The School of Greatness - 77 Keys to Body Awareness and Movement Design for an Improved Life with Carl Paoli

Episode Date: July 28, 2014

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This is episode number 77 with Carl Paoli. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. What is up, everyone?

Thanks so much for tuning in today. Super pumped. It's a beautiful day here in Los Angeles, and I'm very excited because this is the most fun part of my day, which is putting out a new episode and connecting with someone who's inspiring in the world, who's changing the world, who's making a better place. And I'm excited to introduce you to this person. His name is Carl Powley, and he's actually been on the show before.

He's one of a few people who've been on the show twice now. I think Tim Ferriss is one. And we've got a note Chris Lee was one and I think now Carl might be the only other person who's been on twice. So very excited about this. Last time we had him on was a year ago. You can go check out that I'll have this in the show notes where you can see that episode. But this one is all about maximizing sport and life performance with four basic movements and really how to become a master of flow with your body and a master of maximizing your body throughout your daily life and your lifestyle. Because once we stop moving, we start dying. So it's really important for us

to understand how to move, why it's important, and what to do about it. So I'm very excited about bringing you Carl back on the show, and I'll be introducing you to all more about him here in just a second. And with that, let's go ahead and dive into this episode with the one and only Carl Pauly. Let's go ahead and dive in right now. right now. Welcome back everyone again to the School of Greatness podcast. I've got my man Carl Powerly in the house. What's up, Carl? What's up, dude? Good to be back on the show and talk to you again. It's crazy. It's been a year already. It's been a year. I literally just looked just before this interview and it was like July 30th or 31st

or something when we did the first episode. Episode number 26 and now we're in the 70s. You're one of three people I believe who's been on the show twice now.

This is a monumental mark, my man. That's awesome. I know we had a great time last time. Yeah, it was a blast, man. You had me doing crazy stuff with my back and checking out how my body moves, and I want to get into more of that because I've had some minor setbacks with a few different, I wouldn't say injuries, but I would say opportunities for growth in my body that held me back for a month here and there with some little tweaks. So I want to get into all the stuff about what you're an expert in, which is what we're going to be covering, which is about your book, which is called Freestyle. And it's all about how to maximize sport and life performance with four basic movements.

So I'm pumped, man, because I believe that we're built to move constantly. And you can either back me up or debunk this theory I have, but I believe we're built to move constantly. And the desk and the chair and the couch is like our biggest enemies. Am I right or am I wrong? I agree, man. And I say this all the time.

I'm like, if you aren't moving, you're probably sleeping in a coma or dead. It's one of those things that we're, we're constantly moving and constantly on the go. And it doesn't matter if you're sleeping, you're, you know, some part of your body is breathing. So if, if movement is life, like my friend, Lindsay Matthews with birth fit would say, well, then we need to, we need to keep moving. Exactly, exactly. And is there too much movement? Is there such a thing as moving too much? Do our bodies need a break ever? Obviously, I understand the bit of setback. Your body says, hey, yo, you can't go that far. Here's a little wall. I need to push you back a little bit. Usually, we can move too much and affect the physiology of our body, but it's usually dependent on how well we operate in terms of mechanics, meaning how well we move, how efficiently we move.

I think our conversation here is that we have to be in constant movement for life and we need to be in constant movement for performance. For you as an athlete, if you stop moving, then you're lost. We need to find ways of optimizing that movement so you can carry the physiology and make sure that the physiology actually adapts with you so you can continue to move. So it always comes back to movement and it's just learning how the body operates and how to cycle that the right way. Right. So for those that don't know Carl yet, or you didn't hear the first episode, give us a little bit of background about you.

You were in the gymnastics world for a long time, so you're able to do things with your body that I can't even fathom doing. Going upside down and hanging on a bar makes me dizzy and nauseous, and you can do crazy flips all the time and you're if he if you're not following his instagram account make sure to follow his instagram account because it's lots of cool videos of him doing like b-boy and backflips and stuff like that so um but you're a gymnast you're in gymnastics and then what happened you've transitioned from that into being a specialized strength and conditioning coach and crossfit and specifically gymnastics right yeah i mean, gymnastics was, of course, the root where I grew up in the gym. And artistic gymnastics was the sport that I trained and I practiced. And that was something that I was very obsessed with,

of course, until it was time to retire. And, of course, I didn't want to retire until I made the Olympics. And you know what I'm talking about. I'm still there, man. I know. But you're on that path, which is really inspiring. But yeah, I tell people this story all the time.

As a kid, I was so obsessed with gymnastics that I would go to bed early just to close my eyes and think about gymnastics. close my eyes and think about gymnastics. When I sat in the backseat of my parents' car as a kid, I remember looking out the window and imagining myself doing flips down the street and tumbling. And I have those vivid memories. But by the time I was 18, I had had several little injuries. And if you see me standing next to a gymnast, I don't really look like the average gymnast. I almost look like a basketball player compared to them. Right. So I just didn't fit the mold, man. And I couldn't hang.

So I kind of dropped out of gymnastics when I was 19. I still was in the gym, of course. But I found this passion for wakeboarding during the summer. I grew up in Spain in a beautiful city by the water called Alicante. I was fortunate enough to have access to a little boat and I would go out and wakeboard with my friends. I realized that the gymnastics that I learned had carried over to that. During the winter, we would go up to the mountains and I learned how to snowboard.

Once again, I continued to realize that my gymnastics background had carried over. Long story short, I ended up moving to the US and I started coaching gymnastics to these little boys. They were six-year-olds at a gym called Acro Sports here in San Francisco. And it's when I got into the gym actually that I started realizing that I knew something about gymnastics, that I could deliver a message that these kids could kind of take with them and improve on and apply to what they cared about, which I thought was gymnastics. But I was actually very wrong about that. These kids didn't really care about gymnastics.

They just cared about moving and feeling good while moving. they just cared about moving and feeling good while moving. They wanted playtime and they wanted to feel things that made their bodies do things that they hadn't done before. This took me a while to figure out, but one day when I walked in, instead of teaching them gymnastics, I actually asked them what they really wanted to learn. At first, of course, we're like, oh yeah, we want to learn all the different events and do proper handstands and all these things. One of the kids actually said, you know what, coach, I just want to run up this wall and do a backflip. I was like, damn, that's cool. I like that. Then there was this other kid. He had a treehouse and he's just like, hey coach, I just want to jump out of this

treehouse and survive. I was like, that is awesome. I started hearing all these things and I started realizing that they didn't really care about gymnastics, they cared about other things. And what I knew was gymnastics. And what I decided to do was I decided to use gymnastics as an excuse to teach them those movements. Right. And I think that's the time, this was in 2004, that I really began to coach and to train people. I carried that over into the fitness world.

Of course, I found CrossFit through Olympic weightlifting and kettlebells. Eventually, I realized that it didn't matter what discipline you were in. It was really all about understanding how the body functioned for those different disciplines and styles of movement. It was really about decoding how the body moves so you can train it, break it down, rebuild it again, and then apply it into your performance. That's who i am as a coach i i would i would say i'm uh not gymnastics coach but definitely uh uh i guess a movement coach right yeah you're like a human movement coach something like that sounds kind of geeky though yeah no i like it and here's the interesting

thing is you know gymnastics was so boring growing up like no kid at least where i was from did gymnastics it was like the most minor sport that you could do. Is it even considered a sport? Even it's like kind of like, who knows? Right. That's what I grew up thinking. But now I almost wish that my parents sent me to it. And that was mandatory, at least for one year as like a seven year old to be able to do basic, learn basic movements when my body was flexible enough to do a somersault and to do a handstand and just like jump around in a trampoline and flip into mats just to kind of get used to body awareness. Because although I feel like it's

pretty good now, I mean, obviously I've done a lot of sports, but I feel like there's so many people that don't have great body awareness and don't know how to move properly, it's probably because they never were given that opportunity as a kid except for rolling around on the ground. And I don't know why it's not mandatory for at least one year of kids growing up. I think it'd be a great thing for everyone, just for the health, overall health of the world, is my opinion. I couldn't agree more. It's too bad that it feels so unattainable somehow.

I think people see gymnastics and the gymnastics that they see, they see it in the Olympics and they're like, well, that's impossible. I can't jump up on a set of rings and do an iron cross. That's crazy. But if you think about gymnastics as just your ability to move your body through space in ways that you want to move them, now we're starting to talk about something that we're all aware of. I talk about this every day. I'm like, what if you broke your arm today and tomorrow you went to get out of bed? Things would all of a sudden feel a little bit different and you would like to be able to get out of bed comfortably.

think being able to cover those basic needs that the human being actually has, which is being able to move under any kind of circumstances to be able to accomplish a very basic task like getting out of bed or picking up your kids or playing with your kids, like playing tag with your kids. I think that is the essence of gymnastics and that's what people don't understand and uh you know you very well said it i wish now that i could do a handstand and tumble and do some things and i wish it had been mandatory back then but because adults uh right now our generation just doesn't understand how to make that accessible it doesn't exist. And the goal is to make that possible because it is very basic. Yeah. And it's almost like, you know, with CrossFit, at least CrossFitters, gymnastics is coming back. Like everyone's now wants to learn about how to master gymnastics for their CrossFit game or whatever. And that's why you've been such a

powerful force in the CrossFit world with gymnasticswad.com by educating people on very basic things that they can do to apply just with the positioning of their hands, their arms, like their shoulders. And it's making a huge impact in how people are staying healthier, how they're able to lift more, you know, shave time on their uh on their um you know their wads things like that so it's been you've been a powerful force in that community which has been awesome to see and now you've got this book which is really for you know the world not just crossfitters but for average people like myself who just want to like learn how to maximize their body and their movement and what

was really you know your inspiration for writing the book because if this thing is beautiful looking it's like it's one of the most detailed books i've ever seen it's like beautiful it's large it's heavy lots of content in here so many images it's like ridiculous how much time you spent into this you know i looked at tim ferris's like ridiculous how much time you spent into this. You know, I looked at Tim Ferriss' Four Hour Chef book. I almost put this in comparison to how like much detail that book is. This is like almost the exact same amount of detail. I'm like, wow, blown away. That's amazing. So why were you inspired to one, write this book and make it look the way that it is? You know, I joke about this, but I was kind of tricked into writing it.

Right. I was actually hanging out with Kelly Starrett, who is, of course, physical therapist and author of Becoming a Supple Leopard. And we were shooting a couple pictures for his book, actually. And he was there with his co-author, Glenn Cordoza. And Kelly said, you should sign this kid. He looked at me and I was like, me? I'm not ready yet for a book. Kelly's like, you are ready. You need to do this. You're a superstar. Of course, I believed

it. I was like, all right, sign me on. I'm ready to go. Of course, they wanted me to write a gymnastics book. When I first started Gymnastics WOD in 2010, my intention was never to teach artistic gymnastics. My intention was to show the CrossFit community, which is a community of fitness that I'm very attracted to because they bring all these aspects that I was really studying as a young coach and trying to figure out how they would actually fit in within a strength and conditioning program for a professional athlete or a snowboarder or for someone that did trampoline as accessory work for snowboarding, I realized that within the modality of CrossFit, there were certain aspects of gymnastics that were missing in terms of the specific techniques of gymnastics. And I said, you know what, well, let me offer that to the CrossFit community. I think CrossFit gymnastics is already doing it, but I'm going to offer it from a little bit of a different perspective. And my perspective was, let me translate why a gymnast cares about these body positions and performing the movement with this technique, so it can actually transfer over into whatever your specific purpose and need is as a performer.

And all I did was, in gymnastics, was teach movements, show very basic progressions, and then I became a translator by using movement. I would say, hey, here's the gymnastics movement. If you perform it this way and you train it this way, it would directly relate to the movement that you're trying to accomplish maybe in lifting. Or if you're a runner trying to run faster and longer. Or if you're a snowboarder and you're trying to do bigger tricks and jump and land. And when I got first signed by the publishing house called Victory Belt, I was told, you know, do a gymnastics book. Show us some feats of strength. Show us these cool tricks that you can do. And when I started writing that, I was just kind of blah, you know, just disappointed.

I didn't like it. And I told them, hey, I'm not feeling this. I don't know really how to write about this. I don't necessarily feel like this is my calling. And they said, well, write about anything. Write about CrossFit or weightlifting or just strength and conditioning. So I tried to write about that, but it just wasn't coming together. And then I realized that I've been teaching this seminar called Freestyle Connection for several years. And I was talking to my co-author, Anthony Scherbondi, and he said, why don't we just write a manual for the seminar?

And in fact, screw the book. Let's just write an e-book, super small manual. And that day, I was on fire. And within three hours, I just wrote the whole outline, got it all done, and I was like, oh my goodness, this is it. was to create a book that could be used as a translator and a dictionary that you can come to and say, oh, this is who I am as a human being and who we all are as human beings. Here are the principles for those movements. And this is how I can train them in different styles and disciplines. And this is how I can take that training and actually apply it to my purpose for training. So this book is really a manual to help you translate why you move the way you move and

how you can further train and develop that movement to further enhance your performance. So it's really a translator and a tool to help you see across all these disciplines through human movement. Gotcha. Yeah, so there's a lot of people who are listening who aren't athletes. Maybe they work out from time to time, but they're not hardcore athletes like myself or do CrossFit. Some of them do, but not everyone. So you talk about in the book freestyle which is free plus style not one word uh you talk about it's covering four basic movements and my question is you've got

all these different like symbols on the cover of your book and one what do the symbols mean and do they pertain to the four basic movements? So these symbols are supposed to represent basic body shapes. You get straight lines, like when we're standing, that's a very basic body shape. You got 90 degree angles, which is almost like sitting in a chair or bending over to pick up the groceries. And then you got these kind of semi-circular shapes which are basic body positions that we get into. We flex into a little ball or we extend into different positions depending on what we're

doing, like if we're throwing or swinging, we get into these positions. And here on the cover, they're kind of represented separate. But as you go through the book, you realize that we live in the crossover of all those shapes. And for people that are not athletes, they must realize that, just like you said, we are designed for movement. And athletics is simply a high- level expression of how we move. It's an exaggeration of reality. It's an exaggeration of playing. I think that motivation of playing something because it's fun and because it feels good is what I'm also trying to inspire people to do. And I think a lot of us take who we are as physical beings sometimes for granted. And we just kind of go through our life thinking, oh, yeah, this is normal. But I think you should ask yourself, is it really normal?

And if it's not normal, what else is there? Can I go a little further? What can my body really do? Can I be pain-free? Can I perform something with my body that I didn't know I could? And how do I get there is what I'm trying to solve as well. So I'm trying to encourage people to develop their lifestyle but understand that if you just study a little bit how your body moves simply by listening to it and by paying attention to it, you will learn some things about yourself that will get you a little further and closer to being something and someone you kind of just dream of. Right.

So for those looking to, you know, take their performance in life to the next level, whether that's their energy levels, whether that's their business, their career, their relationships, just having more energy throughout the day, being clearer, being more focused, and really just optimize their human performance, their life performance.

What are some things that they should be doing or should be focusing on? Let's just say they're an average weight individual, not overweight, not really fit, but what's something they can do to start optimizing their life through these movements and through what you talk about in the book? Yeah, I think the first thing is just becoming aware of who you are as a physical being. And I mean, this is something you can do in the morning and I try to do it as often as possible.

And just to share a little bit of a personal story, in the morning and I try to do it as often as possible. Just to share a little bit of a personal story, with all the work that I've been doing and all the traveling, I suffered from a little bit of anxiety and I was very stressed and nervous and I just wasn't eating well, wasn't sleeping well, constantly at hotels. I would suffer from some anxiety and I would just start going down this spiral. What I realized is that one very basic thing to do and this is something everyone tells you, just stop and take a breath. What they're really saying is just stop for a second and feel your body.

One of the things that I do in the morning is right as I wake up, as I realize that I'm waking up, before I even open my eyes, I become aware of who I am. Then before I even open my eyes, I think about, oh, yeah, I'm lying here in bed. This is where I am. I feel the sheets. I feel the bed.

I'm warm or cold or I have to go to the bathroom or whatever it is. And it's as simple as that. Just that brings you to that present moment. And then I proceed to open my eyes. And just that right there will change everything because immediately you feel like you're in control. So that's something that you can do even through the day. Let's say you're at work and you're just sitting there by your desk or hopefully standing now because you have a standing desk. And just becoming aware where you're standing. What's the ground below you?

How do you feel the ground on your feet? Are you standing with your legs straight? Are they kind of bent? Are you posting on one leg or the other? Are your hands in your pockets? Are you crossing your arms? What's your posture look like? Small things like that now create a presence.

And that's number one. So creating complete awareness about your body, the way it feels, and the surroundings of your body. Yeah, and I think that's just kind of scratching the surface, but it's the beginning of becoming present and in the moment, like a lot of people say, that you should be. Right, okay. Which is the hardest thing, of course, to master. thing to, of course, to master. And then once you have that, you need to create a lifestyle that revolves around physical movement. And this is the hard part because it's hard to move. And I set this example all the time. I fly a lot. If I sit down in a plane and I travel from San Francisco to New York, as I'm sitting there, I start feeling a little

uncomfortable and I start bending over and hunching over and then my neck goes and then my shoulder rolls in. By the time I get off the plane, I'm feeling wrecked. But if I get on the plane and I make a little bit of an effort to actually sit a little bit taller, focus on how I'm sitting and reading or typing on the computer, when I come out on the other side, I immediately feel better. So it's now bringing that presence into something that's physically expressed. And that is how you're projecting your body in space. And then you can take it a little further. And that's where you need to find a discipline or a physical activity that you enjoy doing with others. That can be as simple as if you have kids, play with your kids.

Pick them up. Put them down. But make that part of your lifestyle. Don't make it a chore. That's something that you want to do because it feels good. If you want to go beyond that kind of physical activity, you can go to a place that's dedicated for physical culture, like a gym. The rule is when you go to a gym, I don't care what kind of gym you go to, it is important that you go in and you take care of yourself and you treat yourself. The treatment can't just be, let me just get in the sauna today.

The sauna is great, of course. Let me get a massage. Massage is great. It needs to be something that challenges you, that makes you a little upset because it's hard to perform, that you feel like you have to overcome something. And another rule is that you need to do it with people because you know very well being on a team, it makes you accountable, it makes you want to work harder. And the bottom line is that when you accomplish

whatever you set out to do that challenge, when you come out on the other side, whatever happens, if you made it through do that challenge, when you come out on the other side, whatever happens, if you made it through, that's a victory. If you learn something new about yourself, that's a victory. If you set a new record for yourself, that's a victory. Uh, you know, those victories, I always consider them, uh, great, but unless you are able to share them with others, it doesn't really become progressive. What I'm saying here is that those victories, once they're shared, they become a reality. It's almost like, hey, I just set a record in this sprint. You tell someone they saw

it, you shared it, all of a sudden that becomes a reality and it becomes a benchmark and it becomes something to chase and even beat. And when you do that, that's always progressive and progress is success. So that's how you should be cycling through your day. So do you feel like we should always be progressing and trying to achieve kind of a new benchmark? So with our bodies, with, you know, bodies with you know anything yeah you think so well here's the thing I think in order to progress you need to regress and I use the the 60% rule and I say you know what let me try to accomplish this this task or this challenge or here I'm gonna set a goal and I'm going to set a goal.

And I go out to set this goal. Every step of the way, if I'm 60% ready, I move on. I'm 60% ready, I move on. And once I get to a point where, okay, I'm not reaching that 60%, I hang there as long as I can until I feel like, okay, I need to back off. I feel like, okay, I need to back off. But what I always do is next time when I come back to pursue that task, I always start from step one again. And I make sure that that first step, instead of being 60%, it's 61, 62, 63. And I make sure that the foundation of what I'm trying to progress towards is 100%. Can you give an example of this? Yeah. of what I'm trying to progress towards is a hundred percent.

Can you give an example of this? Yeah, let's say you said you had some injuries or something's going on right now with your training. Yeah, I tweaked my groin a little bit. It's better now, but for probably three weeks I was kind of just rehabbing it and resting it and doing little exercises, but not, you know, explosive work. Exactly. So one of your goals is to, you know, take care of your groin. You want to make sure that that area is feeling good. And groin injuries are really painful.

And it's so painful. Oh, they're terrible. I actually tore my groin last year of break dancing. Oh my gosh. It's the worst. You can of break dancing. Oh, my gosh. It's the worst. You can't even walk. It's the worst. So, you know, one of the things that you're definitely setting out to do right now, and it's your goal, is to progress towards having a healthy groin so you can play your sport.

Yep. your sport. So every day you go in and you maybe go into the gym or physical therapy or you see a doctor or whatever you are doing. I know you're working with some manual therapist as well. Yep. Dr. Trish. I don't know if you've met her. You showed me a picture with her holding my book. Yeah, exactly. Very happy. But you go in and with someone, you're building towards this goal. Each step of the way, you may be slightly better, but there's always more work to do and you always have to come back and start from the beginning.

That's one. Right. But another thing that's probably happening is that knowing that you are able to move in a certain way but now having this limitation which is this groin injury is forcing you to set new standards for yourself in terms of movement. It's almost like saying, hey, let's bring it down even further down to basics. Instead of doing explosive stuff, now maybe you're walking slower or you're running in only one direction or you're performing a squat a certain way in order to rehab the groin, which is something

that maybe you wouldn't be doing if you were completely healthy. Right. And for some, that may seem like a regression, but that's what you need to do in order to see progression. That's true. Otherwise, I'd just be hurting myself if I try to do too much. Exactly. Exactly.

Interesting. Okay. So we're always either regressing or progressing. And, you know, this is something I try to tell people, and let's see if you can get this visual. When I teach movement, for example, I could teach you how to do a handstand or a handstand push-up like a gymnast would, or I can teach you how to do a handstand push-up like a CrossFit athlete would. Even though it requires the same mechanics at shoulder level, spinal level, the technique for performing it is slightly different.

There's almost like a fork in the road. It's a handstand pushup, but you can go this route or the other route. What happens is if you keep digging deeper and deeper into these styles of performing a handstand pushup, for example, the gymnastics way or the CrossFit way, eventually, down the line, they will cross paths again. It's almost like you close the loop. It's that moment when you close the loop and those two paths cross again that you're

able to progress to the next level of performance. Because all of a sudden, you're seeing how movement is universal, the application of that movement, the training of that movement is individual and specific to each person. Yeah. It's interesting, the older I get and the more I dive into deeper movement and athletic activities, I realize that it's all really connected. For example, in high school and college, when I'm doing just weightlifting in the gym for football, I realized that some of these lifts are identical to what we

do in CrossFit, although I was probably had horrible form back in high school and learned better how to have the correct form in CrossFit over the last four years. And then as I started doing acro yoga, I just started picking this up like two months ago. No way. Yeah. I'm doing hand-to-hand with a partner. She's in the air upside down. I'm balancing her with my hands. Yeah, I've actually seen you on Instagram. Yeah.

I was like, whoa, was he a cheerleader or something? I was not a cheerleader. But I'm learning some things that they do in cheer. My partner, it can be a guy or girl, but I've got a girl partner that I'm learning like some things that they do in cheer with like, uh, the girl, you know, my partner, it can be a guy or girl, but I've got a girl partner that I'm learning with and I'm standing behind her. We're both facing the same direction. I grab her hands and then I throw her up over my head and as she inverts, it's called an in locate or she, I don't know if that's a gymnastics term or not, but I call it inception because it just seems so cool so she goes upside down into my hands and i realized like well i'm just doing like a thruster you know i'm just getting low and like pushing up and doing like a thruster or like a power clean or

whatever and i'm realizing like wow it's like almost exactly the same thing that i learned in crossfit and it's all translating over into this activity now. So I'm seeing similarities, you know, and same thing in handball, the way I do certain lifts and certain movements. In just the gym, it translates in the handball, the way I raise my arm, the way I twist my hips and explode, like everything is translating. And it's, it's kind of cool to see these similarities and different movement activities in the world. Yeah, I mean, for sure. And I think, you know, what's really interesting about that, and kind of going back to this concept of being present and aware of your body is that

when you become aware of how your body moves, immediately you become a better performer. And I think that's one of the reasons why teaching is such a powerful tool for learning. We need to become self-teachers. We need to self-coach. And that only comes by studying how we move as human beings. And that's what you're doing by exploring these different things. All of a sudden you're like, oh yeah, look how this movement actually actually translates in here and all of a sudden you become aware of it and as soon as you become aware of it you just increase your level performance

and I think that's what we're talking about here we're bringing that awareness to people and and it's so simple yet difficult sometimes for people to implement this is a little meta yeah but uh, but there's times where I get so, I'm like seeing myself doing it, the movement, and I'm analyzing it so much that then I get in my head and actually get out of the zone and start messing up, whether it be handball or lifting or acro yoga. It's like i'll start

seeing myself so clearly that i'm analyzing every movement and then it's like i'm not in sync anymore and i'm not doing it with you know with ease it's like difficult it's challenging we're messing up and uh so i think there's a a way to analyze and be so in it, but then also just to let it be, just let it happen and not analyze it. 100. I couldn't agree more. And I think this is where also this concept of freestyle is, hey, let's not set such tight boundaries around each discipline.

Let's be a little looser about it. Let yourself fall into the next thing. Your body is smarter than your mind, really. I think that's something that I'm also encouraging people to do is, go explore. Let yourself just make a mistake. Within the mistake, you will discover something that can be really beneficial and optimal for you. And I think that's the creation of new movement patterns or new styles of movement patterns and a very powerful thing. So I definitely agree with that. Don't overanalyze.

Don't overthink it. Don't think too much. Yeah. Just be in the zone. Let it flow. Oh, for sure. A couple more questions for you. What, and again, make sure everyone go picks up the book free plus style uh if you just go to what's the site freestyle book freestyle

the book.com you can check out all the information on this and i definitely recommend it it's amazing piece of art if anything but lots of great content on movement and everything that we need to know about our bodies, basically, on how to move effectively and efficiently. Make sure to check that out. A couple more questions, though. Can you explain what movement control is? Yeah, that's a great question. Have you ever been on a skateboard or on a bicycle and bom bombed a hill just gone down really fast yeah and then got the death wobbles the speed wobble oh my god the scariest part yeah that's loss of

movement control geez um have you ever seen you know um someone perform a very heavy deadlift and start shaking like crazy of course yeah, yeah. It's classic, right? So that's also loss of movement control. And that's something that I'm trying to teach people. I'm trying to teach people how to learn how to move so you look fluid, so you have control over every millimeter of that movement. You know when you see a good athlete, and I'm not even into baseball, I grew up in Spain as a gymnast of course, but when I see someone pitch a ball and they're just so spot on,

you just watch them and you say, that's beautiful. That is movement control. When you watch a gymnast perform a routine and stick the landing, come out of a tumbling pass, like, you know, I'm a big fan of Shawn Johnson, and you know that. She's a good friend, yeah. She's amazing. But when you watch her on TV perform a tumbling pass and land

and just stick the landing, you're just like, that is movement control. and just stick the landing you just like that is movement control and that kind of expression is what the foundation of my teaching is all about gotcha very cool very cool well carl it's been a pleasure my man and again make sure everyone go check out freestyle the book dot com you can also go to gymnastics wad check out out Carl on Instagram. I'll have it all linked up back on the show notes. But since I asked you this question a year ago, I believe, I'm going to ask it again, and maybe it's changed. It's what I ask everyone at the end of the podcast, and that's what's your definition of greatness?

You know, I can't remember exactly what I said last time, but I think greatness is truly living your life the way you want to live it the way it feels right in your head and your heart and in your gut and trusting that and as you do that being able to share it with others that you care about and that you know you can make a difference being around. I think if you're able to do that, you certainly are great. And I think that's greatness. It doesn't matter who you are and what level you're doing it at. But if you can feel it in those three places in your head and your heart, your gut, and you live your life like that,

and you do it with others then then that's greatness carl you are the man i appreciate you i appreciate what you're up to in the world your level of commitment and service to people on having them live a healthy lifestyle through movement and keep it up man it's it's always a pleasure to watch you from afar and connect when we're in the same area and and i'm so glad to have you back on the show. Thank you so much for having me. And same to you. I mean, I follow your work and I just, I'm always truly inspired and it's great to have you around and as a friend and I truly appreciate it. Thank you.

I am super pumped that Carl was able to come on today and share his wisdom with the world. So thank you guys so much for sticking around to the very end. You guys have been a huge support. If you liked this episode, go ahead and share it with your friends on Twitter, Facebook, you know, MySpace, if you still have a MySpace account, anywhere you can think of online where your friends are hanging out, please share this and let's get the word about greatness out to the masses. Again, this has been growing exponentially since we put it out there. Each episode gets more and more downloads, more exposure, and people's lives are being changed. Literally, I get emails every day from people saying that this podcast and the guests

and the information that the guests are sharing are changing people's lives, both with their relationships, with their physical health, with their business, and they're so excited. So I want to get this message out there to more because there are some great people who are coming on and they're going to continue to be amazing people who are coming on who have simple solutions to big problems. And that's what this is all about at the School of Greatness. exposure, share with your friends, do whatever you think you can to get the message out there. And I'll keep pumping out amazing information, bringing on even bigger guests for you if we can work in that partnership together. So thank you guys so much. Thanks again, Carl, for coming on. Make sure to check out the show notes over at lewishouse.com slash 77. And you can get all the information we talked about today. That's lewishouse.com slash seven seven i love you guys you know what time it is it's time to go out there and do something great Thank you.