The Tim Ferriss Show - #158: The Secrets of Gymnastic Strength Training

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Starting point is 00:03:30 In this episode, we have a very exciting guest with whom I've been spending a ton of time, Christopher Sommer. Christopher Sommer, you can find him on Instagram and Facebook. I highly recommend checking it out. Gymnastic bodies is the account name is the former us national team gymnastics coach. He's also the founder of gymnastic bodies.com, a training system that I am currently testing the hell out of. And I have no affiliation with it in so much as I get no kind of affiliate, anything payout, whatever. I'm just fascinated by bodyweight training and reached out to Coach Sommer to try to finally practice gymnastics as a 38-year-old. And I've learned a lot. We've been toying around with things for about six weeks now as of this recording, and we're doing a 90-day

Starting point is 00:04:20 custom test. So I hope to have some very interesting before and afters for you guys. So we will be doing a round two follow-up. As a world-renowned Olympic coach, Sommer is known for building his students into some of the strongest, most powerful athletes in the world. And you got to check out his Facebook page. He features a lot of these athletes. It is bonkers. During his extensive 40-year coaching career, Coach Sommer took meticulous notes on his training techniques, his wins, failures, and so on, so that he could translate the best elements into a superior exercise system for both high-level and beginner athletes. His four decades of careful observation led to the birth of gymnastics strength training.

Starting point is 00:04:59 Let's try that again. Gymnastics strength training, not vocal strength training, because I'm failing in that department, otherwise known as GST. In this episode, we cover a ton of stuff, and I think it's going to light up the internets because everybody has a strong opinion these days, but Coach Sommer is very well qualified to have the opinions that he holds. We talk about the biggest mistakes of self-taught handstands, why recreational athletes who try gymnastics get injured. Most commonly, we talk about the three to five exercises everyone should be doing. Chances are you've never heard of some of them. We talk about mental prep for athletes who are going into big competition, the questions you should ask a coach before sending your kid to gymnastics.

Starting point is 00:05:40 We get into what is wrong with yoga handstands the questions or opinions that he might pose or have related to kipping pull-ups in crossfit and elsewhere and i asked that question because a mutual friend said if you want him to lose his shit ask about kipping we have the determination of gst this gymnastic strength training goals. If you could only pick one, what would it be and why? Who are the best coaches he's met? What characterizes them? It just goes on and on and on. I mean, if you want to build, say, mass in the biceps, how you can utilize straight arm work and why you must turn your hands out past parallel when training the rings. Why is that important? How does it

Starting point is 00:06:26 affect muscular development and strength development? Why do you need to fix the lats to fix the shoulders? It goes on and on and on. This is a very in-depth conversation. We get into the weeds and I would just say, be patient. There are a lot of gems here and similar to the Dominic D'Agostino episode on ketosis and the end of cancer and so on and so forth, we really get into some nitty gritty detail. And that is why many people listen to this podcast. So just bear with me. If you're like, what the hell are these guys talking about? Give it 30 seconds. Chances are that we'll zoom back up to 30,000 feet or change topics. So stick with it and please enjoy this very wide

Starting point is 00:07:06 ranging intense conversation with coach Christopher Sommer. Coach, welcome to the show. Thanks, Jim. I am excited to finally have you on the show. We've had so many conversations in the last month or two, and I've been so impressed with the subtlety and nuance of the training that you do. So I've been very eager to have you on the show to explore all things gymnastics and gymnastics strength training related. So thanks for making the time, first of all. My pleasure. Looking forward to it. And I thought we could start with just some definitions. So what would you, or how would you define gymnastic strength training, GST?

Starting point is 00:07:54 That's a good question. In a nutshell, gymnastic strength training, I define as high level body weight strength training. So none of the technical training that we do for world-class performance or the acrobatics or technical gymnastics, just purely the strength joint prep and mobility components. And one, one example of what not to do perhaps, or, or how gymnastics strength training might differ from the aesthetics that some people, I'm not going to say compromise with, but choose. We were talking about doing a pike, I guess a pike handstand press or holding that position. And the example, and feel free to correct my recollection,

Starting point is 00:08:39 but was of how a lot of folks kick their hips way out to counterbalance. Instead of doing what? What would the gymnastic strength training version of that look like? Good example. So what we see, and this is kind of getting into some handstands, some skill training, but handstand done correctly is a reflection of physical preparation that athlete either has or does not have. So if they lack strength, if they lack mobility, then, of course,

Starting point is 00:09:08 their technical handstand is going to lack refinement. So in terms of that pike handstand, if they lack middle trap, if they lack lower trap strength, then they're going to try to counterbalance by really arching the chest out, sticking the butt way back behind them. Oh, goodness. I'm not even sure how to describe it, like a pike and an arch at the chest out, sticking the butt way back behind them. Oh, goodness. I'm not even sure how to describe it, like a pike and an arch at the same time. And for people who – sorry to interrupt, Coach. Just for people who I realize I should have probably defined some terms myself.

Starting point is 00:09:35 So pike, for people who are not familiar with this, the easiest way to visualize it if you don't have any background with that is imagine you're sitting on the floor. It's kind of like PE class legs straight and together uh bending at the waist towards your toes is that forward bending forward towards your toes uh and so if you were to imagine you're sitting down with your legs out in front of you at uh just like hypothetically at a 90 degree angle and you put your arms up over your head, let's just flip you upside down to your enhanced stand position. That's effectively what we're talking about. Exactly what we're talking about. And to hold that because center of mass is way out in

Starting point is 00:10:13 front of the body then, in order to hold that, the traps are what's responsible to keeping the back and the shoulders straight. So if you're not strong enough, and some people say, well, it's just skill training. Well, everything builds upon everything else. So we've got Olympics coming up. People are going to be pumped. They're going to see our Olympic team. They're going to see the other monsters around the world competing on rings, and they're going to, I want to do that. And they're going to jump right up. I've got friends who are former SEAL Team 6, and the first thing they did is jump up.

Starting point is 00:10:44 And, of course, they failed utterly, and then they come see us. Because it's like anything. You don't jump right into calculus. You learn to count, then we learn addition, we learn subtraction, yada, yada, yada. With enough time and enough layers, enough progression, then we get to advanced math. So advanced ring strength, same deal. And I remember we were talking not too long ago about the importance of pacing when you're dealing with connective tissue, tendons and ligaments, which is something I'm not particularly well known for in terms of patience and pacing.

Starting point is 00:11:19 I've noticed that. But many of the guys who say do outdoor bar workouts, some of which are very, very impressive physical specimens, will jump up on the rings and they'll be doing – I'm not sure what they would even call them. They're kind of like what would be looked at as like a typewriter on the pull-up bar when you move back and forth from one arm to the other. Side to side pull-up. Side to side pull up and uh you're they're like i was feeling fine coach and then suddenly my you know i tore my bicep right tore my pec and it was fine until it wasn't uh what are some if you look at uh the muscles or types of strength that most non-gymnasts will not have even if they consider themselves reasonably athletic, what would be on that list? And we already mentioned one, which is, say, mid and lower

Starting point is 00:12:10 traps. And of course, I mean, I would like to think I came to the table with kind of hat in hand because I recognize how hard a lot of this is. But the more I practice it, the more I'm astounded at how unprepared my body is for these movements. I mean, it's a, as someone who has done a lot of pulling from the floor, for instance, who has, you know, decent deadlift,

Starting point is 00:12:31 I would like to think, uh, I was just astonished at how weak my mid back was. It was just, it blew my mind. It was, it was, it was completely flabbergasting.

Starting point is 00:12:41 What other, what other muscles or movements do you find normals just cannot perform even if they view themselves as athletic? For the, for the lifters, the one that always jumps out at us is their lack of shoulder extension. So if I pick my, if I'm standing upright and I lift my hands forward, that's flexion and I can go all the way up to my arms or overhead. If I'm picking my hands up behind me, that would be shoulder extension. Right. So just to paint another picture for folks,

Starting point is 00:13:10 like if you stand up and then interlaced your fingers behind your tailbone with your arms straight and then tried to lift them up towards the ceiling, keeping your back straight. So the shoulder extension. And what we find is, you know, and a lot of what we'll get sometimes from people as well, I don't want to be in the circus. I don't want to be an acrobat. I'm not interested in skill training. I want strength.

Starting point is 00:13:34 And what they don't understand is if you want to achieve world-class levels of performance, technically, that comes first from having a solid foundation of physical preparation, which means correct range of motion, right? Good mobility, good connective tissue. So shoulder extension becomes so, for example, a lot of people fail. They can't do muscle-ups because they can't do shoulder extension. They think in their head that a muscle-up is a chin-up, a little bit of transition that they don't understand, and then a dip. What really happens is we do a pull-up, we get our hands to our chin, and then the elbows pull back behind the torso behind them,

Starting point is 00:14:11 and there's their shoulder extension. If they can't do shoulder extension, now they're stuck. And they'll spend all this time working technique and doing rep and doing rep, and what they're doing is they're treating the symptom and not actually the problem. Well, I was, so just as some background for folks, the way that we connected was I, at 38, finally decided enough is enough. I've been fantasizing about trying to learn gymnastics in a structured way for 20-plus years, much like my postponing of getting a dog for 20 years. It's just like, why did it take me so long to do this? And I was in Venice.

Starting point is 00:14:47 I'm going to give these folks a shout out. So there is a CrossFit gym there named Paradiso CrossFit. And I just love the folks who run the gym. And I would go there to train because they would let me use chalk and do all the things that a lot of gyms will not allow me to do. And I met a gent who was doing a body weight workout. He's the only person doing a bodyweight only workout. And he suggested that I follow gymnastic bodies on Instagram. And so I started following your company on Instagram and saw older, let's just call it middle-aged men, sort of my demo as it stands right now,

Starting point is 00:15:26 uh, who had started from scratch doing impressive things. And I had used age as my crutch and excuse for not pulling the trigger in the last few years. So I reached out to Rob Wolf, who was kind enough to introduce us. And then, uh, we've, uh, collaborated in this experiment that we're currently doing, which is roughly 90 days with a handful of goals that we'll get to, but I want people to understand how we connected. So I'm in the middle of training right now. And I have to say, I feel better than I've felt with the exception of a little bit of elbow nonsense that is not from this specifically. It's a recurring thing. I feel better than I have in years. That's good to hear. Just from this little bit already, we've done.

Starting point is 00:16:15 Just from the little bit that we've done. And the follow-up question to that is, for instance, when people are training for handstands at home, so self-taught, what are the biggest mistakes that they make? Well, they won't like the answer. And this is a little bit of national team coach attitude coming out. People tend to want what they want when they want it. And that's fine if I'm looking for mediocre to average results. If I'm looking to really do best effort, then I've got to back shit up and I've got to take care of my business. And for most of the adults, it's going to be they have severe compromises in their mobility. Their shoulders don't work well. Their hips don't work.

Starting point is 00:17:06 Their knees don't work. Their elbows are shot. Their forearms are tight from all the desk patrol. Their calves are like piano wire from sitting all the time. We won't even talk about hip flexor. Their scaps don't move. Their scapula have no motion. They can't protract. They can't retract. Their spine is locked in just a flat or a kyphoid. So they're hunched over their lower back is continually arched and they're just kind of frozen in this position. And then they want to try to move their body. Now, the common one that we get from people as well, these are extreme ranges of motion. These are artificial ranges of motion. And actually, these are your natural range of motion. The problem is they quit using it, and so

Starting point is 00:17:52 it just atrophied. So we're not doing anything special. We have to recreate that natural range of motion first. We've been doing, gosh, I don't know now, maybe since 2006, working with the adults. And the thing that just, we keep having my nose rubbed in it over and over and over again. Every time I think I have it down, I find I need to take it further. It's just the complete other lack of joint prep and mobility they come to the table with. And if we do, even your own case is an excellent example. We haven't done

Starting point is 00:18:26 anything advanced yet. We're doing all basic, we're doing fundamental stuff and you're already feeling better than in years. Well, I think it's a lot of it has to do with two things. If I'm trying to self-diagnose, the first is identifying musculature and motor patterns that I simply had not developed properly previously. Even if I had a passing familiarity, like the – well, let me frame this in the form of a question. So how do most people – can you define what the hollow position is, why it's important, and how do most normals do when they do, say, a hollow body rock? Maybe you can explain that too ah so what people they're gonna most people when they think of abs they think lower ab they think upper abs they're not going to think about obliques at all and they're not going to think transverse abdominus at all so lower abs are easy upper ab easy obliques okay they they understand

Starting point is 00:19:22 the sideways they don't understand how obliques wrap around into the lats into the lower back okay that's fine but transverse abdominus they're like excuse me this was that english they don't have a clue and that's what supports the body when it's in a straight body position so you know for for example ab rollers were we don't use them in our program but just as an example ab rollers were getting a bad don't use them in our program, but just as an example, ab rollers were getting a bad knock that if you do an ab roller, you're going to hurt your lower back. Well, yes and no. You'll hurt your back if you're doing it wrong, if you are arched in your lower back. So for definitions, if my lower back is arched, I'm in anterior pelvic tilt. If I'm the opposite movement and I'm kind of my tailbone tucked under and my lower back is flated, I'm in anterior pelvic tilt. If I'm the opposite movement and I'm kind of my tailbone tucked under and my lower back is flat, that's posterior pelvic tilt. Well, when my body's

Starting point is 00:20:11 horizontal, then my back is supported when I'm posterior pelvic tilt. If I'm arched, it's unsupported by the musculoskeletal and I'm hanging by the disc. Which is true for a ton of exercises that we do. If I feel it in my lower back, almost universally when I send you videos, the feedback is more PPT, posterior pelvic tilt. It should just be a mantra. Yeah. And for people who need a way to visualize this, because I realize a lot of this vocab is new, and coach, feel free to interrupt at any point, but an easy way to think about and remember anterior pelvic tilt is imagine that your, your, your waist is the top of a wine glass. If you have anterior pelvic tilt to the front, you're going to be pouring wine out the front of that glass, basically out of your belly button. And if you have posterior

Starting point is 00:21:03 pelvic tilt, you're tucking that tailbone, you're going to be pouring wine basically down your sacrum, down the back of your body. It's just an easy way for me to remember. That is clever. I got to say, 40 years of national team, and I've never heard it described that way. It may be our go-to definition from now on.

Starting point is 00:21:23 I can't do the gymnastics, so I'll have to stick with refining my definitions, although I am making progress with the fundamentals. Yes, you are. I'd like to talk about the assessment that we did. So I flew out to a great gym, Awaken Gymnastics, in Colorado, and we met up. That's our GB Master affiliate.

Starting point is 00:21:43 We only have one in the world, and Awaken in Denver is our number one GB affiliate. They're the best at what they do. Yeah, it's a fantastic gym. And we did quite a few hours of various assessments. If somebody wanted to try to self-assess or videotape themselves to have, say, someone qualified in gymnastics assess them. If you were to do an 80-20 analysis, which movements or exercises give you the most data?

Starting point is 00:22:13 Most bang for the buck. Okay. Let's see. So we went over with you. We checked hanging leg lift. So hanging leg lift automatically is going to tell me dynamic range of motion. Is that right? That's like on a stall bar.

Starting point is 00:22:28 You don't want to be free swinging. Well, it could be, you know, most of them, you know, whatever they can do. It'll, to my eye, as soon as I see it or our staff's eye, they're going to know right away whether or not that person has adequate. It's going to tell us your core strength and it's going to tell me hamstring flexibility. That'll do that in one. Bridge. Bridge is a huge one for adults. That's been one of our, we have a thoracic bridge core stretch series and that's been one of our best selling products. That's what I'm doing this evening.

Starting point is 00:22:59 Yeah. Yeah. Notice guys that Tim's real happy right now. That'll change in just a few. Yeah. What characterizes, this is a really important question, what characterizes a good bridge? And for people who are thinking of bridge, I mean, imagine you're laying on your back, you put your palms down by your ears, let's say, feet flat on the ground, and then you go up into an arch. Now, I was extremely surprised and found it quite hilarious how bad my bridge was i mean

Starting point is 00:23:29 terrible uh in the assessment but your standards yes by what i see on a normal basis yours was yours was medium medium it was like a d plus it was like on the verge of passing but i realized despite all of my many years of wrestling, where we did tons of bridges, almost all of my bridging comes from bending at the low back, right? So my lumbar bend. Which is a huge issue. Yeah, so what does a good bridge look like?

Starting point is 00:23:56 A little background? Yeah. Okay. So the lumbar, the lower back, is not designed to have a ton of movement in it, a big arch. Your thoracic spine, your upper and your middle back, they're designed to have a lot of movement. They're designed to rotate. Your lower back is not.

Starting point is 00:24:14 But when most people do their bridge work, they're so compromised. Now, okay, even back up a little bit more. They're so compromised in range of motion, their upper body because they've been hitting the weights hard. They've been doing just a lot of high-intensity training. Now, to preface that, there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that at all. If you weren't one of God's gifts when you were born, you've got to do something to make up the deficit.

Starting point is 00:24:39 The problem is when they do all that weight training, they're not doing it in balance and maintaining their mobility. If they had, they wouldn't have the issues that they ran into. So if all you do is strength, strength, strength, strength, strength, then you can always tell someone who has their curl king and their bench press king. They come in and they're hunched over and their elbows don't straighten. Their arms don't go behind them at all. They're like, you know, my shoulders are killing me. Most of the time what we found is, yeah, their shoulders are completely effed up, I agree,

Starting point is 00:25:10 but their biceps are crazy tight also, and that bicep runs up through the front of the shoulder, and it's manifesting itself as a shoulder issue. So kind of all these come together, long story short, to cause them a huge problem being able to get into a proper bridge, which should be all upper body, no lower back almost at all. But people are doing the exact opposite. They hurt their lower back and they say, man, these bridges are dangerous. No, the bridges aren't dangerous. Doing them half-assed and wrong without vetting your sources of information is dangerous. And I've found it incredibly therapeutic as someone who's had basically a frozen thoracic

Starting point is 00:25:50 for God knows how long, 10 years. Sure. We were worried about that. I remember. We're like, hmm, I wonder what's through this. Tim has the upper body mobility of a Lego figure. What are we going to do? So just the progression of doing, and, and, and of course people should look for visual references and, and we, I'll

Starting point is 00:26:11 point them to a bunch of, I'll point them to a bunch of resources in the show notes, but the, can you walk through the check boxes? Cause I know we've done this even recently, the concept, I don't know why this didn't even occur to me, but of helping to take the lower back out of the equation by elevating the feet. Elevating the feet. Yep. And elevating them as high as necessary. Some people are so tight that they basically start in a handstand. And it is what it is, right? the main thing that we try to always hammer with students is they're always in a hurry i've got to get it right now even even our conversation remember way back when started that way and i was like dude this if you can handle it we need we

Starting point is 00:26:58 need to change gears here we need to go slow now in order to go fast later well you said if you want to be a stud later you have to be a pud now, I think were your words. Yeah, that sounds like a smart ass remark. That's a good one. I wrote that down. I've corrupted you, all your great podcasts, and I've corrupted you. So what are the other checkboxes? So let's just say they get the feet up and they're like, okay, feet elevated, feet elevated to the point where they're not feeling stress on the lower back. Then now it'll depend on pressing strength also.

Starting point is 00:27:36 So if they're, if they're very weak in the shoulders, then they're going to have to start from the hands in and work their way down. But we'll assume they've got feet elevated. Hip high or higher if necessary. Doesn't matter a bit. Then from there, we're going to work on most people are going to be up.

Starting point is 00:27:54 They're going to have bent elbows. So we're going to work on straightening the arms. No matter how close they are, they could be wide. Could be wide. Yeah, because, gosh, I had one special forces guy that came to me years ago, tough, tough guy, first name Mark, and he had gained 80 pounds of muscle, 80 pounds of muscle. Oh, yeah, it was just like holy moly, and he was just a beast. But he had completely effed himself up because all he did was gain strength without mobility. And athletically, unless my sport is just purely lifting, unless I'm a power lifter, unless I'm an Olympic lifter,

Starting point is 00:28:33 then maximal strength is not my sole criteria for being successful. In fact, usually the strongest athletes in the weight room are not the best athletes on the field of play. In fact, I don't know a single exception. There may be one there somewhere that someone can share with us and let me know, but I've been around the world. I won't say as many people as you know, but in 40 years of world-class gymnastics, I've met a ton of people.

Starting point is 00:29:02 I've never seen an exception. He couldn't even hang on a bar anymore with his arms straight without hitting his head. You think your shoulders are tight. He was like, coach, what can you do for me? For once, I was at a loss for words, which is rare for me. I think you're screwed. I don't think I can fix this one. And so what did you do with him in the bridge? Was he just stuck? He couldn't even, this was hanging on a bar. We couldn't even get in a bridge. It was impossible. What we would do with someone like that and Mark, so you're more, so guys, just to give the audience some feedback, I went into Tim's assessment expecting medium, medium. And Tim was much more mobile,

Starting point is 00:29:56 much more athletic, much more well-prepared than I had anticipated. So I had spent a lot of time putting a custom program together for Tim that because he did so well in his assessment, I had to throw the whole damn thing away and start over from scratch. Because basically, he was too advanced for what we had assumed he was coming to the table with. Someone who is crazy compromised, we're going to have to sneak up on it. We're going to have to get in there and we're going to have to first do PEC minor. We're going to have to sneak up on it. We're going to have to get in there and we're going to have to first do pec minor. We got to loosen up pec minor.

Starting point is 00:30:29 We got to get in there and we got to work on the bicep tendon. We got to get the bicep tendon going. We got to work on forearms, get forearms loose. We've got to break the scaps so there's some motion there. We have to do all of that.

Starting point is 00:30:42 And it's not high intensity work, but it's got to be done. And as you heard Tim say, the body thrives on it. It's like a tonic for the body. The body feels so much better because it's what the high intensity sexy work, but it's that fundamental work that makes the high intensity sexy work possible later. Well, not only possible, but safer. That's a good point because we had, I think one of the questions that people asked, I date, I think one of the, Tim asked for questions on Twitter and what would you like me to ask Coach Sommer? And some of the people came back with, I know, what would you like me to ask Coach Sommer? And some of the people came back with, you know, I know someone who's a gymnast and they're just beat the shit.

Starting point is 00:31:31 And my answer to that is simple. They weren't my athlete. They weren't my athlete. We don't train through pain. As a national team coach for a long time, physical preparation was always our number one priority. We built the physical structure first because if you think about it, it's kind of silly. And we see this a lot with people who are getting into weightlifting. They're CrossFitters.

Starting point is 00:31:56 They're Olympic lifting, and they're enthusiastic. They're excited, and they want to get that weight on the bar. And they're trying to build technique with a flawed range of motion, which, of course, gives them effed up technique, and it doesn't work, and then they get hurt. Or you hear someone, oh, I changed my shoe and I blew my knee. Seriously, your knee is that tight that because your heel of your new shoe is a fraction of an inch higher or a slightly different angle

Starting point is 00:32:21 that your knee blew? In our training program, we call everything, you need an optimal surplus. You need an optimal surplus range of mobility, range of motion. You need an optimal surplus of strength. You need an optimal surplus of stability. You need what you need to perform and a little extra for when things go south. Not if things go south, when things go south, not if things go south, when things go south. And if you're just riding the edge of what you're capable of, and they hope, oh, nothing will go wrong. I hope nothing will go

Starting point is 00:32:52 wrong. Oh, it is going to go wrong. It's absolutely going to go wrong. And so you prepare the body for that ahead of time. So when it does go wrong, it's like, ah, that didn't hurt. I didn't get nothing. Nothing's injured moving on next turn. Well, one of the questions that you've asked me multiple times when we've been going over different workouts, and I would mention, for instance, uh, I felt it in my bicep. Like I felt an extreme stretch in my bicep. So for instance, there's a movement that we've been calling a German hang. A lot of people would call it skin the cat, perhaps. Very similar where you would hold on to, say, a bar or rings in this case. And I'm going to simplify this, of course, but tucking up, going back in between the rings, and then hanging down with as little of a pike at

Starting point is 00:33:42 the hips as possible. Nice flat back, nice straight hips. Exactly. And sort of palms facing towards the ground. And I was saying, I really felt an incredible stretch in my biceps more than in the shoulders. And your question would be, and this is applied to different body parts, where did you feel it in the bicep? This is getting back to the not training through pain comment. And could you describe why? middle of the, you're like,

Starting point is 00:34:10 if it's in the middle, I don't really care. Um, and same for like the abs, like we can smash those all day long. If it's at the attachment points though, then I want to know about it or we're going to dial it back. Yeah. So why is that? Real quick. So most people, I'm going to sneak around to it. So most people, when they, when they do their training, they, uh, meaning well, meaning well, and I'm not, I'm not slamming anyone by any means. And the only reason that we know this and are able to share is because all these years I've been doing this, I made the same effing mistakes that they make. We just survived my stupidity and learned how to do better. It's the story of my life. It's the story of all of our lives, right?

Starting point is 00:34:52 I used to tell my athletes there are stupid gymnasts and there are old gymnasts, but there are no old stupid gymnasts because they're all dead. But most people, most beginners, they want to base all their training off muscular fatigue, which is a problem. It's problematic because muscle tissue regenerates about every 90 days. About every 90 days. You know, from end to end, all the cells, everything's done in 90 days. Okay, that's well, that's fine. But connective tissue takes 200 to 210 days.

Starting point is 00:35:27 So we have a huge gap. So if I get in and I'm just, you know, I'm not a big fan of beginners training to failure simply because their structure isn't mature enough yet to handle it safely. And by mature, I simply mean enough productive, well-structured hours under their belt. So, you know, I haven't had to do it. Particularly if it's in new ranges of motion, right? If they've just- Particularly if there's joints, you know, if it's a muscle belly, if we're, like you said, if we're doing core, you know, we'll beat your core down all day long and I'm not worried about

Starting point is 00:36:02 it a bit because it's just muscular fatigue. But as soon as we get joints involved, everything changes. And it's actually really easy for people to verify because they can think back over all the injuries they've had over their training career, you know, in their athletic career, playing around with the kids in the backyard. The vast majority of those injuries are all joint related. Almost always. It's extremely rare for someone to have

Starting point is 00:36:25 a muscle belly injury. It just doesn't happen. Yet their training, especially in the beginning, is all skewed just towards muscular development, not connective tissue development. And that's where they get into trouble. So when they come to us, the first thing we like is for them to spend, and it's, is it going to be boring? It is, you know, 200, 210 days. We're talking six, seven months of dial it back guys, dial it back. Yeah. It's, and I think that the, it's important to emphasize too, that dialing it back doesn't mean it means that you're not rushing, but it doesn't mean that you won't, it doesn't mean it means that you're not rushing but it doesn't mean that you yes it doesn't mean you won't experience a lot of progress if that's fair to say i mean i think that's crazy fair to say and you you found that yourself yeah but what happens is some of them we run into this

Starting point is 00:37:18 maybe you have also as we get some people who are addicted to the rush they're they're addicted to the adrenaline rush they're addicted to the adrenaline rush. They're addicted to laying there in a pile of sweat. They want to do the sweat angels. They want to crawl out of the gym. And the problem with that is if you're a world-class athlete, you can't do that because I have to be back in the gym the next day and train again. I can't afford to destroy myself or the special operations guys we work with. You know, we've got to be able to do both. They've got to be operational and increase

Starting point is 00:37:50 their performance through their training, but they have to go hand in hand. And so it's only in beginners that we see that they think somehow they can cheat time and it can't be done. I mean, connective tissue is going to take 200 to 210 days. There's no supplement. it can't be done i mean connective tissue is gonna take 200 to 210 days there's no supplement you can't paint yourself blue you can't dance under the moon there's there's nothing you can do to speed that up it's going to take what it takes and so we work as hard as we can within those parameters if there's joint pain we shut it down it's it's like you like your elbow is a good example years ago ago, pushing too hard. Now, if we tweak that elbow a little too much, it flares up on you. We'll repair it,

Starting point is 00:38:32 and it's going to take time, but it takes much longer to repair it than it does to avoid it in the first place. Yeah, for sure. And just a couple of notes, and then I'm going to swing back to the diagnostics, how people can assess. But another topic that came up, I think I'm sure I brought it up at dinner once just increase the likelihood of having connective tissue problems in gymnasts because the muscular strength and growth would outpace the development of and the adaptation of the tissues. Yeah, it completely would backfire, huge backfire, because a lot of our power comes where we like to get, where students make their greatest gains in strength is to be able to do dynamic plyometric work and straight arm ring strength. Those are your two biggest bangs for the buck. And what we have learned the hard way that's different, the main difference between working with young developmental athletes and full-grown adults is the order in which we need to present the material. We have to do, as a young athlete, I can do all physical components at once. I can do plyometric. I can do straight arm. I can do their mobility. Bent arm, it doesn't matter a bit. I can do it all at one time. But an adult who's now fragile from years of making a living, right? Sitting at a desk

Starting point is 00:40:06 day in, day out, as they get a little older, kids get bigger, levels of activities drop, drop, drop, drop, drop, and they're compromised. So we have to build these things in a different order. We have to first go rebuild mobility. Then we have to rebuild core. Core, I'm talking not just abs, but obliques and lower back. Most adults, a lot of their lower back pain isn't lower back related. It's oblique related. And we have to go in and we have to correct that. Then we can worry about regular strength. Once those things are done, then we can get to the moneymaker, which is their dynamic strength. But with an adult, especially a strong adult who's been athletically inactive, so they've been doing strength training but not out moving, doing sports, being active, you know, outside of their conditioning. Or let's say, for example, all they're doing is squats.

Starting point is 00:41:02 And they're very linear in the path of their knee. And there's no meniscus work. There's mcl work there's no acl work then they go outside they play a little softball here at all the time yeah when i was playing softball i blew my knee going around first base really how many kids blow a knee running around first base well that's i mean the supplemental knee exercises that look wacky as hell when you first look at them that you've had me do, and maybe we can, we can show some of this to people in the show notes. Um, even in the span of three or four weeks, I've seen a huge difference in knee stability improvement because I haven't ever done, I haven't ever performed these types of targeted movements before. And coming back to the diagnostics, we talked about

Starting point is 00:41:48 the bridge. We talked about the hanging leg lifts. Are there any other movements? Shoulder extension will be huge. So shoulder extension would be sitting on the floor. Sitting on the floor. Sitting on the floor. Yeah, sitting in that pike that you described earlier, hands touching behind them. And then without letting the hands move, trying to scoot the butt as far forward away from the hands as they could. And so that's immediately just that one movement right there is going to let us see.

Starting point is 00:42:23 It's going to show me their scapular health. Can they protract? Can they retract? It's going to tell me how tight their pec minor is. It's going to tell me how tight their bicep is. And it's going to tell me how tight their brachialis down by the elbow is. Oh, the brachialis. Yes, your favorite. My good friend, the brachialis. And also your favorite. My good friend, the brachialis. And also, and this relates to kind of daily living, a lot of people who have back pain, myself included quite a few years ago,

Starting point is 00:42:52 if you're wondering if you have a tight pec minor, you can just Google pec minor and figure out where it is, but basically think right under the clavicle. Get a lacrosse ball and go on the wall and try to roll out your pec minor with a lacrosse ball. And if it's, if you have back pain, you don't always fix that back pain by just focusing on the location of that pain. Um, and you start addressing the pec minor and a lot of that stuff just alleviate is, is, is alleviated. Um, and I want to throw one thing out there just for people who might be interested that, and that is, I think part of the reason I seemed or was better prepared for the assessment than I would have been otherwise is that I started doing really just one thing, one type of new exercise, which was compression strength training in that pike position.

Starting point is 00:43:53 And did that for just maybe two times per week prior to doing the assessment as I was traveling. And for people who are wondering what this is like, if you really want to feel humbled as I did. So I was traveling. I was in Colombia. A very close friend of mine almost got to professional rugby in New Zealand. He's a beast. I mean, athletically, extremely strong, extremely fast. I mean, he's always going to be one of the top performers in the gym when he walks into a weight room.

Starting point is 00:44:23 And he saw me doing pike pulses. And so I'll explain what this is to folks because he was kind of laughing at me. And he's like, what kind of Jane Fonda bullshit are you doing here? You know? I love that name. And I said, all right. I'd like, all right, big guy.

Starting point is 00:44:34 You're such a tough guy. Let's see you do these. So for those people who are interested, so you're sitting in this seated pike position we're talking about, right? So you're sitting on your ass on the floor, the upper body perpendicular with the floor and your legs out straight in front of you and point your toes, kind of tense

Starting point is 00:44:50 your quads to push the back of your knees into the floor. Then reach forward and stretch forward as far as you can. Get your fingers out on either side of your legs as far out as you can. And then just try to lift your heels off the ground, keeping your legs completely straight and just pulse it up and down, like three to four inches, maybe if you can manage that. And just try to do 30 of those. And my buddy could not lift his heels off the ground and just fell over laughing. He's like, yeah, okay, those are hard. But that compression, if you think about the range of motion that most people train for core, they're doing sit-ups or maybe they're doing hanging leg lifts up to like an L-sit. So their legs are getting up to kind of parallel height.

Starting point is 00:45:34 Well, that last 90 degrees and especially the last like 45 degrees where you're bringing your thighs towards your chest is so hard. I mean, I had zero strength there prior to doing just a few weeks of this stuff, which just amazed me. And for those people also, we were talking about the transverse abdominus. Coach, feel free to veto this, but I think it's also nicknamed the corset muscle if you're trying to think of what it might look like as it wraps around the abdomen. So if you cough a lot or laugh a lot and get really, really sore, it's very frequently often, uh, or it's engaging that transverse. Um, but let me ask you, so you mentioned CrossFit, you mentioned a couple of things, you know, the drenched in sweat

Starting point is 00:46:19 doing the snow, the not snow angels, but, uh, sweat angels. What are your feelings about kipping movements, like kipping pull-ups? You had to open that can of worms. Well, I was asking a mutual friend, I won't name him, and I said, what should I talk to Coach Sommer about? And he said, kipping pull-ups, he'll lose his shit. So I said, okay, I got to ask him. So we started i i was the original gymnastics guy for crossfit way back in the early 2000s and ended up leaving we i was i

Starting point is 00:46:52 was there before there was the first crossfit affiliate when all there was was glassman working out of that little gym in santa cruz uh left just because you know, to do GST right, like anything, you know, a dichotomy that I always find curious with people, especially the CrossFitters, is they will be so on point with dissecting everything they do in terms of their Olympic lifting. You know, my pull is here, my pull is there, my knee was a quarter inch this way. I mean, they're just methodical. And they don't bring, and I shouldn't say just CrossFitters, but then other people, they don't bring that same degree of attention to detail to their body weight work. So one is supposed to be meticulous and one is somehow just supposed to be thrown together and yet they expect the same quality results so if we if we look back oh back in the day crossfit you know

Starting point is 00:47:52 their lifting was was nothing by national standards now they get people who are qualifying to go to nationals fast forward all those years in terms of their gymnastic strength training and they're not even remotely close. They don't match a national team. They don't match a state-level athlete, let alone a national level, let alone an international level. They're not even in the same ballpark. And part of the issue is because the kipping pull-ups were a huge big deal.

Starting point is 00:48:25 It was a moneymaker. I'll be straight out, I'll piss some people off, but it was a moneymaker. As advertising for a program, they could bring someone in who's never been able to do a pull-up, have them hold their chin by the bar and let them fall, hit the bottom of that movement,

Starting point is 00:48:42 bounce back to the top, and the person's eyes light up and they're know, this is the best effing thing ever. I've never done a pull-up in my entire life. Oh, my God, oh, my God, and they're pumped, and they're pumped. What they didn't realize is that this person has compromised basic strength and compromised shoulder flexion. They don't have mobility in their shoulder, so they're hitting the bottom of that movement with multiples of body weight. So they weren't strong enough to do a regular pull-up. So now we're going to drop them on connective tissue with multiples of body weight. That's got to go somewhere. So it's going to force

Starting point is 00:49:13 that shoulder to open further than it can handle. And I'm going to bounce off that connective tissue like a trampoline back to the top of the bar. And then to pour salt on the wound, now I'm going to do a shitload of reps at the same time. I just i'm just going to crank on it and they were getting people who were coming in and you know cross people there's there's there's no proof there's out of doubt you know bullshit bullshit you got you guys can live in a dream world all you want it was it was blowing people up and now the good thing though and to their credit you know it took time there was a denial no it has nothing to do with it. But now we're seeing a recommendation of, you know what, guys, we've got to start getting some basic strength built first, some basic mobility.

Starting point is 00:49:53 And then at that time, kipping pull-ups, yeah, absolutely, there's nothing wrong with it. They're healthy. They're good to do on a healthy shoulder joint with a good foundation of basic strength. But a beginner doing kipping pull-ups, really? That's insanity. That's just pouring gasoline on a fire. So kipping then is the finishing addition. It is not the starting element. We would never, you know, we started working with adults. So our first, we do seminars all around the world. You know, we spend a lot of time doing hands-on. And our very first one we did, I don't know, 2007 or so. And we've got all these people.

Starting point is 00:50:31 We've got all these beasts here, and they're strong. And I tried to do my entry-level plyometric work on some floor work with them. And the stronger the athlete, the faster they went down. Knees, lower back, ankles, baby stuff, baby stuff. I mean, we're not talking anything hard. We're talking about standing in place and with knees straight, being able to bounce down the floor using just your calves. No way. Their tissues couldn't take it. They hadn't done anything like it. Or we had 15 minutes on the schedule, for example, how bad mobility was Or we had 15 minutes on the schedule. For example, how bad mobility was.

Starting point is 00:51:06 We had 15 minutes on the schedule to stretch. Nothing hard, nothing intricate, nothing intense. Just an easy, basic stretch. Get them loosened up for the day. That stretch took an hour and a half to complete. And I was, oh my, it was an hour and a half, Tim. It was an hour and a half. There were bodies lying everywhere.

Starting point is 00:51:26 It was like I was in Vietnam or we're filming a war movie. And I turned to my staff. I'm like, what the fuck am I supposed to do now? They failed warmup. They failed warmup. Now, in fairness, this stuff is really, you would look at it and just like my friend who's like, what is this Jane Fonda bullshit? And I'm like, hey, man, why don't you try this for 10 minutes? It is really taxing.

Starting point is 00:51:53 I remember doing one of the stretching routines, which I'll note I think might be of interest to people, is I'm hitting each once per week. So there's one that is front split focus. It's a very hamstring focus. There's one that is bridge focused and another that is middle split. Adductor. Adductor and middle split focused. Inside of the thigh. And the point that you make is doing this twice a week will not double your progress.

Starting point is 00:52:22 It will cut it in half. So you're only really hitting each of these once per week. I mean, there are different daily limber protocols. But I remember doing at the very beginning of one of these workouts, I believe it was, oh no, it was absolutely the front split workout, a shit ton, for me, a shit ton of calf raises. I remember you moaning about that raises with different foot placements. It's like, okay, 180 calf raises later of different variations. I was like, okay. And I'm only three minutes into this hour long stretch sequence. Uh, but, and I know we're bouncing all over the place because

Starting point is 00:53:00 I want to give people kind of a buffet sampling of how this training differs. But one of the reasons I respect the programming that you put together and the nuance that you bring to this is that the observation then is, and correct me if I'm, or you can elaborate on this if I'm missing something, but that a lot of the hamstring flexibility issues or limitations that people perceive are at least in part due to lower leg issues, including the Achilles. A huge amount of them. Yeah, including the Achilles. So in this particular progression in the beginning, you're hitting, you're stretching, you're engorging and then stretching the insertion point basically around the heel

Starting point is 00:53:43 and then again at the knee and working your way up to the hamstrings. And there's an athlete who's been on the podcast, Amelia Boone, one of the most successful obstacle course racers in the world. And she's basically pointed out the same thing. And she said, yeah, you can take someone who's really inflexible in their hamstrings, have them roll out their feet with say a lacrosse ball or something like that, and all of a sudden they gain two inches in their descent with the hamstrings. Because it's all connected. You know, we found by accident, so we never intended this, and we just were very methodical.

Starting point is 00:54:18 So part of what maybe helps people to understand the layers of complexity that I approach training with is that for years, my bread and butter was to produce best athletes in the country. That was my job. In order to have a job, I had to produce some of the best athletes in the world. And we had to do it from scratch. And so it becomes an issue of, one, an injured athlete is no good to the United States. It doesn't matter how talented he is, how strong he is. If he can't go out on the floor with the USA on his chest,

Starting point is 00:54:52 we can't win a medal with him, so he's got to be healthy. And then the second caveat that goes with that is that we have to – I have to describe it correctly. We're trying to find a way to make the best better. Because these athletes are already the best on the planet, and you're going head to head

Starting point is 00:55:18 with other athletes who are the best. So then how do you find a way to make something which is almost already perfect, even closer to perfect? And if you do what everybody else is doing, right, without kind of going out into the jungle, if you will, into Indian country and learning new things, then you can't get a leg up on your competitors. The way knowledge, now if we go, we have PhDs who come through in this and that, and we always give them major shit, major shit. Because the way people think the world works is that they do their research, they write about it, they publish it, we learn about it, and we implement it with our athletes.

Starting point is 00:55:57 That is not how the way the world works. The way it really works is you've got high-level, world-class coaches who are super bright, decades of experience. Just my last senior athlete alone, I had 16,000 hours into training Alan. 16,000 hours spread over 12 years. What is Alan's last name? Bauer. Bauer. So, yeah, you guys got to celebrate Alan.

Starting point is 00:56:20 He OU just won national NCAA championships. Again, major blowout by the largest margin in NCAA history. Wow. That was, well, as of this recording, very recently. Yeah, that was just this, oh, goodness, the weekend of the 15th. So I think we're scheduled here to come out sometime in May. But, yeah, very, very big deal. But, you know, to go back to the other, so we're looking for an edge.

Starting point is 00:56:50 And so we don't know why some things work. We just know it works. And I started getting notes from therapists around the world. For example, therapists are taught that they should have a neutral spine. You should have a neutral spine. I was getting people from around the world and they were writing me, but athletically, I'm sorry, I'll be direct, but neutral spine athletically is the biggest load of horseshit I've ever heard in my life. You can't run with neutral spine. You can't throw with neutral spine. You can't climb with

Starting point is 00:57:18 neutral spine. I can't swim. I can't do anything with a neutral spine except lay in a box, dug in a hole, and they get ready to bury me. I mean, that's the only thing I can't do anything with a neutral spine except lay in a box, dug in a hole, and they get ready to bury me. I mean, that's the only thing I can do. There's nothing athletically I can do with a neutral spine. So we know just automatically to produce athletes, we're not going to do neutral spine because torso-wise, there's only two movements. I can go from an arch, snap to a hollow, or I can be hollow and snap back to extension to the arch. Those are the only two movements the torso is capable of athletically. Everything else is a variation off that. We can add rotation with some throws and some this and that,

Starting point is 00:57:53 but that's all there is. So we spend a lot of time building power for that. And these therapists around the world started taking our really gentle introductory work and they trained it on themselves first. And I'm like, you know, just real similar to what you said, Tim, you know, I feel better than I have in years, coach. I feel better in years. And this is completely different from what I was taught in school. Well, let's start. I'm sorry to interrupt, but maybe, maybe we could use an example that we've discussed before, which was a new movement for me, which is Jefferson curl.

Starting point is 00:58:26 And, uh, yeah, there's, they're having some fun with that. So we look at Jefferson curl right now. So it wasn't that many years ago that if you squat it below parallel, you were, it was heresy. It was heresy. If you want, if you went below parallel, the knees, the knees couldn't possibly adapt to it. You're just going to blow your knees. Your kneecaps are going to just pop off the front, right? It's going to be shrapnel, knee shrapnel. And now, yeah. But everybody accepts now that, you know what?

Starting point is 00:58:59 There is nothing wrong with the body being exposed to its natural range of motion. Now, do you have to build it up gradually? Yes, obviously you do. But the Jefferson curl falls into that. So, gosh, how to build it up gradually? Yes, obviously you do. But Jefferson curl falls into that. So gosh, how do we explain Jefferson curl? I can give it a shot. Yeah, you'll be better at it. This would be a good exam review for me anyway. So Jefferson curl is a gradually rounded, stiff-legged deadlift.

Starting point is 00:59:21 That's the simplest way to visualize it. So if you're looking at an athlete from the side doing a Jefferson curl, they will most likely be standing on a box, holding onto an Olympic barbell right in front of a deadlift position. But when they start the descent, and it's elevated so that when you have plates on and whatnot, there's room for it. But when they come down, they're going to tuck their chin and then vertebra by vertebra round their back down all the way into the bottom position where the objective would be, or one of the objectives would be, to get basically your wrists to the front of your toes.

Starting point is 01:00:07 In a perfect world, if you're advanced enough. Yeah, in a perfect world. And, of course, doing this very gradually with supervised attention from somebody who knows what they're doing, and then reversing that and, again, going from this sort of vertebra by vertebra, rounding up until you end up in that top position, and then repeating. Is that a fair description?

Starting point is 01:00:31 Fair description. Yeah, the easy is just think of it as a string of pearls, and we're just curling one pearl at a time. We've been having some fun with that one. So we have done Jefferson curls, I don't know, 12, 15 years now, uh, expected standard is body weight for us. Uh, when the people listening do not try this with body weight right out of the gate. No, don't. So for example, one of our senior students in, um, in Australia, uh, in his training, physical therapist has his own clinic doing really well. And, um,

Starting point is 01:01:03 he tried it with just the the empty bar you know the 20 kilo bar at first trashed him he dropped all the way down to i think a kilo or two right which is completely fine and what we'll talk about why in just a sec and then he built up and last time i checked with mark over the course of i don't know i'm forgetting there's too many students but around 12 to 18 months he built up to either three-quarter body weight or maybe up to full body weight now. And back feels better than it ever has. But the key there, as people got to understand, is that this was a gradual process over 12 to 18 months. It wasn't just go.

Starting point is 01:01:39 Now, we've got a very good, I'll throw Quinn out. I'm going to butcher Quinn's last name. Quinn's a PhD in physical therapy. Quinn Hienot does some really good work. How do you spell his last name? You had to ask me that. We can get it for the show, Nats. Yeah, we'll get it for the show.

Starting point is 01:02:01 We chat a lot on Facebook and that. And Quinn likes to stir stir the pot if you will you know stir up some shit and he's experimented with jefferson curl himself for i think going on about three or four years now now and feels wonderful and he'll toss it out and so one of the things that will always be come up is you know the the is the McGill experiments where they would take connective tissue from a pig cadaver and put it under such and such amount of strain, and if we put it in this position with this much load, it snaps. Okay, and everyone runs around, and the sky is falling, the sky is falling.

Starting point is 01:02:39 Oh, my God, oh, my God, don't bend your spine, stay neutral. What everyone kind of missed the big elephant in the room was the pig was fucking dead the tissue was dead it can't adapt it's dead it's no longer living and it wasn't exposed to very gradual loads so that there could be progressive adaptation which is what our bodies are really good at so they kind of overlooked all that so if i take this completely unprepared tissue and I do this to it, it'll break. So some very interesting discussions right now. And obviously everyone's fine.

Starting point is 01:03:13 You know, we've got athletes doing great, adults who are doing wonderful. And the physical therapist will come around simply because it's healthy. Now they've got to understand, and other people who are listening should understand also, is that her weighted mobility work needs to be approached with a different mentality, a different level of intensity than conditioning work. Because connective tissue has one-tenth the metabolic rate of muscular tissue. So it heals slower, it adapts slower. So you have to kind of come to the table with a very patient attitude or as I consider myself, I'm extremely impatient naturally. But I've learned in order to get what I want and to go where I want to go, I've had to learn to be patiently impatient. If I give in to the urge, then I get hurt.

Starting point is 01:04:02 Athletes get hurt. We fall apart. And nationals or Olympic trials are every four years. Nationals are once a year. And you don't get another nationals. You don't get another Olympic trials if you blow it. You've got to be on point that day. So it teaches us.

Starting point is 01:04:15 And our environment was actually a blessing because it's very much practical. It's very much results oriented. There's no room for opinion. I think, I feel, I prefer. It works. It doesn't work. It produces results. It doesn't produce results. You are the best in the country. You aren't the best in the country. I mean, it's very clear. It's very clear, and it can't be argued with. And that was actually something when we segued into kind of the fitness world, if you will, where you come out of national team and everyone knows who the studs are. In the fitness world, though, everyone's proclaiming they're the stud. Everyone's proclaiming they're the national champion.

Starting point is 01:04:59 And there's nothing to support it. There's no results. There's no great athletes. There's no great abilities that have been generated. There's just the marketing. And that was hard to wrap my head around because a national team that doesn't exist, you can't go to the Olympics and the guy who talks the loudest gets the medal. I have the loudest voice. I'm champion. I think that's national politics right now. Oh, wait. No, never mind. Different podcast. I did want to ask you how your visit to the White House, but I figured we'll save that one. Yeah, we'll save that for another time.

Starting point is 01:05:30 Yeah, Tim went to the White House last week, guys, so I'll pick his brain for you later. So I interrupted. But yeah, you get to the fitness world. And I mean, another one of the differences that you pointed out for me, which I really liked, was that in the fitness world, it's exercise and diet, whereas in your world, it's always been eat and train, right? People are trying to do, and I'll throw a little blurb in here. We have an outstanding nutrition program. The guy who wrote it, former SEAL Team 6, when he started, but back in the day, he was like 140, 145. And then Jeff got all the way up to 220, just shy of 225, solid muscle. And his waist was the same size as when he was thin. He looked like two Vikings, two shoulders on top of his body.

Starting point is 01:06:33 He came walking out. I was like, what the fuck? It had been a couple of years. What the hell did you do? And it's these basic nutritional concepts that we teach. But what we try to do with adults is they're trying to stay ahead of a bad diet through exercise. They're trying to outrun a bad diet. And it can't be done. It can't be done. find this crazy combination of massive amounts of cardio, and they can kind of keep their

Starting point is 01:07:09 weight in check a little bit, and then they stop that cardio, they immediately start gaining. Weight gain, weight loss, all of that should be separate from your conditioning. You've got to get your nutrition dialed in. If your nutrition is dialed in, your body is going to find its natural, healthy weight that it's going to operate at. Now, if you want to be the giant muscle guy, and that's not your phenotype, which is your body type, you know what? Tough shit. Deal with it. It's not going to change. You're not going to change your phenotype. You're not going to change your body's genetic expression. Okay. That being said, right, you can maximize what your potential is. What we hammer through to our students is you're not responsible for the hand of cards you were dealt.

Starting point is 01:07:51 You're responsible for maxing out what you were given. So who knows what your strengths will be? Maybe you'll be more endurance. Maybe you're going to carry easy muscle mass. Maybe you're a max strength guy. Maybe you're very skill-oriented. It doesn't matter. Maybe you're very explosive. But whatever it is're very skill-oriented. It doesn't matter. Maybe you're very explosive.

Starting point is 01:08:06 But whatever it is, make the most of it. So on that point, and then I want to come back to – I want to ask you about – I think I wrote this down during our assessment. Tony Faye, quote, no routines, end quote. That's all I wrote down. So that's a cue for a story I believe that you told me that we'll come back to. Does that make any sense? Or is that just like a cryptic 3 a.m. note that I wrote to myself? I don't know. But the- You got to stay away from the wine, dude. Never, never.

Starting point is 01:08:36 Never. In vino veritas. We'll get back to that. But the- Oh, I kind of know what it is. I think I can actually cue it up. Is that the basics? Yeah. Well, we're going to come back to that in one is. I think I can actually cue it up. Is that the basics? Yeah, well, we're going to come back to that in one second. The question I want to ask first is one that came up a lot from listeners of this podcast, and I'm going to create sort of a composite of these questions.

Starting point is 01:08:59 But if someone is 35 years old, let's just say, former athlete, does basic gym work, diet is okay, not terrible. They feel reasonably athletic, but they're not competing in anything, certainly. Have never done any gymnastics. What would good goals be for such a person? And what would bad goals be maybe at the same time? Well, without question, bad goal would be for them to jump right into kind of full body weight, straight arm strength. For example, a back lever, which doesn't require a ton of strength, but they love to do it because it looks so cool. It's kind of like their first thing they can do that. You know, wow, look at me. The problem is, is that it puts them in

Starting point is 01:09:50 extreme load while in shoulder extension. So let me, can I paint a picture for people? Sure. So, so back lever, just to, just to create the image and coach correct me if I'm wrong. Imagine you're laying on your stomach on the floor, arms by your sides, and then you turn your hands palm down so that your thumbs are pointing out away from your body. And then you lift your arms off the ground as high as possible with your arms straight and then place a bar in your hands and then lift your body off the ground. Off the ground and kind of hold yourself there. Sure. That'll work. body would be horizontal yeah and what they don't realize is that when the shoulders are in shoulder extension like that is that the biceps are under maximum stretch so it's not it's not a problem to do with being strong enough um the bicep is too low and they're going to tear a bicep. So for a young adult, not a problem at all.

Starting point is 01:10:47 And we went through, you know, we get some, and we're lucky. You know, we have a lot of people who use our material. But some of our material, you know, Coach, you're too conservative. Coach, it's a new world. Coach, we don't have time. I had someone who was 21 or 23 once. Coach, I don't have time to take my time. I'm already 23. I was like, okay, all right. I think you're misreading this, but they want to jump right into their strength training and they do well, but they

Starting point is 01:11:16 don't do the mobility work. So it wasn't last year. I think it was the year before. I think maybe the street workout community, five of their top guys around the world snapped biceps. And these are crazy strong guys, right? I mean, we see them. These guys are beasts. They're doing one-arm chins. They're doing this and that. And they all snapped them on back lever stuff because the mobility wasn't in line.

Starting point is 01:11:38 Now, we all know when you're young, you can get away with a lot of stupid shit because the body heals so fast. Luckily, I certainly wouldn't have survived being 21 if it wasn't that the case. But as an adult, the structure is mature now. And I think maybe a better way to look at it is people think I'm getting older. Ligaments are breaking down. Tendons are breaking down, tendons are breaking down, joints are getting brittle. And actually that's not the case because if we go back in time, when you were a little guy, when I was a little guy,

Starting point is 01:12:17 when all listeners were a little guy, we ran around like madmen, right? It wasn't, oh, today I'm going to ride my bike three miles. It was sun was up, go jump on my bike, and I'm gone all day. And I'm running, and I'm jumping, and I'm climbing, and we're just being crazy little guys. So we have this huge matrix of activity that the body is used to. Then we hit high school. And for most people, that's our first exposure to structured athletic training. And the body does well with it. Now, the mistake is thinking that the body did well solely because of that structured athletic training.

Starting point is 01:12:49 What they're overlooking is all that activity, that matrix of activity that occurred for those years prior to that. Then if they're a high enough level athlete, structured training might continue into college, graduate, time to get a job. All right, I'm still, you know, I'm young, right? Hormones are pumping. I'm going to go to work, and then I'm going to go play basketball with the guys in the unions. I'm going to hit the gym, this and that. That goes good for a couple of years. All right, I'm getting by, having fun weekends.

Starting point is 01:13:17 Weekends are full. Then you meet the cutie, right? You meet the love of your life. You get married. Suddenly, I can't go play basketball every night now. Okay, so we do this and that. And a little at a time, our levels of physical activity outside of conditioning are dropping down. And they're dropping down a lot.

Starting point is 01:13:35 Then kids come, right? Well, there's another huge chunk of time gone. Then before you know it, you're 30, you're 35. You haven't been hitting the gym very often. There's certainly no time for just playful activity or doing sports or this or that on a regular basis for most people, right? And they spend most of the time hunched over that desk. And now the body wants to be healthy. It wants to be healthy. That's your prime example. We feed it the right movements and the right dosages and it blooms, it blossoms. It's your prime example. We feed it the right movements in the right dosages

Starting point is 01:14:05 and it blooms, it blossoms. It's like weeding and watering a garden, right? The body wants to be healthy, but we have to do it in the right dosage. And so, for example, those street worker guys, they hurt themselves because it was the wrong dosage. They wanted to go too hard, too soon, without the mobility. So for an adult to come back around and answering that question a long way, 35 year old, very first thing we got to do, we got to fix joints. We've got to repair joints. We've got to get that range of motion back. If you were to look at all of the adults that you've dealt with, let's just say 35 year olds, if you had to pick, and of course this does not cover all the bases, but if you had to pick and of course this does not cover all the bases but if you had to pick say

Starting point is 01:14:46 three to five movements or exercises or stretches for addressing the most common deficiencies like getting those joints back into play what would you what would some of your selections be so just just for joint joint i think i think we'd put'd put Jefferson curl at top of the list. Because Jefferson curl is going to let us, it's going to, because remember, we have multiple sections of the spine, right? We've got the cervical, thoracic, and lumbar. That's going to come through also into glutes. That's going to go down into our hamstrings. That's going to hit our calves.

Starting point is 01:15:21 That's going to hit our Achilles as well. So for one, that's a lot of bang for your buck for one exercise. Even if that was all you did, right. And you just did Jefferson curl, a lot of aches and pains are going to go away because of that. Next one was tough. It's always, it's always hard to, to boil it down, boil it down. We took care of pike. We've got, we've got to get extension. We've got to get some thoracic extension. I throw elevated bridge in there. If arm strength was sufficient to handle it. If, if not, we can scale it down to some weighted work with some bars or some, some barbells, either some dowel with a plate. We've got to get shoulder extension in

Starting point is 01:16:03 there because what happens a lot, a lot of the conditioning we're exposed to is all front delt heavy. Right. Right. It's all anterior delt. And the pecs get tight. The anterior delts are getting tight. And we start pulling our own shoulders forward. We create our own impingement.

Starting point is 01:16:20 You know, and it doesn't matter. You know, so I'll do more exercises. I'll do more exercises. Well, no, you're just making it worse. What the problem is, is there's not balance in the shoulder joint, right? There's no, there's no retraction and it's easy to tell. What does their posture look like? What do we see with everyone now?

Starting point is 01:16:36 They've got that. What do they even have a term now? Texting neck. Is that just a kind of that, that turtle forward, distended forward? It's like the Wally powered down look, I guess. Yeah. And you know, the scary thing there, and again, we have some PTs who use our stuff around the world with a lot of success. And they're the ones who come in and then educate us for, we'll say, you know, we've noticed this.

Starting point is 01:17:00 And they tell us, they teach us, well, to the limit we can, because we're not professionals. But to the limits we can, they start teaching're not professionals, but to the limits we can. They start teaching us the mechanics of what is really going on. So we have a very good student, Wesley Tan, runs one of our affiliates. He's a full-time osteopath in the UK, runs another one of our GB affiliates, FormMA GST. And Wesley's the one who taught me that there's a point, coach, where if you abuse the body, it's not going to come back. And so, for example, you see some older adults who are extremely hunched forward, neck distended forward, chin up because they're trying to see where they're going. And it's not that they have bad posture and they could fix it. It's that they can't fix it because the vertebrae are a rectangle. And if you spend, after spending years of hunched forward like that, it compresses the front edges of that rectangle till it becomes a

Starting point is 01:17:58 trapezoid. Right. And that doesn't come back. Once that happens, it's done. It's over. It's done. Same thing happens with the muscle bellies. So people who get frozen shoulder or impingements in this, that is, if you're not using the muscle belly, the body doesn't want to support it because muscle tissue is expensive. And by expensive, the body looks at it. It's expensive to feed. It's expensive to maintain. So you can't, for example, your body isn't a painting. You can't get to a certain degree of muscle mass, mobility, athletic ability, endurance, whatever you want to say, and then just stop and have it continue to exist like a painting you did. It has to be maintained because if you're not using it, it costs too much resources for the body to continue to keep it.

Starting point is 01:18:47 So it's going to start breaking it down. That's why you get a few days, right? And then you start losing strength. You start losing mobility. You start losing wind. Easiest physical attribute to build endurance. Simple. Super simple.

Starting point is 01:19:03 Endurance is what? Endurance is simply strength repeated over and over at a lower load. No big deal. That's a six to an eight week process. Simple. No problems at all. Mobility, it's going to take some time. What's the easiest one to fix? Muscular strength. Okay. No problem at all. So it's super important then that we use that muscle mass because if it's not being used, you're not only going to lose the size of the muscle mass, the body's going to start doing deposits of collagen on it. And it's going to start shrinking that muscle belly on the traps, for example, going back to those older adults we discussed. And it's going to shrink until a lot of it is connective tissue on the edges. Now, what people need to realize, and they don't, is that when they see an adult who's hurting, right? They're older, they're shuffling, they can't pick their knees up, their hips are frozen, they're hunched over, their neck's displaced. They weren't that way

Starting point is 01:20:01 when they were younger. This is all the result of inactivity and poor progressions in their exercises, and it didn't have to be. And then they need to take the next step of connecting is that if it happened to that guy or that woman, it can sure as hell happen to me also if I go down the same road that they went down. So returning to the shoulder extension, because I noticed in our assessment that I had terrible shoulder extension and I had kind of accepted it and written it off with stupid reasons like, well, you know, I've done too much deadlifting. I got too much huge slabs of muscle in my back. I can't do shoulder extension. It's like total horseshit. I mean, especially-

Starting point is 01:20:42 I did notice those huge, massive slabs of muscle. Yeah, the imaginary lat syndrome that I have. And I mean, that was just blown to smithereens when I met – let me make sure I get his name correct. Is Paul Watson, is that right? Oh, yeah, Big Paul. In New York City, who's gigantic and extremely flexible. So as soon as I hung out with him, I was like, okay. Yeah, that kind of – to let people know Paul is, what would you say, 6 feet 230? and extremely flexible. So as soon as I hung out with him, I was like, okay, no,

Starting point is 01:21:05 let people know. Paul is always a six feet to 30. I mean, and just, and for, it's about 40, I want to say, and just probably walks around at 6% body fat and can do, can do,

Starting point is 01:21:16 can do a flat like chest to ground pancake. No problem. Can do dislocates with a weighted dowel or barbell. No problem with all different types of grips which i can't do at all even though i'm making progress uh the the shoulder extension what is your preferred way to work on shoulder extension what is is it the sitting down arms behind you scooting the hips forward is there something else you would add to that mix? Well, we have to sneak up on that one a little bit. So sometimes we can't even work shoulder extension at first if the elbows are deconditioned.

Starting point is 01:21:54 So if brachialis just inside the elbow is weak, if the insertion of the bicep tendon is weak, then when the arm is extended as they stretch, there might be some discomfort. So if that's the case, we have to give that time to adapt. So you notice that's one of the questions I ask is, how's your brachialis feel? How's your bicep feel? How's your elbow feel? Because we never push through pain. I mean, you can, you can, but have you noticed that the guys who push through pain, right, they've got a shelf life of somewhere between two and four years. And then the body is so beat up and so painful and so chronically injured that it's just easier to be a fat slob sitting on the couch and have at least my pain drop than to try to continue pushing through and being a stud. It's so common, and it's also unnecessary. For example, and I don't get this one. I don't get this one a lot. I'll bring it

Starting point is 01:22:53 because where there's a lot of people and don't get me wrong, I really like weightlifting. I think the Olympic lifting is sweet. There's a lot going for it. I think the way that it is approached here in the States is not as efficient as it's approached in China, for example, or in Russia. So, for example, in both of them, before there's any weight added at all, they build complete mobility throughout the body. They can straddle their legs, chest on the floor, sit with legs together, pike. They've got bridge. They have all these basic mobility. Incredible ankle flexibility and mobility. We talked about this. Is it related to cloak off? Huge ankle, and especially, exactly. You watch cloak off. Dimitri cloak off. People should watch this guy. Check out some videos.

Starting point is 01:23:38 Oh my God. He is such a beast. But what they also need to do is not just watch the weight he's putting up, right? They need to watch his warmup in the training hall and look at how amazingly flexible and mobile he is. Now, what's important to understand is at a world-class level, right? At a world-class level, resources are limited. Energy you have for training is limited. The amount of time you have for training is limited. The amount of time you have for training is limited. The amount of time you have for recovery is limited. You have to maximize these things because you're going, it's one thing to be the best stud in the town. It's another thing to be best stud in the state. Another one in the region. Another one in the country. Completely different animal to be the best in the entire world. To be the best at what you do out of billions of people. We're talking slivers of difference between the very top guys. So with all those restrictions and all those parameters in place, if the best in the world are stretching their ass off in order to get strong,

Starting point is 01:24:40 why aren't you? Agreed. And not you personally. Damn, put me on the spot, coach. No, you as in all of us, as in all of us, right? And what will happen is people just kind of get blinders on. They want to watch the technical. They want to watch the progressions.

Starting point is 01:24:58 What did you do for this and that? And then they'll blow off the mobility work that they do early, not realizing that the mobility work was the gold nugget they were looking for. They just didn't brush the dirt off in order to see that it was gold underneath. They just thought, ah, it's just another rock. Who cares? No, it was the gold. That was the sweet, and they missed it.

Starting point is 01:25:18 So if we're looking at, again, this 35-year-old former athlete, maybe was super competitive but has kept in decent shape, maybe does some form of exercise two or three times a week. In terms of understanding that the mobility and working with J curl, elevated bridge, shoulder extension, et cetera, those are going to be ingredients in the recipe in their progression to gymnast of some type. What would be – Not even gymnast. I would say – Functional human being. Functional human being, right? Because we don't train.

Starting point is 01:25:55 I'd like to point out to people, we don't train gymnasts. We do gymnastic strength training, right? But I don't have – I just got off the phone with our Olympic coach today, Kevin Majajka, right? We had a great conversation, but guys, regardless of how good you are at rope climbs and plans and this and that, I wouldn't hold my breath that Kevin's getting ready to give you a call and say, please come and be on our team this year. You know, I saw your rope climbs and you are kick ass. You are the one for us. We got a uniform waiting here for you. We're departing for Rio in July, man. Be ready. Pack your bag.

Starting point is 01:26:27 It's not going to happen, guys. So I think it's – Correct. Functional human being. We're athletes. Functional human being covers it all. So let me just jump to the punchline question, which is let's – so we look at – if I wanted to give someone a stretch goal to inspire them to train consistently, right? So the mobility might not be enough, but if I wanted to give them a,

Starting point is 01:26:51 a light at the end of the tunnel. So I'm like, I know this shoulder extension stuff is going to be very unpleasant, maybe not super exciting, but this is the objective. This is why this is what you might be able to do in three, 6, 9, 12 months from now. The back lever we've talked about is not necessarily a good goal because you might think you have the strength, and perhaps you do. They'll definitely have the strength, almost without question. Right, but they don't have the mobility. They don't have the mobility. Snap goes the bicep.

Starting point is 01:27:22 Yep, there's a nasty surprise waiting in that box. What would be a good gymnastic strength training goal to have or goals? And just as context for people who are wondering, after trying to do my best to survey the landscape and figure out what might not be the stupidest goals i wanted to you know i'm not saying these are the best goals but i decided okay well press strict press handstand which we can define in a second seems like a good one and it just seems like a sweet thing to be able to do and then front lever and then lever straddle planche and then straddle planche exactly so uh we can we can talk about what each of those are, but would the press handstand, for instance, be something that incorporates the strength, the mobility, and all these pieces? If you had to pick one… If you had to pick one, that would be the one.

Starting point is 01:28:14 That would be the one. Okay. Because it's going to have all strength, all mobility, balance, agility, everything rolled into one movement. Do you want to take a stab at describing what that looks? What does a perfect press handstand look like in your mind? It's a perfect press handstand. So I'm just trying to keep it simple, right? Bend over, hands on the ground by your toes. And that can be put your palms on the floor so they're just in front of your toes, shoulder width.

Starting point is 01:28:44 Legs straight. Legs straight. Legs straight. Okay. Now, if they needed to bend, we could, but we're talking about perfect world, right? And then, so hands on the floor, shoulders directly over the hands, and then no jumping, using just the middle back, just the traps. Because everyone thinks traps, traps, traps, anything, traps just for shrugging. Well, your traps are a huge muscle. They're a huge muscle, and they anything traps just for shrugging. Well, your

Starting point is 01:29:05 traps are a huge muscle. They're a huge muscle and they don't just lie in the top of your shoulders. They're in the middle of your back and down towards your lower back as well. They're a giant muscle and they're capable of a huge amount of power. And when you fix those, right, a lot of shoulder pain goes away. A lot of lower back pain goes away. But to go back to our other, hands on the floor, shoulders over the hands, using that middle back, those traps, pull the hips up on top of the shoulder, maintain that flat back position. Then we continue on with lower back, finishing the legs up to the handstand. And so a couple of things that make this particularly challenging. So one, obviously you need to have the flexibility in the hamstrings and everywhere else. You have to have the mobility. look like they should be easy and they are not um you're bringing your legs basically to your chest in that last like 10 to 12 inch range really challenging um and then the i think where you see

Starting point is 01:30:14 a lot of people online do this incorrectly at least from the standpoint of having the objective of gymnastic strength training right because there are all sorts of ways you can cheat with this stuff to make it biomechanically easier. But if we're trying to do it strictly, um, and why, why do it soon? Maybe this is a nice thing to throw in because people say, well, it's just a matter. It's personal taste coach. It's personal taste.

Starting point is 01:30:37 You do it this way because you prefer this form. Now we do it a particular way because this is what builds the most strength that's transferable to other activities. For example, this will – I'll continue. So who have I pissed off so far today? I've pissed off CrossFitters. I don't know. I'm going to piss off yoga. I'm going to piss off yoga right now.

Starting point is 01:30:59 So I once had – and I like yoga. Don't get me wrong. But their approach to handstand is flawed. They want to go bone on bone. So they want to have their shoulders depressed. So they're bone on bone. They want to have pipe shoulders. Could you elaborate on that?

Starting point is 01:31:15 All right. So shoulders can elevate. So if I'm standing upright and I elevate my shoulders, that would be like me shrugging my shoulders to my ear. And then doing the opposite is the other direction. Well, when we do a handstand, it's, and if I describe it this way, it's going to make sense, right? I want muscle and connective tissue to be doing the work. I don't want bone grinding on bone. That's not a recipe for longevity. It's not going to work. But the easy one is they'll say, well, there's a yoga handstand and there's a gymnastics handstand. And my answer to that is,

Starting point is 01:31:51 well, you're almost right. There's a gymnastics handstand and there's a fucked up gymnastics handstand. Those are the only two there are. And here's how we evaluate it. A gymnastics handstand, right, done with nice flat back, nice hand, all being a smart ass aside, right? We're going to look at it just from a purely practical viewpoint. Which one leads somewhere? So if I do a yoga type handstand with that arch and the flexed shoulders, I'm not going any farther than that. I can work on duration. I can do some other things, but I'm not going any further. If I do a gymnastics handstand where it's flat, now I have nice range of motion in the shoulders. I have strength through the

Starting point is 01:32:30 middle back, through the traps, right? I've got good core strength. I've got good compression strength. Now I can move on to good press handstand work. Why? Well, we want to get stronger. That in turn allows me to go on if I'm in the mood and I want to do more, I can go into more advanced one-arm handstand work, pirouetting work. All those things are results of a proper, nice straight-line handstand because we don't do anything in gymnastics, right? That's just purely aesthetics. Why do we do things a certain way? It lets us generate more power. Why do we want more power? It lets us get more air.

Starting point is 01:33:14 It lets us do more flips. It lets us do more twists. It lets us do harder things on rings, which means more points, which means more gold medals. Let me throw out a couple of observations and you can correct me if this is wrong but like one of them an example of something that people might think is aesthetics and it there is an aesthetic appeal but it's a side effect and not the reasoning behind it would be a strong point in the toes right a strong point on the legs see so very good so you see a lot of people doing handstands and i was guilty of this uh certainly and they have kind of uh what i heard what one acrobat called tofu feet they're like they're not fully dorsiflexed like they're not pulling the toes

Starting point is 01:33:56 back to the knees which i think looks terrible also pretty common in yoga but they don't have that and they don't have a strong point and so so they're – at the very least, their quads and their adductors aren't really fully engaged. They're loose. And so they're leaking energy in all sorts of directions. I like that, leaking energy. Yeah. That's a very good description. And it makes – I think I probably stole it from Pavel Tsatsoulin.

Starting point is 01:34:22 Pavel's a good buddy. Pavel's a good friend of mine. I like Pavel. Pavel's great. And they all and when what is the consequence the consequence there are consequences one of which is you're wasting energy so you're not going to be able to train as efficiently number two is you're not going to have the you're not going to develop the proper balance and alignment because you're going to be flopping all over the place and having to correct more so than you should. And, um, so that just that pointing has a huge impact on your

Starting point is 01:34:52 ability to train the handstands, like a really strong point. And, uh, the, um, the other point I wanted to make is because I've, I've, of course, in the attempt to try to work on this in the past which failed and i've made a ton of progress in the last few months but when doing it solo i would watch videos online and of course not all videos are created equal and you would see people and preach the choir on that and you would and you would see people doing a press handstand but they would they would planche really hard right so you So you would, in other words, you'd see people, they put their hands flat on the ground in front of their toes, and then they shoot their head really far forward. So their shoulders travel. If you were to drop a plumb line, like a string with

Starting point is 01:35:36 weight on the end from their shoulders, it would hit the floor, say like eight inches in front of their hands. Six, eight inches in front. Sure. Exactly. And then they go up into the handstand and they have this arch in the back and maybe their feet are pointing straight up. And what does that look like? It looks a lot like what was the gold standard in sort of Muscle Beach, Venice or Santa Monica, like 19, circa 1960s. 1940s, 1950s.

Starting point is 01:35:59 That's right. 1940s, 1950s. But that's going to place a lot more structural strain on the spine so then if the what is the proper version look like i mean roughly right your your ears are roughly in between your shoulder blades you're in between your arms yeah in between your arms fully uh shoulders extended up or not extended what am i looking Pressing, pressing down through the ground and keeping the hand, the shoulders directly on top of the hands. Yeah. And what, and for, for people who want to just do a little experiment, obviously do it, do it safely. But I was blown away the first time that someone showed this to me. If, if you do a normal,

Starting point is 01:36:39 say kick up to handstand on the wall, just the way that everybody does it, right? So you're, you're, you're kind of flipping up and you end up looking away from the wall. There are a million ways to do it. Let's say you do that. And then instead of doing it the way you've always done it, before you put your hands on the ground, you start with your arms overhead in the position that you want to assume on the ground and shrug your shoulders up as high as possible, trying to get your deltoids to the size of your ears. Maintain that position and then go up. And the stability is just a world of difference. I mean, it's night and day.

Starting point is 01:37:10 It's a completely different movement. All right. I have to ask this because a million people asked since we're on a roll here. We've already checked off yoga. That's true. And I have to come back. Guys, I like everything else about yoga except your handstand. So only a small amount of hate mail for the handstand one.

Starting point is 01:37:31 Uh, and, uh, some of the coaches and doesn't have to be in gymnastics, but some of the, but it certainly could be some of the coaches who have impressed you the most. And I took down in between like my bouts of hands shaking and like accidentally getting chalk in my mouth, doing the assessment and like when I could bend my arms and do something, I took these cryptic notes. I wrote down one name, which was Alexander, world champion, male and female. Does that ring any bells? So, you know, I've been extremely, extremely fortunate in my career. I have just a multitude of friends who are world and Olympic champions, world and Olympic team members, world and Olympic coaches. And for a long time, you know, I just kind of, because if that's your environment day in, day out,

Starting point is 01:38:25 it just kind of becomes your norm, right? And then after a while, you kind of stop and think. Like one day I was at a competition, and I was visiting with some friends of mine, and I came back, and my oldest daughter was maybe around 12 at the time. And she was like, oh, my God, do you know who you were talking to, Dad? And I said, well, yeah, sweetie, I know. They're my friends.

Starting point is 01:38:47 She says, that was the Olympic champion and that was the world champion. I said, yeah, I know, babe. I know. And she's just like, oh my good God. Well, Dimitri Belozachev is a good friend of mine and Dimitri is one world in 83 at 16 years old. 16 years old. Just unbelievable.

Starting point is 01:39:09 Then he won again in 87. What a lot of people don't know is in between there, Demetri, obviously Russian, Demetri had a car accident and broke his left lower leg between the knee and the ankle in 42 places. 42 places. So basically, you know, that's powder. It's powder. And they put him in. He's unconscious.

Starting point is 01:39:36 He's on the table, and he's covered up. And they're getting ready to remove his lower leg. They're taking it off. And the surgeon pulls the towel down, the sheet down, because he's prepped for surgery. I mean, he's out and he sees it's Dimitri. Now this is Russia, right? In the early eighties. So, you know, it's not, it's not warm, friendly Russia. And the doctor, he, the doctor immediately like, holy shit, I am not cutting this leg off because the surgeon who takes Dimitri Belozachev's leg off is probably going to lose his hands shortly thereafter also. You're right. You know, national hero.

Starting point is 01:40:13 So they save his leg and Dimitri comes back from it and wins worlds in 87. Goes to 88 Olympics, does great medal, gold medals. Well, Dimitri was lucky enough, we're at different training camps and that Dimitri was my roommate. And, you know, Russians are Russians, right? It takes a long time for them to warm up to you. So it took, I don't know how many years, but we started getting along real well after some years. And he started sharing some stuff. And I'm like, you know, Dimitri, because his leg is trashed. His leg is trashed. He had 80 Olympics.

Starting point is 01:40:47 And I said, Dimitri, you know, how? How the hell, dude? He says, yeah, only that's for a few seconds. I can do anything for a few seconds. I said, I don't know, dude. Well, so it's just great, right? So he's, you know, a legend in gymnastics. If we get together with a room full of world and

Starting point is 01:41:05 olympic champions who are russian they will all defer to dimitri he's that big a legend and this isn't a room full of massive egos okay these yeah there's there's no shortage of confidence here and if dimitri's in the room they treat dimitri awesome it's it's a very very cool thing to see well we go forward. Oh, gosh. I'm going to forget my name. Is it not Alexander? Well, Alexander, the reason, doggone it. My Alzheimer's is kicking up.

Starting point is 01:41:39 Anyway, we had a world champion from the Russian on the women's side who won worlds. And Dimitri's coach, Alexander, was responsible for training both of them. We had a world champion from the Russian on the women's side who won worlds. And Dimitri's coach, Alexander, was responsible for training both of them. So Alexander is the only one in history who produced a male world champion and a female world champion. He's the only one. And Alexander right now is down coaching the Brazilian team. What is Alexander's – is that his first or last name?

Starting point is 01:42:06 It's like, I always screw up all the Russian pronunciations. All my Russian friends are going to laugh because they're totally used to me butchering this, but it's like Alexander, Alexander and off or, or something. Got one of those. Alexander.

Starting point is 01:42:17 If I'm with my Russian friends, I just say Alexander and everybody knows who I mean. So I don't have to embarrass myself. What, what makes him, what do you think allowed him, made him? What makes him him? Yeah, exactly.

Starting point is 01:42:30 What makes him different? What makes him him is the ability, so it starts with depth of knowledge, to have enough depth of knowledge that you can look at an athlete and plan what you need to be doing four years from now, eight years from now, and then reverse engineer all of it to today. All the training cycles, the strength, the deloads. It was from Dimitri that I, so back in 83, Dimitri was the only gymnast, and I think today probably one of the only ones who every fourth week was a deload week. Why? To give the body a chance to recover. Now there's a lot of people who talk deload,

Starting point is 01:43:10 but way back then, right? The training, if you visit with Dimitri, right? It's always, Chris, it's mathematics. It's all mathematics we do. To them, you take these correct pieces, which would be like doing the correct numbers? That creates your equation. If you put the equation together correctly and then you solve it, there's your answer. And your answer is the physical preparation at the end in a successful competition. So Alexander is great, great at knowing we're going to just be consistent over this training block. So, you know, an Olympic cycle is four years long. So we're getting ready to finish this Olympics, right? And then the next cycle starts.

Starting point is 01:43:50 So it could take, for example, to get someone to 75, 80% of their genetic capacity with a good coach, a good world-class coach. It's going to take three to four years. It's going to take three to four years just to let the body grow, adapt. Do you think that's also true for 30, like training an adult? I do. Okay, great. I do. Uh, now that's a healthy adult. That's a healthy adult. So if they're severely compromised, and so, you know, to get through our whole curriculum should take three to four years. If they're severely compromised and we have to do damage repair, we've got to heal some injuries, we've got some chronic things. Because what's a chronic injury? A chronic injury is simply an injury that you kept abusing until it became semi-permanent. That's all chronic injury is. It means you slammed your hand in the door and it

Starting point is 01:44:49 hurt. Okay. And your, your response to slamming your hand in the door and hurting was to keep slamming your hand in the fucking door. You kept slamming it in the door and you say, God, my hand really hurts. What should I do? What should I do? I said, well, quit slamming your hand in the damn door and it will get better. But people, they don't, they don't realize, they don't think that way. They're just like, well, I, but I really, really like doing this. And we get people coming to us really beat up because we're taught no pain, no gain. Well, we flip that around. We say no brain, no gain. Now we're not talking about the pain of fatigue. The easy way to know the difference between fatigue and injury is simply the sharpness of the pain. So, for example, and it's some experience also.

Starting point is 01:45:31 So if you're feeling pain, right, and maybe it's from a core workout and you stop, you're doing hollow body rocks, whatever, it doesn't matter what you're doing, sit-ups. You stop. If it's fatigue, it's immediately going to start to lessen. As soon as you stop, the pain starts going away. If it's an injury and you stop, it's immediately going to begin increasing. That's your oh shit moment. That's, oh, I have screwed myself up, right? And so you kind of have to ride that.

Starting point is 01:46:03 We want to work to where the body is working, but we don't want to work so hard. It's like for a long time it was a big thing for people doing kipping pull-ups to take pictures of their hands being raw and bloody from their ribs. And they were looking at it as a badge of honor that I worked so hard. And in the short term, for that moment, yes. Yeah, they worked really hard. Now, I looked at it differently. I looked at it as like, you stupid shit. What are you going to do tomorrow now?

Starting point is 01:46:34 Right. Because there's no amount of work you can do today that could offset the amount of progress you could have made throughout a properly structured week. It can't be done. You see that with kettlebells a lot too. I remember when I was really deep in kettlebell training. It was – yeah, you take yourself out for God knows how long. You rip all your calluses off. But they mean well.

Starting point is 01:46:58 They mean well. We tend to use two terms with our athletes. We have immature athletes and mature athletes and definition. And it's, it's not an age deal. It's, it's an attitude deal. So an immature athlete is someone who wants what they want right now.

Starting point is 01:47:18 Okay. A mature athlete is someone who's willing to do what needs to be done now to get rewarded for it later, delayed gratification. And it's the mature athlete that in the long run always comes out on top. They're always the ones with the greater longevity and the greater success. The other ones, the immature ones, if they're really talented, they may stay ahead for a while, but eventually you're going to get so dinged and broken and beat up that they have to step aside. And the mature guy, the mature athlete or woman, right, they're just doing their thing day in, day out.

Starting point is 01:47:51 It's like writing a book that has 365 pages in it. If I ask you tomorrow, Tim, go home tonight and write me a book with 365 pages. You're like, Chris, you've lost your fucking mind. But if I say, Tim, I want you to write me a page, a single page every day. In a year, we've got a book with 365 pages. And if you picture that, that thickness of a novel, it's a lot of pages there. But if I look at that thickness of a single page, it's so thin that it seems negligible that it doesn't even matter. It's like, why did I bother?

Starting point is 01:48:30 Well, it's the consistency that adds up over time. That's where you see these great athletes. You've got to understand, you see a world-class athlete that did not start training yesterday. This is a multi-year process. Well, also, I think that there's a behavioral modification and a component of this, which if you wanted to dig into the research is supported at this point, which is doing each day less than you feel maximally capable of, it's a fantastic sort of positive reinforcer. And this applies in sales. This is what IBM did way back in the day

Starting point is 01:49:06 when their sales force was slaughtering the competition. They had the lowest quotas in the industry because they wanted their sales people to be unintimidated to pick up the phone. So we could substitute intimidated to pick up the phone with intimidated to go to the gym or start a session. You could also apply it to writing. Leave a little in the bank, right?

Starting point is 01:49:27 Leave a little in the bank. I remember there were two examples offhand as it applies to writing. A friend of mine who's very, very consistent, prolific writer, and he said, my key is every day I write less than I feel capable of. And a guideline that I was given was two crappy pages per day.

Starting point is 01:49:43 That's all you have to do, two crappy pages. And sometimes you overshoot that and you have a great workout and you're feeling, as you put it, froggy, right? You're feeling fantastic. And you just blow through it and set a bunch of PRs, but you didn't go into the workout with the pressure of having to achieve PRs in every exercise. And Hemingway, maybe not the best life model, but was a prolific writer. Still a stud, yeah. And he would end mid-sentence. He would end still feeling like he had more to say in a specific paragraph or sentence so that he had a place to pick up the next day. I love that.

Starting point is 01:50:18 So on the point of consistency – and actually, I want you to finish your last thought because I totally hijacked the conversation. What's up with that, dude I totally hijacked the conversation. But you said it takes three to four years to get them to what percentage of their genetic? And this is ballpark, 75 to 80. And this is just an example to people because the body will not let you run at 100%. Won't do it. Won't do it. There's not enough optimal surplus that we mentioned earlier. Three to four years to get to 75%, 80%.

Starting point is 01:50:49 It will take me another three to four years, another three to four years to get to about 90%. Another three to four years. And then after that, it will take me another three to four years to get to about 95%. And that's me riding herd on them. That's my standards, right? Because remember, it's easier for me to maintain that immaculate standard because I'm not the one feeling the fatigue right now. Okay. It's much easier. It's very difficult for a world-class athlete to train themselves,

Starting point is 01:51:25 right? And it doesn't do a world-class coach any good to have all that knowledge in his head. It takes a partnership, right? It takes both of them working together to create this great athletic animal. But the interesting thing is that another three to four years, you get to 95%, and as soon as they ease up, the body drops back down to that 75, 80. That's where it likes. Now, to build back up won't take nearly as long as to build it in the first place because the structures are already in place. Nervous systems already develop, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. But that's where the body's comfortable. So as far as adults are concerned, does a 35-year-old need to be able to produce

Starting point is 01:52:09 at 90%? No, they don't. Do they need it 95%? No, they're not full-time professional athletes. They don't have time for that. Can they produce at 75%, 80%? and the interesting thing is is will that put you on the olympic team no absolutely absolutely not are you going to be close to it no but is it will it put you being better than 99 out of 100 people around you absolutely absolutely it will put you there and if we put a percentage on that that that means that just by being consistent, putting some consistent years of training in, that puts you in the top 1% of the human population in terms of physical ability. That is not a bad consolation prize. No, it's not. And I want to underscore the consistency point because I've always been an intensity guy, right?

Starting point is 01:53:03 I mean, for the most part, because that's my easy, that's my default mode and, uh, you know, it's served me well. It's served me well. Uh, but there's a, there's a point where, you know, the, the, the sword cuts both ways. And, uh, you sent me an email recently. I'm going to replace the name just in, unless we decide to, I was going to say, or maybe take out the profanity just in case. Yeah, I'll take out the F-bombs. Dear you, lazy bastard. No, that's not how it starts. So this, I just want to, because I want to talk about older students who have picked up gymnastics.

Starting point is 01:53:39 Okay. So there are a lot of people who are rightly, I think, or naturally skeptical of the ability of, say, a 35, 38, 40-plus-year-old to acquire these skills that are associated with people who start when they're 5, 6, 7 years old. So I'm going to replace the name with Frank. Okay, so I was having a hell of a lot of trouble with tuck hops. And to just explain that, and I fully plan for everyone listening to put a lot of video examples in the show notes. You'll have visual references for a lot of this, but tuck hops, it's a great exercise. There are different ways to practice this, but a tuck handstand is instead of having your body ramrod straight from your hands all the way to your pointed toes at the

Starting point is 01:54:22 very top, you're basically bringing your knees to your chest or rib cage while you're in the handstand position with your feet still pointed, but your heels kind of touching your ass. Is that a fair description? I agree with that. And I was having a lot of trouble with range of motion. I just couldn't get low enough. And so coach sent me an email, which was, Frank is one of my senior students. Here's a video of him working his tuck handstand compression. While it's not exactly the same exercise, this does provide a nice visual example.

Starting point is 01:54:57 Now, the part that stands out for me is what follows the video. Because I watched the video and I was like, okay, that's pretty solid. And you said, you know, he started roughly two years ago, out of shape week and rather pudgy on his first workout. I believe that he failed three times, 12 seconds bent hollow body hold. And I mean, there are people in wheelchairs that are stronger than that. Yeah. And I probably, probably going to get the,

Starting point is 01:55:20 not going to do this exercise justice, but I mean, a bent hollow body hold is effectively, like imagine if you're in a crunch position on the floor, right? And then you put your arms. Yeah. Just kind of pick your feet up like you were going to do a sit up, except don't sit up. Shoulders up a little off the ground, feet off a little ground, and then just try to rock back and forth. That's it. So he failed at 12. He couldn't do three sets of that times 12 seconds.

Starting point is 01:55:47 Couldn't do it. Not a chance. Fast forward two years, and he's a beast. Now, there were two points here that really left a mark on me. So the first was he's very consistent. Okay, we've talked about that. But here's the part that I really liked. So he never rushes through exercise, and every time he gets stuck on a progression and is not able to break through that particular plateau,

Starting point is 01:56:08 he simply drops all the way back to the first progression and begins working his way up. So I want to try to illustrate this because this is a really, because most people, myself included, will just bang their heads against a wall with the plateau movement, right? Sure. So let's take the tuck. I'm sorry, not the tuck, but the press handstand, which we've been talking about as a great kind of bang for the buck objective because it incorporates so many different elements and attributes that you need to develop.

Starting point is 01:56:37 Okay. So what would a series of progressions, like four or five progressions for that look like? And does it literally mean that if he couldn't get through movement five, that he would drop all the way back to number one, or would he go back to number two or number three? Nope, he'd go right back to number one. Now, he might not start with the very week one programming of you know three by one rep he might he might drop back to uh week 11 you know where it's where we provide the programming where

Starting point is 01:57:14 it's five by five and just demonstrate mastery then next workout bump but basically what what he's doing is if he failed on that exercise that means there was a chink in the armor somewhere. There was a hole in the preparation. There was some deficit or super – had a deficit that had been overlooked or some part of the body that had not yet super compensated. So by stepping off – so basically we want people to go through when they're in training to just be super simplistic. We want their training to go through a period of overload where whatever they're doing is kicking their ass. It's hard. It's intense.

Starting point is 01:57:56 And then without changing reps or sets, we want the body then to go into a period of load where that same amount of work, that same load, same exercise, same reps, same sets feels moderately difficult. So it's feeling easier because the body's gotten stronger. And then where people always cut it short, where they undermine themselves here is they don't go into under load. So to super simplistic under load is where damn i'm just not feel like i'm working very hard you're moving the same weight you're doing the same reps you're doing the same sets right but you're just you're just cutting it short what people tend to do is they want to ride that razor's edge i did this much today i'm going to do this much i'm going to do more next week that typical five pounds on the bar. Okay. Well, that's great. If that was the case, I remember my first weighted pull-up

Starting point is 01:58:49 workout. I was excited. I was excited way back when I was a teenager. I came home. I did my five pounds. I pulled out my calendar, did five pounds. I'm going to do a pound every week. I said, holy shit. I'm going to be pulling 1,500 pounds in a year, man. I'm world champion. I'm world champion in the making. Well, linear doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way. So what happens is that you hit that point of where you're maxed out currently, and then you've got to step off,

Starting point is 01:59:19 and we've got to give the body a chance to accommodate. So, for example, you mentioned Rob Wolf. Rob is a good buddy. Rob's super sharp. For those of you who don't know, he's a nutritional guru. Check out his stuff. Yeah, R-O-B-B for people. R-O-B-B.

Starting point is 01:59:32 Yeah, he's got two Bs there. Well, you know, Rob is a high-intensity guy like you, Tim. And so I shared with him the year Alan won national. So national champ. Imagine you've defeated the entire country, right? There's one champion and you're it. Everyone, you kicked their ass. Unbelievable feeling. Extremely awesome.

Starting point is 01:59:54 Well, that year, I didn't change anything on Alan's conditioning the entire year. Not a damn thing. I didn't change an exercise. I didn't change an exercise. I didn't change a rep. I didn't change a set. Not for that entire year. So you mean that for the progressive resistance purists out there, there might be another way? Well, but remember, he wasn't a beginning and he wasn't a beginner at this point, you know, cause a beginner, right. It wouldn't do any good if I can do a wall pushup inclined on the wall. I mean, Alan was strong. He was already doing hollow back presses, you know,

Starting point is 02:00:34 rope climbs were for maintenance of healthy elbows, yada, yada, yada. But for that year, I didn't change anything. All that changed was workout that took an hour, got to the point where it was taking 40 to 45 minutes, at which point do your stretch and get out. Because the less time you're in the gym, the better. Okay. Because it's less wear and tear on the body. Think of it, you know, when I hear what you mentioned, you know, people who love to be high intensity. Okay. It's cool. But the analogy that comes to mind is someone who wants to be high intensity all the time. It's like having a new set of tires. And every time you come up to a stop sign, you don't gradually brake.

Starting point is 02:01:15 You slam those brakes hard. You skid to a stop. Every single stop sign. How long is that pair of tires going to last? It's going to wear out pretty quick. And the body, now the body's not like tires. It can rebuild itself as long as you don't put it too deep into a hole or physically break the structure, damage the structure beyond repair. So, you know, as long as you show some degree of care, you rebuild yourself. But if you keep

Starting point is 02:01:43 skidding to that stop every single day, right? Matter of time, matter of time. It's not if it's, it's guaranteed. So let's, let's, let's throw out a couple of, I'll use another automotive metaphor. Let's switch gears. And I will ask just a couple of questions that I think people would love to hear answers to. The first is someone listens to this. They're extremely excited to do gymnastics strength training, and maybe they go out and they're sampling different things from all sorts of different places. And of course, I have no business. I should say with full disclosure, I have no business association. I'm not getting any kind of affiliate, anything from you.

Starting point is 02:02:26 I just am a real fan of how you train. So I think people should check out your training programs. But what exercises should people not attempt or just remove from consideration for the first, say, six months of gymnastics strength training? Probably. Such a good question. I would say muscle-ups. I would say muscle-ups. The issue becomes there's nothing wrong with the pull. There's nothing wrong with the dip. The shoulders will adapt relatively quickly. They'll get up on rings at first and they're shaking. And that's simply because the stabilizers aren't used to the load. But that'll adapt within, you know, two weeks, four weeks. They'll be fine.

Starting point is 02:03:09 The issue they run into is because their shoulder extension is weak. They can't get the elbow behind the torso. So instead of doing a dip with body weight, now they're trying to do a tricep extension with body weight. Completely different animal. Completely different animal, completely different animal. That's, you know, they're kind of have their elbows can't go. Their elbows are trapped at their side and now their hands are in front of them and they're just trying to press themselves up. Of course, they're just trash and their elbows. Now, some people, okay, we do see it.

Starting point is 02:03:38 Some people have incredible joints that you can just pound and pound and pound and pound and pound. Nothing happens to them. Run them over with a car. All you're going to do is hurt your car. Everyone assumes they're that guy, they're that woman. The reality is you're not, guys. You are not that person. If you were that person, I would see you at training camps right now

Starting point is 02:04:00 or you would be a celebrated professional-level athlete. So accept the fact that you're human and those are not your joints and so you you can't take that approach and have longevity it's not going to happen so okay so muscle ups go out muscle ups go out now how do they get around the muscle up how do they get because their elbows hurt they can't do a slow we need to build strength we got to do it slow. How do they get around? They do the kipping muscle-up. Okay. Well, that gets me on top of the rings, but where I get the benefit of muscle-ups is through that transition as I'm going between the pull-up through my chest up above.

Starting point is 02:04:38 That's where cross is. That's where planche is. That's where Maltese is. That's where all advanced ring strength is. It's that strength. When you see a gymnast, right, when you see him this summer at the Olympics, right, and we're – just as an aside, guys, we've got some podcasts coming out for Gymnastic Body. Sorry, Tim, competing with you here. That's all right.

Starting point is 02:04:58 And we're going to talk some training, right, with some of our Olympic guys. And when you see them, you're going to see this massive musculature and it didn't come from push-ups and it didn't come from dips. It came from that advanced ring strength they do. So if you're doing a kipping muscle-up and you're going from below the rings to on top of the rings and it's gone, you just skipped the most beneficial part

Starting point is 02:05:21 of the muscle-up. It's gone. You waste it. Let me ask a related question because, of course, every four years, I watch gymnastics. I love watching gymnastics, as do a lot of people. And they go, holy shit, if I can get arms that look like that by hanging from a bar for an hour a day, I need to start hanging from a bar. How much of, now we talk about the rings, how much of the musculature in the upper arms, biceps specifically, comes from straight arm work versus some form of bent arm work? Excellent, excellent question.

Starting point is 02:05:54 So the majority of the massive biceps they see is going to come from the straight arm work. we use so for example when the guys would at that level of training at that level of strength rope climbs for example so my guys had to do a triple on a seven meter rope so that's with no all rope climbs are done with no legs okay and gst we we do ropes without legs we get some people say i know the rope is used for transportation As soon as they take out the escalators in a mall and they put ropes in place of it, or they take the elevators out and they put ropes, I'll buy that argument that we use a rope for transportation. Until that happens, a rope is used for getting freaking strong. That's the point of having a rope.

Starting point is 02:06:43 In five minutes, they would do a triple on a seven meter rope, get in the back of the line, do a double on a seven meter, get back in the line, and do another. And that'd be about five minutes worth of work. Okay? Now, for them, what we did notice, and a lot of people missed this, we're going to do two things here at once. So for the maximal strength component of it, it's the straight arm work, Maltese work in particular, right? Just blows the body up. And people listening, don't just go into your garage and try a Maltese on your rings. You can, you can, you can totally, cause I don't think Maltese will hurt you. The Maltese won't hurt you, but you're landing on this concrete on your face underneath the rings is probably going to hurt. Maltese won't. It's the sudden stop at the end. That will be uncomfortable.

Starting point is 02:07:36 But now what we found out with the guys, though, is we did over the years the weight vest, the weights, the heavy-weighted rope climbs, pull-ups. Nothing put better mass on a bicep secondary from the ring strength than high-volume rope climbs. Nothing. Nothing blew them up. Now, the key, though, is for everybody listening, if you go and you jump right into ropes right now and you haven't built a foundation of rows, pull-ups, multi-plane pulling, and then get to rope climbing, right, you're going to give yourself a raging case of elbow tendonitis. Yeah. Your elbows are going to just disintegrate.

Starting point is 02:08:10 Yep. So like anything else, you got to pay your dues. But if you go through the proper steps and you're prepared to do rope climbs, there, there is nothing better because the bicep is an endurance muscle. That's its job, right? Its job isn't to how much, now it can do this, but its primary function is not to how much can I do the heaviest load for one rep? Its primary function is go out and kill something, pick it up and carry it a long ass way back home. That's its primary job. That's its primary job. So it just blossoms from high volume work. Now the key is that it's got to be high volume with a reasonably high load, which on the rope climbs is body weight.

Starting point is 02:08:54 But we've got to build to that. So two things that I'll throw out there just because people might find it interesting. So the first is you can build extremely muscular biceps. This is not gymnastics related, but with purely straight arm, heavy pulling in the deadlift combined with – Let's just say you had one day of heavy pulling. And by heavy, I mean two to three reps to the knees, kind of like the Barry Ross protocol in the four-hour body. Sure. I like Barry Ross's stuff. No eccentrics, drop it. And then let's just say you do that on Mondays

Starting point is 02:09:27 and then on Fridays or Thursdays, whatever it might be, you do high rep kettlebell swings, two-armed kettlebell swings. You can get really, really muscular arms without doing any bent work whatsoever. There you go. And also when we're talking about- And easy enough to switch that high rep kettlebell work to throw rope climb on Friday if you're advanced enough.

Starting point is 02:09:50 If your elbows are bulletproof enough, which mine are not, as an example for folks. I've done plenty of rowing, but when I have… Here's the difference, though. When I have a parallel grip, right? So if you're like, I can pull, fuck that. I can do bent rows of the barbell with 225 pounds or whatever, and you So if you're like, I can pull, fuck that. I can do bent rows of the barbell with 225 pounds or whatever, and you think that you're the king of pulling. If you don't do a lot of parallel grip work or fat bar work, and then you go to a thick rope, you're in for a

Starting point is 02:10:17 surprise. Maybe we should touch base on the difference real quick between the various grips yeah please okay so guys in terms of gst specific strength if you're doing just pull-up work your parallel grip is by far by far going to have the greatest return on investment simply because that parallel grip hits the brachialis so hard down in the elbow. The reason we need that is when you climb a rope, you're going to have more of a parallel grip. You do that parallel grip pull-up. Obviously, you're developing that. When we're on the rings, we're on top of the rings, right? Because everything is aimed for eventually getting onto the rings to build strength. So when you're on the rings, we need the grip turned out past parallel.

Starting point is 02:11:15 Now, back in the day, Greg Glassman and I, Greg is a super bright guy, founder of CrossFit, but he just didn't understand why we would turn the rings past parallel. He thought it was just aesthetics. Coach, it's just aesthetics. Well, the problem is if I'm on the rings and I do a dip, I do a muscle up, I do whatever, and I straighten doing dips and you're in between the straps. Correct me if I'm wrong here, Coach, but when you get to the top, that means- Top of the rep, arms are straight. Top of the rep and your arms are straight, that the rings themselves- You've got to turn the thumbs out slightly.

Starting point is 02:11:58 That's right. So instead of having the rings parallel, pointing straight ahead- Or turned in, which is what most people do. Or turned in, they would most people turned in they would be at say 10 p.m and 2 p.m or something like that exactly and it will vary as long as they're out now the reason is is all strength what's the weak link in straight arm strength is the elbow the weak link is the elbow and what a lot of people will do is we've had people who were taught well elbow pain is just part of doing ring strength. No, it's not. Elbow pain is an indicator that your ring strength is effed up and you need to

Starting point is 02:12:29 do better programming. It hurts for a reason. And I took you off track there just because I wanted people to visualize the proper thing. So you were saying to Greg that when you get to the top, the issue is it's not just aesthetics. When you get to the top- It's not aesthetics. You've got to turn past parallel so that the brachialis is activated, right? There's a reason that after all these years of CrossFit being on rings and doing thousands upon thousands of kipping pull-ups and dips and all this stuff that there are no iron crosses unless they were a previous gymnast, right? There's no homegrown CrossFitter who has an iron cross. There's no homegrown crossfitter who has a plunge or a malt because right from the beginning on those very

Starting point is 02:13:11 basic movements, they didn't turn past parallel. They didn't turn the rings out. The brachialis wasn't trained. The brachialis is what supports the elbow when it's straight. So if it never got trained, they can never move forward into the money-making exercises. So that's why on those parallel, those pull-ups, if we use a parallel grip, and it's easy enough to do some, just do a set, right? Do a nice parallel grip workout, and then compare the soreness that you feel on the inside of the elbow from fatigue, right? Compared to regular chin-ups and regular pull-ups. It's night and day.

Starting point is 02:13:47 Then we would do chins and then pull-ups. Got it. So the other exercises to remove, if any. So we have muscle-ups, back lever. Yeah, muscle-up, back lever. Any you would add to that list? You know, man, this is is a little unfortunate it's uh and i don't know that it's so much of a removing as uh deprioritizing yeah a cautionary tale so it takes it takes time to rebuild connective tissue, and it's connective tissue through the ligaments and the joints that generate power through the body when they're doing plyometric work.

Starting point is 02:14:34 So there was a rash of Achilles ruptures when there was a couplet done of – so they were doing deads, I believe, with 225 pounds. And then that was coupled with box jumps. And they were doing that for rounds. And there's not a problem with either one of those in isolation. The problem came when it was in a competitive environment with most of the adults, right, were in their later 20s and their 30s, you know, the typical people who are working out. And because it's a race, the box jumps turned into jumping down also, which turned into rebounding a plyometric off the floor. Because I've got to get these done, right?

Starting point is 02:15:17 I'm in a race. So they had pre-fatigued the Achilles with the deadlift and then went into the plyometric of the box jump. Nothing wrong with either one of them, but in combination, took some people out. I think there were like nine ruptures that year, which is, you know, one, okay, it happens. Right, Ivankov had his Achilles. He was one of the leading guys we were looking to from Russia. Ivan Ivankov, former world he was he was the top guy that was favored to win the gold at the 96 games his achilles popped walking across the parking lot

Starting point is 02:15:52 now is it because walking across the parking lot is a dangerous thing and we should all avoid parking lots no it just happened to be the last straw and it had been damaged prior to that which a long story short you went back to the front split series that is the very reason that there is that high rep calf work there to promote achilles health because there is connective tissue can the tendons and that do not have their own blood supply okay so they they get fed they heal they strengthen through the muscles moving around them and gravity. That's what flushes the area. So if we only do very high, high intensity, low rep work, there's not enough blood flow for them to be healthy. And this isn't mine.

Starting point is 02:16:41 A friend of the Bulgarian Olympic coach for the 70s and 80s is a good friend of mine, a genius. Genius at programming. Ruman makes me look like a tottering idiot who should be sat in a corner and no one talk to me. What's his name? I can never pronounce Ruman's last name. You guys can look him up. Bulgarian Olympic coach for the women, 70s and 80s. Ruman, I want to say our bastardized American spelling is R-U-M-I-N or M-A-N. Sadly, Ruman had a really heavy accent. as R-U-M-I-N or M-A-N.

Starting point is 02:17:08 Sadly, Ruman had a really heavy accent. So a lot of the American coaches, they didn't want to take the time to talk to him. But I was a linguist in the military way back when, so accents not as good as you, Tim, but accents don't bother me. So I would just pin, and he was an older gentleman, I would keep this guy up late so many days in a row.

Starting point is 02:17:26 He'd be, Chris, I've got to go get some sleep. That's okay. Just one more question. Just one more question, Roman. Just one more. So our knee series that we do came from Roman. Oh, no kidding. Yeah, that I've been doing with the skiers.

Starting point is 02:17:38 That's directly from Roman. Inside Squats. Yeah. He saw Alan when he was eight, and Alan was incredibly powerful at eight years old. Just unreal. And he was getting too and Alan was incredibly powerful at eight years old. Just unreal. And he was getting too powerful for his frame at that age. You know, about eight, we were starting to hit a preliminary growth spurt. And Ruman gave me that knee series. And it was about a week, week and a half.

Starting point is 02:18:00 You know, his knees weren't hurting. They were starting to get slightly uncomfortable. Ruman showed us that. Boom. Knee issues gone. Never again nothing with knees ever. Wow. So I have – we could talk for hours and hours more.

Starting point is 02:18:13 But I want to be respectful of your time, and we can always do a round two sometime if you have the willingness and if the audience wants more. But I do have a couple of questions before I get into some of my usual rapid fire that I'd love to ask. Do you still have some time to chat? You've opened a can of worms. I'll talk training all night. All right. Here we go then. The next question is from one of my listeners and it's, it's quite simply, how do you mentally prep your athletes

Starting point is 02:18:45 for big competition? Uh, when, when you're down to that, you know, you go to the nationals or any, any competition, but specifically big competitions, how do you, and by, by prep, I mean mentally prep like the, the day of, is there anything in particular that you do? It's, it's, it's very, it's very different. Um, it kinda, so it starts with repetition. So we, we talked a little bit about training. So in, in, in a nutshell, what we'll come back around, we'll fill this out. So in the preparation prior, right, successful repetitions, right. It takes a certain number of repetitions to lead to competence, and it's competence that leads to confidence, and that's what leads to a successful competition. So as Americans, right, we tend to be in a rush, be in a hurry. We don't want to take a lot of reps. We want to get something.

Starting point is 02:19:47 We do it correct a few times, and then we want to bump on. Completely different from the Chinese approach, completely different from the Russian approach, where they'll literally do hundreds of repetitions before they move on to the next drill. And then they're not upset about it because they understand it's a process. As Americans, we tend to, we're always like, now it's both a good thing and it's a curse. One, it's a good thing because it forces us to be so creative. We're so hard charging. We get so many things done. Physically, sometimes it kind of works against us because we don't give the body and the nervous system a chance to stabilize. So if you want to be confident at a competition, you have to pay your dues in prep. Example, and that's mentally and physically.

Starting point is 02:20:34 For example, 72 Olympics. I was talking about this with Dimitri Belozarchev, my friend, world and Olympic champ. So in 72 Olympics, Olga Corbett was by all accounts going to crush everyone at the games. She was going to crush everyone in training as they went back and the Russians went back and they reviewed all her training. She had over a 98% hit rate on her routines. That meant she was almost perfect, almost perfect. When she went to the games, she had a major meltdown. Now, the question, of course, raises, how is it possible for someone who was this perfect for this long in training to go to the competition and just fall apart? As they dug into it, they found out the error was not in physical preparation.

Starting point is 02:21:25 The error was in mental preparation. So as Olga was cranking at home, she was the one who decided when to go. Coaches waited on her. Judges waited on her. Everything was structured on her. She was very comfortable. She didn't start until she was ready. Equipment she's ready for.

Starting point is 02:21:43 Lighting she's ready for. Madding's familiar. Everything is good. When you get to the Worlds and you get to the Olympics, judges don't give a fuck if you're ready or not. When they raise that flag, yeah, it's brutal. It's brutal. In fact, to give everyone a little taste, the warm-up gym is not there. The warm-up gym might be 10 minutes away, or it might be a five-minute walk down this concrete hallway. So you go and you warm up, you walk down this hallway, right, and then your ass waits there.

Starting point is 02:22:15 And then the flag goes up, and you got to go to 100% within 30 seconds. You got 30 seconds to be on the equipment. Massive head game. Yeah, massive head game. So they went back, and they found out that Olga's problem was that everything had gone her way. She controlled too many variables. Too many variables. And they were too easy.

Starting point is 02:22:34 They were too accommodating. And so what they did is the Russians changed their training just to screw with people. So if I'm coaching someone and there's going to be a mental component, I'm going to fuck with them. All right, I'm going to tell them, and not in a mean way, but all right, you're up, and then walk away. Yeah. Leave them waiting. You know, let them get antsy. Make them go when they're not ready.

Starting point is 02:22:56 Make them do a cold set. Okay, don't let any and everything you can. Have a crowd of people around them trying to mess with them. Any and everything. And I will also say it's much harder for women than it is for guys simply because women are more caring and nurturing than guys. A guy goes out to compete and he's worried about one thing. He's worried about kicking ass. Okay?

Starting point is 02:23:20 The girl goes out there and she's worried about kicking ass also. But she's also worried about not wanting to let anybody down. Are they going to be disappointed with me? Are they going to like me? She has this whole range of other emotional burdens that a guy doesn't give a shit about. They just don't care. I've seen girls who are just amazing in training and get out there, and it's just because they have this other load that they place on themselves that guys don't have to deal with. And the way you handle that in training is we just have to get more reps in.

Starting point is 02:23:50 You've got to have more reps and do everything you can to put them in a situation to where, for example, 2004, I was doing some of the prep. I was doing some of the floor and the tramp and helping with volve and doing the physical preparation for a girl we had trying out for the olympics she did not make it she did not make you had to be top six she was ninth okay and carly fantastic girl great girl they uh their approach though for mental training i thought was flawed they brought someone in and you know i won't i won't say names i'll just i'll just say that I disagreed. And it was a very, they were trying to be really, really positive. So, you know, 30,000 square foot gym, big giant yes signs everywhere. Yes, you can. Yes, it'll be great. Yes, it'll be wonderful. And the reality is it's not going to be wonderful. It's going to be stressful.

Starting point is 02:24:39 It's going to suck. When you are in a competition at that level the pressure is is crushing it's a physical pressure that you feel on you and you still have to produce performance at a world-class level and the only way to handle that is we have to try to replicate that in training right so that the pressure is not going away the error that was done with Carly was trying to downplay the pressure. I would say do the exact opposite. Do the opposite. You should go to the training, to the competition, and hopefully competition is less pressure than what you go through in training. Now, that's not going to be true at Olympics and such,

Starting point is 02:25:17 but at most things it should be the case. It should be the case. So mentally, if you're scared, let's let's say if you're feeling unconfident if you're feeling threatened uneasy your preparation was flawed well that's it brings up an anecdote that i heard from uh paul levesque better known as triple H, the professional wrestler, who's also an incredible business executive for WWE. But he visited – let me get this right. Why am I blanking on his name? I've caught whatever you were dealing with earlier.

Starting point is 02:25:57 Not Roy Jones, very famous boxer, Floyd Mayweather. That's it. Okay. boxer, Floyd Mayweather. That's it. And he visited Floyd maybe an hour before a huge title fight for a championship belt or to retain his belt. And at one point, Paul said, you know, I'm going to leave. I don't want to interrupt your prep. And he goes, why would you interrupt my prep? He goes, if I'm not ready now, nothing I do in the next 60 minutes is going to make me ready. I love that attitude. Feel free to hang out. He's just watching basketball or

Starting point is 02:26:30 something. And it also, you brought up the SEAL team, six members and so on earlier. I mean, that's, I think, a great example of a parallel track, right? In the sense that they very much want to sweat more, in some cases bleed more, in training so that they can avoid dying in real battle. So the simulations are extremely brutal and intended to be sort of along the lines of, and I'm not really up on my ancient name pronunciation, but I think it's Arca Locus, who said we do not rise to the level of our hopes. We fall to the level of our training. Perfect. So making the conditions equivalent.

Starting point is 02:27:15 Perfect. My buddy would tell, they were so well trained, no stress. Now, how in the world you can be in 145 gunfights and not feel stressed when you're heading out to another one? You just, yeah, fall asleep on the helicopter, get out, do my thing, and get back on. Seriously?

Starting point is 02:27:31 He's like, oh, yeah, I mean, gosh, just another day in the office. Holy moly. So on the day of, assuming you've done the requisite preparation, you've conditioned them to perform well under stressful circumstances, any type of change, change, change, nothing, change,

Starting point is 02:27:52 nothing, change, nothing where, where people fail. Okay. So this, this is then this, this is an important lesson,

Starting point is 02:28:00 not just in competing, but in everything. So a lot of people psych themselves out of doing as well as they could have by prematurely comparing themselves to the people around them. Instead of just go out, take care of your business, do your best, and see where it falls. If you're going up against the best who's ever been born, you're not you're

Starting point is 02:28:25 not going to beat them there's not going to be a miracle the sky's not going to open god's not going to reach down and bless you with extra athletic ability you know it's it's it's not going to happen so you just you just ignore that you know you go out and you just stay in your own head and do your thing now psychologically people handle it differently. Some people, we have the same chemistry on Olympic teams. Some people like to be left alone. Let me go do my thing. They'll come together for the team, but then when they're prepping for their set, they've got to go off on themselves. There's other guys where they feed off that interaction.

Starting point is 02:29:00 They want people coming around and getting them pumped up. And then there's all in between. None of them are right and none of them are wrong. It just is what it is. And it's important to just deal with who you are. Same in training. There are some people who thrive on multiple training per day. And they just blossom.

Starting point is 02:29:19 They do awesome. There's other people who have to train just a few times a week. It doesn't matter. There's been Olympic champions have to train just a few times a week. It doesn't matter. There's been Olympic champions who trained both ways. It just depends on what your body does best with. If you were sending a – I'm very curious to hear the answer to this. This was from a – I think it might have been a mother. I think it was a father who said, uh, what questions would coach summer ask a gymnastic coach at, you know, a nearby facility before sending his own five to

Starting point is 02:29:53 10 year old off to train with them? Yeah. And I went through that. So I did, I didn't coach my daughter. I didn't coach my daughter. I wanted to be dad. And, you know, I didn't get involved. Were there things I would have done very differently? Yes. But her happiness in the process was more important to me than her success. And she was state champion. But that was more important to me than stepping in and making sure everything was world class level. I didn't want to go there. First thing I would do if I'm reviewing someone, because everyone, have you noticed that the bell curve is reality, right? The bell curve shows that there's a huge majority of people who are average. There's a few who are at the bell curve. Every fucker you talk to is exceptional. Every single person, right? Every person is another millionaire in the making. They're going to win the voice. They got Academy Award. It's coming. Nobody says, yeah, I'm average. And it's the same thing with gyms. So the first thing I would do is look at a competitive record.

Starting point is 02:31:00 How have they done and at what level have they been successful? So are they successful at a local level, at a state level? How have they done in terms of regionals? How have they done in terms of nationals? Are they on national team? How consistently have they been on national team? Is it year in, year out? Was it a one-time deal? After I look at that, the very next thing I'm going to look at, I'm going to look at injury rates. How healthy and successful are these athletes? How would you find that data or would you just ask them point blank? Well, if they're a world-class coach, they're always going to be straight with you. The only people in my experience who talk shit are the wannabes. Yeah, that's consistent in everything

Starting point is 02:31:46 that i've experienced in everything i i had so 2003 uh yeah it's 2003 i'm at a training camp and paul ham has just won the world championships he's just won worlds and alan is a little guy we're at a training camp and paul's coach stacy maloney is there and we're we're at a training camp and Paul's coach, Stacy Maloney is there and we're at a technical meeting and it's on roundoffs. It's on roundoffs of all things. And so Stacy comes and he sits down next to me. He says, Chris, what do you think about this? Now in my head, I'm thinking, who gives a fuck what I think about this? You just won world championships. I want to know what you think about this. But he asked my opinion. I don't say I'm not going to be rude to Stacey, but in my head, I'm thinking that. So we talk about it for a little

Starting point is 02:32:28 bit. And then Stacey gets up and he goes around the room visiting with other coaches that he respect and he wants their opinion. And then he, he makes his own opinion that he had just one world. So it would have been so easy for him to be kind of aloof and snooty and arrogant, you know, I'm this and that. But the point is that that's the reason that Casey, that Stacy won worlds, that he was a coach of that caliber because he was always open to learning more. He never said, I know everything. And like you said, I've never met an exception. It's the ones who aren't at a high level who think, you know, I know everything.

Starting point is 02:33:02 There's nothing left to be learned. And it's just not the case. So I would check that, check around, you know, I know everything. There's nothing left to be learned. And it's just not the case. So I would check that. Check around, you know, talk to people. Watch the athletes in training. You know, go and watch some workouts. How does the coach handle it? Is there a lot of tears?

Starting point is 02:33:18 You know, if it's a guy and there's tears in the workout, he's got a broken leg, right? And girls, you know, girls are girls. I live in a, I've got two daughters leg right but the first and girl girls you know girls are girls i i live in a i've got two daughters a wife even my dog is female there's there's tears here constantly but it's it's just part of being female so if it's an occasional tear no big deal but if there's a lot of crying all the time there's a problem i i'd move down the road. But if they're happy, now doesn't healthy doesn't mean a free-for-all. Healthy and happy doesn't mean indulging. You know, there should be structure.

Starting point is 02:33:55 There should be accountability. But it should be pleasant. You know, kids or any athlete, adults as well, will either live up to the standard you set or they will live down to the standard you set. So I can just kind of go ahead and try to get a feel. You know, is this a place where you want, is the competition record as good? Is this an environment that I'm content with my child being in? You know, if you get a good feeling, okay.

Starting point is 02:34:19 As an adult, if you were assessing a gymnastics coach for yourself and you could observe a workout, let's just say you could only watch the warmup. What would you look for to be there or not be there? Or what would the characteristics be? Do they take the time to warm up the joints or do they jump right into work? You know, do they actually take time to mobilize? Are they doing stall bar work? Are they doing Jefferson curl work? Are they loosening up their wrists and their knees and their ankles? Are they loosening their back before they get going? Are they doing some type of pre-strength? are they doing lower level strength elements to get the muscles warm

Starting point is 02:35:06 and firing before jumping into the hard work a lot you can tell a lot from how a program warms up no that's why i was asking and great question yeah there's i mean there's a movement that also from an evolutionary standpoint makes a lot of sense Just like we were talking about the biceps and high, high capacity for volume, the QL walks, which you introduced me to, which if you really want to have people laugh at you, this is a, this is a, this is a great move to do. Uh, although you had mentioned, and this doesn't surprise me at all. That's that you've, you've seen high level power lifters using, doing this. That's where, that's where I got it. Yeah, holding onto kettlebells kind of with a goblet squat type of grip. So what this looks like, folks,

Starting point is 02:35:48 we've already talked about this seated pike position. So you're sitting on your ass, legs together, legs straight. So basically, keeping your legs completely straight, if there are other elements, please let me know, Coach, technical points. But basically, you're walking your ass cheeks across the mat, back and forth. let me know coach technical points but basically you're like walking your ass cheeks uh yeah one across the back and back and forth you look like a retard doing a speed walking sitting down yes

Starting point is 02:36:13 that's actually the that's a great description that's exactly what it looks like and uh you uh ql relate or i say refers to the i would screw it up yeah quadratus lumborum yeah quadratus lumborum, which is sort of like the grand central of all sorts of muscles and fascia in the back. And it's incredible how much that loosens up my entire lower back and hips doing this very, very simple QL walk. I'll pick up, gosh, sometimes three, four inches. Oh, yeah. Just from loosening up from sometimes three, four inches. Oh yeah. Just, just from loosening up from those first. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:36:48 And the, uh, you know, I, how long should a proper gymnastics warmup take? Ooh. And, and one more,

Starting point is 02:36:58 which is warming up the joints. Are there any specific movements that, that hit the shoulders from any angle or perspective that would indicate a better warm-up for gymnastic strength training than others? Okay. It would depend on duration of the workout. So if you're in there for an hour, I'll preface it. Say you're in for an hour, I would say probably 10 to 15 minutes is reasonable. Now, at the same time, if I have significant mobility deficits, then perhaps the majority of the workout needs to be mobility work. So it could kind of shift

Starting point is 02:37:43 possibly as high as a half hour if I have a multi-hour training coming up. It's complicated enough, and we've tried this over the years. There are enough things to address that should be addressed on a semi-regular basis that you can't really get everything into a single warm-up. So you're probably going to have two or three variations. You know, if you're doing advanced work, you're probably going to have two or three variations in order to get to everything. Like, for example, ring strength before a good hard ring strength. It's very nice to do TheraBand series for the shoulders. You know, different shapes and pulls and circles and all these things with TheraBand are really great for warming up the interior of the shoulder.

Starting point is 02:38:27 On other days, do I need to do that as much for shoulder? No. It might be more weighted shoulder work is appropriate for other days. Is it necessary to do all of them at the same time? Most of the time, no. We have one senior student, really, really good. Matt started training with me in his late 40s. He's now 52. We have one senior student, really, really good. Matt started training with me in his late 40s.

Starting point is 02:38:56 He's now 52, beast, press handstands, planches, front levers, at 52, ridiculous shape. And he went through a period where just for shoulders to feel better, he did every shoulder prep we had all our integrated mobility our courses are set up very unusually where for our introductory courses uh the students the adult students come in alternate an exercise with an integrated mobility because we want them 50 50 so we found if i if i told people how important stretching was they always blew me off but if i required it do a set before your next set you have to do this stretch then back and forth and we just had great results so matt's is uh crazy maniac still still skateboards still water skis does all those as gst and shoulder would get a little finicky so he just did extra mobility and it just fixed his shoulder right up i was introduced to

Starting point is 02:39:46 a an exercise by a master's crossfit competitor actually that really helped with shoulder i would say warm-up more than mobility but for pressing exercises even in gst including any type of hand balancing or handstand work, which you have to have a decent amount of grip strength for this. But I was very skeptical of this, even as someone who's done a lot with kettlebells. I've never been a huge fan of the bottoms up work with kettlebells, meaning you're- Yeah, it's got it flipped up and you're gripping it by the handle, the bell on top. Exactly. But this, I was like, you know what, screw it. I'll try it with a lightweight. And I started with, say, whatever it is, might be like 15, 16 pounds.

Starting point is 02:40:30 And I've increased that. I use 35s now. But a little bit of chalk goes a long way here. But you would basically swing it up to a clean and then press it overhead. And then you just do rotations. So I'm doing like side to side rotations and it's incredible how well that activates the smaller musculature. The shoulders are wonderful,

Starting point is 02:40:54 isn't it? Oh, it's great. We didn't do them with kettlebells. We'll do them with a light dumbbells. So basically guys, what, what Tim's is trying to is just take,

Starting point is 02:41:03 take a dumbbell, push it up overhead, turn, turn the thumbs, externally rotate it just a bit, and then just do outward circles. And keep a flat back, shoulders open, no arching, and do them for time, one to two minutes. And we'll just, good gracious, wonderful warm-up. And then, you know, something we didn't address and i'll throw it in just real real real quick i know i know we're running out of time but uh some people who are experiencing shoulder issues in terms of mobility have nothing to do with the shoulder or necessarily the bicep but sometimes it's because the lats are so strong and tight and so it's an

Starting point is 02:41:42 issue that i have absolutely exactly a lot. A lot of, and cause in a lot of the lifters too, cause those, those lats are working hard. You guys are moving some serious weight and those lats are of course working. And if there's not a corresponding mobility going with it, it's real easy for those lats to kind of get chronically contracted, lose their mobility. So a lot of times you get in there and just stretch the heck out of that lat automatically get relief on the shoulders okay coach i yeah i am going to do a couple of rapid fire then a couple of closing questions and then maybe uh i mean you and i are talking quite a bit these days so we'll consider doing a follow-up and i definitely want to share the um sort of the results of our experiment with people also so we'll certainly be in constant contact. But the,

Starting point is 02:42:25 the first rapid fire question is, and the answer doesn't have to be short, but it certainly can be when you think of the word successful, who is the first person who comes to mind for you and why? Wow. Good question. Well, it's not Obama.

Starting point is 02:42:43 It's not Obama. Piss all the people off out there. Well, it's not Obama. It's not Obama. Piss all the people off out there. You know, someone I have admired for years and years is Tony Robbins. So he would be very high on my list. I tend to be very eclectic. I'm not trapped just in athletics. What I found in terms of business, arts, politics, it's all the same. When people get to that level of success, they all have the same attitudes. They bring the same tools and attitudes to the table. And I found it surprising

Starting point is 02:43:24 that I can sit down. I can sit down with you, Tim found it surprising that I can sit down. I can sit down with you, Tim, and visit. I can sit down with special operators and visit. And I can sit down with world-class ballerinas and dance and artists and that. I just did this weekend visit with a world-class artist. And you would think there's no common ground there. But there is common ground because what's required to achieve success in all of those requires the same skills.

Starting point is 02:43:51 You've got to be consistent. You've got to master the basics. You've got to be patient. You've got to constantly reinvent yourself. Look for a flaw, a hole in the preparation. Fix it. Move forward. You also have to be very observant.

Starting point is 02:44:04 And I think part of training yourself to be observant is asking questions. So I think that's why. And being willing to hear the answer. Definitely. That's why you take a bunch of people who are the best at what they do and you put them in the room. Generally speaking, they're going to get along just fine. Absolutely. Now, why Tony Robbins?

Starting point is 02:44:24 I mean, I'm a huge fan of Tony Robbins. He's been on the podcast, and I have tremendous amount of respect for him. But I want to just hear your reasons. I like that. I firmly believe, especially in the US, I firmly believe that if someone isn't as successful in any arena you toss it out, whether it's professionally, personally in your life, financially, if you're not as successful as you would like to be or making progress towards that, it's our own fault. We have so many opportunities here that, gosh, so much wealth of knowledge that a lot of times, so for example, when GB got started,

Starting point is 02:45:06 okay, there were two years, a year and a half, two years in the beginning where I was doing 18 hour days and didn't make a nickel, nothing. And everyone around me was like, what are you doing? So, well, you know, I've got plans for this. And we talked about a little bit and they're like, well, you know, if you need some extra money, you could go get a job. Think about how much further ahead you'd be right now. But you kind of have to have that vision. And then once you have the vision, you've got to be able to put practical steps to it. And then everyone's good at that.

Starting point is 02:45:37 People outline stuff all the time. But then can you stick with it? Right? Because when you run your business, Tim, when I run my business, there's no one telling us what to do. We're the ones who monitor ourselves. This needs to be done. I'm going to get it done. And it's kind of that difference between letting someone else being in control of your life and you choosing to be in control of your own life.

Starting point is 02:46:04 Now, I know some people are going to get upset. Coach, you know, I'm a of your own life. Now, and I, and I, this, I know some people are going to get upset. You're a coach. You know, I'm a single mom. It's this, it's that I can't, I can't do everything I want to do. And I get that. I get that. I've been there. I've gone through that. And I'm not, I'm certainly not saying there are, there are quick fixes because these fixes can take years. But I think if someone's willing to put the time in that there's so much opportunity and they're willing to do that for years, right? That, you know, it's kind of a big, giant blank check. A lot can change.

Starting point is 02:46:31 You really have a lot of control. And so that was a message that, you know, and I didn't say it nearly as well as Tony Robbins does. And I am going to twist your arm so I get an introduction someday to Tony. That's high on my list. Yeah, well, I threw a little jam session for the people who are on the podcast, so both of you will be invited. Totally awesome. I'm so looking forward to that.

Starting point is 02:46:53 But, you know, way back when, you know, poor as could be, hadn't made national team coach yet, was just getting started in my coaching career. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. And here's this guy saying, you know what, just think clear, plan ahead and be willing to work. And that resonated with me. That resonated with me. And, you know, it's like, God, I just had this discussion with someone this morning. You know, you're young. It's so challenging.

Starting point is 02:47:28 It's so difficult to be patient. Or you're 35 and you're starting to get back in shape again. And the hardest thing they need to do is they've got to, especially if they were a good athlete previously, you've got to set that attitude of having been a stud before aside. Because that body you have right now is not that studs body that you had previously. It could be again, but it took time to build it the first time. It's going to take time to rebuild it this time or personally in your life. If things aren't where you want it to be, it's going to take time to build it there. Yeah. I had this, uh, I had this Olympic weightlifting coach

Starting point is 02:48:05 who I think you guys would hit it off famously, especially if you were both a couple of drinks in. It's dangerous. Very similar approaches. And he said, you have a Ferrari engine and a Toyota Corolla chassis. That's what I love that. He said, you can't just slam on the accelerator and expect good Corolla chassis. That's what I love that.

Starting point is 02:48:25 You can't just slam on the accelerator and expect good things to happen. But yeah, Tony is very tactical, practical. And I apologize if you and everybody else can hear metal bowls being spun around. That's what my dog Molly does when she's trying to tell me that she's hungry. She just licks an empty bowl and sends it spinning. I'm like, yes, I get it. I know you're hungry. She's being subtle tell me that she's hungry. She just licks an empty bowl and sends it spinning. I'm like, yes, I get it.

Starting point is 02:48:45 I know you're hungry. Uh, but being subtle. Yeah. Being very subtle. Uh, what book or books have you given the most to other people as gifts? Ooh,

Starting point is 02:48:56 I like that one now. You know, it's not so much as I'm a big fan of, uh, Robert Heinlein. Oh, yeah. Science fiction. Stranger in a Strange Land.

Starting point is 02:49:09 Yeah, just all of them. I come back to those over and over again, the theme of self-reliance. I came from a really, really humble, modest family background, and so I think that instills a hunger and a work ethic. It's a little bit kind of embarrassing, actually. It's a little bit of a Charles Dickens theme there. You know, it's a frustration thing. Things weren't where we wanted them to be or where I wanted them to be. And then, you know, how big a price, how hard are you willing to work in order to change

Starting point is 02:49:39 it? One I'm enjoying right now, and I'm just getting into it, is The Obstacle is the Way. Oh, yeah, by Ryan Holiday, a very close friend of mine. You're killing me, dude. You're killing me. I'm just going to hang out in your living room so I can meet all these people. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, you and Ryan would hit it off. Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 02:49:57 That's a great book. I actually – this is a really small world. So I actually produced the audiobook for that. Are you kidding me? Wow. really small world. So I actually produced the audio book for that. Are you kidding me? And when you were talking about preparing your athletes for the stress as opposed to painting it over with yes, you can and positive psychology and really kind of sowing the seeds of their own destruction by doing so, I was thinking about stoic philosophy. So it doesn't surprise me

Starting point is 02:50:25 that you're reading The Obstacles of the Way, which has become an extremely popular book among professional sports teams and coaches. I mean, the Patriots, Seahawks, they've all read this. Someone else that caught my eye who had read it and that led me to it was Schwarzenegger. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Gosh, I mean, comes to the States with no money in his pocket and then becomes world champion Oh, yeah. me. Yeah. Arnold's an impressive unit. So two things that I know are bouncing around here, but two things that also astonished me when I interviewed him for the podcast was, number one, I didn't realize in doing the research until I did the research that he became a millionaire before he ever had his first starring role in real estate. Yes. Absolutely. a millionaire before he ever had his first starring role in real estate. And that gave him the ability to only audition not out of financial necessity, but for the roles that he wanted. So you could say no. And that his highest grossing film of all time for him

Starting point is 02:51:38 personally was Twins because no one wanted to make it. And so he took a cut on the upfront payment for the salary per se to, in exchange for backend points that were abnormally large for the film, for the film industry at that point. Yeah. Fascinating guy. Um, I love that. Uh, let's see what, uh, do you have any particular morning rituals? What is the first 60 minutes of your day? The morning rituals I'm supposed to do? No, the ones that you actually have or don't have. I tend to find, as I've gotten older, because I'm in my 50s now, early 50s, as I've gotten older, I find that by far my most productive times are early morning.

Starting point is 02:52:24 That's when I'm sharpest, I'm clearest. So I'll tend to get up pretty early before everybody else in the household is up. And I'll get... When do you get up? It varies. I'll get up somewhere usually between 4 and 5. And it gives me a chance. My girls get up in a few hours.

Starting point is 02:52:42 It gives me a chance for that two, three hours of just clear thought. Maybe it's working on a project. Maybe it's a new manuscript. Maybe it's just I indulge some reading. The house is quiet. And then I do my best if after that girls head to school and then I get my workout in. And if I'm consistent with that, then the rest of my day is usually pretty golden. Yeah, you've already won.

Starting point is 02:53:06 I remember somebody said to me, if you win the morning, you've won the day. I'm still working on it. That's a work in progress. But I definitely agree with that. Do you drink coffee? Do you eat breakfast? Do you drink coffee? You know, I went for years.

Starting point is 02:53:22 And you're always told I'm not a coffee drinker. I'm one of those few, I think, who it just tastes like cough medicine to me. And so it's not me being virtuous. It's just me despising the taste. And it's funny because my wife is a big coffee drinker. She loves it, so she's got her gourmet grinder and all this stuff. But for me, no, no way. What was the second question, Tim?

Starting point is 02:53:47 Breakfast. Do you drink breakfast or drink breakfast? Do you eat breakfast? You know, I found as I got older that I do best if I don't do breakfast. I do best as I used to be heavy, heavy protein. And then after I got over 50, if I cut, and this is me personally, would it work for younger athletes who are training? I doubt it.

Starting point is 02:54:09 It's a bigger engine, need more fuel. But for me, older, it's slowing down. I find that not doing breakfast, reasonable lunch. My protein sizes are so much smaller now, mostly veggies. Have a good healthy starch. Usually it's rice or potatoes, reasonable little protein there, some fat at lunch, weight, do the same at dinner. You know, and I'm done. I'm good. I was amazed how much I was overeating just from habit.

Starting point is 02:54:38 Oh, yeah. Yeah. Eating by the clock. I mean, I've noticed the same thing for myself. And I mean, I've been amazed how many people I've interviewed for this podcast who are the best at what they do, who do not eat breakfast. You're kidding. Really? I thought I was alone in the winter land. Yeah, yeah. Pavel, his answer was coffee, dim. I keep it simple. And then Wim Hof, same story. You look at Stan, the general, or former general, Stan McChrystal, same story. You look at Stan, the general Stan or former general Stan McChrystal, same story. And it just goes on and on and on. I'd say a good third of the men specifically, not sure if the female body responds as well to it. Although I'm sure there are intermittent

Starting point is 02:55:17 fasting people out there who would, who would say that, that women respond in the same way, but very high percentage, I'd say maybe a third of the men I've had on the podcast do not eat breakfast. Now, specifically, these are men probably over the age of 45. So I don't know. I would imagine their diet has probably changed over time. And interestingly enough,

Starting point is 02:55:37 if you do dig into the literature, there is, or if I want to be a nerd, there are data to suggest that as we get older, it is possible that we absorb protein more effectively when we have larger doses of protein less frequently. So having- Ah, let's see. That is interesting. That is very interesting because I find myself every once in a while getting a big steak.

Starting point is 02:56:09 Once a week, once every two weeks, I'll go and I'll just get this massive thing of protein. And then I'm good for a while. It's just very modest. Yeah. So this like bolus of protein for like older women, I think I saw one particular study. It could have been an observational. No, I doubt it if they're trying to standardize the protein amount. But it was some large amount.

Starting point is 02:56:31 It was like 70, 80 grams of protein in a single feeding was absorbed better than that same amount split over several meals in the day. Really fascinating stuff. What would you put on a billboard if you could put a billboard anywhere? What would it say? Just what's on top of my mind right now? Yeah. What's on top of my mind right now. Yeah. What's on top of the head. We're not looking for universal truth, but just what's, I would say probiotic. Probiotic.

Starting point is 02:56:53 Probiotic. We went, I don't know if it was a history of I had to cut them out, too much margaritas. It's kind of funny. As you get older, it starts creeping in more and more and more. but i went through a phase where it didn't matter what i ate didn't matter what i ate if i ate fat if i low fat if i ate veg if i ate high protein terrible digestion just terrible digestion and i happened to come across something that said if you have da da da da da da da da might be a probiotic issue. And so through a good buddy, I had a laboratory grade.

Starting point is 02:57:31 These particular ones were from Clare Labs. You kind of need a prescription for them, but they're a laboratory grade probiotic. How do you spell Clare? I want to say it was K-L-A-I-R-E. Got it. No, I'm not paid by them guys, and they're a son of a bitch to track down because you need a prescription for them.

Starting point is 02:57:44 And I got to get them a health provider. But hooked me up in 12 hours. And so I was like, holy moly, because I'd been uncomfortable for months. And in 12 hours, this took care of it. Contacted a buddy of mine who was, you know, great, great at nutrition. He went over and said, you know, coach, you should go ahead and probably take, you know, two, four weeks and just really hit these probiotics hard and repopulate the gut. You know, years of too much margaritas, too much protein, not enough vegetable matter to feed the good bacteria. And so, night and day difference.

Starting point is 02:58:24 I bet simply because of that, I dropped eight pounds. Yeah, I bet. I mean, I'm currently taking VSL-3 and a few other probiotics, but one of the points you made that I think is really worth underscoring is the vegetable matter and prebiotics. So providing the food that creates the environment in which bacteria that you want to grow can grow effectively, whether that's through foods where I think, you know, one of the ways I had this biologist tell me at one point, he said, I think slow carbs going to be vindicated because you know, the beans and lentils and so on are vilified by paleo, but they provide the perfect vehicle for a prebiotic environment that can foster the development and growth of these various bacteria in the gut. And if not that, if you are a paleo purist, you could also consume something like phos, fructooligosaccharides, or inulin, or any of these other things.

Starting point is 02:59:27 But wow, I had no idea that you had that experience. Yeah, it was shocking. Prior to that, I would have said number one supplement was emulsified vitamin D drops. How much were you consuming, just out of curiosity? And of course, the amount you would take depends on what your levels look like. It depended. Yeah, just a little background there. So I was at our Winter Nationals seven years ago.

Starting point is 02:59:50 And just kind of the environment, you know, national team, kids everywhere, middle of the winter. It's always in a February. And I would just get sick, really bad kind of bronchitis-like sickness once or twice a year for, gosh, decades. And at one of these, I was half dead, and my assistant coach is trying to run my athletes. He's doing his best, but it's not going real well. I'm trying to coach hanging over a railing, and I'm visiting with Rob Wolf later that night, and I'm just like, you know, this is ridiculous. And Rob's the one who tagged me. He said, Coach, you know, this is ridiculous. And Rob's the one who tagged me.

Starting point is 03:00:25 He said, Coach, you know, it's always in the middle of the winter. Try some vitamin D. And I started the liquid vitamin D. I have not been, if we don't count food poisoning in Hong Kong, I've not been sick since. That's outstanding. Yeah, and that's quite a swing. You know, once or twice, pretty serious per year too. Nothing for seven. That's outstanding. Do you have a particular brand that you use for that? I want to say, I've looked at it so many years, I just kind of pick it up off the shelf.

Starting point is 03:01:08 And I want to say it was BioTest perhaps. Got it. And so I can't swear about other ones. I just know I've always used that particular one. I've done, gosh, all kinds of different protocols from one or two drops a day. It's like a runny Elmer's glue for those who haven't had it. Yeah, the taste isn't anything to get upset at all. My daughters, when they were young, disagreed. They said, what's the worst thing in the world? It's not bad at all. We've

Starting point is 03:01:38 done daily a few drops all the way up to once or twice a week with eight to ten drops. You know, and just mix it up. It just seems like, you know, as long as you're consistent, it almost doesn't matter. Yeah, so I'm guessing each of those drops is probably an IU, one international unit. Ah, gosh, it seems like, man, I'm tied to the computer right now. I'd go grab it for you. It seems like the dosage is surprisingly high in each drop. And I'm a big fan, especially as you get older,

Starting point is 03:02:11 you've got to go get blood work. And anything else is guessing. Yeah, you need to get blood work, period. I mean, if you get your car checked out more often than you get your blood work done, then you need to rearrange your priorities. So last question, and this is to rearrange your priorities. Uh, so last, uh, last question, and this is where I'd like you to certainly, uh, among other things,

Starting point is 03:02:31 point people to where they can learn more about you and gymnastic bodies. But, uh, what, uh, what ask or request would you have for my audience, for the people listening? I'm not understanding the question. So the question, they're actually kind of two separate things. So one is outside of gymnastics, uh, gymnastic bodies and the work that you're up to and pointing people to that. Do you have any ask or request for the people listening? I mean, there are going to be, um, hundreds of thousands at the very least in the first

Starting point is 03:02:59 week, maybe millions of people listening to this. What would you like them to think on, do, or consider? Oh, okay. Very good. Actually, I love that question. I would like them to consider two things. I would like them to consider where's the fire? Where's the fire? Where's the rush? Where's the rush? Why are they trying to accomplish everything, their current goals, yesterday? Why not slow down a little bit? Not saying not to work hard, but why don't we just slow down a little bit, a little more reasonable pace, some more consistency? So that would be number one, ask. And then second

Starting point is 03:03:38 one is mobility, whether it's my material, whether it's just the stuff that Tim posts for you, whether it's someone else's material. You know, it's fine with me, guys, but we've got to get those bodies moving. We've got to get natural range of motion back again. That alone, if we did the hierarchy, what will increase quality of life the fastest for them is going to be mobility first, then core, then, you know, your more conventional strength, your arms, your shoulders, yada, yada, yada. And where can people find you online, on social media, et cetera?

Starting point is 03:04:14 What would you recommend as a next step for somebody who's never done gymnastics anything who wants to dip their toe in the water? First thing, go to gymnasticbodies.com. Now, we are putting a special landing page for your listeners, Tim, with a nice discount for them. We have a nice introductory program that's just gymnasticbodies

Starting point is 03:04:36 g-y-m-n-a-s-t-i-c b-o-d-i-e-s dot com slash Tim. We've got a nice discount there for you for a nice intro program. It's about a 24-day program. Gentle introduction to kind of the language we speak. Get started on some mobility, some great follow-along videos for them.

Starting point is 03:04:57 You know, kind of hold their hand. Make sure they get started off on the right foot. Yeah, it's been a tremendous learning experience for me so far. And it's, it's only been, I mean, really a handful of weeks that we've been digging into this deeply, although we had some prep time and talking about it prior to that. Um, and, uh, definitely guys, if you are like, ah, you know, I'm, I'm so busy, I'm doing this, that, and the other thing, take a look at the program, but at the very least, follow Gymnastic Bodies on Instagram. And every time you see a video from a student who seems to throw one of your excuses at the window, take a second and just admire what someone has done from scratch.

Starting point is 03:05:41 Like Matt, who you mentioned, who started in his late 40s. Awesome. One by one, if you just watch that Instagram account for a week, you will run out of excuses very, very quickly. What about elsewhere on social media? Is there anywhere else people can say hi to you? Our Facebook page is gymnasticbodies.com. A little more proper there.

Starting point is 03:06:06 My personal page, Christopher Sommer, S-O-M-M-E-R. A little more no rules there. I'm not insane, but my interests are wide-ranging. So if you come to my page, you're taking your chances what I'm going to torture you with that day. So it might be conditioning or it might be, you know what? I think such-such has kicked ass and I like it. So you're going to like it too. And you do throw up some ridiculous, in the best way possible, videos of just monsters doing some absurd, absurd stuff.

Starting point is 03:06:39 I mean, who is the gent? You sent me, you encouraged me to check this out. This guy who was going from, you were trying to explain the, let me get this right. I want to say plate planches that I was doing a while back, which are kind of like a front raise holding onto a plate with the shoulders super, super protracted and the massive posterior pelvic tilt. Oh, I sent you that clip of the world champ on rings.

Starting point is 03:07:05 It might have been. I think you sent that clip of the world champ on rings. It might have been. I think you sent me one of Van Gelder on rings, and then you sent me one of this guy on parallel bars going from handstand to the straight body planche. Full body weight instead of 10. We do it with 10 or 25 pounds. He was doing it with full body weight. Oh, my God. How body weight instead of 10. We do it with 10 or 25 pounds. He was doing it with full body weight. Oh, my God. How do you spell Van Gelder?

Starting point is 03:07:29 Yuri. Yuri. So it's Yuri Van Gelder. I think he's from Netherlands, if I'm remembering right. Former world champ. V-A-N space G-E-L-D-E-R. Just a monster. Oh, my God.

Starting point is 03:07:42 Oh, such so just just crazy strong and not, I mean, it doesn't look like a small guy either. I mean, he's a big boy. He's got like two people's back. He has got a wide back. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:07:55 So people should check that out and I'll link to everything in the show notes. Uh, well coach, thank you so much for the time. Uh, I know it's precious and I, I, I think people will get a real kick out of this.

Starting point is 03:08:06 And we crammed a lot into the talk. We did talk a lot. It was good. So I look forward to chatting again soon, which I'm sure we'll do. And to everybody listening, you can find all of the links to everything that I can track down, that my team can track down, related to all the topics we covered. Links to Coach Everywhere, Gymnasticastic bodies everywhere in the show notes. Uh, that'll just be at four hour workweek.com forward slash podcast. Uh, it's all spelled out for our workweek.com forward slash podcast. And as always, and until next time, thank you for listening. that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend. And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found

Starting point is 03:09:08 or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance, and it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and

Starting point is 03:09:44 you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by XO Protein. It's one of the startups that I work with. I love what they do. These guys are making protein bars using cricket protein powder. And before you screw your face up and look disgusted, I bet they taste better than any protein bar you've ever had before. I devour these bars after lifting sessions. I take them with me on the road. The recipes were developed by a three Michelin starred chef, former head of R&D at the Fat Duck, which was ranked the number one restaurant in the world during his tenure. The bars are paleo friendly, no gluten, no grains, no soy, no dairy, etc. They are high in protein

Starting point is 03:10:24 and flavor and extremely unique and they do not pop your glycemic response up oddly enough and you can look that up online to see some stories on that. Ferenstein, that's the journalist who looked at it. On top of all that they are less processed than nearly all protein bars

Starting point is 03:10:40 you'll be able to find. This is your chance to see what the hype is about. The founders were just on the Forbes 30 under 30 list and they are offering a deep You'll be able to find. That's exoprotein.com forward slash Tim. And I would recommend doing it relatively fast. And that's not a BS scarcity thing. They're a startup with limited inventory and they sell out all the time. That is what happened last time I mentioned them. So check it out, exoprotein.com forward slash Tim. This episode is brought to you by Headspace.

Starting point is 03:11:24 More than 80% of the people I have interviewed, world-class performers across the military, entertainment, sports, and beyond, all have some type of meditative practice. I tried for years and years and failed miserably. The key is making it simple, and you can dramatically improve your life in just 10 minutes a day, and technology can help you. This change comes through guided meditation and Headspace is by far the most

Starting point is 03:11:49 popular app for this purpose. More than 4 million users. It's meditation made simple. So what I recommend is that you take this practice meditation, which is rooted in thousands of years of tradition supported by thousands of scientific studies and try it for 10 minutes a day for 10 days. That's all you need to do. You could also check out the founder, Andy Pudicombe's TED Talk, which has more than 5.5 million views. His last name is P-U-D-D-I-C-O-M-B-E if you want to look that up. But otherwise, download the free Headspace app. I have it on my phone and begin their Take 10 program for 10 days of guided meditation,

Starting point is 03:12:28 completely free 10 minutes a day. That's all it takes. You should give it a shot. Headspace.com forward slash Tim. Just go to headspace.com forward slash Tim. And until next time, thank you for listening.

Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

The Tim Ferriss Show - #158: The Secrets of Gymnastic Strength Training

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Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

The Tim Ferriss Show - #158: The Secrets of Gymnastic Strength Training

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.