The Joe Rogan Experience - #1766 - Ben Patrick

Episode Date: January 19, 2022

Ben Patrick, known online as "the Knees Over Toes Guy," is a coach and owner of ATG: an online personal training program for strengthening knees and developing full body fitness. His new book, "ATG for Life," is available now.

Welcome. What's happening, man? Hey, man. We should thank Jamie because inadvertently, Jamie's the reason why this podcast got started. You're welcome. Thank you, Jamie. Jamie told me about you- Probably three years ago-ish. A couple, yeah, for sure, at least a couple. And I've always had weird issues with my knees for years. I've had both knees reconstructed.

You've had a bunch of knee surgeries as well, right? Yep. How many knee surgeries have you had? Well, I had, with my left knee, partially artificial kneecap. Artificial kneecap? Really strange thing, yeah. knee, partially artificial kneecap. Artificial kneecap? Really strange thing, yeah. What's an artificial kneecap? What's it made out of?

Some kind of like rubber plastic kind of shit. I was super depressed. Wow. I was. So like when you feel it? I missed my senior year of basketball. So I was getting, they said basically that my kneecap had fractured off. Like the upper left side was just fractured. So they had to take it out, put something else in there. I've never even heard

of that before. Yeah. You can still see kind of where it juts out. Ooh. Yeah. And can you sit on, well, obviously you can't have seen you be on your knees. No, no issues at all with that. Yeah. Yeah. No issues. But I had issues a long time after that. Yeah. Until I started, you know, figuring out some alternative training stuff. Did you, you got a meniscus replacement. Meniscus transplant. Now that is wild. Yeah. What, what, what happens there? Uh, apparently they, you know, put in a cadaver meniscus. And how long does it take before your body takes it? Don't know. But that one didn't seem like a problem at all. That was, that one was easier. Really? Yeah. So when they put the cadaver meniscus in, how long before you were able to really work out again? That one, I would say,

was like in a matter of months, I could feel that spot actually felt fine again. A matter of months? Yeah. Really? How old were you when that happened? 18. Because I looked into that and they said they don't recommend it for people over a certain age. It was like, I think it might have been 50. People tell me now, they're like, oh, you had that? They don't do that anymore. I think they still do it. Yeah, at least from what I read online.

I guess more rare they would do that. And then quad tendon repair. Quad tendon repair? What happened there? It's a torn quad tendon. So that's the tendon above your kneecap. repair what happened there it's a torn quad tendon so that's the tendon above your kneecap so everyone that i've turned on to your stuff um has loved it and has said well how come i didn't know about this before like when so we should explain your knees over toes guy is your instagram

uh handle and uh athletic truth group? This is what you got. Is this, did you, who founded the Athletic Truth Group? Yeah, so before I was on social media, I made a business name, Athletic Truth Group LLC. And these are your books. Yeah, I have a couple starting books on Amazon. KneeAbility Zero, so that's the idea of getting stronger knees. Body weight, you don't need anything. That came about during know, I had to figure out for people there's no gym.

Right. And then the other book goes over like my classic stuff. So that's called ATG for life. So that was my business. I ran a gym for seven years prior to COVID. So you knew you had all these injuries. You were really depressed. You felt like your knees were falling apart and that was going to hinder your ability to do what you love. You love to play basketball. Yeah. And so how did you devise and what research did you do to figure out all these strength and conditioning methods to strengthen your knees? First clue was from a guy named Charles Poliquin. So at the time I was painting walls for my dad. Just, I was out of high school. I was a, you know, a bum. When you're an athlete, you don't get a scholarship, you know,

people think you failed at life, you know? Right. But I was painting walls, researching relentlessly and I saw a clue from him about the farther and stronger your knee can go over your toes, the less chance of knee injury you have. Which is always contrary to what they always tell you in gyms, at least they used to tell you. Don't ever have your knees over your toes. You do squats. It's very dangerous. Exactly. So I believed that all the way up to that time. So I quickly started looking into this. Charles, rest in peace, he was an older guy, so I couldn't find any video of him doing it. But he had a disciple named Keegan Smith, an Australian strength coach. Um, and there I could

see video examples of him doing it and they were intentionally training knees over toes. So I just, it was almost kind of like a shotgun thing. I just started trying everything. You know what I mean? And I quickly found that what got me the least pain was actually the lowest level of quote unquote, knees over toes training, which is basically dragging a sled backwards. And I would do anything I could find for this. I'd put my car in neutral and have a buddy in my car. And I'd put my butt against the bumper and just backwards. So I'd be, I'd move my car in neutral, but backwards, dragging a sled backwards. And I used that to carry me through and, and went from there and was able to return to my sport and do a lot of cool stuff. So who figured out the dragging a

sled backwards thing? So cool. First off credit has to go. This is Chinese wisdom passed down generation to generation to prevent cartilage breakdown, to prevent arthritis in elderly. So they actually have their elderly start walking backwards. So in China, you have walking backwards. Meanwhile, in Finland, in the forestry industry, they would drag trees backwards. So they would drag trees backwards. So they would be dragging trees. And then have you heard of American powerlifting coach Louie Simmons? Yes.

He's a legend. Louie was trying to figure out the secret of these Finnish guys who were getting such strong knees and backs and stuff. And they credited the forestry as their like foundation. Really? Of dragging trees. So he popularized, and so he could probably, you know, tell someone much more in detail. But the idea of a sled, of dragging something as a form of human exercise. That's the history as I know it. the history as I know it. Louis Simmons also created the reverse hyper, which I've used to strengthen my back. And I know a lot of people that had disc issues. He developed it to deal with, it's really kind of a crazy story because they were telling him that he needed to get his disc fused because he had

disc issues where his discs were pushing on his nerves, where he was, you know, having bulging issues, bulging discs. And so he was like, well, something compressed them, then something can decompress them. So how do I decompress them? And so he developed, you're aware of the reverse, I'm sure. It's an amazing machine. And it's the first machine that I've ever seen that actively decompresses the muscles while strengthening the muscles. So on the deceleration or the decline, it actively decompresses your spine. And then when you ascend, when you lift your legs up, it strengthens all those lower back muscles. It's a genius piece of equipment. Yep. So he was already on the side of, he didn't want to go through with the surgery for his back.

Yeah. And he figured out how to rebuild his back and went on to hit insane powerlifting numbers and stuff. And it's the same for me. For me, my corollary was jumping super high, you know? So that was something I actually could never do before all my knee problems. But because of figuring this out, all this stuff, basically figured out how to put rockets in in my knees now that's so crazy because i've watched your videos and how high you jump i mean you almost can put your chin on the rim it's wild what's you know a lot of people can jump high but i think what's cool is um this i was demoing some stuff. And are you about 6'1"? How tall are you? 6'1". Yeah. So when you jump like that, like that's crazy. Like how high you can get up when you tell me that you didn't used to be able to jump at all when you were young.

Yeah. That's nuts. Yeah. So that's what makes my story unique because all my coaches I played for, they'll attest and they've attested on camera like what a terrible athlete I was. The pen used to suck. Yeah. Now, for anyone watching, I actually set up, and I'll leave it there until well after the podcast,

but I set up my top six Instagram posts. That's what you see when you go to a page to quickly educate on all the main stuff we're talking about here. I've sent your stuff to so many people, and some of my friends already knew it. My friend Coleon was already doing it. Oh, cool. He had some knee issues, and then he started doing the split squats,

and doing split squats completely eliminated all of his knee injuries. I don't know if he does your whole program. That's interesting because I follow him, but I've never talked to him. Yeah, he's a big fan of yours. As many of my friends are. The backward sled thing is something that I've recently implemented.

I have a yard that's got a nice long piece of grass. And so I stack that sucker up with like 100 pounds. I put on the sled and I just... And it's amazing how much it's helped. My knees feel different. They feel like... It's hard to say. It's like they much it's helped. It just, my knees feel different. They feel like, it's hard to say. It's like they feel more stable. You know, it feels like they're more rigid.

Like there's more there. I mean, they still work great, like with stuff. Like I'm 54. I saw him out, so for the record, he was playing with my one-year-old out there. And your knees are bending great. Oh, yeah, yeah, they're very flexible, yeah. So, anyways, I just wantyear-old out there and your knees are bending great oh yeah yeah they're very flexible yeah so anyways i just want to put that out there like for anyone who hasn't seen you in in action i was very impressed oh just playing with them well just to see how your knees bend

you can deep squat you can rest on your knees oh yeah yeah no i don't have any issues like that no my my issues is torque yeah it's from kicks. That's my issues. It's mostly meniscus. The amount of torque that you put on your knees when you throw a kick, and then I'm hitting 130 pound heavy bag, and I'm doing it for an hour a day. That's a lot of force, and I love to do it. And so for me, it's like, okay, I'm not going to stop doing this. Like, I'm going to stop doing it when I have to stop doing it. And until I have to stop doing it, I'm going to figure out what I can do to strengthen my knees and make them better. Your exercises have 100% made my knee stronger.

Well, 100%. I appreciate that. It's really amazing. So with those kicks, and a lot of people out there can relate, you do that because it's something you want to do. It's not like that's the healthiest thing for your knee to go with this. I mean, the amount of torque is probably like in the thousands of pounds every time you throw out a kick, if you add all that force. And it's the same with jumping. Playing basketball is not good for your knees, but I want to do it. So that's where the sled

comes in because every step that you're going backward, you're strengthening your knee. But there's a fundamental difference between the sled and any other exercise that I do. The difference is that only you move the sled. So the sled never moves you. When you do squats or anything like that, you're taking some degree of risk. The weight is going to move you down, and then you're going to move it back. So last time I was in LA, I'm on the roof of my apartment, and I have one of those internal resistance sleds up there. And my neighbor's 82, and he wants to join me for a workout. He doesn't know who I am. He's just, I can instantly put him on a sled. And this is an internal resistance one that you can push and you can go backwards. I've seen that one. Yeah. If you pull up my Instagram, I put so that anyone

listening can get the world's fastest education, meaning I'm just, I made for the podcast. I spent the last week preparing six posts in order. So let's go to that one on the top left. The current human exercise fundamental is walking forward with a machine doing the work for you, a treadmill. Okay. It should be the human doing the work. Even pushing a sled would be so much better. You can put an older person on pushing a sled.

Only they move the sled. So you don't have the, you know, with a squat or something like that, there's a lot more chance of injury. Right. But we want those effects of a squat. But for example, I go six days a week, I sled, and one day a week, I squat. You see the difference there? Is that what you do? Six days. Every workout, I sled first. It doesn't matter if it's upper body. I sled first. So is that how you warm up? That's how I warm up, but it also, it gets my cardio in. If you go right to the second post, someone can see exactly the benefits I'm talking about. You actually get a foot workout when you push a sled. For sure. Okay. And so I think most of us humans

we're missing training our feet yeah i agree with that right so right off the bat and you were mentioning louis simmons and the reverse hyper and how it's like how you can rebuild it back when you push a sled you get a very similar effect because you're not loading your spine right so pushing a sled and then going backward at least as much. So I do more backward than I do forward, but I sled every day. So every time I work out, the first thing I do is I sled. No kidding, because I've only been doing it once a week, and I've been thinking, you know, like, I don't want to overdo this.

And that's what's interesting is that it's a lot easier to overdo exercises, and it's the crazy impressive exercises I can do that get views on posts. The sled is not interesting. But the sled is what I've definitely done more than any human being over the last 10 years. So the best thing I can do is just relate the exact, you know, path I took. So how does one know when they're overdoing the sled? you know, path I took. So how does one know when they're overdoing the sled? So first off, if the sled had a thousand pounds on it, it just wouldn't move. Right. So you already have that difference. It's much harder to get into a tricky situation on the sled. And we really haven't seen

such a thing. Like people have asked this a lot. How do I, like, what's too much? There's actually in the last five years, there's one dude who has sledded more than me. And I've made him my training partner now. Like, I'm like, dude, like your mission in life is to push me, push me every day of my life. He sleds every day as well? Go look at the second slide on that.

My training partner is 43 and he has reversed his body. He can dunk a basketball. He's the guy in all my posts. So he's 43 years old. He's the youngest looking 43-year-old I've ever seen. He can now dunk a basketball. He's completely shredded. Damn!

In the last five years. Look at that. That's crazy. He's out-sledded me in the last five years. One-handed hang while he's extending his legs, contracting his abs, and holding a 45-pound plate. He rarely does that. But that's fucking wild.

That's wild. What does this guy do? He's a trainer. Man. Yeah. Fucking sign me up. Yeah, he wrote the gym book with me. It's intended to be like our gentlest starting tips for longevity.

So that wheeled sled, what is the difference? Does that have resistance on it? We can break it down. That's actually the third slide. I basically put in 100 plus hours of work just to prepare every commonly asked question from the podcast so that anyone can go see. So I love a real sled. Like I heard you're putting a gym in here. Yeah, we're putting a gym next door. Turf and a real sled, you're going to be hooked. But think about out of your driveway. A real sled

is tough to find a good surface for traction. And you need friction, but if it's like choppy, that's no good. It has to be a smooth friction. Oh, okay. That's the cool thing about the sled is being able to get a smooth friction. But it's kind of smooth on grass, right? Kind of, but it depends on the grass. Also, it would depend. You'd have to have a certain degree of weather.

Yeah, that's true. You would be susceptible to maybe your foot hitting something. But we're 100% putting a turf in next door, so that's not an issue. How wide do you think the turf should be? Because that's an issue we're trying to figure out right now. It doesn't really matter how wide. It just depends on how many sleds you're going to put in. So I think even if it's about four feet, I think for every four feet or so, you can have a sled.

Okay. Do you mean how long or just no why okay yeah because the the width issue we're just trying we're mapping out the gym right now so there's like a jujitsu area with kickboxing bags and then there's going to be uh my daughter does gymnastics so there's a springboard area and then there's um cardio area and heavy bag area. Awesome. So we have all this stuff set up and we're trying to figure out where the, um, the, where this AstroTurf is going to be and like how wide it should be.

Yeah. I mean, ideally you run it just along one side of the gym. So you just let it run from one end to the other. And then depending on how many people are going to be training there, like if it's, if only one person would, would need to use the sled at a time,

then I think about four feet. Okay. So you could go like four or eight or 12, I think, you'd be fine. That's good because I think we have it set up for seven feet. And it's just not going to be that many people here. Seven's great. It's a private gym, so it's going to be mostly comedians and guys who work here. Exactly.

Seven's great. Sled and turf is ideal. And so you like that rogue sled? Rogue dog sled. Because they have a handle too so you can push. To me that's the best. If you can push it on the way there so that's getting your feet, your hamstrings, your glutes

without stressing your back and then backward on the way back. Right. Because mine I just have a chest harness and I put the harness on and it's got a clip and then backward on the way back. Right, because mine, I just have a chest harness, and I put the harness on, and it's got a clip, and it clips to a strap, and I just pull it backwards. That's cool. Yeah.

It's not a Rogue one, but I could get a Rogue one. Yeah. I love their stuff. For most people, a waist belt will be the safest. Why is a waist belt better than a chest? I think it's easier to balance. Balance? Yeah. Imagine for someone who's starting and is very fragile, a waist belt better than a chest i think it's i think it's easier to balance and you know uh balance yeah like imagine for someone who's starting and it's very fragile and now the strap

is coming all the way up to the chest area they could actually like you're pretty fit and athletic but having the so it could still work obviously yeah at the chest but most people will struggle with the coordination, I guess you would call it. I see. Should I switch or is it okay what I'm doing? I mean, if it's working, there's no need to change it. The concept is still the same. Yeah. It's just something for most people to know that a waist belt will feel plus you can see with a waist belt, you could even kind of rest your hands on the belt and just have a bit, a bit more control for someone who's less fragile. But again, I'm taking people who are coming off gnarly knee injuries, people who are 70s, 80s, even 90s.

So I just want to make sure it's all the safest data. No, that totally makes sense. I also was doing another one of your recommendations, which is going backwards on the treadmill with the engine off. But I should tell you, my friend Phil, who used to own a gym, said that you could blow out the engines that way. Yeah. My post on that one says, great for the human, maybe not great for the machine. Yeah. Apparently, it can- I put that in every post now. Like, look, you can take a treadmill that's not turned on, turn around, and use your strength to spin it. Right.

But it may not be good for the treadmill. Well, someone needs to develop an ATG treadmill where it can handle that kind of resistance. Yeah. What about one of those, well, those aren't strong enough. I have one of those Air Runners, which is awesome for running on. It's like the self-propelled. It's actually, I think, what did they say, Jamie? It's like 15% harder than regular running.

Something like that, right? I like it a lot. I'm a big fan of that. It's great for running. Yeah. If they come out with a model that you can put resistance. Right. Because people have sent me video.

I'm like, that could be a little sketch trying to go backward on it. Yeah, there's no resistance. Right. It's too easy. So let's break down that point because it's actually the resistance that makes it fundamentally safer. Meaning if I just tell my 82-year-old neighbor, go sprint, I mean, something bad is going to happen. But when he's against a sled, you're basically trying to find the right amount of weight that slows you down,

but still allows you to get into a natural motion. Obviously, if it's a thousand pounds, it won't move. So the best weight is going to be right in the middle, a medium amount of weight that slows you down. So you're not taking any like jarring, you know, like when you throw a kick, that's the, like all that impact coming in. But if you can get into a smooth resistance, pushing and going backwards, the sled, you're now actually working your knees in that similar motion of the kick or in basketball, the landing or the jump, these, these positions that really hurt at the point of impact. And you notice how you're able to get like circulation. So that's part of the trick is to get those knees to heal. Okay. We got to get them stronger, but how do we get them to heal at

the same time without the strength work, increasing the risk of injury? You see what I mean? So it can be tough to get out of that knee injury, knee pain cycle. And that's where the sled comes in. It's a solution. I am. Yeah. I mean, I'm someone who has worked my legs out forever, like most of my life, but I've never done these exercises. And part of me is like, how the fuck did I not know about this? How am I finding out about this from Jamie? And then from Instagram? I mean, it's very simple. It's very simple how this occurs. So I wasn't taught it either and didn't get a scholarship to college. Painting walls during the day, I have nothing. I had no backup plan. So I was like, all right, I'm not going to make it as a basketball player. I'm just going to figure out how to bulletproof

my niece. So then I start really digging into the corners of the earth to find data. You see what I mean? Everything we're talking about right now in this podcast, without question, will be in the textbooks in 20, 30 years. Wow. But it takes a long time for textbooks to change. You see what I mean? So you're not going to find the stuff we're talking about in the main textbooks that people are going to schooling and learning. So I find some pockets of information, work really hard on it, rejuvenate my knees, manage to market myself and get a college basketball scholarship,

played two years at a junior college. You know, like in America, we have these two-year JUCO, a lot of wild stories, had an amazing coach there and kept healing my knees while playing. So like I was improving as I was going through my first two years of college, got a full ride D1 scholarship at age 23. Wow. So I went from Mr. 18 year old on my butt. Oh, you know, like people from my hometown by the time I was 23, getting a D1 scholarship, it was like, what the heck is going on? So I actually had started training kids in the summer just because it was like this unbelievable thing that

had happened. But here's what I'm getting to. I go to this Division I school and the strength coach who has his degrees from college and everything, he's not going to let me do my drills. The very things that got me the scholarship. Isn't that a wild concept? What did he say? You're not allowed to do your knees over toes stuff here. So the school gave me a scholarship, full ride. I'm going to be living out my dream, having a chance to play in March Madness, whatever. Now I mentioned I was 23. Right.

So I get a call from the head coach before the season. And he tells me, NCAA has denied your eligibility. They say you're like, your clock is up. None of us knew. It's a very rare thing. I've never heard of this happening of someone like fixing their knees and then later going to college. So we did a whole appeal process. But in the back of my mind, I was like, I don't want to now have to go two years trying to train behind the strength coaches back. And look at the system. So it's like it's not his fault. He's just doing what he learned in the textbook.

How the heck is the textbook going to change? You see what I mean? Did you have a conversation with him privately? Anyone can relate if you've been in team sports and you bring something up to the head strength coach or the head coach or something like that, there's a lot of pressure. You're risking getting in murky water,

having a bad reputation on the team. So I never got past that opening conversation with him of like, you know, I've been doing these things. So did he see you doing it? Like how did this happen? Yeah, yeah. I told him which exercise, like these are the things I've been doing that are like, that have me able to play. Because I couldn't play before.

So explain how the conversation takes place. So I meet him. He's going to be running my program. Right. And I say, okay, I need to add in these things. Like you've seen these knees over toes split squats, right? Very uncommon exercise. No, no, no. You're not going to be doing that here.

So it's just a total stop. So I'm not going to be doing. So he tells you you can't do them. No knees over toes. Does he say why? No. It's no knees over toes in his gym. But does he say why? No.

It's no knees over toes in his gym. So I knew I was going to have to be going, you know, just on my own time outside of school and classes and workouts to keep up my routines. So when this whole thing went on, with my eligibility getting denied, the head coach thought I should just get a lawyer. I'd be able to fight it. But I actually just withdrew from the thing and became a trainer. So when he was saying this to you, did you try to argue it? Did you try to say,

this is what's helped me. This is what got me here. Exactly. What did he say? No knees over toes in his gym. Did you show him some of the literature? Did you show him some of the Poliquin stuff? No,

I never got that far, but it was also for me being a new recruit college kid, it was like, that was a, that was a, an intimidating moment for me. You know what I mean? I didn't have excellent communication skills. I was a nobody, you know, I was just a new recruit. That sucks. Yeah. But in his mind, he's just enforcing what he believes, you know what I mean? And what he learned in college. Is the right thing to do. Exactly. I mean, he's literally a professional. Exactly.

Yeah. So new data can come out. And new data has even come out on full knee bend and your knee going over toes and stuff like that and how it actually leads to less pain and more athleticism. But now from the moment that data comes out, it's not like the textbooks magically all switch, you know, I mean, the whole curriculum and textbooks and the tests. And so even in my first couple of years of college, I would have to be guessing on tests. Like is the answer, the actual answer that's up to date right now, or is the answer what the textbook thinks is the answer does that make sense yeah

i understand and it goes like that for diet and you see like new data is constantly coming out right yeah so that's why for me it's it's really nothing um i'm not even trying to be critical of that system there's so many cool aspects to college and stuff like that. I just knew I had to create an alternative. So I just, it was like a light bulb went off and I just went hardcore as a trainer from that point. Now, when did you start getting traction? Like when did people start paying attention and recognize like, hey, this guy is really on something. Making results in person. So I had a gym for seven years and I became known as the knee guy. Where was your gym at? Clearwater, Florida. It's like a beach town by Tampa.

Oh, cool. So getting results in person became known as like the knee guy. And quite honestly, friends telling me like, you need to like go on social media and stuff like that. So I hated social media at the time. Why did you hate social media? This was only a few years ago. I don't know. What reasons could you come up with? All of them?

Exactly. So – Yeah. So – but I did realize, okay, I'm going to need to approach social media the same way I approach needs and try to become as competent as I can possibly be and be patient with it and be responsible. You know what I mean? And so I really liked Gary Vee because he had a positive vibe.

You know what I mean? Maybe too positive. I'm just kidding. I really like Gary Vee because it seemed like you could be yourself and actually win on social media. Yeah. And you're the same way. You're just you.

And you're winning more than anyone. That's another conversation. Thanks for everything you're doing. You're the voice for us right now. I don't want to be. I understand. I understand. I can't even imagine.

But there are examples. You can just be you. You can just try to help people. You don't have to be perfect. I can make as many mistakes as I can progress, but tomorrow I'm going to go out and I'm going to try to help people. And the next day I'm going to go out and I'm going to try to help people. And that's how I'm going to measure my life by how much I help people. There's no ego. If I made a mistake, move on, try to help people. So I've just been doing that since. And I did count up though for, you know, if someone wanted to be realistic about it, if you're like me,

you're from a small town, you have no special connections or anything i answered over 500 000 messages oh my god before before i hit like a hundred thousand followers oh my god so i'm at like so how do you have the time for that um do you give yourself like an allocation? I'm very organized. I also have gone multiple years of my life without any entertainment sources whatsoever. So like this past year, 2021, I did no TV, no Netflix, no video games, not a single sports game of any kind. Oh, my God. Yeah.

That sounds monastic. Well, I don't consider myself a lucky person. So I had to go, okay, I know how much this dragging this freaking sled works. Right. And it gets your cardio in and you can put older people on it and you can rehab on it. But people aren't aware of it the way I am. How do I get there? Okay, I want to get lucky.

I want my post to do well. I want people to know what I know. Yeah. So I tried to put luck on my side and literally work at it harder than anyone else was going to work at putting, you know, the negatives out there. Here's this empowering positive thing I'm trying to get out. Went hard at it. It's clearly effective. It's just it's very amazing the kind of dedication that it takes to have no entertainment,

no Netflix, no video games. Jamie would die. Look at him over there. He would literally die. One of the best things I ever did. I did no cheat meals the whole year too. What? Yeah.

Nothing? No cheat meals. Well, you're pretty shredded. I appreciate that. No pizza? No. No pizza at all? My wife's out there, and she's honest. She would rat me out if i was lying to you i'm sure but i got something really good out of that and i've rolled around in this

year and i haven't i didn't go back because when you finish the end of the night and you watch a tv show or something like that and you have some pizza or whatever, those are like a temporary form of happiness. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like it, now imagine if you don't have that and you want to make yourself like super happy. You know what I mean? So I spent a ton of time working my business. I spent so much time with my kid.

I've taken that kid on like a thousand walks on my chest. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. And we're super tight. And I've helped so many people. Your kid is very tuned in. I appreciate that. He's really, he's fun.

Like he looks at you like when we're playing with the Hyper Ice vibrating ball. We have this massage ball. It's called Hypersphere, I believe it is. And it has varying levels of vibration that is amazing for rolling out, a little tightness. So this was not – it was just an accident.

I've had this thing going on with my neck. So I came in here today, and while we're talking, I said, well, you know, it's not going to seem weird to you. Like you're an athletic guy. So I put my hood on, and I put this vibrating ball, and I started doing these rolling things in my neck. And your son was like, what is going on over there?

And so then when I give it to him, I was pointing to the little button and how old is he? One. He's very smart. Cause he was realizing that the button was causing that thing to vibrate. And then I'm like that, like that. And I point,

he puts his finger on it and then I pushed down on his finger and his eyes light up. He's tuned in, man. It's, that's obviously the time that you spend with him, interacting with him, is really

having an effect on him. And he's obviously very smart, too. Man. Super appreciate that. Oh, it's so cute to watch him play with that ball. It's his new favorite toy. Well, it's his now. Even to me, I'm like, how does he zone in on that tiny... Now he can do it within minutes. He just already had it down yeah well

it's cool um he spends a lot of time outdoors if i'm not watching tv you know he's not right i don't put him in front of screens and stuff oh that's great now i'm not gonna withhold him at all he's gonna be free to eat pizza he's gonna be free to you know be in front of screens and i think what's realistic is like i think if i live this way that i like to live Monday through Friday, I think he'll be cool with that. You know, he'll be like, all right, dad doesn't watch TV during the week. You know what I mean? We can still watch a movie. We can still have pizza on the weekend. That's still 104 days a year to be normal. But I, I've really fallen in love with this style of living. Cause it's like, you're trying to like, you gotta, you gotta do more. You gotta get out there there to be happy because you can't just resort to these temporary things yeah that is true like

i think you actually enjoy what you do and when you enjoy what you do you're not uh you're not longing for something that you appreciate doing i think there's a real problem with a lot of people that their day is a lot of suffering yeah And not real suffering, but it's discomfort. I know what you mean. They don't enjoy it. They don't like their job. And so when they get home, they cannot wait to get in front of that computer and play a video game or wait to binge on some Netflix and order some food that they enjoy, but that's bad for their body. Yeah. And it's totally normal, but it may prevent them from getting to their long-term goals if they're, you know what I mean? If they're doing that all the time, but it's,

I get it. I get it too. I can, but I see what you're saying too. I can, anything you're describing, I've been addicted to, you know what I mean? So I totally get it. But, and like you said, with, you know, doing stuff during the day, um, that we don't want to do, I can relate to that too. You know what I mean? Yeah. Um, that was kind of how school was a lot for me. So like one thing with my kid, super simple. It's like, okay, when it comes time and he gets to like, you know, think about reading and that can become stressful. You have to read these books and stuff. Imagine if we just picked what we wanted to read about. Right. I think we'd be better at reading. Well, I figured that out when I was young because I was absolutely convinced that I was going to be a loser because I

couldn't concentrate in school. I didn't care. I could not pay attention. I was just, and I guarantee that if I had different parents and maybe it was a different time in history, I would have gotten on some sort of ADHD medication. They would have said, this kid's fucked. Like in order for him to be a productive member of society and graduate college and all that you're gonna need to put him out some medication so he could pay attention in school I guarantee because I couldn't I did not give a fuck what they were talking about and so I thought that I was going to be a loser I was like I'm just I can't work I can't I just can't focus then I discovered martial arts and

I could do nothing else I was I was all I could think about focus. Then I discovered martial arts. And I could do nothing else. All I could think about was that. And I was super focused. And then I realized, like, oh, I just need to find something I like. And it just is like a bell went off. And then there's an expression that I learned when I was doing Taekwondo when I was young. Is that martial arts are a vehicle for developing your human potential and that is an amazing statement and it proved to be so fucking accurate because what

martial arts showed me was that if there was something that I really loved and enjoyed and something that gave me great satisfaction, I dedicated my time to it, I could reap tremendous results from it. And it set the tone for my entire life. Like all of my work ethic, all the things that I've done since then. I mean, all of it, I owe to martial arts and I owe all of it to this realization that it wasn't that I didn't have the ability to focus. It's just that I am fiercely opposed to focusing on something I don't give a shit about. But when it's something I do give a shit about, I am fucking all in and I become obsessed. I was like, so what I thought was just a terrible personality flaw that I have and a discipline, a complete lack of discipline that I had was actually not the case.

I just am completely opposed to being forced to do something that's uninteresting. And that is the majority of this country. The majority of this country is stuck in this situation where they have to do something they're not really interested in. And so what do they do? They find enjoyment out of the social aspect of work, working with people that they like. So that's good. So they're doing something they don't like, but at least they like the guys at work and they like the people that they interact with. So that's where they get their enjoyment from. And then when they get home, then they find some other stuff to do yeah that's that's powerful

but it totally makes sense yeah it seemed like it was a character flaw but actually it was a great ability you had and by not being focused on stuff you weren't interested in that means it was opening you up to focus on some really powerful stuff you see what i mean like yeah if you had if joe rogan had just gone with the flow, you know what I mean? Yeah, if I had given in, I would be fucking doomed. You see what I'm saying? I would not be me, for sure. I wouldn't be as successful.

Exactly. And there's also a thing about energy. Like, kids have so much energy. They don't want to sit down and do something boring hour after hour. So if you have a boring class, and that class is over, and you have another a boring class and that class is over and you have another boring class and that class is over. And also I went to public school and a lot of the teachers, it's not a knock against public school. Some of the teachers were great. But a lot of the teachers were like really uninterested.

They were just showing up and doing their job. And all they wanted was you to listen and pay attention. And I couldn't fucking care less. I really couldn't. And I was completely sure that I was going to be a loser. I was so insecure about it. I was like, I was thinking about my future and I was like, man, like, what am I going to be?

Like, I can't, there's not a thing that interests me. Like this sucks. And it, I was convinced that this was because there was something wrong with me until I found something I loved. And then I got so good at it so quickly and I was so dedicated. I was like, oh, okay. And then when I quit that and started doing comedy

and then I started applying sort of the same mentality from martial arts to comedy, I was like, oh, you can get good at anything. You just have to dedicate yourself to it. Bingo. That's what a lot of people don't realize or don't have the opportunity to learn because they get stuck into a system. Like maybe you have like overbearing parents

that want you to go down a very specific path. Like, Hey Mike, you're going to be a doctor. Hey Jill, you're going to be a lawyer. You're going to do this or you're going to do that. And this is what the family wants. And then you're, you're like trapped. You're fucking trapped. And maybe you really want to do something else. Maybe there's something that's exciting to you. I was lucky. My parents were like, I mean, if you finish with the knee stuff I had and no recruitment for college and I'm still like, yeah, I'm still going to be a basketball player. And they were like, okay, yeah, you are.

That's great. Now they're like, you're still going to work hard in the meantime. Yeah. But they never made me think that they didn't think I was going to make it as a basketball player. That's good because my mom did not think I was going to make it as a comedian. And she didn't think I was going to make it as a fighter either. She's like, what are you doing? You're going to get hurt.

But that's just because she's a mom. If you're a baby, someone you make in your body wants to kick people in the head for a living, you're like, what the fuck are you doing? You know, don't do that. Yeah. It's got to be, I mean, it's immensely hard now to be a parent. But to be a parent in the 1960s when my mom gave birth to me, like, fucking who knew what to do? You know, no one had any good data yeah you know

you had dr spock he wrote a couple of books you know like there's there's so little to like people didn't understand how much variety there are there are in human beings and what their interests are and what their desires are they really just didn't know so it's like most people that raise kids, they learn from their mom and their dad or their grandparents or the people that are around them. And so you kind of like, you adjusted based on your instincts and what you've learned along the way. But all you learned was from the way you were raised. Today, we have such an amazing amount of information about the different styles of parenting and the benefits of those and why it's important for your children to encounter adversity. One of the things I've found with my kids is introducing them to

sports, getting them used to losing. Losing is important like it's very important and learning why you lost and learning to make adjustments and learning that bitter sting like you know one of my kids was uh playing basketball and she they had a terrible game and i was like listen it is so much better to lose because then you realize like when you missed and it sucks and you could have won the game if you made that well fucking practice more and then maybe you missed and it sucks and you could have won the game if you made that. Well, fucking practice more. And then maybe you'll make it next time. Like become dedicated.

Become obsessed. And then you will reap the rewards of that. And then you will understand that you can apply that to all aspects of your life. 100%. It really is. It's a complicated formula, but it's also simple. Yeah. It's complicated in that you's, you're dealing with the human mind, which is filled with doubt and anxiety and emotions. And you're also,

you're in the middle of all the other everyday life stresses and relationships and, you know, job pressure. And then you're trying to figure out like, how am I going to feed myself? How am I going to prosper in life? How am I going to not be a loser? Like, how am I going to feed myself? How am I going to prosper in life? How am I going to not be a loser? Like, how am I going to be someone who, when someone runs into me that I, you know, went to school with a few years from now, how am I going to not be embarrassed to tell them what I'm doing with my life?

It's really how we handle losing is low key. It's so important. You know, Mark Bell. Yes. That guy mentors me so well well he sends me messages all the time we stay super tight just this morning he was like life is low key how you handle losing it's a lot of it yeah it's a lot of it yeah losing is so important in everything bombing and comedy has been one of the most important teachers for me because like especially once you once you get your legs on in the beginning can be fucking ruthless but once you get your legs under you and then you have like a

bad set the bad feeling that comes with a bad set is the ultimate motivator because it makes you go back and reassess and dig in some people though not like some people with Some people with emotional issues, it causes them to spiral, and then they're paranoid, and the next set they're even more fearful that they're going to have a bad set. It's the same thing that happens with fighters when they lose.

When fighters lose, particularly at a high level, when you notice it in MMA, there's fighters that are streaking and they're doing really well. And you're like, wow, this guy has like real world-class championship potential. And then they have a loss and that loss devastates their confidence. And sometimes they never bounce back. Sometimes they bounce back, but there's some struggles. And then they return, like a good example is Francis Ngannou. Francis Ngannou is the UFC heavyweight champion,

and he's actually defending his title this weekend against this guy Cyril Ghosn, who is his most formidable challenge. And Francis was this juggernaut who was destroying everybody, made it to the UFC heavyweight title, and then got beaten up by Stipe Miocic, who is the most accomplished heavyweight champion of all time. Stipe is one of the all-time greats, without a doubt. Goes down in history as one of the all-time greats. Stipe figured out how to avoid Francis's devastating striking power, get him to the ground, and wear him out and beat him up,

and just dominated him in a five-round decisionis was devastated after that fight and for the next fight he fought like shit he had another fight afterwards and against this guy derrick lewis is a very dangerous guy as well and him and derrick had this completely uneventful fight where neither one of them would pull the trigger but derrick did enough to win the decision but it was one of the worst heavyweight fights of all time, with one of the most exciting heavyweight knockout artists ever fighting the other most exciting heavyweight knockout artist ever, and neither one of them pulled the trigger. It was terrible. But it was just his psychological defeat. It wasn't just a physical defeat to Stipe Miocic. It was a remnants of the psychological defeat. But then the pain of that was so frustrating and infuriating that he dug deep, revamped his training, switched camps, changed gyms, changed his approach, started destroying everybody, and then came back and devastated Stipe in the rematch.

Just knocked him out, and now he's the heavyweight champion of the world So it's one of those things where it's like whoo after the steep a fight. Let's see how he rebounds He didn't rebound good at all. It looked terrible in the Derrick Lewis fight never. It's like he might not ever make it now boom He's the heavyweight champion the world and one of the scariest motherfuckers ever walked the face of the earth He figured it out. But he figured it out partially because of that loss. If he just went in there and knocked out Stipe in the first round in that first fight, he probably wouldn't be the fighter he is today.

Probably worked harder. Yeah, he probably worked harder, learned more, developed his endurance more, realized how to pace himself more. It was the most valuable yet painful lesson. And those losses are so much better than those wins. If you think of his wins like the knockouts of Curtis Blades or the knockouts of Junior Dos Santos, I'm sure it boosted his confidence. I'm sure it showed him that he could perform at the highest level in the big stage, but not as much as that loss.

That loss was like that's the burning embers that will not fucking go out. Probably still feels him probably probably gets up to pee in the middle of the night it's like fuck that guy kicked my even though he knocked him out in the rematch it's probably this in the back of his head but i think it's like most of us go through life and never quite realize is that like the future is unwritten yes you can be typecast you can this i was typecast as the fragile knee guy. I had nicknames for this. My high school nickname was old man because of my knees. Now it's like that's my ultimate advantage now is my knees when I play basketball.

That's so wild. So the thing I was worst at is now what I'm best at. That's so wild. Yeah. And for people out there, like even if you think, oh, my knees are shot, I can't do anything about it, find a sled. Start dragging it backwards. And what about people that have a lot of cartilage damage and meniscus damage?

More damage, more you need the sled because it gets the circulation. The toughest thing is when you start losing that ability to communicate to an area. So if you usually have great knee bend and blah, it's very easy to get in there, work out your legs. What happens when you can't even figure out how to work out your legs because your knees hurt so much? You see what I mean? That's where the sled is the trick. We haven't really seen, there's no such thing as too much damage when it comes to just, okay, if you can walk, you can walk backwards. If you can walk backwards, you could drag a pound backward, two pound, keep going, more circulation while getting strength at the same time. You can will yourself out of extremely devastating knee issues. But I would say that you'd have to put in a hundred miles resisted backwards to know for sure,

you know, oh, am I actually doomed or not? And the more you do it, you start getting more communication in the area, you start getting stronger, starts getting better. So that's been my formula for a long time now. And I think it would take the average person about five years of consistent work. But that would seem like, oh my God, five years, you know, five years you know but we don't think anything of spending decades to become good at a bench press or martial arts you know what i mean or the piano well there's the other thing is if you don't do those five years your knees are just going to still suck and those five years are going to happen whether you like it or not still getting cardio yeah it's not like you hit pause on the world and like let's just pause life and time and and I'll do something else for five years.

No, five years are going to happen. I'm talking five minutes or less. You know what I mean? Yeah. I'm talking about a hundred. Like my average is about a hundred meters a day backward. That's it? Yeah.

Oh, okay. I was doing long sessions. You can. Is that good? Is that bad? Like I'm not sore. I think over the years I've seen that the more frequent

because it allows you to get that circulation. Having a really good setup and getting it in more frequently I've seen has worked really well. What is it about going backwards? Yep. So anyone listening to this

could stand in front of a mirror right now. And if you went to take your first step backward and paused right where you're at, first off, your knee is over your toes. Now, what originally scared people out of knees over toes is that when your knee is over your toes, there's more pressure on your knee. That's the position that the pressure goes into the knee when your knee is over your toes. But now it's been found out that bodies with more pressure on them age biologically younger, not the other way around. So it's actually when we start avoiding these areas of pressure that a joint will degrade and get really fragile. So this is a way to get that pressure in a safe way with your knees over

your toes. So every step backward, you're strengthening your knees over your toes to some degree. The better you get at it, the more you do it, the more you add up that pressure that actually makes the area stronger and gets it to heal and gets it to be younger. So there was a gross misunderstanding of knee over toes equals more pressure on your knee, therefore avoid the area completely. And I can see why that would be. That could make sense. But that was just a conclusion based on seeing that there was more pressure, not realizing that the way human bodies age and stuff, they actually need motion and pressure, even something like compression, like a knee bending all the way.

Motion and compression is how you get synovial fluid to carry nutrients to the joint. So we would think avoid bending a joint to make it last longer. It's the opposite. Now, just forcing into pain, that wouldn't make sense either short term. You see what I'm saying? So my job is like an art of how do you get motion and compression and pressure? How do you do all that stuff safely? So it's a subject in itself, but that's not a subject that you can learn in any textbook yet. You see what I'm saying? Right. But that will be in the textbooks. It's all being,

these are actually like just basics of physics and anatomy and how the body works. But exercise is pretty new if you think about it, you know? Yeah, like rigorous exercise on large scale, like amongst the entire population of the planet. How old is that? Is it 100 years? Right. There's no way it's even.

Right. And okay, when did it get common and stuff? Arnold Schwarzenegger and guys popularized it. Yeah. But they were trying to pump up their muscles. They weren't worried about long-term knee issues and stuff well when did the olympics get really popular like what was the first year well obviously it was very political during world war ii right and it was um in world war one as well right it's been going for a while so that So we're talking the early 1900s there.

What was the year where the Olympics became something that everybody was aware of? First of all, when did they start? I don't know. 1896. 1896. 1896. Where was the first one? Greece.

Greece. Oh, of course. Well, I believe so, yeah. Interesting. Now, I know that dating back to the late 1800s, there was already evidence in books of people doing that Nordic hamstring curl exercise. Really? So the concept of exercising with our own body weight goes back quite a long time. So someone was holding the ankles down or what were they doing?

Yeah, it was in a sort of gymnastic setting. So that exercise dates back to gymnastic background. And that's basically, that's being able to levitate your body from behind your knee. So there's another example of like, what do I teach? Okay, pull-ups, super common.

You can go into any gym in the world. People want to be strong with their own body weight, but not behind their knee. There's not, those Nordic benches I use, they're not set up for that. Where does There's not, those Nordic benches I use, they're not set up for that. Where does one get one of those Nordic benches? Right now, Rogue or Zoran X. Rogue has a Nordic bench?

And they call them either floor glute ham or poor man's glute ham. And really, it's a cheap, super cheap device. Well, I have a glute ham machine too. Can I do it off of that? It's similar. That one rolls the pressure from the knee to the hip. So that's like a great foundation, but it's not

as much pressure behind the knee. But I know exactly what you're talking about. Awesome, awesome device, and that would be great. That would be totally acceptable if someone was doing that. But it wouldn't be as much pressure behind the knee. So the pressure behind the knee is key, because that's what strengthens the knee. If you want to have a really...

This is the Rogue one? Yeah. I'll bring mine in. I the knee. If you want to have a really, this is the rogue one. Yeah. Yeah. I'll bring mine in. I got one. Oh yeah. One of these. Yeah.

Now someone can see this. If you go to my Instagram, if you go to the fifth post, um, you can see this in action. So someone can see what we're talking about. So the one that says most people, I feel like we should put orders in before this podcast comes out.

You definitely should. If you want one. So. That tib bar, I love that thing. Yeah. Someone sent me the newest one. So here's the Nordic coming up. Okay. There it is. Now my mom's controlling it on the way down. I was going up, but this post was illustrating an example that there are muscles that, like the tibialis muscle, it's that muscle on the front of the shin. You can see it at the start of this post if you just let the post play again. So most people in pain, we've been lifting. We've been lifting loads to failure.

You can stay on that exact post. Yeah, it'll show it. We've been lifting. We've been taking muscles to failure. But we've been skipping entire muscles that relate to pain. That one right there, that's your first line. I mean, that's every kick you throw, every step you take. Right. There hasn't even been a study yet on strengthening that.

No, I've never even heard of strengthening that until I saw your posts. Right, but it's understandable because I'm not going to land on men's health for my tibs. I'm not going to. You should. Actually, here's the story, and people are walking around with shirts now that say chicks dig big tibs. But I was training a high school football team. And I actually had to come up with clever ways to get them to buy into being the strongest in these smaller areas. And so I convinced them that women looked at pictures of men with and without shorts. And that men who had those tibialis muscles were, like, subliminally more attractive to the women. So I had these.

Is that true? No, not at all. There hasn't even been any studies on it. So, but they bought into it. And they had. You lied. I lied for their benefit. And they're now like a division one scholarship factory.

But getting stronger in these smaller areas. It's understandable why someone wants to go into the gym and pump up the biceps and not pump up the tibs. But what if your quality of life is being able to do your sport or something? And that could change your life quality. I'm so happy just because I know that this Sunday I get to hoop with my boys, my friends. And not just that, but I get to throw down dunks. Are you kidding me? It's like waking up from a dream every time I get to go hoop. You know what I mean? Because you were worried that you would never be able to do it again. I never thought I'd

be able to play basketball without debilitating knee pain. I was hooked on painkillers, icing my knees four times a day just to go out every few months and try to play. You know what I mean? Really? Yeah. And I'd never even grabbed the rim or something like that. And let me tell you, sports are more fun when you're dangerous. You know what I mean? Yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Right. So now there's no way anyone's done more tip raises than me and more backwards sled, but that's not, that's not sexy. It's not sexy. Like bench press. Exactly. That's the mission for me. That's the, like bench press. Exactly. That's the mission for me. That's the grind for me is that I have to make sexy these areas. And they weren't even making any equipment to train to strengthen your tibialis

with free weights anymore. It had fallen off the face of the earth. You couldn't buy them anywhere. My buddy reached out, said, what needs to exist that doesn't? I drew up some diagrams. Boom. Now they're being used by pro athletes all over the world, but more importantly, helping people in their 70s, 80s, 90s to be able to walk longer without winding up in a walker. You know what I mean? Yeah. There's a bunch of exercises that you guys suggest that are transformative for martial artists. One of them is the monkey feet. Yes. That was in that post of these areas we don't train with measurable loads. Yeah.

I recommend that to everyone. There's something about the hip flexors that if you can develop those from lifting the weights with your feet, with that device, you can develop much more power in your kicks. You use it every kick. Yes, every kick. Here's where I start to get, this is the point of the conversation, I start to get fired up. It's because for a fighter, your bench press, sure, your bench press should be how much weight you lift with your feet. That's what you should walk into the gym, the cockiest mofo there, knowing I have stronger hip flexors. You know what I mean? I have stronger knees.

You want to go into a fight knowing that you've worked your Nordic, that you can crush that dude with your strength in your hamstring. You know what I mean? Well, the strength in the hamstring, one of the things that's really important for is your guard in jiu-jitsu. It's gigantic. And a lot of guys would just do leg curls, you know, which is definitely good. It's definitely something. But, you know, just do leg curls, which is definitely good. It's definitely something.

But leg curls with the monkey feet is so superior. There's something about isolating it and balancing it with your one individual leg and being able to do those leg curls. And it's stunning how weak I was when I first started doing it. Like that, like this woman's doing here. Look at that booty. God damn. I would advise someone, go very light, okay?

Yes. People can over, anything we're talking about here, people can overdo. You know what I mean? In your training areas, you haven't. But it's a free weight. She's going very shallow. She's not going very deep. How is that?

I mean, that's okay. People start off with different ranges of motion. So is this like someone who's just starting? You know, this is a common exercise that has been around a long time, the idea of hamstring curls. And I believe that hamstring curls are really good. But I want you to notice something on this, okay? Notice at the bottom of the rep. See how there's the bottom, there's nothing. It's easy. See when her leg is straight? When her leg is straight, there's no weight. Now as she goes up, it gets tougher. That's how hamstring curls are.

The Nordic I was describing and showing, it's the opposite. So I believe in doing the hamstring curls for more repetitions with lighter weights. You can get that healing effect. You can get blood flow into the area. Be very, you know, be gentle with it. But then the Nordic has that intense bulletproofing effect because it's getting stronger as that muscle is lengthening. I see.

Power, it has much more powerful effects on adapting your body versus just general strength and healing. So light curl machine, general strength and healing. So light curl machine, general strength and healing. What was shown there was a free weight hamstring curl. So there's still body weight and free weight versus just machines. You know, it's well proven machines can have their place for sure, but there's something really special about free weight. You know what I mean? Yeah.

And so that's what, you know, applying the free weight and body weight concept to your ankles and knees and hips has really powerful effects. So if you've gone your whole life, and for me, the reason I became obsessed with the hip flexor was because of being a super slow guy. I, in high school, was like breaking records for my terrible 40-yard dash and stuff. And it was embarrassing, you know. And it was embarrassing, you know. And even once I started getting to where I could jump better, until I started training that Nordic hamstring curl and the hip flexor and taking those as seriously as other people care about their bench and their squat, now basketball is so much more fun because I can really run fast. And I've trained a lot of NFL corners and stuff. And I'm now like average speed with an NFL corner. That's fun. But without doing measurable overload for the muscles that pick up my leg, I just, it wasn't there. Because the natural athlete has it. The natural athlete can go do, it took me years to do what the natural speedsters can do on the Nordic hamstring curl and the hip flexors from day one. You see what I mean? Yes. So that's why I was saying, I started to get really fired up about this because the grinder with the work ethic and the skill who doesn't have the body

to be a pro athlete, to have that pro, oh, it's one thing to get the pecs of a pro athlete. No, no, no. But the speed, the kicking, you know what I mean? That explosive quality that is so mythical and only the natural, no, no, no. That's, it's physics. You can train it. So I get, I get super fired up about that. It's just amazing that, as we said, exercise has been around for a hundred years or whatever, in terms of like large scale populations doing it. But the fact that you're implementing this program, that's so revolutionary in 2022. When did you start putting it out there? In the last few years. Very recently. That's very weird. Yeah. People have only been noticing probably in the last year or so.

But it's weird when you think about how much money is involved in sports and how many people are trying to make a living as a professional athlete yeah how many like super dedicated ultra driven and disciplined individuals and they still didn't know about this yeah and that's because if we're only going off the data from the education system you know we're doomed to that yeah yeah i was just saying seven you were saying how serious the athletes are you know yeah but seven times as much money has been spent studying how do you accelerate more versus decelerate, even though the majority of our injuries happen in deceleration. Right. So it's like, we're always going to be the effect of what the education system is, as long as we're saying

that only what's in those textbooks is true. And that's not the case. You know what I mean? Google itself is still operating. Google will tell you that if you have knee pain, you can, you know, ice it. You can take anti-inflammatory drugs, which now are looking like actually break down your cartilage. So I was popping those like crazy, not knowing those may have been actually wearing down cartilage instead of helping. And then I was icing, icing, icing that Google also said to do that. The guy who came up with the rest, ice, compress, elevate, he now says he was wrong. It doesn't even matter that he says he was wrong

because it's already in the textbooks what he said 30 years ago. What does he say to do now? Now he says motion. Motion. Yeah, you need to get motion to it. You need to actually get blood flow to it because the icing can actually delay healing. Yeah, they used to say that icing prevents autolysis, right?

can actually delay healing. Yeah, they used to say that icing prevents autolysis, right? Isn't that the term? I mean. Where you're, because of the inflammation, it breaks down muscle tissue. That was like, I know that this is outdated. But this was, at one point in time, the thought process. And they would always tell you to ice injuries. Yeah, and I think it.

Do you think you should ice injuries at all? Well, I think when you get hurt and you're in pain, the ice works. You know what I mean? And there's a lot of people who – To reduce pain. Yeah. But not necessarily to help heal. Exactly.

I think that's where it comes in. Yeah. And now I see people are having good results with the idea of doing it, you know, for a shorter period of time, like these ice baths and stuff. Now, unfortunately, if people are expecting to get a bunch of good tips on that kind of stuff, I have no helpful tips because I don't do anything for recovery. I just do my workouts. I don't take any supplements. Nothing, no vitamins, nothing. Only thing I take is instant coffee in the morning just to be like, so I'm not like potentially lying about something, but there's an instant coffee called strong coffee.

Yeah. And so it has about 15 grams of protein in there. So I'm getting my coffee protein. That would be considered the only supplement I take. I don't take any supplements for anything. It's very important to me that I do nothing for body work, no recovery, no massage,

no any kind of thing that could help my knees, I refuse to take it. Does that make sense? No. I need to master the exercise for people. Right. So if any of these things work, then how do I know what I'm getting from the exercises? Right.

But vitamins? Dude, I eat pretty good. I'm sure you eat pretty good. Yeah. But you know how difficult it is to get the, well, first of all, how old are you? eat pretty good. I'm sure you eat pretty good, but you know how difficult it is to get the – well, first of all, how old are you? 30. Yeah, I'm 54.

When you get to be older, then you realize like not that you're older and wiser, but your body needs those things in order to – Now, I also want no cheat meals, and I eat – That's great. I eat – I'm sure you're eating great. I eat really quality foods. I'm sure you're eating great. I eat really quality foods. I'm sure you do.

I'm getting a lot, but I'm also not anti-vitamin. I'm okay with using my life to figure out things for people. You know what I mean? Yes. I just don't want any possible advantage that could help my knees. I'm okay. I don't take my life that seriously. I believe you on the vitamins.

When I was 30 is when I first started really taking vitamins. I was probably 28, 29, 30, in that seriously. I believe you on the vitamins. When I was 30 is when I first started really taking vitamins. I was probably 28, 29, 30 in that range. That's when I started getting serious about vitamins. Yeah. And I took loads of vitamins back when I was trying and failing to fix my knees. And that's just kind of how powerful some of these simple things like a sled can be on pain levels and stuff like that. But I just want to be clear. I'm not anti-vital. I understand what you're saying. You just are dedicated to your process. Yeah, and maybe as I go, I will adapt. There's no ego in it.

It's just that right now I know I'm serving people better by not using anything to speed up my recovery. You know what I mean? I understand that, but I don't believe that I would put vitamins in the category of speeding up recovery. I would put them into optimizing your health and optimizing nutrition. And I would listen to you on what vitamins you think are the essentials. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Like, what am I not getting from food? You see what I mean? Yeah. I would definitely listen to that, you know. Omega fatty acids for sure. D3 for sure. Grass-fed meat, wild-caught salmon has a lot of the, you know what I mean? Yeah. But you need a lot. Like it's to really maximize your potential. I mean, it's like, let's look at it this way. If you were a professional fighter and you were going to fight a version of yourself like you, but there's you who does sauna, who does ice baths, who takes vitamins, who gets massages, who's like, you know, involved in all sorts of VO2 max tests and all sorts of different.

I would bet on that person. Yeah. Doesn't mean that he would win because maybe you'd be better skill wise or more efficient or more dedicated and disciplined or, or just fucking meaner. You know, like some there's, there's, there's things that are intangibles, right? But I think all things being equal, which they rarely are, but all things being equal, the person who optimizes their nutrition has a body that functions better. has a body that functions better. Yep.

Now, right now, I'm a coach. So now let's say I'm training that fighter and I'm doing my side on the exercise side and he's consulting experts, you know what I mean? Yes. Who are in the trenches on everything you're talking about. Boom, that's going to be the best fighter. You see what I'm saying? So I'm in the um i'd love

at some point to demo like cold front splits and shit like that just so you can see it what do you mean like doing the splits and stuff oh i can do that awesome yeah um i i'll just demo this super okay sure all right so here we go people are not hearing, so you drop all the way down. That's super impressive that you can do that and bounce up. I didn't just walk in here like fresh. No one's seeing this, though, unfortunately. That's okay. But it's not okay because this is a video podcast.

Can I turn a camera on you? Yeah, I can do that. I'll see you when he's ready. Here we go. This is a first, folks. this is a first for the podcast this is wild that you can do that and just bounce up like that nobody can hear you though so you're you come back come back to the microphone come back to the mic because the problem is like when you're saying that it's all cool stuff the way you're doing that how long did it take before you let's is when you're saying that, it's all cool stuff. The way you're doing that, how long did it take before you – let's explain what you're doing.

He's on his shins and knees, and he goes all the way backwards, and without using his hands, goes all the way up. How long did it take before you could do that? You're looking at years. Years. Years. And I think that five-year rule on the backward sled to get the healing while working on the ranges of motion and stuff. That knee thing is wild.

I think about five years. When you go all the way back. That means you have to have enough. And I wanted to demo it cold because you know what it's like as an athlete. It's easier to be warmed up and show something off. Oh, yeah, for sure. Here's a video of you doing it. Yeah, so people often assume that I'm in pain or something doing that.

It's totally pain-free and easy. You know what I mean? But that means at my knee joint that I can handle my own body weight in both range of motion and strength. Yes. So I think that's a wonderful test. But if you think that you're going to, if you think knees over toes training is going and trying that, that would be very risky. You know what I mean? Right. Right away, it would be very risky. That's

something you build up to. Right. Exactly. What about doing something like that with a weight vest on? I think that could be a good idea. I think there's something to it when you start to add weight though, that the human body, like you start to tip over. You know what I mean? Yeah. But I think that would be a cool idea. But I found that just maintaining that ability, if you're, you know, to play basketball and stuff like that. But I think a fighter, that would be a great, you know, to have that kind of pain-free ability.

But my only point was that could vitamins make me better? Sure. But I'm like in the one in a million in terms of the knee ability that I've created just through training. You know what I mean? Yes. So that's – but I'm a coach. So I'm going to make certain sacrifices. I'm also going to know that in modern society, if I'm going entire years without a single piece of bread or something like that,

you can feel like my immune system feels so strong. You know what I mean? My, it's not being fucked with by inflammatory foods. Yeah. And, and so eating, you know, um, eating, uh, foods that have a lot of omega-3s and stuff like that, I know I'm still going to do all right out there. You know what I mean? Yeah, for sure. But as I go, I'm always looking. And I'm never telling someone else, don't take vitamins or something like that.

It's kind of like I'm just trying to play my part to be as obsessive as I can to master these exercise regressions and formulas for people. And then they can, you know, a fighter should have experts in a variety of things, basically. Yeah. And when you're eating, like, tell me what's like a normal breakfast, lunch, and dinner for you. Well, the breakfast is just the instant coffee with the protein. That's it. The strong coffee. Boom. Done. Because to me, that's like so thrilled about that because I can just start my day. Currently, I get a rotisserie chicken for lunch.

It's like six bucks. One for me, one for my dog, Lucky. The dog gets a rotisserie chicken? He eats pretty good. Damn. Do you take the bones out? Hot sauce. Oh, yeah, yeah. I debone it for him. Pretty good. Damn. Do you take the bones out? Hot sauce. Oh, yeah, yeah. I debone it for them.

And then at night, I like to treat my family to a dinner. And I'll tend to do two servings of, like, you know, the protein side to skip all the starches and breads and stuff like that. And then my dessert every night is fruit. So I basically eat meat and fruit. That's it? No vegetables? Basically. I kind of like vegetables. I'll have some here and there.

Again, I'm not studying this to the degree that I'm studying the exercise. I saw you were doing meat and fruit this month. That's the whole month. I feel fucking great. I did it basically this whole last year. So to me, it was kind of like, I used to think fruit equals bad, you know? Yeah.

Guys like CarnivoreMD put out good data on it. So again, I'm not pretending to be an expert. Right. No, Paul Saladino, his information is excellent on this stuff. He actually got me to see if anyone, just to give an example, like he's called CarnivoreMD, but I actually really realized the value of fruit from him.

So I just have an open mind on it. I'm not, I'm not against someone being a vegan or anything like that. I, I respect everyone's diet. I'm trying to see what works for me, what I feel good on. And one thing I'm really passionate about is the fruit for dessert, because I find that really helps people get off foods they don't want to have. And when you start to have good fruit, because most of us go our whole lives, we never have like good fruit. You know what I'm talking about? We grew up thinking fruit is like a soggy piece of cantaloupe. When you have like really good fresh fruit, it's delicious. It's delicious. Yeah. And so I find that regardless of what diet someone is on, that's the most, that's the only,

the only thing I would say I'm an expert on is how to not eat cheat meals. You know what I mean? That's the only thing I've done different. Paul expert on is how to not eat cheat meals. You know what I mean? That's the only thing I've done different. Paul's work, what's really interesting is the highlighting of the fact that if you look at nature, that these brightly colored, delicious things are what nature wants you to eat. These plants essentially want you to eat their oranges. They want you to eat their apples. That's how they spread their seeds. People eat them or animals eat them,

and then they shit out the seeds, and that's what actually helps them grow new trees. And this is just a part of the process in that they don't develop these protective chemicals that some vegetables have. And so what he's trying to highlight is that there's a lot of things that people eat that have some kind of protection against predation and we know that this is a thing right we know that this is a thing with plants that there's some plants i think it's the acacia tree um that will actually if you can play the sound of a grasshopper eating leaves next to the tree, they will emit a chemical that makes their leaves taste like shit. And they've done this. Google this because this is pretty important.

It's really wild stuff. There's things that happen with plants where they're not exactly sure what's being communicated. But they know that if, for say, a giraffe is upwind and this giraffe is eating leaves, if the wind from the giraffe eating leaves comes down towards these other trees, those trees will emit a chemical that changes the flavor of their leaves and makes them taste horrible to discourage predation. That's fascinating. His perspective, and I don't know if he's accurate, but it's fascinating and he's a very, very intelligent guy.

It makes sense. It's logical. What he's saying is that if you look at animals, all animals essentially, most animals are edible. Very few plants are edible. It's a small percentage of plants that are edible for human beings. But almost all plants are. I didn't know that. The plants don't have the defense mechanisms that the animal has.

The animal's defense mechanism is it runs away from us. Like if you look at a deer, they run away from us. Fish run away from us. Those things, they run and that's how they stay alive. What plants do is they develop these defense chemicals. And these chemicals taste like shit or these chemicals can cause animals to not want to eat them. They discourage predation. And what he believes is they also create inflammation

or some sort of a chemical reaction in the human body that could lead to some autoimmune disorders, including things like nightshades, which I love tomatoes, they're fucking delicious. But he had this whole thing about them, about the chemicals, the oxalates in different forms of vegetables like kale and other vegetables that we think of being healthy that might not be good for you. However, there's other doctors that look at these chemicals

and look at these things and say, no, these, when you eat them in the proper quantities, are good for you because they have a hermetic effect. They have an effect similar to the effect that you get from being in a sauna. Like if you're in 185 degrees for the rest of your life, you're dead, right? But if you're in the 185 degrees for 20 minutes, it's actually very good for you because your body produces these heat shock proteins in response to that heat. So this, this is where the debate sets in. to that heat. So this is where the debate sets in.

And this is where I'm not sure who's correct. But what I do know is when I eat nothing but meat and fruit, I feel fucking great. So it seems to be working for me. However, honestly, when I think about it, I go, well, I think what's going on is I'm cutting out bread and pasta and most bullshit and processed foods. I think that might be what's making me feel better. There's a lot of truth in all of that, though. Someone should have their own choice on it. And I think for me, the reason I go meat, fruit, and then I leave the vegetable optional. So I don't say, oh, I'm not allowed to eat vegetable. You see what I mean? Yes. I leave the vegetable optional.

Number one is because the meat and the fruit, and even like avocado is a fruit, and these things have a lot of calories. So it's very real to me that those are going to like sustain my body. They have a lot of calories. They can sustain my body to put out effort. And I crave those most. You see what I mean? I crave the meat and the fruit more than the vegetable. Yeah. But like you said, there's some vegetables that if I like, I'll have most. You see what I mean? I crave the meat and the fruit more than the vegetable. Yeah. But like you said, there's some vegetables that if I like, I'll have them. You see what I mean?

Yeah. So I figure if I'm eating meat, fruit, and some vegetables, that's still going to be so much better than the average person is eating. It's definitely better than the average person. I don't ever feel bad when I eat vegetables, though. This is why it's confusing to me. Like if I eat a bowl of pasta, I feel like shit. I feel great while I'm eating it. The mouth pleasure is amazing.

Yeah. I love delicious food. Yeah. But if I eat a salad, I don't feel bad. Yeah. I enjoy the salad, but afterwards I don't feel bad at all. So, I mean, is there a long-term effect from a cumulative effect of whatever, you know, defense chemicals these plants release? I don't know, because I've only heard Paul talk about that. And I don't, I would like to see someone debate him who is logical and objective and

reasonable and well-educated. That would be an interesting conversation. Not someone who's ideologically like connected to eating vegetables only. Not someone who's ideologically connected to eating vegetables only, but someone who has looked at this very from an analytical perspective, looking at all the data that's currently available. Yeah, I think that's a great idea. For me, at the end of the day, I look at everyone

trying to do their best out there. Paul got me to actually eat more fruit instead of eating junk. You see what I mean? So like, that's a huge win. That's a huge takeaway for me that I would tell anyone. And I've helped a lot of people now with like, here's my, like my only diet advice I have for someone else is try fruit for dessert at night instead of stuff, you know, you don't want to put in your body. That's great advice. That's all I have. Like after all this time, that's the only advice I

personally have for someone. Yeah, I don't have, I mean, I've never heard a single argument against fruit. It's just, it tastes great. It's good for you. It's filled with vitamins, especially you know, things like oranges and pineapple and stuff. Papaya and mango. It's like, how is that bad? How can it be? It's so fucking

delicious. But I did at one point actually think that like fruit was bad just because it was like sugar and carbs yeah but i think for me it's realizing that well wait a second but meanwhile i'm binging on pizza at night or whatever you know what i mean so i've felt so much i feel like my internal health has been a lot better making fruit my dessert you know yes i think so i mean there's um i mean there's so much variety that you could choose from from fruit too. This is another great aspect of it. Just so many different kinds of fruit to choose from. You won't get bored eating it.

When I did the carnivore diet before, I would call what I'm doing now more animal-based because I'm doing it from Paul's descriptions, which is I will still eat fruit and I will still eat honey and a few other things. But when I did it before, I did an entire month with nothing but meat. I eat mostly ribeye steaks. And if I eat lean game meat, I eat like bacon with it. Oh, wow. And maybe some eggs.

The difference there was my workouts were a little flat. There's no flatness to my workouts were a little flat. There's no flatness to my workouts with the fruit. Keeping the fruit in and keeping the carbohydrates from the fruit and the sugars from the fruit, I don't have any problem with workouts. Even fasted workouts are better. Today I worked out fasted before I got here. Yesterday I worked out fasted before a podcast.

No issues at all. No problem with energy levels but like before when i did nothing but meat like in heavy endurance work and um like rounds in the bag and things like that i started to really drag ass like i was like this is like i was forcing myself into it yeah whereas i feel with fruit very energized yeah and at the end of the day we're all coming from different lives we've had. Different things might be detoxing. We all might react differently to different diets.

Sure. But I think what you're on now, I mean, that would be my vote if I'm coaching an athlete is to add in the fruit. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think there's anything wrong with it. And, you know, the recovery thing, like where you don't do massage and you don't do sauna and you don't do like cold plunge or

anything like that. So this is all just to show that everything that you're doing is consistently achievable through exercise only. Yeah. And I think it makes me work harder on the regressions and on the form quality. You know what I mean? Like I can't, I can't, um, do things risky in my training because I'm not going to have something to go make myself feel better from it. You know what I mean? So I think it's actually made me get really dialed in to, you know, the formula of what I'm doing. Do you incorporate rolling, like foam rolling or any kind of nothing? Nothing.

Massage ball, nothing? Zero. Really? So do you get sore? I mean, I can get sore in my muscles, you know, from certain work. You don't get like stiff, like stiff back where you have to roll it out or anything? I mean, I don't. Really?

I never roll or anything like that. But you do stretch a lot. And that is, that's amazing. I'm big on flexibility. Yeah. And I think that for most people, what I, so what I'm super passionate about is the idea of doing strength work through flexibility. So like, I don't currently do any static stretching. I'm not against static stretching, static stretching. I would think of as a foundation. What I really enjoy is when my strength work and my flexibility work kind of become one and the same. So I'm trying to get – I'm not just trying to reach my body to a position and then strengthen a different position.

Anywhere I can go, I want to be strong there. And I think that's why I can do the splits cold or I can be playing basketball and then do the splits or these kind of things and not have to worry about tweaking something because I'm getting strong in those nooks and crannies. So how do you get strong while you're doing splits? Like what are you doing to get you strong in those positions? If you go to the fourth post, you'll see my favorite exercise. So the top three posts I put is only about the sled. That's how important I think the sled is. If you look at the – so you're going to see on this –

Give me some volume on this, Jamie, so I can hear what he says and give me a refresh. The oil that delivers nutrients into the – So this one's about full range of motion. Once I get into exercise, notice my back leg. All I want you to watch on this one is the back leg. I do this every Monday of my life. So this would be a super low level where you're bending the knee. But watch what happens.

The back hip flexors start stretching. Now when you do this flat ground without the back knee touching the floor, your hip flexors get very flexible. But I'm handling my body weight. So I'm not just sitting there stretching with my back knee on the ground. I'm actively lengthening through that back hip flexor. So if you think about a split, you can lengthen through that back hip flexor with that full range of motion split squat. And then in that front hamstring, I do things like Romanian deadlifts, but where the intent is only on getting that stretch every rep. Like I'm not sacrificing the weight. Romanian straight leg?

Yeah, like a straight-legged deadlift, like that kind of thing. But where I'm not sacrificing, I'm not trying to go heavier and shortening up. You see what I mean? Meaning every rep you're trying to get the best range of motion you can. And then you may have seen me do that Jefferson curl thing where I, uh, I curl my body and I reached my hands like down below my toes. Okay. So, so if you look at the angles of those, and if you look at the angles of that ass to grass split squat, that full range of motion split squat on the back hip flexor, you can actually approximate the angles of those, and if you look at the angles of that ass to grass split squat, that full range of motion split squat on the back hip flexor, you can actually approximate the angles like of a front split through only strength training. So that's, I don't, I don't static stretch personally. I use static stretching in my system as an optional basis. But what I'm trying

to do is figure out, even when it gets into my groin area, like, you know, like a butterfly stretch, I hold weights on my knees and I strengthen my groin. Does that make sense? Yeah. A lot of guys in martial arts do that as well. It's not max out lifting, but the idea is that I'm going to be strong and capable in all these nooks and crannies. When you do this butterfly stretch thing, do you hold a dumbbell in each hand? Exactly, on each knee.

And put the weight on each knee? Exactly. And then do you lift the knees up? Exactly. So then I use my groin muscles to lift the weights. Is there a video of that? No, I don't have that one. So you do that, and that allows you to increase your flexibility

because you're actually pushing down with the weight and then also strengthening it because you're lifting it. So for me, I was extremely stiff, and I found that if I just, you know, stayed static stretching, I would get some benefit, but I would, like, tighten back up. You know what I mean? Yeah.

And here's another example where, like, there's no studies on your groin injury from having a strong and flexible groin from this exercise we're talking about right now. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, it could be 20, 30 years or more before something like that is in a textbook. But I'll tell you this much when your groin is flexible and strong and you go play sports, like all past evidence would indicate if an area is stronger and more flexible, you have actually like way less chance of injury. So there seems

to be like an, there's an exponential thing going on when it comes to strength and flexibility, being in harmony versus either being strong, but stiff or flexible, but weak. You see what I'm saying? A hundred percent, because I've heard the argument that you can be too flexible because it can make you less stable. And people have said that to me, and I was like, oh, boy, is that like – But it goes the wrong way. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Exactly, exactly. So saying – because I get athletes all the time.

They see me dunk and do a splits or something, and that's why I'm doing that is to stand up for flexibility because the amount of young basketball players who are scared to get flexible because they think it will take away their jumping ability or something. It's like you said, throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I've heard guys say that in martial arts about fighting. Right. Basketball players are suffering a lot of injuries because they're way too tight. They're tight and weak. So they're worried about getting flexible when really the problem is they're weak and inflexible and they need to be getting more flexible and stronger.

You see what I mean? So is this a myth that's been – It's a myth. It's going around in the basketball community? Big time. So is that in football as well or baseball? Yeah. So they all think that to be flexible somehow or another makes you less fast?

Exactly. Really? Yes. Even though there's, there's, um, it's like if you just take an area and you don't do any, you know, strengthening through that range and you just, I guess, passively push it through stretches, you know what I mean? I don't think you or I thinks that's going to make you athletic. But the idea then to think that flexibility makes you slow is just false. Let me introduce you to a real freak. There's this guy who fights for one championship FC. We've pulled up his videos before. I think I know who you're going to say.

In Galani? Yeah. Yeah. He is so jacked. I mean, like superhero jacked. But he is so dedicated to flexibility. Yeah. And he has these videos that he puts up on Instagram. And we're used to seeing people that are flexible that maybe are built like you or even me, but not that big. He's giant and he's fucking preposterously flexible and very fast.

So anybody that thinks that you can't be flexible, but look at Jack. I mean, he's super jacked. Give me some volume on this. I can hear it. So this is him. So for someone that's this muscular,

so this is like him just working out. You can look him up. You can see him doing this. Yeah. I want to see some other stuff, Jamie. See But you can look him up. You can see him doing the splits and stuff. Yeah, I want to see some other stuff, Jamie. See if you can find some shit. You could probably Google his name and then see. You'd probably see. Yeah, like look at this. Yeah, there you go. I mean, for someone that has legs the size of this guy

and to be able to do and he's all about like full range of motion and strength and flexibility. Yep. I don't know where he lives. A lot of these guys in One Championship, because One Championship is an Asian organization, and they fight a lot in Singapore and all over the world,

but a lot of it is in Asia. Yeah, you don't have to be flexible to be athletic, but if you're like me and you lack explosion, period, and you're stiff and weak, well, then if you're going to try to get explosive, the ability to open up flexibility and strength, you can then just be it. Look at this.

Yeah. Like, what the fuck, man? Yep. This guy's doing a split in between two boxes, full side split, like more than 100% flexibility. Because he's past the range of motion that you would normally associate with someone's legs and hamstring stretches. Yeah.

It's wild. So I would tell someone to think about flexibility as access. So flexibility is like access to get stronger into different areas. Yes. And the, arguably the best bodybuilding legs ever. So like we're talking about like the most muscular legs. Tom Platz. Tom Platz. But have you seen his flexibility?

No. Look, type in Tom Platz flexibility and you're going to see him doing the thing I was doing on the floor. Really? So when someone reaches out to me and they're like, oh, but if I'm not like a lean frame, it's impossible. It's like, actually the most, I got that from the most muscular legs of all time. That guy's legs are as big as my whole body. You'll see actually pictures of him doing that thing where you're fully laying back with the quads fully stretched out, crazy hamstring flexibility. Wow, I did not know that so flexible flexibility is access if you're

like i'm not going to tell someone who's doing great like oh you need to be you don't need to do anything you don't even have to quote unquote exercise look at the guys i mentioned back at the start in the forestry industry who are essentially probably exercising better than most people exercise they're for the fucking legs yeah bro that's bonkers right but that's my point is probably exercising better than most people exercise. Look at those legs. Yeah. Bro, that's bonkers. Right, but that's my point. Those legs are bonkers.

That does not look real. Yeah, and that's the sport of bodybuilding. Come on, man. Look at those legs. Isn't it weird that he had a regular size upper body for a bodybuilder? His legs were so big. I mean, not like regular for a regular person. Yeah, and you see the flexibility he had yeah crazy flexibility flexibility is access so look at all the fucking there you go see that on the right yeah see that on the right yeah

right so the idea of quote unquote muscle bound or that flexibility takes away your explosiveness there's there's myths going on around there. Yeah. And. What the fuck is going on there, bro? That's crazy, right? Isn't that crazy? That's so nuts.

I've never seen a leg like that. He used his flexibility. Yeah. To be able to dig into these muscles even more. Does that make sense? Yes, 100%. So for him, the flexibility was the access. So most people, you can either dunk or you can't dunk. It's not like you're going to fully grow and you can't jump. And then later in life,

you're going to create jumping. And I don't think I would have been able to do that if I was stiff. You know what I mean? Yeah, no. I firmly believe that the flexibility gave me the access to then adapt these areas in my muscles. You see what I mean? Yes, for sure. It's just so interesting because you've come from this place of having these destroyed knees and you've figured it out along the way. It's like you're a real gift to athletes because there's a lot of people out there that don't ever have knee problems.

And they probably would never pursue what you're doing like the fact that you've achieved this level of athleticism and ability because of the fact that you had fucked knees it's amazing yeah it's wild never would have dreamed i'd be able to dunk like yeah well what's also amazing is you have um you've not just applied that to the lower body, but also to the upper body, like to shoulders. Yeah. When it comes to shoulders, elbows, wrists, I have the same goal of being quote unquote bulletproof, meaning a human body is fragile. So I'm sure as heck going to train to make it less fragile. And there seems to be the same kind of common denominators, having range of motion, getting blood flow to the area to build up. So even with your elbow, if you are always stuck at a 90 degree angle with the elbow,

you know what I mean? You never take it through a full range of motion. So yeah, it's the same concepts with the shoulders, the elbows, the wrist, training the decelerators. So that muscle in there by the forearm, the muscle right behind your shoulder, you know what I mean? If you think about like a baseball player, I've helped a lot of baseball players who thought, I won't be able to throw without shoulder pain. But if you break down the throw and you get stronger in reverse, at some point you actually can throw. You see what I mean? So by grabbing a band and pulling it back this way i like to use dumbbells i like measurable i like something measurable you know what i mean right so um

yes you get some of these similar common denominators of training areas that most people aren't thinking about because they're thinking about the performance side not realizing that the pain and injury is the number one thing that stops you from throwing more miles per hour or jumping higher. So when you figure out the recipe, when you figure out a sort of mathematical recipe of the action you're doing, and you can always be more bulletproof than what's needed for the action, you can keep putting out more force. You see what I mean? So like for a kick, you could probably break it down to some of these various, probably the Nordic because it's like your leg is straightening. Definitely the hip flexor, depending on how you're kicking, probably that tibialis muscle.

And then, of course, the knee. And so there's no absolute, but it just means that you can probably go after that a little bit harder if your strength training is accounting for those different angles. Yeah, it completely makes sense. What about the torso? Like what about the abdominals and, you know, the lower back muscles? Because a lot of sports utilize a twisting motion of the body. Martial arts, it's like almost everything. It's twisting, particularly for striking.

Yeah. It's a, particularly for striking. It's a gigantic aspect of your ability to generate power and speed. I'd say there's probably three things I do a bit more unique on that. And number one is just when we think about the six-pack, I'm thinking about that lifting the feet. So I'll show you my favorite exercise for that. If you go back to that fifth post, which we've used a bunch, at the moment that I'm using the monkey foot, you're going to see my training partner lying down. He's hooked up to a cable machine.

He's lying on his back. This is like a reverse sit-up. And so we know in my gym for males, half body weight, 20 reps, most people can't do it. But they train it for a while, and then they can. It's coming up right here. Boom, there he is right there. So he's hooked up to a cable stack with a measurable load trying to get his knees up. And like I'm telling you, like if you take the average male athlete and you put half their body weight and you ask him to do 20 reps,

they reach a point where they cannot get their knees up. Their lower abdomen and stuff is not capable of getting it up. So that's all abs. Lower abs and hip flexors. And hip flexors. So a lot of my stuff that you've seen was during the COVID period where I was trying to figure out how do I mimic exactly what I was doing in my gym? So my whole zero program is meant to mimic these ground up effects of a sled where you're pushing through the foot. And so that was an idea of how do you have no sled and rework those effects from the ground up. And then, like, with the monkey foot is awesome to work those hip flexors. But in my gym, we have the cable strap right there.

You get to work both sides, hip flexors, lower ab. You see what I mean? What is he connecting? Can you go back to that again? How is he connecting it to his feet? It's a low ab strap that hooks onto the foot. So it's like

it's, if you've ever seen like a lifting strap, it's a company called Chic that makes lifting straps. And they make a strap that you hook up to your feet. So we're lifting weights there. Right there. So we're lifting weights with our feet.

Right. I just needed to see what the strap looked like. I've never seen that strap before. And on YouTube, I have the detailed videos and all this. I was just trying to make it easier for people by having these fast videos to quickly show all the main stuff we would talk about. I have a cable machine at my house. I just wanted to make sure that I could get something like that in there.

It's quite a setup. We put a box behind us with weight on it so it won't move because it's a maximum effort. So right off the bat, we're trying to strengthen our core from the ground up, meaning the ability to lift our feet. And then we also go on a back extension machine, but sideways. And that trains the QL, quadratus lumborum, a four-sided muscle. It's not your low back. It's not your abs. It's in between the two. And what that one does is it pulls your body from side to side. Because when it comes to twisting and stuff, what you're often really looking at is a combination of a lot of things happening at once. And if you don't actually strengthen that muscle, which does straight up go side to side,

you don't realize you're missing out on like one of the key muscles that creates that lateral explosion or twisting, that rotational strength. So that is like the lower back on the sides. Yeah, exactly. That's always what gets really sore when I kick the bag a lot too.

Yeah, and I think that one's super underrated for our lower back because when we kick or swing or jump, a lot of us, we have more of a one-sided thing because of sports. Right. And then sport is getting us, sport is abnormal. It's not, there's no example of human life jumping 500 times in a day like I would on a basketball court or something like that. Same with you with the kicking.

It wouldn't be natural to kick that much as you have to for your sport. So we can get pretty out of balance in that quadratus lumborum. Most people who haven't trained it, they can't believe it. They're sore for like a week after. It's almost like they have a muscle they've never trained. So without that, my back would still have tweaks here and there. And particularly for me as a right-handed player, it was so much easier to stretch to one side. And when I would reach with my left arm, it's almost like I'm blocked off or something.

You want to see the best example of an imbalance? One of the greatest boxers of all time, Roy Jones Jr. Roy Jones Jr. has a left bicep that's as big as my head. Wow. His right bicep is totally normal. Wow. They used to call him Captain Hook. Like, look at his left b my head. Wow. His right bicep is totally normal. Wow. They used to call him Captain Hook. Like, look at his left bicep.

Bro. Whoa. It's crazy. Obviously, his right one's pretty big, too. But his left was fucking, like, look at that. It's like 40% bigger. It's giant. And it's got lumps, and it's all shredded and shit.

Yep. Roy, look at that one. Whoa. Roy has the most ridiculous left bicep but my god his left hook was off the fucking charts yeah off the charts he would throw a left hook the way a lot of guys threw a jab wow and he was so freakishly fast wow now imagine that kind of an imbalance deep in your core there on either on either side of your spine, probably fucks with his back, right? Yeah, but I'm just saying for a lot of us, we have some of these imbalances.

And so I think that's a huge one is training that quadratus lumborum. Yeah. So the hip flexor, the quadratus lumborum, you're already training areas that most people in their quote unquote core work are not quite training, you know? I have another good example for you.

My friend, John Dudley, he's an archery coach and was a world-class archer at one point in time. And he is so used to pulling back a bow with his right side. So he's used to holding the bow out with his left side. So the left side's all push and the right side's all pull. And so his back, and my back muscles are fucked up because of this too not fucked up but my right side is thicker than my left side like i've had women massage me and as a massage i'm like you know your right muscles are like much bigger than your left muscles and his back i'm gonna send you this uh because uh i'll give it to jamie so he can post it up here his right back muscle is pushing against his spine in this weird way and so he has um see he sent me a picture of it he's got this weird looking fucking back here

where it's like leaning uh text it to you jamie his you can see it here but well i'll show it to you, Jamie. You can see it here, but I'll show it to you on the big screen. His back muscle is like leaning towards one side. His back bones are twisted to his right side. That is because he's always pulling. Look at his fucking back. So he has like real problems with his back because of this. Wow. Because his whole life. I mean, John is uh probably 45 and i think he's been doing this

since he was like a baby so he's been pulling back a bow for you know 30 plus fucking years and his whole spine like look at that it's literally turning towards the right area, like the area where he pulls. It's nuts. That's wild. That's not good, right? No, but I don't think we have to avoid doing these things we want to do. You just have to strengthen the other side. Yeah, and I think the human pursuit should matter more

than running away from life. Right. And that's the difference between your approach and the approach of doctors. Right. So if I would have just never played basketball again, would that have been happiness? You know what I mean? No, no. Thank God.

Thank God you figured it out for everybody. Thank you. My doctor, when I had my third or fourth, you want some of that? Sure. I had my third or fourth knee surgery. My doctor was like, you have to stop doing martial arts. I started laughing. I was like like that's funny

like what do you want me to be a fucking serial killer come on man i can figure i'm like it's not that bad he's like you're gonna keep having these injuries i'm like are you sure how do you know man you don't know the future well that's how i'd tell someone man you don't even have to do anything through pain you don't even have to just find yourself a sled first. Get into a groove where you can go backward, where it's smooth. You're getting the resistance. You can feel that resistance, but it's not choppy. It's smooth.

You're getting a burn. You should get in the foundation. Like I'd be okay if that was my career. If I could only talk about that, I'd be okay with that because it's that – I think it's that important for humans with the lower body. Now your buddy with the archery, that would be a different set of exercises, but the concept would be the same. It's like I'm not going to undo your knee damage.

Right. But you probably can fight. You probably can do martial arts. That's kind of the thing. So for John, what would you recommend? Um, it would start with an external rotation exercise that gets deep into the shoulder. And so external rotation, meaning like fist outward and then pull it back. It'd be like your elbow resting on your knee. And it's, it's almost like a, imagine arm wrestling, but in reverse, in reverse. So would you do that with a cable?

I do cable and dumbbell in my program. Okay, so here he's doing it with a dumbbell. Yeah, there's a dumbbell. So I alternate weeks in my program, cable and dumbbell. Why do you do that? Why do you change it up? So think about a dumbbell. Look at this position.

Nothing. Nothing. With a cable, toughest. A lot of resistance. Exactly. Right. So I just find it's safest when we work it from each angle. So with the cable, nothing here.

With the dumbbell, that's the toughest part. Right. With the cable, that's the toughest part. Oh, I see. I see. So you do once a week? I do that once a week. So once a week, how many different exercises for the shoulder?

Don't have it off the top of my head, but it would probably be like six or seven different shoulder exercises. And you just have a one day shoulder workout? It's actually a pretty simple, uh, schedule. Monday, Thursday are leg days, Tuesday, Friday are upper body days. And then Wednesday and weekend are, are where we just work on flexibility. It's actually pretty balanced, but we sled every single time. Every time you sled. Every time.

So sled is the backbone of the whole organization. Yep. Yeah. What about dips? That's another thing. I had a shoulder injury. My doctor told me, stop doing dips. I was like, okay, buddy.

If you think about throwing a punch or something, throwing a baseball, the shoulder does have to stretch back. Yeah. And what I do is I just first focus on getting people to do pushups. And when we press dumbbells, we don't just arbitrarily stop where the dumbbell stops. We twist as we go down. So imagine you're on an inclined bench and the dumbbells are just like this, like you would do, but you gradually twist like that. Let's explain to people that are just seeing it or listening rather. What you're doing is palms down in the full extension and as you bring it towards you, you bring

your palms to you. More like a parallel. Exactly. So that the dumbbell doesn't hit your shoulder. Right. So you go through your own full range. You go deep. You get stronger through a full range of motion. I have those twisty push-up things, those handles, you know, perfect push-up. That'd be pretty cool. I like those a lot. You twist and go through a full range of motion.

It's also, it enhances what happens when you punch. It feels natural to me. As you turn, yeah. That's how I try to teach people this dumbbell press, is think like you're throwing a punch. Yeah. It feels more natural to people. You know that thing, that perfect push-up thing?

I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, I swear by those. I love those. They're great. Yeah. So when it comes to something like a dip, a dip would be a more extreme example. But can I go like full range of motion, pain-free on the dip? Absolutely.

Is my chronic shoulder pain gone? Absolutely. But would I tell someone to jump right into that? You know what I mean? Right. No. I don't want to throw out a good system just by forcing someone into something too soon. Right. No, I don't want to throw out a good system just by forcing someone into something too soon. Right, right.

It seems like a lot of this would benefit from at least some kind of supervision from a trained athletic trainer, someone who really understands your system. Yeah, that's why I didn't want to go online. Yeah. I didn't want to. People were telling me put an online program, put an online program. I said, I won't do this. I can't do this unless I'm seeing

the person's form. Right. And seeing what they're starting on each progression. Right. So then I had a buddy who was doing online coaching and he was like, well, you're going to have to charge an arm and a leg for that. You know what I mean? And I was like, all right. He said, you got to charge at least 99 bucks. I said, all right, I'll do half that. And that's what I've been doing since. And I've coached hundreds of thousands of form videos. And now I have a dedicated legion of people who did the program, changed their life, and now they work for me. And we work seven days a week coaching people's form on these exercises. That's what I do for a living. The books are just meant, you know, it can help for someone who doesn't want to dive into this to just be able to

read about it. You know what I mean? Right. That's what the books are there for. The books is just a new thing. What I've been doing for the last years is dedicating, how do I coach people's form affordably? And that's it. So it's one service. There's no higher tiers. We work our butt off watching your form and guiding you. That's what we do. Well, I'm really impressed and I really appreciate how much information you put online for free because you put out so much for so many people. And I read you saying that this is for like the 10 year old you who didn't have access to that, which I think is wonderful. I think it's really amazing because there's your, your, your methods are very unique and you work really hard to develop this system, but yet you give it away. Yeah. I mean, I've maced every business decision,

everything like that on what did that younger version of me need? You know what I mean? Right. And I would have needed to see this stuff. You know what I mean? Yeah. And I would have needed to see it to be able to buy into it and actually want to do it. You know what I mean? And then, and then people are supportive. Enough people want to have their form coached enough people. What I deliver is literally my schedule. Like what I'm doing this week. That's what's online. What I'm doing next week. I'll put up on Saturday. You see, like it's, I couldn't deliver a more honest business than saying I'll make it cheap that you can do exactly what I'm doing. That's the best I can possibly put out is what I'm going to do with my own body this week.

Yeah. With each regression, meaning scaling it, how could anyone start that? So my mom has been key for that. She's 67. And, like, my mom has to be able to, like, enjoy doing every exercise. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. So, but that, when I got into this industry, I didn't think of

exercise like that. I didn't think of abilities as that anyone could improve on an ability, right? Not everyone is going to be as funny, but could everyone be a comedian on some level? Could everyone work at it? You know what I mean? Right. Everyone can improve where, from where you are to where, you know, you are in the future. If you work hard, you can get better. Exactly. So that's really my passion is helping people realize they can exercise. But, you know, at the end of the day, I'm trying to help people, you know? Yeah. No, it's clear. It's really clear.

That's something that really comes through with all the content that you put out. I appreciate that. Yeah. My dude, I mean, you know, you could be so much more obsessed with business stuff instead of just, you know, pursuing your passion and the effect you're trying to have on the world, you know, and that's going to be the right move at the end of the day. Well, you know, what I do is just, uh, I just do what I'm interested in. That's why you're here. But you could be like shark tank and you could be asking me for a percentage right now and I would have

exactly, exactly. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah, I have zero interest in that. Exactly, but that's what I'm saying is that not everyone has that integrity, you know? Well, it's not just that. It's just that's not where my interest lies. I mean, when I have enough money

for stuff and food and whatever, then I'm not thinking about money. Like, I don't, like, I call it guerrilla Buddhism. Like, have enough money so that you don't worry about money. Yeah. Like, so. I'm exactly with you. Yeah, it's not that, like, I don't see, one of the things about Buddhism that always drove me crazy is just, like, the idea of attachment to objects.

Like, you don't want to be attached to anything. And you don't want to be attached to anything and you don't want to be attached to people. So you have this sort of monastic existence where you are, you know, not monogamous, but you're a celibate. You don't have any relationships. I'm like, well, then you're missing out on a lot of life. You're missing out on so much because there's so much thrill that's involved in a lot of the things these people are avoiding. Yeah. Like, I think you just have to understand what those things are. Yeah.

And that's my approach to money, too. It's like, understand what it is. So don't avoid it. But, you know, there's a lot of fun and cool stuff. Yeah. But you had the best definition I've heard just now when you said that, you know, to the point that you're not, you said like not worried about money. Yeah.

That makes so much sense. But still, you should have some. Yeah. You should have some. You know, it's not bad. But that's what I'm saying. Buy a nice shirt. Yeah.

Exactly. Make enough that you're not worried. Exactly. Yeah. But don't become obsessed with it. But some people, the thing about the Shark Tank thing is that's their game. Their game is like numbers. Yeah.

Like they're all about, like I have a good buddy who's a financial guy, and he's very wealthy, like stupid, fucking preposterous wealthy. And he'll call me up about business stuff and ask me about this thing or talk to me about an investment. I go, bro, you're talking to the wrong guy. I don't give a fuck. I'm not investing in anything. This is not happening.

And he's just trying to hook me up, and I'm like, eh, I'm not investing in anything. Like, this is not happening. Like, and he's just trying to, like, hook me up. And I'm like, eh, that's nice, but no. Yeah, I'm just, my interest is in doing the things I'm interested in. And, you know, when it comes to podcasts in particular, if I was just going to, like, chase down the people that are going to get the most views, I'd probably be miserable. There's a lot of people that would get giant views that I've turned down. I'm just because I'm not interested.

And I don't know why I'm interested or not. I don't think about it that much. I think about what am I interested in, and then I just do that. Yeah. That's my whole life. That's the right decision. I think it's the right decision. That's the right decision.

Yeah. I think it works. But if I was a business person, I'd probably say, hey'd probably say hey fuckface leaving a lot of money on the table like Do you could have integrity two days a week? Have a cheap day you know what I'm saying So for anybody who wants to get a hold of you its knees over toes guy on Instagram what you have a YouTube channel Yep, is it knees over toes guy on Instagram. You have a YouTube channel? Yep. Is it knees over toes guy? And these books are available.

This is Knee Ability Zero and ATG for Life. These books are available on Amazon. So you can just get them really easy. Are these self-published? Did you publish these? Yeah, me and my uncle. There's your personal training reinvented. This is where if you want to train exactly

like I do and have your form coached perfectly, that's the most honest business I could come up with. That's awesome. Listen, brother, thank you so much for being here. And thank you for all the content that you put out because you've helped me so much. It's really made a big difference in my knees. It's made a big difference in like, I put out a video the other day of me kicking the heavy bag, and I thanked you in the video because it's true. Like, to be when I was a kid, I thought when you're

54, you're basically dead. Yeah. I was like, well, you know, I'll do this while I can, but there's no way I'm going to be able to do, you know, spinning back kicks at 54, but I can do it all. That was explosive. Not a problem. But it's, this is all, a lot of it is because of your exercises and your methods and this, and I can do it all. That was explosive. Not a problem. But it's, this is all, a lot of it is because of your exercises and your

methods and this, and I've been doing it for over a year now. Wow. The impact that it's had on my knees has been amazing. So thank you. That's what it's all about. Thank you. My pleasure. Follow him. Check it out. Follow the program. Get your knees healthy. Get your shit together.

Get these books or follow him. Just pay attention. All right. Thank you, everybody. Thanks, brother. Thank you very much. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Bye.