Modern Wisdom - #160 - Michael Blevins - A Conversation Not About Fitness

Episode Date: April 16, 2020

Michael Blevins is a coach, podcaster and part of the team who trained some of Hollywood's biggest stars for screen. Expect to learn why exercising is where we connect most closely with what it means to be human, how the modern obsession with training can be damaging mentally and physically. We talk about metaphysics, psychedelics, finding meaning & purpose in life... and not really at all about fitness. Check out everything I use from The Protein Works and get 35% OFF SITE WIDE with the code MODERN35 - https://www.theproteinworks.com/modernwisdom/ Extra Stuff: Check out Michael's Website - https://www.nonprophet.media/ Follow Michael on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/gritandteeth Take a break from alcohol and upgrade your life - https://6monthssober.com/podcast Check out everything I recommend from books to products - 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

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Modern Wisdom. My guest today is Michael Blevinz, one of the big dogs behind non-profit. He is also part of the team who has trained some of Hollywood's biggest actors to get them into shape, including Jason Memoa, Henry Cavill and the cast of 300. So if you were hoping for a conversation about what's the best exercise to get big biceps or how can I grow my calves, I'm afraid you might be a little bit disappointed because me and Michael talk about everything to do with the fitness industry except for fitness. So, exactly how are modern gyms not contributing to our sense of well-being, how

is fitness training in some of its current manifestations, potentially really damaging to people's both mental and physical health. We get into metaphysics, we talk about philosophy, it's a bit, it was not what I expected but something that I wholly enjoyed. If you are feeling like going deep today and having some very symbolic thoughts about the world around us then you're in luck. But for now please welcome a conversation not about fitness with Michael Blevin's. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. Michael Blevin's in the building. How are you doing, man? I'm good, man. Thanks for having me, Chris.

I appreciate it. Really happy to have you on. We've got one of our mutual friends out with you at the moment, right? We do, LED. Yeah, Elisaurus. Yeah. All the way from Newcastle to where are you?

Where are you based? I'm in Salt Lake City, Utah. Cool. Yeah. So, which is a strange place to visit, I guess, if you're in your opinion, you're thinking about coming to the States. It's not generally the destination that you're thinking of. It's usually East Coast, West Coast.

The middle area admittedly is not that interesting, but Salt Lake seems to be kind of a sweet spot. Yeah. Like it. Yeah, it just seems to be, I don't know what it is about it. It's pretty here. It's high desert, you know, high altitude. They're skiing. If you're into that, there's a lot of outdoors. You're three minutes away from like Red Rock Desert. So it's pretty good. Yeah, it's good. Eladies, Eladies are a little bit of a wanderlustra, isn't she? So I'm not surprised that she's ended up on your on your doorstep. So how would you describe your approach to fitness?

Ooh, I tend to run away from it, but I have to kind of asterisk that I run away from the fitness industry. Fitness, I think, is really important because it's kind of our last attachment to what it is to be human, right? Like before we become also technologically advanced that we have robots throwing food down our throat and all entertainment is LED screen and all senses are sensed through some other machine. I think it's kind of the expression of being in your body, your mind, it's kind of the expression of being in your body, your mind, it's kind of the

combination of maybe, I don't know, you know, how weird you want to get, but it's kind of like a spiritual experience when you express it appropriately. And I think my approach to fitness is providing that experience for people, providing like the idea that this is an all-encompassing philosophy that influences other parts of your life. Isn't it interesting that a lot of people use video games, social media, etc, etc, as a escape from reality in quotation marks? And now you're offering people an escape to reality with fitness. That's a really good way to put it. I would say, and I would kind of bookmark that for a really deep conversation about what it is to actually sense something.

We are here. This is the deep conversation, Michael. Let's fall down the rabbit hole, my friend. All right, so there's something to this experience and how I frame this for people because people are very, I don't know how to put it because I don't want to, people's initial belief is that what I see, what I hear, what I feel is reality, right? But in reality, that's not, that's not it at all. So what I sense is an interpretation of certain signals, wavelengths, patterns, particles that my brain

brings translates for something that I can make sense of. So the color is green, but that's just a wavelength spectrum. In reality, what is that? What does that actually exist? Or are we already in a sort of virtual reality? And by putting on virtual reality through our reality, we're just devolving into one level of abstraction. So how I first like to think about it, and this is a nightmare situation.

This is like, this is claustrophobia inducing. And I like to say, you know, imagine that you yourself, your body with all your senses were locked into a 12 by 12 by 12 by 12 box. And it was completely dark. There is no light. But the outside world exists around it. How long do you think it would take you before you start trying to interpret what's going on around? You hear a car pass, so the echoes and the ricochets of sound, you start to echolocate, and eventually, actually very quickly, your body through an act of synesthesia would start echolocating,

and you would start getting visual perception of what's outside of your black box. And this is what happens with people that learn how to echolocate after being blinded or something like that. They can actually navigate a three-dimensional world based off of sound and ricochets and noises because they have taught their brain to reinterpret their own reality. So it becomes kind of a sonar thing. And every human has a capacity to do this. In the same sense, if you are missing something, whatever tastes, hearing, the senses take over

and you'll make a map of the world. Like our reality is whatever the map we make of the world, but the map is not the territory. So the best way I'd like to put this is like, actually that black room, that is reality. You were already that your brain is in a blacked out container and all it's doing is interpreting the world around it. And sometimes you get that wrong.

Have you looked at David White's work? I have not. Right. So, you are describing what David White has arrived at. So, anyone that wants to find out a little bit more about this stuff, just search David White on making sense by Sam Harris, it is episode 184, which came out earlier this year. Is this the author of the case against reality? Yes.

Okay, so I am familiar with this work. Yeah, so what he's saying is real serious manifestation of what you're talking about. The world, as we see it, could be completely different. And he thinks it is likely to be really different, but because we have to survive, we've managed to interpret it in a way that allows us to survive. So I get that. I like that approach. I think it's interesting. Yeah, and is it useful? It's always like that question. That's the good. That's what I was

about to bring you back to. So we got, okay, we've got fitness. We've got this bringing back to reality. What is reality? All this stuff. But at the end of the day, what does it matter if what we see is a true representation of what is out there when we don't have any other way than the way that we do have to see that? So I totally agree the utility of it for me, and through fitness specifically, comes when I say, all of these are just representations of reality, but how good you are at interpreting that has to do with your sensitivity.

So the more sensitive I am with faulty tools, admittedly, like my eyesight's faulty, my memory is faulty, my taste, my touch, my hearing, I literally ran past somebody the other day and I thought they called me an asshole. And I was like, what did you say? And they're like, oh, I said I'm sorry. And I was like, shit.

Why did you get a fault to that? That's, I've thought a lot about that. I was like, because- What about people calling you an asshole? Is your running past? Well, because I think in my model of the world, I've built a model where the majority of people I run into are not worth knowing, and I don't give them the benefit of the doubt. I'm actually on the negative side of it.

And it's something I've had to really work after to really correct that thinking because I want to become more sensitive to other people. So I've started this drill because I realized, you know, when driving in traffic, if somebody cuts you off, you're like, ah, burn, flip that person off, give him whatever ruins. You're kind of like, oh, people are so stupid. And in reality, that's not true. People are not stupid.

Human beings are highly intelligent. They just sometimes lack attention towards my personal well-being, which makes me think,ard or Tourer thinks about that person. But if I remap the situation that they didn't cut me off because they're against me, that goes towards whatever razor it is, I can't remember, but the thought is it- Do not attribute to my list that, which can be attributed to stupidity. Exactly.

So, if I go back to that model and I go, okay, first to tribute a mildest thought which can be a tribute to stupidity. Exactly. Yeah. So if I go back to that model and I go, okay, first to tribute a different thing, they cut me off because they're in a hurry, right? They're late for something. What if that lateness was, their daughter was in the hospital and this is like a drill that a lot of people do. And then now suddenly they come here,

now I wanna get out of the way and help that person out. And so it re-models the world. So I wanna become more sensitive to those interactions Suddenly, now I want to get out of the way and help that person out. So it re-models the world. I want to become more sensitive to those interactions. Fitness is just a way to become more sensitive to the world around you, because you become more sensitive to your output input, what the environment I'm in, my heart is racing, the weight is heavy. I don't want to do the activity. My brain is working against me.

All of these conversations and inputs and outputs, I have to start to manage. And that's something that we don't practice. So we lose our sensitivity with the, you know, the model of the world that we're viewing. And I think the more you get it to fitness, the more sensitive you are to reality. Why is fitness the answer to that?

Why can't I do it through something else? What's so special about fitness? Most of the glasses that I see through, so I'm applying my bias through most people, it could be if I was speaking to an artist, they might say, well, it's obviously art that's the thing to do this. Person, I'm going to, so I'm going to steal my own argument here, your argument. I would say that the visceral feelings that you get, especially when you do high output fitness, but then again, I can go on the other side of that and say Pilates, yoga, especially in yoga, slow things that

essentially is just mindful stretching. There's some very, very present states that you get into there, but there's no hiding being a hundred and eighty BPM heart rate, right? There's some very very present states that you get into there, but there's no hiding being a hundred and eighty BPM Heart rate, right? There is there's nowhere to hide. There's nowhere to hide when you're picking up anything over 70% of your max on a deadlift. There's you know that it's happening. It brings you into the present and I did a podcast with Paul Bloom Psychologist from philosophy University of Yale Beast absolute beast. And his new book is talking about why people like pain. So how pain and meditation, basically,

what is the similarity between BDSM and meditation? What do they have in common? And there's this quote from a really famous dominatrix that said, nothing catches attention like a whip. And the point is the reason that people do these extreme sporting events, based jumping, that flying squirrel thing, I don't know what that is. The reason that they do all of that stuff is because you use the line between you and death is so fine. And so at the forefront of your experience, you can do nothing but think, put all of you

into that particular experience. And I wonder how much of these, you know, as you talk in these sort of almost allegorical, symbolic ways about your fitness, I wonder how much of that experience is you bringing yourself into the present, making it a meditative experience because there's no way to hide? Well, a lot of it, yes, is presence. And I find, you know, maybe the easiest, most tangible way to feel that is through fitness. But you're right, there are other ways. Like art is a great example. But I think art is the outcome of the others. Like, if I'm present and I practice and of the others. Like if I'm present and I practice and I feel hardship and pain and I translate that into an experience and I want other people to relate that experience I create art. And a lot of the times where there's effort and time comes art. And so music runs out

with you. No one in musicians like how they create music is just a huge mystery, but a lot of it has to do with how their experience has informed them. And a lot of that is painful experience. The tough thing is like, what is the difference between dealing with pain, learning to develop pain tolerance and masochism. Like, it's a fine line. And a lot of the time, especially, I think in CrossFit, people cross

that line and then they get lost because they become addicted to the feelings that tolerating pain come with, the release of endorphins, this like, you know, community-based sweat angeling is what I would call it. It're addicted to the outcome and they forget to get sensitive with the actual output. One thing there is it's using a sledgehammer where a small stone hammer might do, right? You know, there's very, again, what did I say? You can't hide away from 180 BPM heart rate. There's no way to go. You know it's happening, you feel it, you know this place, and it's the same place every time.

It's like getting drunk. But you going and drilling for you guys would be in pounds, so like 100 pound deadlift, 10-po deadlift, that's not taking you to a place. You're forcing your attention into the movement, you're drilling the movement. You know, for people that are listening that aren't sort of fitnesty, think about anything that you have to do a lot. You know, like even changing a baby, you know, a spending time with a baby rocking a baby to sleep, you can

choose to do it with or without presence, with or without mindfulness, you can be in that situation fully, or you can be away. And I think people can take that extreme, that top, top end, real pushing pushing, and that is an easy way, that's the, that's the whip, right? That's nothing catches attention like a whip, that's the whip, right? That's nothing that catches attention like a whip. That is the whip. Yeah, and I'll grade this on kind of a curve because there is, there's stuff that demands attention

at the very top of intensity. And you kind of, you decide, you described squirrel suit flying and some base jumping. And there was this, there's a documentary called Valley Uprising. I don't know if you've seen it. It's on Netflix. It's one of the best documentaries I've seen. And it's basically about the culture, growth, and yosemite national parkway climbing came under the scene. So it starts with all the great climbers and how they develop these

roots. And it kind of gets to a guy, interviews a dean potter, and he's dead now. He died from, I believe, a base jumping accident, something related to that. But he was an extreme free solo climber, one of the bets, and people kind of saw where he was headed with it. And so people attribute that, oh, he is just, he's just a, what do you call it, an adrenaline junkie. That's generally what gets said about some of these people is that they're just seeking a hit, they're junkies, right? But how he described it was how I describe anything that requires presence, which he's trying to touch avoid.

So he was specifically talking about like tight-rope walking. And he'll walk, you know, freely up thousands of feet where any mistake is certain death, like any slip, and even like certain things, certain inputs that aren't up to you, the wind direction can shift. Anything could switch you off, and that danger allows him to be totally present in a appreciative of his life. It's actually the opposite of what most people attribute to adrenaline junkies, which is I am risking this on this knife edge because actually it allows me to feel life at this intensity that I can't get doing anything else. But I back that

out into, you know, let's call that the sacred space where everything is so, like, I don't know if you've ever been to any kind of ceremonial happenings, but they create a space and they clean it and they clear it and everything is precise. Ritualistic. Ritual, right. Like, you know, they smudge and they call in directions and they do all these, you know these very ancient and cultural traditions and the ideas that they're creating a container that they can create sacredness inside

a profane world. There's a really good book called The Sacred of the Profane that kind of describes how almost all human cultures have this idea of sacred and profane. And the interesting part about fitness is that we've kind of lost that. That's why I kind of go against the industry so much because we've created nothing sacred inside this practice that I think is really sacred, which is intuitively teaching you about your own psychology, your own physicality, your own capability, and eventually your own spirituality. But our gyms have become psychology, your own physicality, your own capability, and eventually your own spirituality. But our gyms have become, for lack of a better term, like masturbation pots.

Like they're just people going to the gym and looking at themselves and either being just like shaming themselves or admiring themselves in a narcissistic way. And fitness in the industry is purely aesthetic. Like we talk about functionality, right? Like, crossfitters are talking about, oh, it's form and function and it's functional because I lift a heavy weight quickly and look how athletic I am,

but in reality, if you've ever dealt with Crossfit athletes, 99% of them are dieting before a competition so that they get more camera time. Like, it is still the same aesthetic problem. There's very few Maybe at the top where they put aesthetics aside for performance, which is the expression that we're talking about But on this sacred profane thing Once I come down to the bottom of the curve where I think that it's not sacred. It's not profane That's actually still sacred which is mining practice, it's very boring. So where I think the most development comes in is actually some of the monotony,

like finding, you know, sitting and thinking becomes the most painful or sitting and not thinking rather becomes one of the most painful experiences somebody could have because their brain is all over the place. So in the fitness world that we're trying to create, we had to kind of start over. And we constantly start over. We deconstruct what works, and then we recreate what we think is better. And so we're constantly breaking this space down and rebuilding it into something that can transform people. And one of the simplest ideas that allowed that to happen is we got rid of the name for our physical space.

So there is no name. Like we have a brand that we sell stuff through because we have to file taxes called non-profit, but the space is just called the space. And one of the reasons to do that is that way, when people have powerful experiences here, in a container that we've made sacred, they can't talk about it, right? It's not, you know,

hashtag blessed and hashtag got in my, you know, whatever, I'm gonna flex show my abs and then say something inspirational like Gandhi, you know, like, I don't, it's become, I guess, perverse, in a way. And what we wanted to do is rewrite that. So this space is sacred.

People can have experiences. And they can talk about the experiences, but they can't talk about the spot that really illuminated that, by not having a name. Instead, it's a green building warehouse on Nightsouth across from a skirt club. And people go, what are you talking about? And so no one can find their way here

unless they really seek it out. And I think that was the biggest difference that we made is that we don't advertise, we don't try to push what we're doing because if people want to find the thing, they'll do some really hard work, which means that takes away you know me having to convince them that fitness is an important thing, or convince them that hard work is important. What would you say to someone that said all that that is is another marketing ploy that's triggering off different signals? So some gyms are super out there. They've got the guys with the

tans and the white teeth and then other gyms are we're functional and we've got the fittest athlete or we've got the biggest athlete or we've got the this. And someone could say, well, that's just another that's just Michael being another step ahead of the curve there and thinking, well, if I make anti-marketing, my marketing, then the marketing will work even better because it sets you apart. To some point, that is true. There's a gorilla aspect to this, but I would probably reply, like, well, then we would probably have more than seven clients.

But if it was like a marketing scheme to keep people into this place, but in reality There's seven people that are basically allowed on a daily basis to come in and train here Other days we might allow a few other guests and whatnot to come train on days that we're training But on transformational projects when we take somebody from A to B we limit it It's very private here and I mean Yeah, I would say if the anti-marketing was working, we would actually be making money off it, but we don't, instead, to support this entire space, we have to create material such as books and things to read and all of these things in order to

Support the work that we're doing that then informs the other material that we're writing. It is a terrible business model It's we joke about it often it's like we're really bad at business business. Okay, so I walk into your space for some somehow I've got on the guest list. Someone's got led. He's got me in VIP or whatever it is. And I managed to really disappointed if you think your VIP. You know what I mean, right? The door. The door man hasn't stopped me at the door before he started to shift at the strip club across the street. And I've, I've, I've got in what happens. What's it like? Tell me about the space is people listening who will know

the heritage that you guys have through Jim Jones and all that sort of stuff? Like what, you know, what happens? I walk in. What's it like? One of the things that we got right at Jim Jones was having an inside and an outside. In here, stuff happens out there, other stuff happens. And so that was the start of understanding a sacred space.

And some of the things that we messed up were obvious to us, but, you know, we let too many people. But in reality, when people come in here and they're having this experience, it starts with a lot of conversations. And this is why, sorry, I mean, not to use these terms because it's involved, but it's not what we do is not scalable. Like, there's never going to be a day where I'm like, cool, what we did worked really well because we know it works really well. That's where we're going to start.

That's where we're going to start. That's where we're going to start. That's where we're going to start. That's where we're going to start. That's where we're going to start. That's where we're going to start. That's where we're going to start. That's where we're going to start. Let's like, hey, let's like duplicate me. That's quadruple me. Let's just fill up the space. We've got 5,000 square feet. Let's open up another one down the street, which is like orange theories or CrossFit gyms down the street. There's no formula for this. So when people come on and it's really off putting it first, because for a month, I am just asking

questions. That's all I do. I ask questions. I show them a couple things. I might have them move around a little bit to get a better idea. I ask them about their work life. We have conversations about their past, their history, their traumas, their injuries, all of these things. And after about a month, people start going like,

hey, how much is this place? Because I haven't charged anything. So the first month, I actually do diligence to see if I can actually make it work. The reason we're so successful is because I don't work with people that I don't think I can win with. Like we can both win. If it's not a win-win situation, I don't want anything to do with it. And it takes me about a month to assess that out, to understand their home life, to understand their background, to understand their motivation. And then we just start the process.

It becomes very one-on-one, but sometimes incorporating groups when they need it. So the idea here that's different than most gyms is when you go and do a gym, like a cross-fit box, they have a program, it's the best programming in the world, by the way. It's like this master, elite, wait, lifter, Navy SEAL wrote it, and he's been to the games 19 times in five years, and that program is supposed to be for everybody, because it's the best in the world. It's a super secret squirrel program, and if you come to this gym, you get to do that with everybody that's a super secret squirrel.

And, you know, that's intelligent programming. Look, and it's written two years in advance. Like, it's written like, you know, a doctorate. You're just like, your whole next four years of your life are planned. You're back squatting in 2024 on a Tuesday at 85%. And instead, when people come in, I look at them on the day and decide what they need to do. Now, that sounds like it's a last-minute approach. What we're doing is an intuitive approach to a structure that I've broken down. So when somebody comes in after about a month of analyzing, I go back and I work out in order to get to X on this day, they're going to need this kind of stimulus.

It might be three endurance sessions a week, two strength sessions, one body flow session, two body work sessions where they're actually getting recovery work. I try to plan out everything and then dose it like, okay, if they're dieting and Aaron is running their nutrition and cooking for them, then I'm talking to her in order to slowly break down calorie restriction so they don't ever feel it or increase macros in a certain area so they can handle certain adaptations. And then on the day, I have kind of an idea of what needs to get done. You know, during the week, I need these three sessions.

And if this day they walk in, I look in their eyes and they didn't sleep well. Well, there goes the high intensity section, right? Like, that's the last thing I want to do to somebody is beat them down so that it's harder to come back. Our model now, as opposed to what we were doing at Jim Jones, which was to literally just fuck people up. Like that, that's all we were doing. It was like really hard work.

So people were shocked by all the work that we were doing. And we became adapted to this heavy workload and we could tolerate it. So then we'd give it to other people. They would break down and we were just laugh like, ah, see, you're missing something in your fitness. And that's what most trainers and coaches do when you come in to see them. They want to make you hurt to show them how much you're missing of their knowledge or their expertise. So it's used that pain, I think, often gets used in fitness as a proxy for secret or hard work.

But I mean, like I can write a workout for someone now, I'm not a programmer, I've not got my CrossFit level one, I can write a program for someone now that's impossible to do. And it's hard work. That doesn't mean that I have some super secret squirrel knowledge, right? fit level one, I can write a program for someone now that's impossible to do. And it's hard work. That doesn't mean that I have some super secret squirrel knowledge, right? Right.

So I'll out minute on the air down every five minutes for an hour. Yeah. It's like, yeah, I can make anybody hurt. And that's a tool. But in reality, and if you follow Paul Gloom and some of like Daniel Connament and a lot of these people that are really delving into the Syke and behavioral patterns of people we find that pain tolerance doesn't come from beat downs It comes from so slow

Accumulated ability, right? Like I tolerated this much. I lived cool It wasn't that bad and then I come back and I do a little bit more. You look at an elite endurance athlete, like somebody like Rebecca Rush, she's a perfect example. World champion mountain biker, one left all a couple of times in a row. She's a rapper athlete.

She's known as the queen of pain. Like that is her fucking nickname. That's about us. She doesn't go and beat herself down every day. She actually goes and beat herself down every day. She actually goes and enjoys herself in a natural environment, on a bike, being physical in the way that she loves to express it. And then on the day, all this accumulated tolerance gets put towards one competition.

And of course, she's going to slay everybody. She hasn't had to tap into the heart lock every day in order to get a amount of all you that's required for a professional stuff. Perfect example of that. Elliot Kipcholge never, never trains above 80%. Ever. Fastest man on the planet, fastest man on the planet over 26 miles, never trains people of 80%

because he's got it in the tank. Now, I wonder how much of that, how much of their particular physiology has that extra 20% in there, you know, like to raise that ceiling, it takes a super, a super physiology to have that in the tank. We were talking, I was talking at Steve Forcer from CrossFit. Yes, see you the other day.

And he was talking about how the best athlete will qualify for a local competition or whatever it is by only giving 80%, which means they can go back to training. And I was like, yes, but that's only if your 80% is good enough to be as good as everybody else is 100% or else you have qualified, right? So I think that's a really interesting point. Like, how do people continue to improve, continue to get themselves better without, like you say, just force feeding themselves with this pain and and and using pain as a proxy for hard work?

So this is where the boredom in monotony pays off. Like there's something structurally that changes in the brain within us boredom. And it like, if you've ever read a book called Endure, we have an offer at Lanslop. Alex Hutchinson. Oh, endurance by Alex Hutchinson. Yes, even a monster. What a guy.

We had him on the podcast after we read his book, mostly because he wrote about Mark and then never consulted Mark. So Mark has the thing is like, hey, we're gonna have a conversation. And it went well because we agree on a lot of the same techniques and a lot of the phenomena that's behind building great endurance has to do with the brain.

And fitness in general, and this is where I said, there's something in there in his book, and we've noticed it is that if it's not boring, it's not working for endurance. But there's this ability, and maybe I'll phrase this on a bigger spectrum for which we work, because we work in general fitness and capacity, GPP. General physical preparedness means that we want to be capable in each of the designated energy systems as we know them. So we've redefined a lot of them, but as they go, strength, maybe it's called power endurance for some people, maybe it's called for us, it's capacity, maybe it's MetCon, whatever,

it's like this 90 minute thing. And then there's endurance, and then there's culture endurance. And in between, or fettered with really ridiculous terms, like speed endurance, who the hell knows what that means. And then there's strength endurance, which is just another way to describe it. So if we're at the three rep mics, call it a three rep mics. I wish it was this,

but we've basically bastardized our terminology, but we do address, okay, this is the systems. But we chart on top of that. One of the things that I think that we're most well known for is taking stuff like the physiology and mapping on a psychological map as well as a philosophical map on top of that, like overlays.

If you imagine you had a bunch of those, forget what they call them, where they have a projector, those clear screens or whatever. And you can kind of lay them and they should all line up. And one of the ones that we've reached psychologically is that each thing takes a different temperament. So strength is on a very sympathetic fight flight.

That's the energy system. It's ATP, it's protein phosphate. It's just immediate go to the presence itself preservation. Like, if you've ever lifted anything really heavy, when it's getting shaky leg and you're starting to do like, you know, a little bit of palsy at the top, just pass the name, you're trying to struggle to get that up, your immediate feedback is let go because you could hurt yourself. Self preservation is an immediate task for that.

So ultimately, we find with most athletes that are in that channel, they're very self-involved, actually. And not as not to say that as a pejorative, it just means that in order to get good at their sport, they have to be present inside their self. And their self has to be the existing thing that is most important. But to an extreme point, that sympathetic state becomes narcissism, right? All importance. And you see it, when somebody like polls a super heavy deadlift and like, you know, he's thumping his chest, it's not an ego maniacal, but it's a very ego presence that that person is the most of he did it. He is the champion. And then on the opposite side, we have ultra endurance,

which runs into the multi-day, and even you can see this after a couple of hours, you'll see, you know, a kick-chog, or like, by any of these runners, they cross the finish line, and they're in tears. They're breaking down, they lost their sense of self. And that's because we find endurance happens in a parasympathetic state, which is loss of self,

loss of ego. If you've ever messed with psychedelics, it's ego death, which is a deep parasympathetic state, which is loss of self, loss of ego. If you've ever messed with psychedelics, it's ego death, which is a deep parasympathetic state, or you could do breathing drills to get you there. Pranayama, breath of fire, all of these things reinforce a state where I have lost my sense of self. I've separated it from my body and I've become one with the universe or whatever you want to describe it as. And so as we map these things, we understand that certain states are good for certain people. It's certain times. Not everybody needs to run in the whole trend trends, but if your job is very self centered,

sympathetic, maybe you work at a hedge fund where everything is immediate and your sense of accomplishment is very personal. Is your answer going to be CrossFit and powerlifting? Because you're just like multiplying the amount that you're in that state and when you compound that with your commute to work or the fact that, hey, I've got to beat my hedge fund day, you know, 6 a.m. to start before everybody else starts. So I wake up through an alarm at 4.30, I get get my car with caffeine, cortisol's running, sympathetic state is up. I'm in traffic, I'm swearing at people, I get to the office, I'm late, I do

all this stuff, and then I'm like, oh, it's noon, I got to get my workout in. So I run down to a cross-fit gym, I blasted an 11-minute mat con, crushed, you give everybody a high five, get back to the office, finish work, get back in traffic, go home, and then I wonder why I feel like I'm disease, because I can't sleep then. And you're like, you're just compounding this state. And in reality, like, hey, maybe we should, you know, maybe the, especially if that's working for you, bio means. So if you're, I don't know, a jockle character and waking up at 430 and crushing the day is the answer. And you feel great, you feel

fantastic about your life. There's nothing to change, but most people do not feel good about their life. If most people want change, you're transformation, they wanna become somebody who they envisioned. Right? I think the mapping of whatever you wanna call it, the philosophical, psychological,

with the energy system, that's certainly something unique that I haven't really heard spoken about before. In James Clears, Atomic Habits, which I'm sure you'll be familiar with, he talks about, he spoke to one of the Chinese weightlifting team coaches, legendary Chinese weightlifting team coach, and he said, what's a difference between the athletes who are the best and the ones who are the very best? And he said, it's the ones who can put up with boredom the most effectively. So, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, he probably ranks in your category of people who are happy to forego a aesthetic for performance. He doesn't look like the sort of guy

who is dieting down to make sure that he's like, got an extra ab or whatever before the CrossFit Games. And you look at him and you think, yeah, he must be getting after it every day's pomp to get into the gym. Like if your coach says, hey man, it's a recovery day, you're just doing like five by 10 minutes on a roa

with a couple of minutes rest and some breathing exit. And nasal only breathing at 135 BPM. You're like, ain't nobody getting pumped up for that. No one's getting pumped up for monostructural work at like a mid, not even getting leaner, not even getting leaner, but in fact, probably somehow getting fatter as you do that. Yeah. So the inner he is one of the examples that it point to of somebody who and you'll see

it because right before the game see ads a couple pounds like he will gain some fat tissue. But I don't know if it's on purpose, but what it is, it's probably need that for the weekend. Exactly right. Or sure, hyper protective. And that's what people don't realize about that. That's the other thing is like, of course,

like boredom, and that's what Al Tuchenson talked about is like, there's something that develops once you become bored with an activity, how you have to deal with the pain of it and the monotony of it. And they study motocross racers and endurance motorcyclists. Because if you're racing for long enough, man, that's a monotony at a level that most people don't recognize.

Because the stakes are still very high, but you have to figure out a way for your brain to not be sub-regulated. Exactly. So I have to be very present in the moment, but also almost separate myself. This comes in by-crising, too. Events are so long that eventually I have to separate myself from my pain and my anxiety about the future, and I just have to be in a present state and process, make sure I take

care of myself. And then when the moment happens, when a break happens, I have to be on it present state in process, make sure I take care of myself. And then when the moment happens, when a break happens, I have to be on it, and now I'm sympathetic, and I'm hunting it down, and I'm fighting. So these kind of things are really interesting to us, because a lot of people think that man training is so hardcore. And to be honest, we perpetuated that problem. When we got to, sorry, I want to interject there, Michael, for someone who doesn't know what you guys did in the past, what is a, what is a two sentence summary of your training style since before a nonprofit?

We were responsible for a lot of the bullshit that people know as movie fitness. And we did that for a very specific reason because it was a really good platform. So we worked with actors and actresses and stunt crew and crew of 10 movies over the past 10 years, especially, actually, things 12 years now. So 300, 300 Resimmon Empire, Man from Enkohl, Man from Manesteele, Justice League, Batman or Superman, Wonder Woman, Aqua Man and I can't remember the others, but they all learned the same fucking movie. And the reason why we first started doing it,

Mark originally did the original 300, and I came in on Manastill and then the second 300 as his assistant. And it was because it was a good platform to show people that actually that this is not special, that this is available to everybody. Sometimes we won that conversation, most of the time we didn't,

because Ego gets in the way. So you take somebody through a transformation, they change, and they wanna talk about how hard it was, because they want social... Signalling. Yeah, social praise for the work that they've done. Everybody wants that. Everybody wants acknowledgement of the hard work that they've done. Everybody wants that everybody wants

acknowledgement of the hard work that they've done, but they make it harder for people to then do that themselves. Why? So the difference, uh, well, because if if you're like, hey man, how did you get into such good shape? You're strong, you're athletic, you're really lean, you're tan, how did you do it? And I'm like, oh, it was actually really simple. I just like changed how I viewed food. And I ate in a certain matter for a certain amount of time. And I changed how I thought about training. And I started to really be cured. It's going to be, instead of being obsessed with what I wasn't, I started to be curious about what I was capable of. And I just did that for six months. I did the guidance of somebody that made sure I didn't. I started to be curious about what I was capable of. And I just did that for six months. I did the guidance of somebody that makes sure I didn't

hurt myself and voila, here I am. That, no one's gonna, they're gonna go, oh, I guess it's just easy for you. But instead, they're like, you know what? I crushed myself for 27 hours a day for training sessions. And I only ate kale and dust for six months. It was miserable and look out good at it. People are so happy. You think that creates a seeming barrier to entry,

like projects that barrier to entry where people are like, oh, well, I'm incapable of achieving that. I therefore, it's probably pointless me even starting. I couldn't live on Dustin kale. I think so. Yeah. And then they'll old tribute to like, well, he had the best trainer and the best personal chef and bodywork people. They look at all the haves because people are really good at separating the have-nots, which is true. It is easier if you have a private chef. No one is going to argue that.

But this thing comes up too. Like, oh, well, they're getting paid to train. It's like everybody has the same quit Don't quit conversation in their head when it comes to it is it's an equalizer and it goes beyond economic status When you start running all out the conversation is the same it doesn't matter if you're male female black white Mexican Everybody has the same voice that goes, hey, shut this motherfucker down, this is uncomfortable. It's not like, hey, but you're rich and you're getting paid,

so keep going. In fact, that's probably the opposite. They're... I don't need to do this shit. I don't need this. I've got... Exactly. Gerard Butler's contracted in for two movies at 5mm pop,

or whatever it is. I don't need to fucking put up with this So deal yeah, and and why would I like people already think that I'm great because everybody around me in my circle Tells me how awesome I am I get awards you know on the weekends and I travel and you know get belonged by supermodels But what whatever the thing is it's like it does but it's actually pretty miserable because you lack honesty. You lack any kind of presence. I wanna, I wanna interject there because I had Aubrey Marcus on.

And he, first off, everyone that's listening will know what that episode was like. And if you haven't already heard it, I implore you to go back and listen number 117, one of the best 60 minutes of conversation that I've ever put out. And he started talking about one of the best 60 minutes of conversation that I've ever put out and he started talking about one of his fears for actors and he said that Because they're constantly playing a role

He was talking about how the persona is incapable of receiving love Capable of receiving praise with incapable of receiving love because love is something it's speaking to you Speaking to who you are as a person, right? It's about I see you, I see the values that you have, and love is something that requires honesty. When people are playing a persona, which is literally an actor's job, but everybody that's floating around,

to one degree or another, your ego is mediating that id, it's stopping the id from coming out and being all visceral and just meaning that you run across the road and get hit by a car or whatever. And that's, everyone has this degree of persona. And I think that that's one of the reasons why you have actors who seemingly incredibly, incredibly successful, how could he be depressed?

How could he be this? It's because they don't, they feel love for the characters. People don't love Gerard Butler People love King Leonidas. They don't love do you know, I mean it's okay You're able to transcend that and actually have I suppose this is one good good advert for the advent of social media is that now actors are able to flesh out that Personality a little bit and be more than just you the Maximus doodias. Yeah, absolutely. I think I would take it one step farther and be like, I wouldn't worry about actors. Everybody has a persona. Like we are all just

characters. And I don't know if you've ever seen anti-and-me, I think it's called, which him Carrie, when he was a documentary about you. Oh, yes, very playing. And he doesn't even switch off. He doesn't. And like it is so profound. And maybe I'll ruin a spoiler alert. That's fun.

In the end, when he's talking about it and he goes, I realized in a moment that I had become Andy and people saw Andy in me. And I realized I didn't know who I was anymore because I didn't know who Jim Carriwa. Jim Carriwa is just another mask that I needed to try to fit on and get used to again, which is terrifying. That is ego-depletion. That's a loss of self, loss of identity. It's also in the extreme points known as schizophrenia. And so a lot of these

practices that we do we risk schizophrenia in order to establish an identity and that we talk about identity from this sense because we see it with athletes actors too Actors, it's a little bit more obvious But let's say that you've been racing bikes since you were 19 and you're a professional bike racer. You've been to the Tour de France and you retire at 35. Who are you? Like you have just lost everything that you were appreciated for.

We see it in the military all the time. You spent $10 million on an asset to learn the deadly skills of being an SOF guy. And you go over there, you do democratic, whatever, and you come back and nobody gives a shit, you need to work at Starbucks. Like you're one of the most expensive, educated people on the planet at killing people. We're doing whatever job is required. And you come back and there is no use

for your skills in society. And so you have a loss, there's no acceptance there, you need to figure out a persona. And everybody goes through this. So it's not just actors, although actors are kind of the obvious one just because they're pretending to be somebody else. It's their profession, right? They are forced into this persona all the time. I want to sit in this point.

We're supposed to be talking about fitness, but fuck it, this is more interesting. Um. I was talking to, um, Tucker Maxx, you know, Tucker Maxx's. Yeah, I do actually. Yeah, have you seen his new stuff? I have not. I read, uh, I hope they serve beer and how. Okay.

And then I followed Ryan Holiday's path of help marketing that thing. So I bet you know, yeah. So he's this old frataya party boy that publicized all of his stuff. And I had him on the show a couple of weeks ago. And man, like he's just gone complete. He's rebounded off the other side. He's completely internal. Like done so much self work, so much self inquiry,

incredibly, incredibly self aware. Like one of the most self work, so much self inquiry, incredibly, incredibly self aware, like one of the most self aware people that I've ever, ever seen. If you want to find out a little bit more about him, he's got a newsletter, which is lessons I've learned that he's tweeting every day. And then at the end of the week, he'll just send you a summary of all of the lessons he's learned. And almost all of them are reflections on himself and this and the other. What he was talking about was people now see him as this guy that created a literary genre, right? Frataia. He was this guy. He was party guy, fucking girls

going around doing the thing, getting drunk, throwing up on people, you know, just doing the thing. This is Tuckermax. I put Tukamax in the Tukamax box. This is who he is now. And then he goes away and people still see him as that, right? People still see him as that. He then comes back having done some work. And people are like, no, no, we don't want that Tukamax.

In fact, before this podcast today, right, I went on and someone replied to one of his tweets. He did a lesson I've learned, real good one again, a current one what it was. It was all right. A current one what it was. And someone replied and said, man, I miss your old stuff. And he just replied and he said, want the old me by my old books. And the point is, we have these different epochs in our life, right?

We have this is who Michael was when he was doing Jim Jones. This is who Michael is now he's doing, when he was doing non-profit in the initial stages. Now this is what he moves into now. And people don't like that. People really, really get triggered as they watch people ascend and transcend and become something different from what they were.

Because I think that growth mindset and the ability for people to no longer be what they were and be something different from what they were, because I think that growth mindset and the ability for people to no longer be what they were and be something else, identifies in some people that are watching holy fuck. Like that person continues to move while I'm in inertia. Like I'm stagnating and this really hurts to watch someone pull away from me. So we talk about this in transformation process.

And there's a lot to kind of unweave out of this process. It starts with, like generally when somebody wants to make a change and they come to us and like, oh, I want to lose X amount of weight and they think that that's the thing. And my first question is, how fat is your spouse? Like how fat, how? What are your,? How? How does that question go down? Usually it's shocking, which is also to watch somebody squirm is also good. Like, how do

you just, because I know already, like it's very rare that one person is in really good shape, and the other person has just let themselves go. And there's a reason for that. But the reason I ask it is because if somebody starts to change and transform, the person who's looking at them closely will see it's a reflection of their non-progression and they will try to bring them down. So you see this in office, right? Somebody starts dying in the lunchroom. It's fucking Karen's birthday. So you see this in office, right? Somebody starts dieting in the lunchroom.

It's fucking Karen's birthday. So there's like 12 cakes. And they're like, it's Karen's birthday. It only happens once a year. It's like once in a lifetime. Have a piece of cake. I'm like, no, I'm good. I'm having a salad.

And you're like, everybody will try to get that mother fucker to eat a piece of cake because it's a reflection of their non-compliance. And the closer that person is, the more sabotage they will cause. So when I tell people, how fat is your spouse or ask them? And they tell me, oh, a little bit over when, I go, okay, realize that when I require 10 hours to sleep,

and you sleep and pass them, and I require all these things, and you start to change, they're gonna start making you brownies, they're gonna be telling, hey, look how good you've done. Let's go out for a treat, You deserve a reward because they want to actually Stop looking at themselves and I think that happens because I think human beings are reflectors. We are mirrors But are mimetic beings, I think as Paul Graham says in fact, in Peter Teal's job application He asks people what is the belief that you hold which disagrees with 99% of the people that you know?

Where are you breaking? Where are you breaking the programming? Where are you deprogramming yourself? I and I maybe want to get a little bit out there right now, but I've had like you know, this has really helped shift my thinking. I am atheist and I don't think that's a choice. I think I'm you know at best agnostic being in a worse being in Utah and being an atheist must feel like a a little bit of a tough place for it to be true but I don't think there's I think it's just a natural inclination to how you look at the universe and I say atheistic is that I don't believe in a personal creator I don't connect with anything like that.

But I do not deny creation as a process. And when I look at human beings being here on earth as a product of the sun's energy and the earth's ability to nurture growth and life, I go, yeah, we were created. And perhaps our only job is to be a reflection of the universe So if I contend that the universe is making everything which I don't think you can argue that I think that the universe's art is our brain So the universe one, you know because it's a creation process Why not create something that can actually appreciate you? That is the ultimate creation.

Right? That's your hope for having a son or a daughter. That's your hope for creating a business is that the appreciation is a reflection of your own creation. So I figure human beings are a reflector. In the fact that if ever you're not looking up at the stars going, what the fuck this is so awesome. This is amazing. I'm so

appreciative for my experience here. You're a broken tool. You're a hammer without a handle and I think a lot of depressive states are a multifactorial, but a big part of that is not being like not seeing the utility and being a creator yourself. Man, so Daniel Schmackton-Burger, have you ever heard of him? I have not. Civilization emerging. So he is coming on the podcast this week. I'll link you to some of his stuff. I'll link you to everything that I've spoken. I've dropped on you over this. He has a talk which is about emergence and it is the hardest hitting 20 minutes

that I've ever listened to in my life. It's unbelievable. The synopsis of it is that we talk about entropy being the kind of the ruthless force that just continues to pommel everything, right? That you have increasing amounts of randomness occurring as you go along. It's also supposed to be the reason for why heat occurs and a bunch of other things. Sure, this. But you talked about the fact that the uniqueness that we have is that we're a conscious agent who is not only a passenger on the ship, but also a pilot able to affect the ship's direction. And like when you fully, fully internalize this conversation on emergence, which will be linked in the show notes below, you'll have to listen to it probably like three or four times to get it, at least I did. It's not a listen to it on two times speed thing like.

And when I fully internalize that, I was like, holy fucking shit. Like it's, it's, it's right. It is correct. And you, you, right with what you say as well, this connection to what is going on, this grander self transcending who we are, all that sort of stuff, it sounds so esoteric, right? But there's something to it that has to be something to it because of the way that it makes people feel. And I think, you know, through whatever your chosen mode, whether it be strong psychedelic drugs, whether it be looking up at the sky, whether it be sitting in silence in a quiet room in a float tank, whether it be getting your heart rate to 180 BPM, whether it be looking up at the sky, whether it be sitting in silence in a quiet room in a float tank, whether it be getting your heart rate to 180 BPM, whether it be, you know,

whatever it might, singing on stage, performing the most intricate routine that you can in martial arts form or, you know, pick your, like, what are we trying to do? What are all of those things, what have they all gotten common? They definitely put you in a state. I connected, and I kind of connected to myself because I went through obviously change. And I think it's important to recognize what that is. Obviously, I know you probably read a lot of Joseph Campbell

stop the arc of the hero to hero with a thousand faces. And I think we forget that we're all kind of on that path at all times. And then if ever we are not on that path, we're risking demise. Like if we're not ever trying to change into the thing that we hope to become, then we're risking just annihilation of the spirit or whatever you want to call it. And a lot of people don't see this. They just go, oh, I want a new body, or I want to be fit for once. And they don't realize that actually what they're talking about is becoming a different person.

What don't, I mean, so, I mean, if you're familiar with Cycidux, you'll know what the HERO's dose is. But a lot of people have a misconception of what the HERO's dose is. They think it's because it's so scary that you have the courage to take it. And really, what it is is, it's so terrifying, but the scary part is it will change you. So a hero is a hero, not because he has courage to go into it, because he has the courage

to come back and change. Like he goes and finds the elixir and he brings it back at different person to help inform whoever, wherever you wanna contextualize that. So that's kinda how I map my own transformation. It's like if ever I'm not willing to change I'm not doing something right. But I think one constant that has really helped

is like this map of the universe looking back, I'm a reflector, yeah, a gradity journal, all that shit. But in reality, when I look at it, I'm just dumbfounded by how little energy we can actually put out. Like our output is so minuscule compared to our creator, our son. And I don't know, have you ever looked at it, maybe I'll send you a link to this. NASA has,

if you get out there enough, you can actually hear the sun, the sun makes a noise and it's a rhythm. It almost sounds like a bideneral beat, it just woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, woop, wo and listen to that, because it reminds me how fucking pathetic I am. And the reason why is because if I want to do a good job about reflecting my environment, it means I do what created me, what gave me life, what gives me nourishment, which I look at as the sun. And so I do work out for 15 minutes and I go, I fall on the ground and sweat. I'm like, oh, that's the hardest thing ever.

I'm gonna rest for like seven days or whatever. The sun has been up there for billions of years just, we're putting energy into all of this. And so whenever I feel like I'm tired, I always listen to that video and I get up and I go put energy into my space. Because really, if I create an environment, which is what this building is, and I put enough energy into it, other people will come in and they will feel that energy

and they will grow, they will change. And then I just create change, effort change, effort change. And it helps me figure, again, how pathetic it is, but how I could be appreciative of the process that gave me me is I can put energy and help people give them them. Is that makes sense? It's kind of. No, no, not at all. One of the things that I've been thinking about a lot recently is how we can kind of transcend our suffering, right? Like what we have things that happen

to us, bad things will happen, the people that we love will die. Literally, the only thing that we all know is that one day all of this will be gone. To the subject of the poet Rilke, and I think it's Freud walking through a garden, it's a short essay called on Transians. Rilke looks like he's gonna cry, and turns to him and says, like, what's wrong?

And he says, I can't believe the fact that one day all of this is going to be gone. Isn't it such a tragedy that all of this is going to be gone? And that one day you'll be dead and I'll be dead and all of this will literally decay into, and he didn't know he'd death, but that's, you know, that's the long, long, long story of that. And it is, you know, it is a tragedy to have that. But as we go through our life and as bad things happen to us, a good example for me that I've been reflecting on recently is I've been injured.

So I've had two bulging discs, L3 and S1, which is meant I haven't basically been able to do fitness. Who am I without my fitness? That's a question I've asked myself. 18 months, 18 months of being the kid with the water wings on in the corner of the room, like doing another round of side plank and bird dog, and you know, like course stiffening.

I went to go see Dr. Stu McGill in Canada, flew all over Canada to go and see him. That was amazing. He's a beast. And you know, I did this stuff and I'm thinking, fuck, like this sucks, this sucks, this sucks. And I wouldn't recommend it to anybody as a personal development strategy.

Like it's sucked, it sucked dick. But first thing it taught me was who I'm a without my fitness. And the second thing that it taught me was reflecting on that means that I can now tell the people that I, that listen to this podcast and the people that I know. Look, if something happens to you, where you get something that you thought was so courtier being, you know, something I've done for 13 years

that was, I'm the fitness guy. I'm the guy that's in shape, not only is my routine around that, my personality, is around that, wrapped around that, blah, blah, blah. Like, who am I without my fitness? But now I can say to the people that are listening, look, like it will be okay. It's going to be fine because your desire for growth

and your desire for progression will naturally like a vacuum, it'll suck other stuff into it. And then, when you get whatever you've just lost back, when you develop it and you now have conscious competence of that particular thing, you're so much more appreciative of it. Like today, I went in class. Class was a million things that I'm not supposed to do from Dr. McGill. So I couldn't do any of them. So I had like a poly bar. I was doing like snatch pulls with a poly bar in class And this guy's like flinging 80 kilos around and blah blah and I'm like fuck like I'm doing it

Like I get to do fitness. This is fitness like I know that it's like the the most nerfed Child version of fitness that anyone's ever seen but I got to do it and I was like fuck like imagine what it's gonna Be like when I can pick up 200 200 kilos again, you know Yeah, and and that being able to transcend the suffering that you've had by telling other people, by using the experience that you've had to then teach other people how they can expedite transcending that same suffering or an analogous suffering or whatever it might be, is the ultimate middle finger to anything bad that ever happened to you. Had an experience with depression,

had an experience with a family member dying, had an experience where something that you cared about got taken away from you. If you take that learning, distill it down into something really valuable and then teach it to someone else so that it makes their life better, that is you just going, fuck you. Like, you thought that you had me. Not only have you not got me, but you don't have this person either. That's, I mean, it falls in line with, I think, Stuart McGill,

a coward that I think gifted injury, and that's a lot of it. Right. This, yeah, it could, it could be, and this comes back to the depression topic. It's really rare that you meet somebody that is very well off financially and whatever whatever one that concludes that success is for that person and that they don't have symptoms of depression. In fact suicide is more rampant in those middle ranges of successful incomes, middle high range than in any other demographic and you have to wonder at what point, why does

that happen? And a lot of it has to do with bad things. Again, you don't want to wish. This is my argument with Sam Harris on philosophy. The point is to reduce suffering. And I go, man, you'll really reduce people's ability to know themselves. And so, although you don't wish it on anybody, and some suffering, many really want you want to have compassion and empathy and stop it for that person, but really what you're stopping is their own development. Suffering is going to happen. And if it doesn't, how good would it be? And again, this is like, it comes back to my problem with the idea that the soul is infinite or that we are going to live forever and a happy ever and everything is happening.

Everything is just so good. Well, do you know what? Like, five days of nothing but the best, everything makes you not appreciate the best of everything. So it becomes nothing. So if you have all good experiences all the time, you have no experiences all the time because you have nothing to compare that to. We need polarity in order to understand the universe. You need up and down, light and dark.

You need all these concepts. This is philosophically sound where you won't appreciate anything unless you have its opposite. So it's tough to say, you know, man, I do want to teach me. If I think his Peter the old, like he's quote is like, any idiot can learn from their own experiences. It takes a truly intelligent person to learn from others. Which is true, but also there's some visceral things that you just have to learn on your own. And I think being injured is one of those.

I went as bike racing back in the day. I fell in a time trial and I shattered my elbow, like 27 fragments. It was close to an amputee. If I were toward one more ligament, they would have just amputated it, but they did this weird surgery and get it back. And I'm a fairly physical person. And their first thing was like, well, that's over with. Like, you're not going to do that anymore.

And it was almost like, uh-oh, like, how do we even go about it? But the lessons are, A, you aren't what you do. Like, your activities are not you. They're just something that you process. And I think it's also true to recognize that you are not a noun. You are not a thing. Like, you are not, we say a person, place, or thing, that's a noun. That's not true.

That's a, that's to help grammar work correctly in sentence structure, but it is not true. You are not a thing. You don't just exist. Nothing is a thing. It's all process. All of this is just process. Everything is just moving all the time. And this is actually a segue into how we got back into the fitness space because we obviously speak as

so terribly very easily. We go off on these wormholes that are podcast about different topics, cultural affairs, all of these things. And we have really denied the request to add anything to fitness until this year. In fact, our symposium is called Fitness as Fault. So it gives you an idea of how we... Are you just sorry to interject that. Are you only doing that in the UK or are you doing it in the US as well? We're doing it. So we mostly just do the symposiums in the US. The one that we had planned for the UK, we actually just had to cancel because of the fucking corona scare.

It's just, I didn't know. That's so good. Yes. Well, it's, it hurts on two parts because I know it's ridiculous. But it hurts on another part is because I am now, because I canceled it, I feel like I added into the panic. Even though it wasn't possible for us, right? It was just like people aren't traveling to do this stuff. So if we can't fill out a seminar, we can't come there. And it just doesn't look like it was moving. So we just postponed it. Hopefully after we'll come back because the UK, we have quite a large audience in the UK. Shama Paury. Yeah, Paury's a good one. He's largely responsible for that. So he comes to our symposium here. That's how Ellen E. got involved. She came out to symposium last fall.

And those symposiums, although we call them fitness or fucked, people realize really quickly that we're not talking about fitness unless we're talking about the industry. When you come to the symposium, it's structured that the first day is dialogue. And we don't have, this has changed in the past year, we do not have material to teach, which is very terrifying for us at the very start. Because most people that you just seminar, hey come learn these points that I've dictated that you should know and what Don Donne me last year was that I don't want to teach like that. I want to know what people want to know that we can do and then we'll go down that. But to get to that point we just have to ask questions because people don't know what they want to know.

And so it starts for the first three hours we're just bouncing questions off of people. You know why are you here? What are you doing? What do you want to know? What's worth knowing? What is it to understand something? We go down to these really deep, concentrated things. And eventually, we end up at a very somewhat place each time.

But then people will understand our thinking when you come to subject. So the next day when we're actually talking about fitness and how to progress it and how to set somebody up to learn about themselves. They have this 12 hour conversation to backbone. To lock on text, right? Yeah, exactly.

So it's opposed to run at this heart rate for this long. That's just an abstraction. That's just an easy way for me to get out of responsibility of actually teaching somebody. But if I actually teach somebody, I'm teaching them to be sensitive and to pay attention to their personal organism, which is, what does it feel like right now? Can you talk to me during this effort?

Like heart rates apart of it, is it above this? So what happens if, you know, and this is a really cool experiment you can do with people, we're doing steady state stuff. So I want you to stay around 70% max heart rate, and we're going to try to express efficiency and whatever modality you want to get good at. Running, biking, et cetera, whatever. Let's take biking.

So, okay, you're spending, you're at 140 for 45 minutes, everything is fine. I come over, I chat with you, I take my half glass of whatever I'm drinking, and I set it on the edge of a box next to you, and it halfway on the edge so it looks like it's about to fall Immediately that person's heart rate will ask that their response to the same stimulus will escalate because their brain has just taken on another task It needs to stop that glass from falling and so what we do is try to teach people in that space all of these things try to teach people in that space all of these things personally. If you're just running every day, that's fine, that works. You get pretty fit. But if you're running thinking about work and all your other responsibilities,

you're not actually trying to get efficient at something. So we teach people to clear their thought process, that you create a sacred space in which they can become good at something. And then we enter a distraction. So it's like an advanced meditative process, right? We bring in distractions, come back to the breath, come back to the breathing, come back to the focus, think of nothing. If something comes up, that's okay. I acknowledge it, but don't worry about it. The glass is not in your control. Physics will take care

of it. And if it breaks, your effort still needs to be done. So something goes wrong. You need to keep doing. You need to keep going. You need an art, you know, definition of endurance is you need to see something through to the end. The same thing is true with strength, strength, and this is, we recently came out with our strength manual. And basically people ask for a long time, hey, will you write some programming and I refuse to do it. Most of you just want to... Michael, for the love of God, can you just teach us some fitness for once? Yeah, just quite talking about physics and dumb shit.

Well, I thought about it and I thought, you know, what I could do, because what happens is, I say, no, we don't teach fitness. I'm not going to write a program. What happens is people just go to the next shitty program, right? And then they're like trying to take our concepts and apply them to some other thing, which they don't know it well enough to be able to do that. I can do that. I can go do the small love program and understand our take on it and understand what I'm working

and therefore the small love program is great. The hash squat program is great. All of these things work if you have a foundation of understanding of what's trying to be accomplished. So my idea is like, I'll bust out a program. I'll explain our methods and I'll be done with it six weeks ago. So we'll just sell the shit out of it. And what happened is me and Keegan started working on it, bouncing back and forth, and I realized we were fucking in way over our heads. So a six-week project became an eight-month project, and even then I was still not happy with it. I was sitting on it and then I kind of had some epiphany

and it clarified everything. It's because we redefine strength. And this is what we do. And this is, we write things, not because we want to teach people, but because we want to understand better ourselves. Like I write articles and ideas, not because I'm, you know, on a soapbox, protein, what, hey, you should do what I do.

It's really putting words to paper and articulating them helped me understand the better. So every piece that I write, understand that I learned something by writing it that I didn't know before I started writing it. And this was no different, although my ego was keeping me from learning that lesson. It was like, oh, you already know everything about that.

You can express straight, perfectly, you can get people about that. You can express, straight, perfectly, you can get people strong, and I didn't know how I did it until I redefined it. So we created the straight program. Yes, it's based off of just moving the lifts, the squat in whatever variation you want, a deadlift and a press of sorts. Classic powerlifting, although we do recommend a horizontal, as opposed to a press

overhead as opposed to a bench press, although both programs work. So there is like numbers and things that you should do, and it's a, you know, an eight-week program and testing it both ends. So it is literally everything that we hate done in a way that we could appreciate it, which is to start with a definition, which I think is incorrect in most physiological terms. Most people come to strength, they see somebody backslot, right? Heavy weight, fuck a thousand pounds. That guy is so strong. He's like, yeah, he is, but why is he strong? Is it because he's moving the weight? He's like, no, because movement is power, but we refer to things that move as powerful, a wave when it hits you in the face is powerful,

because it's moving. A castle is it strong, or a fortress is it's strong because it's moving, it's strong because it's holding. So when we strength train, we're practicing holding the spine in a very specific position, or a joint, or whatever. In Gymnastica, it might be the shoulder girdle or whatever. Neutral, extended, arch spine. All of these things are an expression of the ability to contract and hold the position. And I think when we abstract and we use a barbell to get strong, we forget that we're actually trying to hold our spine in a specific position. And so we forget to express it correctly.

And so we went back and reiterated why we hold things, why isometric contraction is so important. Why gymnastics is probably the greatest expression of strength. And I know that'll make a lot of people mad that are like, who the back squat's a king of exercises, although has 90% of it is not applicable to 99% of the sports. So, just, I'm going to get on up like my boil thinking people will reiterate me for my degrading the squat, but in reality, it can teach you some things abstractly.

But lifting weight is a level removed from contracting and holding the body. And this is the hardest thing to teach. It's like the dog is not the dog, right? If I write the word dog down, it's not a dog itself. And that's how we've created strength. We've said a 400-pound back squat is strong. But that's an arbitrary abstraction for the expression of holding. And so instead, what we try to do is remember that if I need to push against something, it

means I'm not developed correctly because I can't control the contraction in my own body. Once I can contract to 100% or whatever your marker is for the expression of strength, it means I have control over my body. I have the will to make it contract in the way and hold against the things that I want to hold against, whether that's in an MMA fight, it's somebody puts me up against the cage and I need to hold my position, or it's holding my spine in a deadlift. Whatever the thing is, whole strength is a foundation for the expression of power. And so power comes only after I can hold my position and my stabilization order to express

power. But people go about it differently. I went about it by expressing power first because I'm fairly good at snatching and cleaning jerking and that felt better for my ego. But I'll always use a lose a clean on the squat because I'm not strong. My spine is unable to hold position that's necessary to stand it up. So in learning this ourselves, we were able to now apply it to other people. Our strength training looks wildly different than it did 10 years ago. And that's not because the stuff that we're doing before was wrong, we were just insensitive to what needed to be focused on.

insensitive to what needed to be focused on. Man, it's, um, it's interesting to hear you talk about training plans that are more prescriptive. It's, it's, you know, what everyone that's listening is hearing you in the throws of, I want to elucidate about these ideas and the philosophy that is behind this, but I also appreciate that at some point, like the tip of the spear, gotta enter the gym and in the gym, you need to know what you need to do. It's all well and good, walking into the gym and saying that I'm transcending the ego

and I'm gonna be present in the breath. But like, you need to know what, what way to put on the barbell or what percentage you're lifting today, right? I wonder how challenging you've found it and I don't, I haven't spent much of time listening to Mark talk, but I imagine it must be similar for him as well. Like when when you guys get into one of your symposiums or you get this and you have to actually go right,

now is the time for people to get a X piece of machinery out or X piece of like kit out. There has to come a point where you go, right, enough with the like, erudite, verbose stuff, time for me to... Yes. Lift some things. Do you almost resent that a little bit or do you still kind of have a love for the,

for the, that side of the movement? No, I think it's a philosophically applied like is how I look at it. It's like, yeah, we do all this hard thinking work, but eventually thinking gets in the way of moving. What I really want is to move. I want to feel things. There's this really great quote of like, there's thinking, believing.

I can't remember the other one, but then there's feeling. And feeling is the, I wrote it down, actually this is this is a book mister fuller thing and it like it really is useful in the fact that I don't know if I can find it. Maybe I can't find it. Oh here it is Whenever you think or believe or know you're a lot of other people because you're sensing their ideas. You're just you're reiterating another person's thought or belief. But the moment, yeah, but the the moment you feel, you're nobody but yourself. And so, yes, take our ideas and try to understand them and comprehend them, but unless you translate that into you feeling, it doesn't nobody any good. And so the symposiums, although they're highly emotionally charged and we make it that

way on purpose, I mean, a lot of people think they're going to come here and talk about how hardcore we hate humanity and how people are disappointing. All those things are true. But when we come here, what we've done is circled the wagons, right? We are in harsh territory. We live in a culture where not a lot of people feel like they belong. They're not connecting to a lot of people. I live next to 20,000 people, and I don't know any of my neighbors.

Like, I know none of them. I have to come down to a building 30 miles away to say hello to somebody who looks familiar. That is unprecedented in human civilization. So when I say circle the wagons, it's like, we're in an area that's hostile and we need to band together and talk about ideas and concepts and values that we can all get behind. And that takes getting down to the truth of it. Like, what is true? What does it mean for something to be true? All these ideas understand that there is no such thing as truth. There's just You know a fixed point somewhere that is changing and this is where it gets really weird As we talk about string about holding nothing is holding. There's no such thing is stillness stillness doesn't exist in the universe

It is all waving it is all particle cells are always mutating and dying and creating and Life doesn't move so you you should embody that, keep moving, but embody all the things that you need to move in the direction you don't want to go. So the symposiums talk about this asoteric stuff and then when we get down to it, now let me show you how to feel this. And this is my problem with a remote coaching situation. It's like, no, I might show somebody how to do a hollow or I can explain kind of how to do a wheel or an arch to wheel or all these weird body flow things

that we've done as a late, the crane dance or whatever. But until you're here in the room and you see me do it and you go, I see you do it and I go, no, no, no, your spine is like this and your leg is like this and your knee isn't, you know, you're not activating it. You're not active spine, active knee, active hip. And then you feel it and you contract so hard that you cramp up and you fall over. Now you know what it feels like so you can go practice properly. So the symposiums become a really important part, not only for the conversation, to feel all the feels as it were,

which sometimes can be jarring, but also to feel your body in what it is to actually do something correctly for the first time. How many people do you think that here, this is the team that was behind Jason Memoa and Henry Cavill and 300? This is the team that's behind that

and then someone that hasn't done their due diligence. And it's like, yeah, I'm gonna go train with Michael Blavins. I'm gonna go and get after it and he's gonna tell me about whether Pushpull Legs is actually better than a five day split. And then they sit down and you just force feed them this red pill about reality over the course of 12 hours while Paul Warriors scowls

from the back corner of the room. I guess it could be shocking, but really, and we get this often, like, you know, what was Henry Kovill's training program? Like, how did he get so big and muscular and strong? And in all honesty, it's like there was no program. There was a lot of conversations that happened every single day. Like we sat down and we did the same thing.

We're all talking about a concept or idea, it'll listen to a response and look into training. And then we'll talk about that training after. Why was it hard? What was the conversation like? You know, why did you feel like you wanted to quit after 10 minutes when we had 30 minutes to go? Do you think you did sleep enough?

We just ask questions and that that throws people off because people love definitive answers. And if you love definitive answers, you're not going to like me because I don't have it. If people have got this far in the podcast, expecting definitive answers from you, Michael, I don't think that they've been listening. Right. The answer is five by five bench on Monday. I think that's... Thank you. There it is! That's where in 20 minutes in and we finally got it. But I mean, even in our strength program, we're trying to like move people, like I was really hesitant to put anything specific in there,

although we need to, people need to know what to do on Monday and Wednesday or whatever. And so we broke it down into, who are you? Like try to ask questions like, where are you at? We have three categories, newbie novice and expert. That's not saying that newbie is easy, an expert is advanced and you should do the Super Secret Squirrel program. It shows that designation is different. An expert in powerlifting is going to do a powerlifting

meet, therefore the structure for which you build strength is hyper-specific. A newbie is learning strength, and the destination is really specific. So you decide, kind of, designate where you're at, and then you go down that path. You can always advance the path and become a novice and become an expert.

That doesn't mean you're suddenly strong. It means that your destination has changed and this is how we appropriate the destination. So explaining that to people as opposed to, Henry did this workout and that workout. He did the 300 workout and then he squat five days a week or whatever it was and that's how you do it. Then he'd eat chicken and broccoli and then a cool thing. People would, people like that because people don't really like questions in general towards who they are as people.

And this is like, we write this in the beginning of the strength, it's really easy to say, hey, what's your spot? Die squat for all time. Cool. I think I know who you are as opposed to, how do you overcome burdens? Like that, that question to most people will start bringing tears because they stop thinking about a fucking weight and they start thinking about how they dealt with their mom dying from cancer.

They start dealing with the trauma of abuse when they were a child. How do you overcome that? It's like strength when it comes to the psychological is how do you hold your ideals? How do you hold who you are, your character as a person, through the roughest of sort? When you're poor and you're eating ramen and you have no money and there's no exit, how do you not do the easy thing? How do you not go into prostitution, not that anybody would hire me?

But like, how do you not go into these traps? How do you not turn towards drugs that are escapism? Not the other kind of drugs, which are awesome, but there's these traps in life and we need to know how to be strong psychologically silly don't fall into them and I think the more direct we are with our questioning as opposed to abstract four or five's abstract. How do you how do you overcome burden? That that's a direct question and the more you get to direct question the more connection you have to human beings because now we're being honest with each other. Something that I've been thinking about throughout this conversation is the Tukamak's epochs of life thing and it's interesting to see with you guys as well. You kind of have these little cycles of this was us and then this was us and then this was us and now this is us and this is me and then I'm thinking about what's next and I'm gonna try and make a prediction about what I think is next for you guys and it actually comes from Derek civis you know Derek civises yeah so he's on he's on the podcast tomorrow I have no idea how the fuck same as you he's probably second to you in terms of who's the most challenging to try and get on the fucking podcast.

And he's got this really interesting thing, right? He talks about directives, so he's read probably thousands of books. And what he did was he realized that a book, what most of a book is, is convincing you of the author's authority on this subject. The vast majority of it is a combination of context, which is examples, and you should trust what I say. But like Matthew Walker, why we sleep, it is an entire book, an entire book that says sleep out, sleep eight hours a night. But it's fucking 253 pages long, right? That's what it is, right? So you need, I am an authority. You

should trust me. This is why buy in, buy in, buy in, believe me, blah, blah, blah. But, and Derek said this and he fucking read, piled me on it while I was researching him for this podcast. He said it on Tim Ferris. And he says, the bottom line is, if you trust someone sufficiently, you trust the authority figure, which is giving the instructions sufficiently, all you need is the directive. All that you need is the directive because you don't need the context, you don't need the examples, you don't need the trust me, trust me thing. It's just what do I do? So I think that within the next, I'd put 100 quid on it. I wouldn't put much on it. But I put 100 quid on the fact that you guys loop back around

from being in a more super hardcore, real kind of outward showing type of fitness, which was still kind of anti-market in and like kind of guerrilla and kind of against the grain into this more erudite kind of a boss. There is no form system. And I think that those two are then going to coalesce at some point in the future and that you're going to have a not a minimum effective dose, but like the concentrated, the uranium 505 fucking version, you know, like the hyper dense neutron starship. I think that might happen. I genuinely think that your guys'

progression may come full circle and you'll actually get back into directives in a very kind of pure and condensed way. It's possible. I mean, we've removed ourselves from the movie industry because we didn't feel that we don't feel that repetition at that level was helpful anymore. And what it was taking away from was a creative process of like reinventing ourselves because in reality you're just like the same, okay, you need to lose how much weight, how do you want to look shirtless, what kind of food do you like to eat, what kind of exercise hurt you? It's the same question over and over again, and so there's no personal evolution. We dropped it with a thought that we've mastered it. It's got whatever you want to wear.

But it's not that we're close to the idea. We turn them down because nothing has sunk in. But the second something peaks our interest we go there. And we're very like squirrel. Like there's no there's no plan here. We write down ideas, we have good conversations, and when something opens up, like this sounds really ridiculous, but we're working on a tarot card game right now. Okay. It's I'll explain later when it's more well developed. In fact, maybe I'll maybe I'll send when it's more well developed. In fact, maybe I'll send you it once I printed off, but the idea is that we should not be held

back by anything that we've made a judgment about in the past. That's really hard to do. I've made a judgment about CrossFit, I've made a judgment about certain competitions about what it is. Exactly. And I've made all these judgments. I shouldn't do that. a mid-adjudgment about certain competitions about what it is. Exactly. And I've made all these judgments. I shouldn't do that.

I should leave everything open to interpretation. And not go in like an idiot, like I've never been anywhere before. But to address something as, is this the same thing? Is this, is this, is my recognizing the same human errors? In the end, people ruin everything, but I should appreciate that some people make it better, and I should be open to that fact that some people can make it better. That our symposiums have illuminated that to me,

that there is like a spark and a hope to the people that come here for whatever reason. People heard me and Mark ranting on the internet, on a podcast, and somehow they flew, and now they wanna spend time with us. And there's some of the most genuinely beautiful people that have ever met. There are stories that they share, re-informed, how we do, and how we practice.

And that's shocking. I don't know where it's going. So I also don't like to predict because I don't wanna contain myself, but. I've got my hundred pounds on the line. I'm fine with that. I'll let you bet as much as you want. I like the space that we have. I've really, I said at the other day, kind of over the Internet because we had a conversation,

talked about developing the next endurance manual. And we just had a mind blowing conversation about not endurance. Like it was. Yeah, that doesn't surprise me at all. We were talking about the endurance manual, didn't use the word endurance ones. Well, and I'll share the story if you have time for it. It's it's so I I frequently practice with ayahuasca like that Like that's a plant that speaks to me in a way that it helps creativity. There's all this other things that go along with it, but I have transformed myself using it.

It has taught me how to be somebody that I didn't think was possible. But when using it, it is not all rainbows and trippy passes through the constellations or whatever your experience is with it. Some of them are very hard and your intentions are really important. We've been trying to practice frequently as a reason because it's harder. It's not, if you do it every once in a while, it's kind of like, yeah, who? And it's whatever, for whatever reason, it's communicated to the idea that I need to sit

with it frequently to get good at understanding how things work. And so I've agreed to it. And although it's hard, and I most of the time want to hit the eject button, last weekend, I've been writing the endurance manual, and I've been having a hard time with it. And Mark being Mark was either, you're going to think about endurance this weekend when you sit. It's like, fuck you, Mark. No, because that's just asking for suffering.

Like, if your intention is to learn about endurance, you're fucked. Like, you're going to hurt really bad and I have to be really careful with book my intentions on when I sit with the world's most powerful psychedelic drug, because if I ask for learning, right, like, I wanna learn something really specific, the best way that I learned is by burning my fucking hand, and that is not fun. So, I also have to be careful with like,

hey, this time I just wanna enjoy myself. Well, guess what, I enjoy suffering. Like, it can always go, hey, this time I just want to enjoy myself. Well, guess what? I enjoy suffering. It can always go south, but this time I was like, no, I'm not going to think about Durance. I've been traveling, Australia, competing, I'm exhausted. I haven't ever stopped for months and I have to go right into, we basically landed and went right into a ceremony.

And so I was like, I'm jet lagged, all this other stuff comes up. So I'm just going to think about love or something, because fuck, whatever, like, hit the shit. And so I immediately took the first dose and you know, shook up that really. Did Alex Hutchinson's face just flow into your mouth? Not that bad, in fact. It wasn't that natural. If you're listening, you've got a beautiful face. I'm sorry about that one. Not that bad, in fact.

It wasn't that you're listening. You've got a beautiful face. I'm sorry about that one. He does. I wish it was that direct, but the lessons in these kinds of experiences are so complex that you really have no idea what you're going to get. And so I said love for something, and there's a other process where you like, you know, make an offer in your seat or in the ceremony when you think about something. something and my wife's my mother-in-law, wife's mom, she's been battling cancer for quite some time

and it looks like it's getting the better over for the past couple months her breast cancer is turned into brain cancer and it's kind of enveloped her entire brain she's losing a lot of function of enveloped her entire brain, she's losing a lot of function. So I thought about her and I was like, well, I'm going to do an offering, I go up there and I come back and I bumped my chest. I've had this like weird pain in my chest for like a month and I was like, God, that's for sure cancer. I'm for sure dying. I literally am going to die like in a couple weeks and no one gives a shit about me. I've done nothing to affect change in the world like I thought I would and I'm just a miserable piece of shit Fuck all these people like so much for the love intention. Here we go. Yeah Yeah, and then I and then I don't mean that this is what ends mom spent going through for probably more than 10 years and how

Nobody is ever and how I'm not there for her right now and I was just like nobody is ever and how I'm not there for her right now. And I was just like sobbing for an hour, just like thinking about what a miserable fucking sun and lie am. Like it's like it's a really hard lesson. And then it dawned on me that I thought about how much I loved her and the reason why I will go over there is because love is feeling pain and doing it anyway. And when I realized that, I realized that endurance is love and that the more you feel, love the more you can endure something. And as like this fucking plant has the most visceral way

of teaching you lessons that you don't wanna learn about the world that you don't wanna be in. And I came back and now, like we had a conversation after that you lessons that you don't want to learn about the world that you don't want to be in. And I came back and now we had a conversation after that and it all stemmed around what emotional qualities are we looking for and what do they elicit out of somebody. Why are you able to connect with people that do certain activities and don't do certain activities? And it's really important, like if people are afraid of psychedelics in my world, I almost

am not interested in having conversations with them because that fear shows, and it doesn't mean you have to use them, it's this fear of change that I see. Are you afraid that you're going to be somebody different? And if you are, why are you afraid of change? Like why do you not want to be somebody different? You've experienced you up to this point, and it's gotten you to this point. But why would you want to shift that around to see what else you can learn or what else you can become? So it is, it's kind of wacky here some days. I like it. Let's say the main, the thing that I keep on coming back to is posting out a

podcast or posting out a symposium. This is the team behind the 300s movie and, you know, Henry Covill. And then you get Ayahuasca and why the heat death of the universe is, it's kind of all on how really it's just entropy man and it's waves. And yeah, you're at the bottom of a squat, but really, really what I want to know is, have you managed to strip away the ego? And it's like 400 pounds on your back. But look, I get the impression that we could go on for, I could keep doing this all night.

Unfortunately, I got to go run a club night. But, man, as soon as the endurance things, I mean, I've got a list. I'm just looking at my notes. I've got all of run a club night, but as soon as the endurance things, I've got a list, I'm just looking at my notes. I've got all of the questions about fitness. This was a conversation not about fitness. That's what I'm going to title this podcast, a conversation not about fitness. I can't get behind that. Well, it's been really good if there's anything else.

Maybe I'll send you the address manual once we have it. You have the strength manual, right? No, I'll send you a copy that too Thank you. Yeah, for sure And then you can kind of see about it if we're having a symposium we switched the UK one We're having a symposium in Salt Lake City. I don't know your schedule is like you're more than welcome to come out for it It's at the end of last weekend in May. I think it's a 30th and 31st. It's a special one because we have some friends at Red Bull and that morning before we started the symposium, we actually buy- I was going to treat with Red Bull. I wish. I don't think we can advertise that quite yet. But we actually run the Red Bull 400 beforehand, which is Up and Park City, which is basically a competition to run up the ski jump. And it is.

How cool. Terribly fun. And also, transformative in its own way. So, that one is a really special event. We do that every year. Where can people go? They want to come and fly out and see you, or they're in Utah already? Where did they had to get information on that? Our website is nonprofit with a pH. So NON, PRO, phet.media, is the website. We have all our stuff, all our goodies, all our books, all our symposiums are up there listed.

So then there's loads of articles. I think we have like a hundred journal of articles. I've been, I do these micro essays once a week for the past two years. So there's quite a bit of writing up there for free. It gives people an idea of what we're about. How well there's work. At Grittentieth on Instagram? Yes. At Grittentieth on Instagram. Don't find me there, I don't respond very often. But I have sometimes the book pictures or whatever. So yeah, find all those spots and then whenever you want to redo this maybe you come out to

Salt Lake, we'll have you on our podcast. That sounds awesome. Look, thank you so much Michael. I appreciate that you don't often come on podcasts. I'm really glad that I've managed to get you on this one. Everything that we've spoken about will be linked in the show notes below. The Sam Harris thing, the Paul Bloom conversation, Mike chat with Aubrey Marcus, any stuff that Michael sends me over once we're finished and of course, a link to nonprofit and despite the fact that he's desperately trying to hide away on social media, Michael's Instagram. I found you on Twitter as well. It's like some, yeah. Yeah. I want you to track you down on Twitter as well.

Sworn to Black, yeah. To Black, yeah. It just sounds like all of your social media handles sound like emo songs from the mid 2000s. Funny enough, Sworn to Black was a black dolly of murder, song. Yeah, super death metal. I used to be super into it, never changed it.

I do use Twitter still, I really like Twitter. Got you, well, I'll put that in there as well. Look, Michael, man, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. It's been illuminating and interesting and I genuinely wish that we could continue it. Hopefully we will in the future. Awesome, absolutely.

Thank you, man.