols because not everybody was responding the same way. And that wasn't a very viable thing for helping people. I was sure, I was helping specific people, but I was burning myself out and there's no way I was ever going to be able to do this by myself. So, build an app and build an algorithm at work with that and we understood how to do that.

So, we literally customize things to people, but then it's like, okay, well, a lot of these people like to engage in performance and they should because you should have a movement practice. Any human being that does not have a movement practice is not being a human being. We are designed to move. Now, getting neurotic about that to the degree that like I have to be this specific thing or whatever, that's where it gets crazy. But nonetheless, applying this inside of movement, the framework of movement becomes the next catalyst in how we do things. And the

base layer of that is, hey, for the first few weeks, we're going to just be nasal breathing. You can't go anything past nasal breathing. And for most people, that's such a kick in the balls that it's like, I don't want to do it. Like, my ego is not ready for that check. And you know, you take a power lift of the squats, thousand pounds, I can tell you right now, if they've not done any breath work, their CO2 tolerance is shit. That's a massive, massive carbon print. You're carrying so much lean muscle, so much muscle,

but you don't do, most of these people don't do enough of the kind of aerobic efficiency work. And that's a scary word to guys like that and gals because they think that they're scared of a row. And it's like that's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is the thing that actually makes you survive. Like aerobic metabolism is what makes you survive. So when you're resting you should be high level aerobic and yet you see these guys and gals on oxygen tanks and like breathing like that's not necessary. It's not and it's not healthy.

What's that? That's your indication. What's that due to? See, porcelot two tolerance. Okay. And that is exacerbated by people who are high mass, high muscle mass, heavy weight. It's a car, you look, look, look, what's the demand for oxygen with more muscle mass? It's up, higher.

So I need more oxygen, or because the, like, look, or like, you know, so I've got all this tissue well, when I don't have enough oxygen, or I'm not efficient enough, about four or five breaths in, you're gonna start dipping that needle more towards those anaeroplates, like more towards the demand for, the tissues demand for more glucose, more

glycogen. The nervous system and brain are stuck with glucose and glycogen. There's no if and butts about that, right? But fat is what the muscles like can use. So the more fat we're using with tissue, the better, right? And so the better we get the mitochondria functioning, the better off we are. And there's no reason why in an FL lineman and a gymnast or an endurance athlete can't all be aerobically efficient. It's just different thresholds at which point, like sure, the linemen is gonna be much more

of an anaerobic athlete, like much more high levels, you know, sprinter type explosive, you know, and so is the gymnast to some degree, is you know, pulling it back a little bit more, and then it's like, we got the intern's athlete where you're like, you know, all slow to it, right? And it's all the same thing in terms of efficiency aerobically. It's like, so if I've gotten endurance athletes

who's going out on a high level aerobic ride, but they gotta open their mouth, I can tell you right now they're not as aerobic as they could be. They might be somewhat aerobic, but they are not as aerobic as they could be, and they are not utilizing the system in a way that they could. This is literally factual things we have tested that are now going into read that have raised

some eyebrows enough to go, wow, we didn't really look at it like this. We should really be testing this. So this is what's happening. I get it. So let's take it from the top with regards to Brian's advice for good breath Why do we begin with that? What are the what are the principles for good breath? The state app was created for this like look start them do one one breath protocol

Exercise in the morning do one in the evening for sleep Play with that for a few weeks, see where it improves what you feel, what you like, what you don't. If you want to play with more, go for it, right? That's probably going to be in the vicinity of five minutes each, right? That's not hard for people who like to train. Secondarily, morning and evening, right simple if you want to do all four go for it do it like you're you're getting an A plus now The second part of this is if you're not going to the world championships or you're not competing for You know an Olympic medal or you're not like going to an A priority race within the next two months You do not or event you like, there's no reason why you can't go dedicate three to four weeks to strictly

nasal only breathing and take enough step back to actually get your physiology rewired. Across all training methodologies, whether you're doing across all training methodologies. I will have to say. I'm a carefree MMA athlete, powerlifter, CrossFit, whatever. I've done it with the CrossFit athletes. I did it with TIA. I've done it with several fucking athletes that people would never consider would be able to do something like this.

And it rearranged what was going on and gave them an ability to do things that they didn't think they could manage to do. And so it just empowered them in a level. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, how long does it take to create adaptation to something right around three weeks? I like it. I like that. Of course, everyone who is listening to StateApp will be linked in the show notes below Brian's app, which I'm pretty certain is this the first iteration or is it onto kind of like a 1.5 now? What's the app? Yes. This is the first version. There's been a couple updates on it. Yeah. Yeah. But this is the first version. There's been a couple updates on it.

But this is the first version of it. There's a lot more that's going to come into the pipeline. Once we get through the first investor stuff that we're going through, there will be some serious, serious things that are coming down that pipeline. It's already been way more successful than we ever thought it was going to be. But we also know, like, there's a lot more that we do than just doing some simple breath protocols. Like, there's high level things you can do

in order to change your physiology that could, you know, that are game-changing things. Hmm. So what happens when you breathe through your nose? Tell me. Someone's training, they're just breathing through their nose. What's happening? Why, what's the, we've talked about the different workout of the walk with the dog, the nose

open and close? What, how's that characterized? It's your biological way of staying aerobic. 500 million years ago, cells, single-cell organisms figured out how to become multicellular organisms. They said, hey, let's you and I communicate like you and I are right now. Let's talk about some things. Let's share some information so that we can pass this shit on and see that oxygen-rich environment now.

It used to be hostile. It used to be mostly carbon. It was, we had to be anaerobic and we changed energy other ways. This is where we're headed right now. This is all about energy. There's nothing else. There's nothing else. There's nothing else other than energy. All energy that's ever existed, has existed. It's how the conversion of energy is happening. We don't burn calories. That's us. We're

converting calories. We're literally taking energy, converting that energy, and then putting energy back out. Like, it's literally this cycle of, and we forget about all of this thing. And so that energy deal got made when cells learn to communicate and said, hey, let's take this oxygen and let's use this, and it's much more complex than this, but this is just the story that I like, you know, like, but it's like, hey, 500 million years ago, multicellular organisms figured out how to use oxygen after algae and algae literally figured out how to convert sunlight into energy itself and the byproduct of that was oxygen. So the earth became engulfed in this algae, All of a sudden, there's all this oxygen in the environment, then cells are like, yo, there's got to be an efficient process to this. And here's

that process. Today, 500 million years ago, aerobic metabolism sits at the forefront of the most efficient way to use energy. And so anything outside of aerobic metabolism becomes anaerobic. So if I don't have that process, that conversion of energy, I'll default very simply and we should to this higher stress situation of using energy. So anaerobic doesn't necessarily become a training process. It's more or less the byproduct of I'm no longer able to handle aerobically what's going on. So how quickly I can come back to that aerobic is literally how well I can. So having a very high aerobic capacity means I function high aerobically. So when we look at people like a guy smashing the two hour marathon,

what does he look like physiologically? And although there's like, look, to be totally on, like, look, I support, and I'm very happy for the man and everything, but realistically, if he were in the same setup as they were in 1950 or even 1980, he wouldn't have run a sub-two-hour marathon. That wouldn't have had, it's not the same marathon. It's a different marathon, even though the distances are the same. The shoes, the Pacers, the, all of these things exist, but I don't deny the fact that this man's physiology is off the hook. And the only reason I really know that is not only if I studied how he moves, but I've watched how he breathes. What's your analysis of that? He primarily breathes through his nose. Okay.

Most of his marathon is done, nose only breathing. You can find pictures all over the internet with salt marks that come down his nose and you'll see when he's running that most of the pictures are him with his mouth shut. Hmm. I didn't notice that. him with his mouth shut. Hmm. I didn't notice that. So I've watched video, yeah. Yeah, I've done video, I've, I've, I've,

videoed the video so that I could go and slow it down and look at it and watch it, you know, I've, I've painted it and there it is. And, you know, I mean, he comes from African culture, right? And, and what, what is of the African nose? Like they've got larger nostrils. Well, they've genetically there set up to do something. Like if you've ever watched a horse race,

so I watched animals, like it's like big passion. Like I'm almost neurotic about it, you know? You watch animals who don't sweat and they don't actually the only time Their mouth breathing is when they're overheating, okay? You watch animals who do sweat a horse a racing Horse they will not breathe out their mouth. They just have a bit in their mouth. They breathe through their nostrils They literally will not breathe out of their mouth. Why do we then? Because we, uh, you know, it's interesting. We have, um, done real well at progressing ourselves culturally

through comfort and convenience. And in that process, we've more or less stressed ourselves more than we actually needed to. So by that, I mean this. There was a book written in 1867, I believe, I forget the date, but George Katelyn wrote a book called Shutter Mountains Save Your Life. And he wrote this book as a historian who was a lawyer from England who came over to the states, which was basically North America and South America at the time, studied about a million and a half indigenous cultures and civilized world. He was the biggest thing he picked up on was the fact that an indigenous culture, they did not breathe through their mouth. Rarely, and when they spoke,

they spoke with intent. They did not speak too much. They meant what they said. They said what they meant. When they slept, they slept with their mouth shut, when they hunted, they hunted with their mouth shut. They did everything they could, including when children came off of the nipple, mothers would shut the mouth of the child for fear of the black mouth. Because not only was the white eye,

I called the white eye or round eye, he was called the black mouth because not only was the white eye called the white eye or round eye, he was called the black mouth. And the reason he was called the black mouth is because his mouth looked disgusting. And why would that be? Well look at what we started doing culture, look at what we started doing. I mean we're drinking more alcohol, we were sugar started to become agriculture started to kick in, all of these things of convenience started to happen, right? And here's a culture of people who play attention to nature. What is nature? Physiology? That is literally one of the definitions of physiology, is nature, origin, and thus paying attention to the feelings of nature and what's

going on. So what happens when I feel when I breathe through my mouth, right? Well, I get ramped up, I turn on, I speak. If I go speak somewhere and I talk just for an hour, I'm on. Like I feel like I'm on. If I speak for an entire day, I'm exhausted. I don't go work out, I try not to go to dinner with people afterwards. Why am I so exhausted?

I'm blowing off a ton of carbon dioxide. I'm more sympathetic dominant. I'm actually using less of the fat. So I'm not as aerobic as I could be, even though I'm still slightly aerobic. I'm not as aerobic as I could be, right? So it's learning those waves. They felt that shit, man.

They felt it shit, man. They felt it. We don't feel. We have these things in front of us, and we're getting stimulated. We've got all these kids that are going batshit crazy because they don't have recess anymore. They're told from playing. They're told what to do. They're told how they're going to learn.

Then they're given infinite possibilities on a machine to play games and keep them occupied because mom and dad don't want to deal with them. And then they've got anxiety because of this. They don't have anxiety. They've got proper stimulation from being overstimulated. They've got physiology that's run amok and they don't understand it. And this has been by and large what's going on with us, even those of us that like to train a lot.

Like, I mean, I'm on, I'm talking to you, I'm on, I need to shit when I'm done here. I mean, I'm feeling this, I feel it. So I've gotten to the point where I feel all this stuff and I'm paying attention. If my mouth opens when I'm asleep at night, I wake up. Why? Why would I wake up if my mouth opens? Based on everything I've just kind of gone over because you become more stressed Bingo I'm now slipping more into sympathetic and I'm turning myself on Okay, I understand how many of us are trying to sleep in this high sympathetic activity state, right? And I'm also not as aerobic and then oh shit, I've got sleep apnea. So now I'm holding my breath in an awkward fashion and Like I've got all like weird like what are you paying into?

Like you need medication and a fucking you need a Mass to wear at night. I've got friends who do this. And they refuse to do breath work. And I'm like, dude, it's your choice. I've got more DMs and Pete. I don't even talk about this. I don't write about this stuff publicly. Like I don't go out and go, I'm going to solve your problems. No, here, start with some breathing protocols.

Start rearranging your training. Then start feeling what's going on in your body. You're going to default to places that you can. Is it weird that George Katelyn was also in a book that I've read and I'm the only person who's caught this so far, right? Only because I've read this other book. It's a book called Empire of the Summer Moon and it is about the Comanche Indians who are arguably the most war-driven tribe of people that have almost existed. They're in comparison to the Mongols, and like, you know, a lot of the stuff that happened

then, but they were very, very gnarly. They were so gnarly that had the cult revolver not ended up in the hands of a few young white boys from Texas called Texas Rangers. They would have this world. This country would be a very different place right now. They knew how to fight off of horseback in a way that no other culture had understood. And they couldn't combat it. So shooting a rifle with one shot was no good, right? They couldn't combat it. So shooting a rifle with one shot was no good, right? And so this book was written and there was a guy around there was a number of historians that were there That were interviewed and one of those historians throughout this book that was written about was George K. One and

So there's this guy that's there and the biggest thing he picked up on was that the people who were of the earth that were literally living on the earth, that were living in planes, that everybody feared to cross because they had no idea how to navigate. They had no idea how to do things. And there was this murderous culture of people who did not want them near anything, including other tribes, like other tribes feared the Comanche, right? Like they were feared.

And it's a fantastic read, but the fact of the matter is, is I'm able to now connect through reading physiology and then reading about literally, hey, George Katelyn wrote this book in the sixth in 1800s about this holy crap. There it is. What is history?

It's literally telling us what's going on. There's lessons to be learned about all this stuff and what people were doing. You think a Comanche Indian who knew how to navigate the land could get on his horse and ride for three or four days straight with no food basically or limited food supply and water supply. What do you think the physiology of a human being like that is?

Like literally could survive in freezing cold temperatures, navigate land and storms. Like where do you think we're at culturally right now? We're worried about squatting a thousand pounds and running a two hour marathon. I don't think we're anywhere close to what our biological potential is. I think we missed the boat. I think we're confused. I think we think that technology is this great thing that's going to get us into the future and it's not.

It's just going to lead us right back to our own biology and going, shit, we're mimicking all this technology after stuff we internally are able to do. It's why I asked you, what would you, what, what, what, what I asked you, how do you control your heart rate and how do you feel that? Well, I'd have to be calm for a minute and then I could really pick up on it. Yeah. Well, guess what? You can feel that at any moment you want. Just got to spend the time to get back to that. I understand.

Yeah, it's interesting what you said there about when you spend a whole day talking. Right? So I do coaching course Yes, I coach a sales company in Germany and every time I'm done let's say it's maybe three hours And I've been talking to these guys and it's a conversation it's at least 50 50 between me and them. It's not all me But once I'm finished. Let's say I've done three hours four hours of talking a little bit of water in between a little bit of chill or whatever After I've done that I I'm absolutely gassed. That once I'm done, I'm like, I'm really tired. And I wasn't really too sure.

I thought, well, maybe it's because cognitively, it's quite demanding. I'm trying to link these things together. It's because I'm really putting myself into the person I'm speaking to or whatever it might be. And your suggestion here is that one of the principal reasons for this is going to be that I'm just inhaling and exhaling quite a bit of air, quite a lot. Well, you're breath, yeah, yeah, you're on, right? And so you're getting stimulated, but

you're getting a stimulation that you're automatically, like you're falling into autopilot on because you're talking, I'm talking, right? So I'm ramping myself up not only my ramp myself up and getting into what I'm doing I'm getting focused and I'm being engaged with you, but the byproduct of that becomes my breath my breath is the instant reaction to that It's it's the first respondent. There's only two two things we can do in order to regulate or stimulate autonomic control. Consciously. That is our breath and our vision. So I can choose not

to look at you right now and I can look at the end of the room and I can go into peripheral vision and I can downshift myself. I can go outside and look at the fucking, look at nature, look at trees, right? How many people freak out looking at a sunset none of them why because it's math no it's beautiful yeah beautiful is there but that's not math math is the algorithm that enters the light waves that enter your eyes and open you up to go, womp, and it drops you into parasympathetic. It's interesting. We've got so many tools and things going on that we don't know about.

Like, later, man, I was just the Cleveland Clinic. I was an open heart surgery with them, with a team there and they were like, what do you think you could help with? And it's like, simple, man, control your breathing and control your vision when you need to. When you need to make a better decision

or something fucking the shit hits the fan, like it's time to do that. That's human performance. That's human performance and it's finest in trying to help somebody's life be saved. You know, like why'd that person get there as another another story that we could be dovetailing back towards. Hey, why we move

and what we love about human performance, but that's human performance for me. Like human performance is literally getting to the core of why, you know, people doing everyday stuff, right? Like that's human performance. And I think we're alluding ourselves into thinking that we understand something by, you know, like what's a 500 pound deadlift do for me? These are things I had to ask myself, right? Like this isn't, I'm not asking this to be you. I am I had to ask this to myself. What's a 500 pound deadlift? Because I've had a 500 pound deadlift, right? And it's like I was not able to connect the dots on what that meant. I don't know that that made it better for me to survive. Getting up off the

couch or picking shit up off the floor. I don't know that 500 pounds is necessary for that. Like what's running 100 miles doing for me? It was a fucking amazing experience, spiritual experience. But what was it doing for me, right? And like, where was I at? And so what, why, you know, do I need to actually run a hundred miles? No, but will I, I mean, sure, I did a couple times, but, you know, like, it's just, like, I've done these things and I'm like, so what's the point of this? Is this, oh, I'm now clinging to this thing, thinking it's the thing. And there we go. Now the mind, now, now let's look at the neuroscience. Let's

really start looking at the down, up, how everything's compiling and what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. So when I ask people like, what do you want? Because they've come to me. I literally have a call after this with our mentorship program and I've already had two today. And it's, what do you want? And I'm pretty quick to understand that they don't know what they want even though they're telling me what they want. And so it's usually like tell me what you want. I'll show you a liar. Because we're just not ready, really, really, ready to let go of all these ideas that we have. And it's not that you can't go deadlift a thousand pound or whatever know whatever you can't squat a thousand deadlift 500 go run a hundred miles like these are just extreme versions of them right I don't need to go dive with great white sharks but I did

and I got that experience and it taught me some profound lessons man profound but if I'm actually in the moment and understanding what's going on in this very moment, how I'm operating and what I feel, then I'm moving back more towards what that command you was doing. I'm actually getting in tune with the vibration of how everything works and why when I go, why, you know, I went on a run earlier, what I'm trying to accomplish with that run and understand about that run. Where is it that on this hill that I'm climbing right now that I have that I feel like I need to make this switch and how like how cook do I feel and where is that at and what can I do in order

to improve that so that like hey this this improves my day and it doesn't ruin my day, right? That's what I'm taught you know this is where we start to my reactions to what I'm doing in training. My reactions to what I'm doing throughout my day are the same thing. But I'm just getting people closer to what that actually is. And that's what we've been doing with the art of breath. It's really just, like people come in there and like this gal this weekend who showed up at Rob Seminar, she was like, she's a CrossFit Games

athlete. And you know, she identified as a CrossFit Games athlete. I love that. I just love somebody comes in. I'm like a professional athlete. I'm a cross with games athlete. I love that like I just love somebody comes in I'm like a professional athlete. I'm a professional cross-fitter. It's like wow, okay I get it. I know where you're at You know, we're doing all this work and stuff and there's a high-pox Except where you do farmer carries with with kettlebells, right?

So like you'll do some burpees and then you go and you we have people grab the Kettlebells and then they dump their air and they have to walk as far as they can't Down and back, okay? Yep, just found it. It's in it Yeah, and so everybody like this chick just takes off running man like she's trying to win it, you know and One of our coaches Danny Eager who phenomenal, and he runs CrossFit Kingfield out in Minnesota.

And he's like, he watches this and then he sees a bunch of guys. So there's a lot of people there in the warfare community. So there's a lot of dudes and people who are like, want to win, right? It's like, what are you trying to win? So Danny stopped it and he goes, hey, if you think we brought you here to actually see how long you could hold your breath while farmer walking, kettlebells, you don't understand why you're here. You don't understand what we're doing.

What is it you're feeling when you're holding your breath and walking these things? What's, if you're trying to win the farmer carry, holding your breath, what is it you're winning here? There is no reward. We're here to experience something and understand what this thing can do and teach us. Well, I thought I was gonna be able to carry those kettlebells a lot further, or I thought

I was only going to be able to carry them a few steps and I went further than I did. Awesome. Now we're starting to get somewhere. Versus, oh, I got to win this. Like, win what? What are we winning? That's called ego. And you just removed yourself from understanding

all purpose of training. All training at the foundation of training is to make better decisions under stress. Carbon dioxide is the metabolic stress messenger of the human body. Done deal. I love it. I love it. Brian, today's been fantastic. I really appreciate you coming on. Anyone who wants to check out some more of your work, where should they head? We've talked

about art of breath. How does that relate to the state app? Is the state app a part of that? No. Doesn't separate. Now, state apps, a bit different, the state app state apps separate you know a lot of the stuff with the business is gonna change real soon In fact the whole name everything's gonna change we're changing that so it'll all kind of fit and be seamless So it makes more sense to the world That being said the art of breath is a component of what we teach within side of power speed endurance It's a performance-based seminar. There's a 101 that we teach around the world, but we also have it online,

so that can be found on PowerSpeed and Durance. The state app is, you can find each app, whether it's Android or iOS, on shiftstate.io. Anything about me, or if you wanna get in contact with me, or whatever can be found on brimakenzie.com, I owe anything about me or if you want to get in contact with me or you know whatever can be found on brinemecensy.com or you can go through Power Speed and Currents. Amazing. I have to say it was a listener who recommended that I check out the state app and get

in touch with yourself. And I think I've found the new thing that I'm going to add into my morning and evening routine. I've been looking for what it's going to be. I've stopped doing a ROMWOD for the time being and I do miss some of the breath control. I miss that parasympathetic activation. I'm still doing my meditation on a morning. I'm reading. I'm doing other bits and pieces. Stuma Gills Big Three, but I'm not feeling myself in the body quite so much with that. It's very visceral.

It's very kind of transactional that I'm doing it for the return on what I know it needs to do to my spine health. And I think the next, I think the between now and Christmas, it'll be me doing that, so I'll report back, I'll keep you updated, and I'll let you know. Please do, please do. Yeah, look at it, like I would do the either feel alert or be present protocol. If you're if you're still doing your meditation in the morning

Do the breathing beforehand. There's a reason why breathing is at the foundation of every meditative practice That's interesting. So you'd say for a lot of people that are listening Maybe we'll have a meditative practice in the morning routine You'd say do the breath work before that and then then how how'd you program that in an evening? If you have an active sitting, yeah, if you have an active sitting meditative practice, just be clear that if you want that brought up to the next level, add breathing before that. If you want to really brought up to the next level, use the state app so that you can fingerprint your rhythms

that work with you. So your apps are going to be different than mine based on how you actually handle carbon dioxide and how you handle emotional stress. So that can give you a ramp in. I can't tell you how many people who come to me who are like, I can't meditate. I don't have the patience. I don't have this. I don't have that.

You're already there, but it's like, I show them breathing and the fact is, is breathing is, controlled breathing is meditation. Literally. You'll get there, it just give it some time, right? So use that beforehand. In the evening, anything less than two hours before you go to bed. Okay? Using the spall asleep protocol. anything less than two hours before you go to bed. Okay.

Using the smallest sleep protocol. That'll down shift you and change the sleep. You should probably see some increases definitely in deep sleep, but also potentially in the RAM cycle. Fantastic. I've also got my new Wootband coming as the last one is lapsed. So I'll actually be able to track that and see if that's making any difference as well, which would be interesting. But Brian, today's been absolutely awesome. To the people that are listening, you already know what to do. The links to everything that we've spoken about, the state app, shiftstate.io,

power speed endurance and Brian's website will be linked in the show notes below. Go hassle him online if you need to get some more info out of him. But Brian, it's been fantastic, man, I'm really looking forward to getting into my breath work. Right on, Chris. Thanks for having me, man. you