The Tim Ferriss Show - #228: The Lion of Olympic Weightlifting, 62-Year-Old Jerzy Gregorek (Also Featuring: Naval Ravikant)

Episode Date: March 16, 2017

Jerzy Gregorek (@TheHappyBody) immigrated from Poland to the United States with his wife, Aniela, in 1986 as political refugees. He subsequently won four World Weightlifting Championships and established one world record. In 2000, Jerzy and Aniela founded UCLA's weightlifting team. As co-creator of The Happy Body Program, Jerzy has been mentoring people for more than 30 years. In 1998, Jerzy earned an MFA in writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. His poems and translations have appeared in numerous publications, including The American Poetry Review. His poem Family Tree was the winner of Amelia magazine's Charles William Duke Long Poem Award in 1998. Naval Ravikant (@naval) also joins us on this podcast, as he introduced me to Jerzy. Naval is the CEO and a co-founder of AngelList. He is an active angel investor and has invested in more than 100 companies. His deals include Twitter, Uber, Yammer, Postmates, Wish, Thumbtack, and OpenDNS, which Cisco bought for $635 million in cash. As always, I hope you enjoy this episode! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Audible. I have used Audible for years, and I love audiobooks. I have two to recommend: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman Vagabonding by Rolf Potts All you need to do to get your free 30-day Audible trial is go to Audible.com/Tim. Choose one of the above books, or choose any of the endless options they offer. That could be a book, a newspaper, a magazine, or even a class. It's that easy. Go to Audible.com/Tim and get started today. Enjoy. This podcast is also brought to you by Wealthfront. Wealthfront is the future of financial advice. It's become especially popular among my friends in Silicon Valley and across the country because it provides the same high-end financial advice that the best private wealth managers deliver to the ultra wealthy -- but for any account size, at a fraction of the cost. Wealthfront monitors your portfolio every day across more than a dozen asset classes to find opportunities for rebalancing and harvesting tax losses, and now manages more than $5B in assets. Unlike old-fashioned private wealth managers, Wealthfront is powered by innovative technology, making it the most tax-efficient, low-cost, hassle-free way to invest. Go to wealthfront.com/tim to take the risk assessment quiz, which only takes 2-5 minutes, and it'll show you -- for free -- exactly the portfolio it would recommend. If you want to just take the advice and do it yourself, you can. Or, as I would, you can set it and forget it. Well worth a few minutes: wealthfront.com/tim. As a Tim Ferriss Show listener, you'll get your first $15,000 managed for free if you decide to go with its services.***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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This time around, we are going to name someone who has previously only gone by a pseudonym in this podcast. We called him Victor, I think, in the episode where Naval Ravikant and I spoke about this mythical sounding Polish weight trainer, world champion, world record holder who had helped us to completely revolutionize our bodies. And now you're going to have a name, Jersey Gregorick. Who is Jersey? Well, Jersey Gregorick immigrated to the US together with his wife, Aniela, who also holds multiple world records, from Poland in 1986 as political refugees during the Solidarity Movement. An accomplished athlete, he subsequently won four world weightlifting championships, that's Olympic

weightlifting, and established one world record. In 2000, Jersey and Aniella founded UCLA's weightlifting team, becoming its head coaches. They're the co-creators of the Happy Body program, which everybody should check out, thehappybody.com. Jersey has been mentoring people for more than 30 years, and the case studies will blow your mind. We talk about a number of them in this episode. In 1998, Jersey earned an MFA in writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. His poems and translations have appeared in numerous publications, including the American Poetry Review. His poem, Family Tree, was the winner of Amelia Magazine's Charles William Duke Long Poem Award in 1998. So he is a killer. He can do full ass to heels Olympic snatches with a loaded barbell on an Indo board that is a wobble board.

And he is currently, I would say 62, maybe 63 years old. We'll get into it. And Naval, who introduced me to Jersey, traveled down with me to his house and his gym. Naval Ravikant, at Naval, N-A-V-A-L on Twitter, is the CEO and co-founder of AngelList. He previously co-founded ePinions, which went public as part of Shopping.com and Vast.com. He's an angel investor and has invested in more than 100 companies. He's one of the best investors in Silicon Valley. I call him all the time for advice. And he has been involved with more than a few unicorn mega successes. His deals include Twitter, Uber, Yammer, Postmates, Wish, Thumbtack, and OpenDNS, which Cisco not long ago bought for $635 million in cash. So Naval and Jersey, two of the most intense people I know. And we have a

three-person conversation over Marco Polo black tea, which is Jersey's one and only favorite tea. So please enjoy this very wide ranging conversation with the most intense Jersey Gregerich. Jersey, welcome to the show. Oh, thank you. Thank you for having me. So we're sitting here with Jersey, a.k.a. Victor. And Victor was the name that Naval and I came up with to disguise Jersey previously. And we're sitting here at his home where he also has his gym about, I would say, 100 feet from where we're sitting in a separate building. Naval, welcome back.

Thanks for having me. Yeah, the previous episodes we recorded were great, but the number one follow-up question I always got was, who's Victor and what's the morning workout routine? So we're here with Victor, a.k.a. Jersri. I like Victor. It goes to victories. Yeah, Victor and victory.

And we were talking earlier about how losing is not fun. You must win. You must do everything required to win. So I was hoping maybe you could talk about Jersey a little bit. A video we were watching earlier. We were watching a video, I think, of one of your clients. He was 74. Is that right?

He has two hip replacements and a shoulder replacement. And he was doing high-speed snatches, Olympic snatches, faster than I can certainly even attempt to do them. How do you get someone in that condition to be able to do something like a snatch? So he came here 10 years ago. He was 64, and he was in pain. He was fat. He was aged and not good. So I started simply working with him, putting him on a happy body program and try first to recover his flexibility.

So his flexibility was my first aim. So in about a year, he gained all the flexibility, and I brought him from 20 inches squatting on a bench to 19, 18, and 16, and 12, and finally he could do the whole thing. So then I started really working with him on the full squat press. And that took about a year. And he could do actually the movement. This is where you squat into the bottom position and then press the weight overhead. Yeah, you squat, you press, and you stand up.

So that position requires complex flexibility because you have to be flexible in the ankles, you have to be flexible in your hips and hamstrings, and the spine has to be arched so the shoulders are not really getting any pressure and the arms are straight up, vertical. So it's beautiful movement. So if you do this movement, you can do anything in life. But squat press is a static movement. So it is not yet a dynamic movement. And life sometimes requires from us dynamic movements.

So about two years ago, I started working with him with dynamic movement so it's about eight years and then we i brought him to this full capability uh flexibility like you know one year old he's in that place amazing so uh you know with two hip replaced and no shoulder, so he was limited. But it didn't really matter at all. So I adapted to his problem and then made, you know, inch by inch, his body better and more flexible. Once he was ready, then I started doing the snatch drops dynamic movements when actually the bar flies a little bit it's the first time and that is when you have the bar

across your back like you're going to be doing a back squat and you you effectively bounce a few times and then the bar stays where it is but you drop drop down into a... Yeah, there's a kind of like combination of the jerk when you have the bar on the neck and you jump slightly and then you do two jumps. So the two jumps, the way as the third one is, so we don't exaggerate on the third one, is on purpose that way. Right.

So you learn not to overdo. So when the third jump happens, you jump up, but you go down to the full squat, and you receive the bar there. So that's the snatch drop, kind of jerk combination and the snatch. It's the first approach dynamic approach to the to to develop the capability to the snatch all right once you have that nailed you know really

good perfect right so then you bring the bar to the then you do the snatch drop from that point. It means the bar is on your back, you don't jump, you snap down and block. So if you're really good on that, the bar lowers down itself slightly like one, two inches, but you're already down there to block it, to receive it, if you're very fast. So the speed becomes really important here. So when you're already down there to block it, to receive it if you're very fast. So the speed becomes really important here. So when you're really fast, you can do that. But that is before you do the snatch. When you do that really great, then you snatch is the next one. So the bar comes now in the front of you, in the hip joint, and you're holding it in front of you in the hip joint and you holding it in front of

you now you jump three times but the third one you let the bar go and you go under and you block and you have to be very fast to block and not to over pull so I have to coach somebody not to overpull that's why i came out with these three jumps so the you do jump one two and three you go under so you don't focus on over pulling the bar meaning pulling it too high too high yeah so you know the uh the lifter that pulls the bar, the lowers, is the best one. So the gap between when you sit in a snatch position and how high the bar is pulled, thrown up, is the gap that says, it tells us how good weightlifter is.

So that should be about four inches, five inches. But people have 10 inches. They just waste a lot of, so they are not really great lifters. And then they compensate a lot. And if they improve that, it would be better. So we are coming back to our 74-year-old. So his gap is about five inches.

He's fast. He's 74. And he comes and he stands here and he says, you know, I've been coming here for 10 years. I was 64 when I came. And then he adds, you know, I am 74 and I am a lot better than I was 64. Actually, I couldn't do this when I was in 20s. So he's 74 and he does full capability snatch. So you can imagine that he can do anything in his life. It really doesn't matter. He can ski,

he can do golf, whatever, because that is the most difficult, really, movement on this planet. And he can do it. So he will be doing this probably 84 and 94, whatever it is, yeah? So his really fantastic quality of life is in front of him.

So I want to add something, and then I want to ask you something, Naval. So a few points. So we, just before we started recording, I wanted to see how, how far I had fallen in a bad way because I haven't been here in some time. We went into the garage and we looked at, like you said, the angles in that, that bottom position, among other things of the, um, the press squat where I'm pressing the weight overhead and then going down into an overhead squat, um, as to the grass. And historically you've taken video and photographs and you've looked at the exact angles at the hip, at the

knee, at the ankle, at the shoulder. And you pointed out one thing that I need to work on, uh, which makes sense is given my shoulder issues and so on, but also my inflexibility, working on that thoracic, that mid-back mobility so that I'm not straining the shoulders. What I find so fascinating, one of the many things I find fascinating about your approach is, and we're going to come back to this, but I'm going to go to Naval next, is that you are very good at micro progression. So like you said, you might have someone come in and they start doing a squat, but you want them to do it technically correct. So if they're inflexible, you might have them squatting down only a few inches and then very gradually over time

or stepping onto a box that's only a quarter inch. And we might come back to this, but you have a patient. There are a lot of people who train elite athletes and they basically babysit mutants and they take a lot of credit for it. But you have, I've seen you work with patients with cerebral palsy who have just gone through complete transformations, really amazing. And the concept of micro progressions among other things is really grasped my attention in working with you. But Naval, I thought I would just ask, what have you learned from Jersey? Or what do you take away? Aside from these amazing conversations over Marco Polo black tea, which we always have,

and I'm already sweating because it gets me all amped up. So mostly I just live in fear of Jersey. So even though I send my friends to him and my cousins and my relatives, I myself try to avoid him because he's a fearsome taskmaster. And I'm not even sure I'm up to it. Now, you did gift me my first visit to Jersey, which I thank you for. When people say it's crazy. And I do that with a lot of people. And I've definitely gifted more visits to Jersey than I've actually undertaken myself. But what's interesting, what was really impressive to me about Jersey

is that he's an incredible role model. And he's a role model in the sense of, if you don't mind my asking on air, how old are you now, Jersey? 62. 62. And how much do you weigh? 135.

And give me some stats on what you can press or squat. I can squat about 250, 260. I can snatch about 80 kilos now. 80 kilos, like almost 200 pounds? Yeah, 176, yeah. Clean and jerk about 100 kilos to 20. And what's your body fat? Below 6%.

Below 6%? Right. And Jersey can also, I've seen video of Jersey doing a full snatch on top of an Indo board, which is a wobble board. Oh, I love that. And what are your gymnastic credentials? I didn't do gymnastics. When I was in Poland, I wanted to be a gymnast, but there was no gymnastic team around. So there was nowhere to go to really learn that. But I really love gymnastics. I did all this stuff by myself on grass somewhere, you know, and I really love that.

Give us a sense of some of the medals you hold. Well, I have four, I won four weightlifting championship world, yeah? And my national records, I sent you the link. Yeah. My national records that I set up in us in 1999, I think they're still there. So there are two of them.

So 17 years, nobody beat them. Wow. So held a record for 17 years, 6% body fat, incredible stats in weightlifting and gymnastics, 62 years old. Inspiration to me, because when you look at a great physique, a great body, that's something that cannot be bought. That's something that can't be bargained. It can't be negotiated. It can't be inherited. And at 62, I don't, you know, you can argue whatever genetics you want, but there's an enormous amount of work and self-discipline

that goes into it. So to me, Jersey and his wife, Aniela, who is also a similar character or inspirations, because they say, yes. And they basically says to me, there are no excuses. And on top of it, they run a reasonably successful business. They're poets. Jersey has many, many volumes and volumes of poetry. He has an MFA in creative writing. They're refugees from the solidarity movement in Poland and the fall of the Iron Curtain there. And he's also a meditator.

So when I walked into Jersey's house, I'm always intimidated. A house that he basically built, by the way. I walk in and there's this guy who's like a lion in his cave or in his den, built, you know, ripped, rippling muscle top to bottom, extremely calm, tiptoes out in his socks, serves you tea and reads you poetry. Until he berates you in the gym. And actually my first meeting with Jersey, he made me strip down to my underwear, pinched me with calibers,

took photos from every direction and basically called me fat in as many words in the English language as he knew how. I didn't call you fat, you were fat. That was also so oddly reminiscent of my own first meeting where he reached across and pinched my tit and said, you're too fat. And I said, okay, I think we're going to be friends. Yeah. So Jersey's uncompromising. Jersey does not accept the new age version of, well, you tried, you tried really hard. It's your genes. You know, you're fat because you have big bones. No,

you're fat because you eat too much and because you have no discipline. You're fat because you're a fatalist and you have the wrong mindset. And so, Jersey has this, he has a series of books, which I recommend, but he follows this duality of master versus fatalist. And his books are full of phrases like the fatalist will say, I don't trust science when they're making excuses as to why they shouldn't diet or work out a certain way. And Jersey's response is, I acknowledge reality. So I love these kinds of little phrases he has, or where people say that getting older is depressing. Jersey says, no, life can be enjoyable at any age. People say diets don't work. Jersey says every diet works. In other words, you just have to stick to it. So it's more the attitude and the evidence that he presents, which is inspirational.

And so I prefer to use him from afar that way. But now I know that I have to get back into it as well and start showing up regularly. So I don't want to bury the lead for people too much. And we're going to bounce all over the place. But could you describe the Happy Body program, at least what you have a lot of people do in the mornings? How would you describe that? And then I have some, and I was like, you know, a personal trainer in LA. And I coach people daily and seven days a week and they still would not get what I wanted. You know, they would not follow the program. Was this before or after you embarrassed

a bunch of huge powerlifters by deadlifting? This around that time. With the pink shoes more than naked, okay. This around that time. And you had a ponytail at the time. Well, you know, yeah. So I thought that people really have to have some independence,

that they have to take responsibility for what they would do. And they would need to be connected to the program or whatever the program is, right? So I thought, okay, I need to detach myself from them and I need to create something that they could follow, has to be measurable, has to have everything what they would need in their life from the program to have a good life forever, right?

So what is that, right? So how a person needs to be? Well, definitely flexibility came, first. Right. So you have to have flexibility and you have to have full flexibility. So if something happens in life, you cannot be injured. You are flexible all everywhere. So if you have any, you need any reserves of flexibility, you will have. So that's why today a lot of athletes are injured because in the training, they don't have flexibility. So they, let's say, volleyball jump or they do something that requires more flexibility than they do in the training, they'll get injured. They have no margin for safety. They mess up the ACLs and all the knees and usually today volleyball players, women

especially, they have these problems. So it is important that athletes, they are training in the gym. And in the gym, they are more intense than actually in the games. If that happens, they cannot be injured simply because they have reserve, right? So flexibility first. Then certain strength is needed, right? And then certain speed and posture is important here. So the spine is flexible and the spine is healthy because spine is really the gateway to health of the legs. So if there's any inflammation,

any pressure between the vertebras, your legs will have pain, sorenesses, and so on. Now, not to interrupt, but I will. So that's also one of the reasons, is that not one of the reasons why you recommend the hanging after weight training? Right, decompression. And I remember coming in at one point and telling you I had some pain in my leg and

you asked me, did you hang for the last two days? And I said, actually, I didn't. Got you. I stopped. Busted. Yeah. I trained a cerebral palsy boy and he jumps on three inches back and forth. And when he lands back, he cannot bounce off the floor.

So I teach him that bounce. And he has slow brain and that brain is not letting him to bounce off the floor right away. So if he's off a little bit, he will stop that. So I said, bust it. And again, all right. And that boy said, bust it. So we have this fun. And I should just say, I mean, on that point, on cerebral palsy, I mean,

I've seen a lot of impressive things in this house and in this gym, but the before and after in that case is just astonishing. Well, I will tell you. Yeah, i don't want to take you off track but so when he came here he um you know he barely walked he didn't have energy to uh look at you for more than 30 seconds he he's never read a book he's never watched a movie because he didn't have energy, fell asleep right away, and so no energy at all. So when I went with him to the gym and I asked him to press 15 pounds bar, he couldn't lift that bar off the rack.

I just wanted to just simply bench press. 15 pounds bar, he couldn't lift off the rack 15 pounds. And he's 25 years old, yeah? Macho man. So he's very weak, very weak. So I took the bar away and put three pounds. So I told the father to go away for a walk, and I worked with him in the gym.

And so I did, he lifted three pounds. So I loaded up six. He lifted. So I loaded up 10. He lifted, brought back 15 pounds. He lifted. So loaded up for 18 pounds and he pressed it. So I said, okay.

So the brain has certain situations that when we load it up he's open to progress and progress is going to be fast so i asked father to come and watch it so now it's one year and a half the boy presses 144 pounds. So I'm bringing him almost to the, and he is about 160 pounds. So I'm bringing him almost to the place where normal people are. Yeah. So he's squatting 160 pounds. So he couldn't really jump on, he couldn't detach himself from the floor at all, even one inch jump. So now he jumps on 11 inches. That's amazing. And every inch when he gets,

I started from six inches, we have special dinner. So it's a really special something. He loves it. You know, it's like this celebration i i said we need to celebrate and every interest is celebration and uh he jumped on 11 inches about two months ago so now he's working for on 12 inches and there are some changes on the way interesting you know like one day after half a year when I trained him, his father said, he spoke to me in the car.

And I didn't know how to relate it. What does it mean? I said, oh, because he was always sleeping. And today when we drove, he noticed a car. I said, really? Okay. So I I asked Tajen what was the car? Oh I don't know. So I asked him okay next week see the car and tell me what car it was. So he came back and said did you see a car? Yes. What was it? Prius. Okay. So next week, I asked him about the color and who was the driver.

How old was the driver? Driving license. And he started really remembering more, more, more, more, more things, right? And his energy was better. And he started talking. And about one year after, the father said, we had conversation first time in our life. I said, wow. And then, so the father said, you know, before that,

it was only about it's time to go to bed or it's time for dinner. And that's for 25 years. We didn't have any talk. Today, the boy is in the college. The boy reads books. The boy writes. And he also, I work with his mind with poetry. So every time when he comes, he recites one poem. And then I analyze the poem to see if his logic works. And now we are third time already with the book. And his intelligence, his way of capturing the meaning of the poem

improved so much within one year. He's almost like kind of a normal person to talk, to have fun, to enjoy, interact and so on. So now we are talking about the girlfriend and so on. What book of poetry did you use? Oh, I used Food for Your Soul.? I used Food for Your Soul. Happy Body, Food for Your Soul. Right.

So Jersey has a number of books in poetry which are kind of interesting. If you ever want to read a poem about someone struggling to resist eating a bagel, he's got you covered. But they're deeply personal poems. There's a lot of pain in here. There's a lot of struggle, a lot of strife. There's good perspectives. I saw a good poem you had about doctors struggling with the realization that in today's world, your doctor should be healthy and probably healthier and fitter than you. Otherwise,

why are you listening to that doctor? It's like a burden they've taken on. These are very human poems, but they're about topics like losing weight, nutrition, getting healthier, lifting weights, and so on. Why did you get into this? Why is this your medium and how has it served you? Just to pause, can we come back to that? Yeah. Just because I interrupted you asking about your client, but we were talking about happy body. And so I just want to make sure we get to happy body and then we're going to get to it. No, No, no. Then we're going to come back to the poetry. So you've covered... You talked about flexibility.

You talked about strength. You talked about speed and spine and posture. So you talk about your coaching and how your body improved. And when you came, you had some pains. You had flexibility situation, problems. So I had to work with you had flexibility situation problems. So I had to work with you to bring you right into the perfect posture. Perfect posture means you have the bar above your head and you can go down and up vertically without any compromises on your joints.

So where the compromises are coming from? So the flexibility that is needed is needed in your ankles, in your hips and in your whole spine. The combination synergy of these three is needed to really make that movement the right way. So if the flexibility of the ankle is not right, so the knees are going backward and then your hips are going clockwise. You're going to compensate. And then you start rounding your back, your spine. That can lead to any problems with sacroiliac and also the spine.

So once the ankles flexibility are there, then you move the knees forward and your hips are moving clockwise and that gives you this beautiful arch of the spine if the spine is capable of it. If not, so what we noticed today with you, so you have ankle flexibility, you have your hips, and then the spine is straight instead of, you know, being like a bow, right? So you, now our next thing is about to focus on sternum, focus on arching the spine. So you have a really nice bow and that bow is needed because your arms should be straight up and down.

And if the body ends up vertical, then there is no pressure at all on your shoulders. If I have sufficient flexibility in the thoracic spine. And just for people who are wondering, so what angles are you looking for at the ankle, knee, hip and so on? Are there specific angles? So there is about 29 degrees between the calves and the thighs, yeah, the femur. So about 29 degrees. Fantastic. So when you look at the real weightlifters that they go very deep,

they will have 20 degrees, 21, 22. And usually people will have when they start 50, 55, 60. So degree by degree, you become better. And we talked about before, you remember, the winning and a small increment. So I like to take people inch by inch or even half an inch because we become happy when we get better. And when I coach young athletes and they, let's say, I spread everything for two, three years.

There was this Russian coach who said, I need 10 years to make a national champion. And if I have less time, I will never make one. So I see the same way. When I see somebody, I see the spread of two, three years, I know where it's going. And I have the time, not that I have the time, the body needs the time to actually

get better, right? Because I follow what the body's adaptation is. So let's say you lift 200 pounds and another one is 201, right? And I watch how it is. The lift should not use all the powers that you have when you break records. You should have some reserves, like 1% or 2%. If you break that way, the body has the capability to adapt and the whole training becomes fun.

It's fun to attack records when you have a little bit of reserve, even though there are your records so increments should be should have reserves and the progress should be set up that way so you don't burn yourself out and you wait for the adaptation and so to so a couple of things real quick. First is that as a prescription for me today, I'm going to be doing a press squat, uh, which is where I'm standing bar on my back as if I'm going to do a back squat, I press it overhead and then I dropped down into an overhead squat,

kind of asked to the floor and I'm going to be doing one repetition on every minute for 40 minutes. Right. And, uh, one repetition on every minute for 40 minutes. And just to give people an idea of what a component of my training is going to be, and I'll be doing that every third day. The happy body program that Naval and I have both done in the morning, I'd love to dig into some of the details of that. And specifically, one of the breakthroughs for me with that program was not holding stretches for too long. And I remember going into a number of different stretches. As an example, there's one, and we can't do it full justice via audio,

of course, but where you're laying on your back, your legs are completely straight, toes pulled back, and you reach up effectively past your toes with your hands or towards your toes, depending on your flexibility. And I remember, and then you would hold it for say half second, a second, and then come out of it. And you would do, uh, say six repetitions of that. And I remember then months later, that was the only stretching that I was doing was that type of stretching in different positions. And I went to a yoga class. I hadn't taken any yoga classes. And there's a first time in my life I was the flexible guy in the yoga class.

And it just blew my mind. Well, I have yoga teachers here. And they really become flexible and they go to teach and they are a lot better than before. So how is the program composed, this morning program that you have a lot of people do? So, again, we just stop on where we were going.

But there are 18 exercises in the system. About six exercises are in a sequence. There are three sequences. The program works that you go from one to another exercise in a sequence of six. But the first sequence is the easiest one. So vertically, the program is designed to make you more flexible. So when you go to sequence two, it requires more flexibility and sequence three is the

final. So when you see the final squat in the third sequence, the exercise number five, power tower. So that is the most difficult exercise in that whole 18 exercises. Everything is created and designed to be able to actually do that. That's the one when you actually do it perfectly. You have capability to be Olympic weightlifter. You can go and do Olympic weightlifting.

And if you have this capability, then you can do Olympic weightlifting and everything will be easy for you. And the skills. People cannot get Olympic weightlifting skills because they are not flexible. You cannot ask somebody who is not flexible to enter the flexibility points that he cannot simply.

Right? So now you have the whole program and the program deals with any possible joint that needs to be flexible. And the program deals with also the strength that is needed. Right? The coordination that is needed, right? The coordination that is needed. And every exercise now has six different beats. So the system is also mindful and meditative. The whole program is designed to be meditation. And not only that you are getting flexible,

not only that you're getting strong, but also you stress release, you meditate and you calm down. How is it designed? So now you have one exercise and you have one repetition. So I introduced singularity of the brain. It means you do one thing at a time that's how mantra is you don't two you don't one so in the happy body when you do let's say press or you you

do the the exercise you describe you lay on the back and you you are reaching, yes? So first is inhale. And you focus on inhale. Inhale becomes everything, becomes just one thing that you do. Then you flex certain parts of the body for stability. And then the third is the lift. Always you are lifting. The fourth is coming, the stretch. And in the stretch is the stretch, you are reaching for something. You're reaching for more each time. The program also is designed

to be progressive, to deliver progress and not just do exercises and be mindless and do every time the same thing and not get better over time. You're supposed to be better, like you dance tango, and every year you are a better dancer. But you can dance tango without getting better, right? So you have to somehow be open to that reaching and be better and measure everything so you know you're getting better. That happy body system is created to deliver to you the messages and measure everything so you know you're getting better. That happy body system is created to deliver to you the messages every place and every time that you are getting better.

And it's measurable and it's imaginable. So you can imagine everything and you can keep the data. After a while, of course, the data becomes so organic that you don't need navigation if you're on the ocean and you want to go from one island to another one because it's organic. You know where you are. So when you have the system that is that way and you do that system every day right then it creates this capability of knowing that you push too much that you are sore where or when you are sore how to eliminate and so on so coming back to the one repetition so the you are reaching and then you are lowering the weight is number five.

Yeah. And number six, you are exhaling, releasing the tension. So six things you do in every repetition. Right. But everyone is single and separate. So the mindfulness is 100% on what you do. You are not thinking about your dentist appointment during this time or you are not listening to the music or something.

After a while, you can because you are so aligned with it, right? But it's better not to, of course. So the whole thing is designed to be mindful and meditation happens as well. So sometimes people leave the gym and they space out. They know what happened. What really happened, they meditated for 40 minutes, 30, 40 minutes while doing the program. It's amazing because you do the program but at the same time, you know, the other things happen.

So the breathing pattern now, why the breathing is that we hold the breath. It's pranayama breathing, the same as pranayama breathing, holding the breath and then releasing for the calming down the heart. So when you inhale, you also, like in weightlifting, when you inhale, you tense the body and then you lift and you hold the breath. We don't even know that we hold the breath in tennis as well. So when you are just really, before really hitting, you hold the body, the body is really tough really uh tough yeah tight and then hit happens and then

release happens yeah i mean it's in a split split of the second but you know in that split of the second it happens so in in when you do let's say jerk in uh in weightlifting you hold the breath you inhale tight the body you go down you throw the body you relax completely the body system you go under you block you stand up so so every repetition in the happy body is created that way also it is created to deliver the joy the pleasure of doing it. And you have to really get it that way. So when you speed up a little bit, you are passing the time, you're becoming more,

your anxiety is increasing and you stop liking it and you want to finish. So that's a really terrible brain. So when it happens to you, you slow down. You become slower and you start enjoying the movement. Every breath, every tension, every movement, you lowering, you reaching for something, you love it, you enjoy it.

Once you get it, once you get to the pleasure, you want to repeat the pleasure and repeat the pleasure and repeat the pleasure. That's how training is supposed to be. All anaerobic athletes are that way. They love this training. They are not exhaustive training. It's not like a marathon runner that you run and exhaust yourself.

No. In a power training, everything is pleasurable. Even though you lift 300 pounds, but you are ready exhaust yourself. No, in a power training, everything is pleasurable. Even though you lift 300 pounds, but you are ready for it. You are aligned with it. You have some reserves. So you do something like a gymnast would do, you know, do flips or whatever it is and loves it, yeah?

So the same way you should train the happy body. So question for you now to get back to what Naval brought up, because I've been curious about this for a long time and I want to know the answer. You're very, well, all right. So Naval always says, Jersey, God, that guy's so intense. And then Jersey says, oh, Naval, that guy's so intense. So I find that funny. But Jersey's been on best behavior.

I did hear a story earlier from Aniela, your wife, about how your students at one point were keeping track of how many times you said fuck in various lectures and classes. Oops. But you're a very intense guy. You're a very competitive guy. Very data-driven also. I remember how important that has been when we've trained together, keeping track of all the numbers. How did poetry come into your life? It seems to be such a big part of your life. Well, you know, that happened to me in solidarity, you know, when I was mostly in science in Poland and when I was in Warsaw I started fire protection engineering fire protection engineering all right and in the my fourth year just

before finishing the school and and working on my masters it was 81 and that was the time when solidarity and the government were really fighting. Can you describe for people what is Solidarity? Solidarity was the union that was formed in 1980, and it was the first free movement in Poland and was allowed to be legal. So when Solidarity was formed, very fast, there were 11 million people in Solidarity. So the whole movement was to free Poland from Russia, from communism, really. So I was in the fourth year now working on my master's,

and somebody came. I was the leader of the whole school, and there were 400 firemen students as well, firemen, yeah, inside. So every year about 100. So somebody came to me and said, they are working on changing the law for the school. So I said, what are you talking about? So he said, you know, I was at the meeting with Solidarity and they said that they're going to make the school paramilitary only. And I said, so what does it mean? He said, well, it means that they want to use fire protection,

the whole industry, to fight the demonstrations. And demonstrations were at that time really high. So a lot of people were on streets, and Warsaw could be half a million people on streets and demonstrating against whatever regime was at that time. So I said, okay, so what could we do? And then... So they wanted the fire engineers to use, say, water hoses and things? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All the engines colored the water, let's say, spray and catch people later with that colors and so on. It's just, everything is... Solidarity was looking for powers, more power and government as well. So here government thought about doing that. They wanted you on the government side to fight the anti-communist demonstrations and uprisings. They wanted you to switch sides and bring your students with you.

Well, you know, the, the, uh, whole point for me was not really, I, you know, I said, okay, we have to go to solidarity people and, and talk about. So I went and I talk, uh, in physics to, to, uh, teachers and we discussed it. And, you know, you couldn't imagine strike in the Fire Protection Academy because it's just, it's impossible almost, yeah? But also it's possible. So we discussed that and then as the things were progressing, we started aligning ourselves with the students' strike in Poland

at the same time. It's just mess everywhere, you know, just 81, just before the Arzelski attack, the whole Poland, and it was the time when everything went underground. So we started this strike and then after 10 days of negotiations with the government, the government decided to take us down. And they drove tanks into the academy, took us by force and changed the name of the school. And then they would ask everybody to sign allegiance to the school back. I have some poems about that. So I can read if you want.

So that, and then you could go back. So 400, yeah? And of course, the whole country and fire departments were on strike as well. So it's just everywhere. So they asked us to sign allegiance to the school back. So I didn't sign. So, and about other 80 didn't. About 300-something signed, went back to the school they wanted to form.

So that time after that I was underground. So I took the position of looking after other AT&T and our place of meetings was the church. The church in Zoliborz and the priest that came to help us during the strike. His name was Jerzy Popiewuszko. I have a poem there written about that too. And he was the priest that the country loved him, loved for his words, for his love. And it was the first time that, the first time that I was faced with unconditional love. I've never seen it in my life.

And I was, you know, 27 and I saw people that they had it. And I was looking at that and trying still, you know, find a way why they are that way, that they have some kind of ulterior motives or something, you know, because I've never seen it. I've never seen a person that way. So I spent three years underground and in, the government had really enough with Jersey and his sermons that they were so inspiring people and so much helping people to survive all of it, what was happening, and to be uplifted, that they captured him and tortured and threw his body into the icy river. And after that, Poland really mourned a lot. And that was very, very difficult for me, too.

And I left Poland in 85 in March after, you know, the situations with in the police department and so on. You had to do it to survive. I had to go. And my friend told me, I was called to the police department and I was waiting to go in Szczecin. And this guy comes in and there is a lot of people. And this guy comes here and I know him. And he was a weightlifter. I said, what are you doing here?

So we didn't see each other for about four or five years. He is the lieutenant there, and I don't know. And I am on the other side now, right? So he is asking me what I was there for. And I told him, so let me check it out. So he went, came back. And he said, well, you were assigned to me. And you should go and never come back.

And I said, I said laughing, Jersey, never come back. You would never come out of this building. You'll never come out. You would never come out of this building. You'll never come out. You'll be here. You'll stay here. So my goosebumps come, you know, and then I said, all right, it was just lucky day. And I said, all right, thanks, thanks, bye-bye, and we go. So this is the way later.

And about two months after I was out, I was in Sweden, and then in Sweden, because of my involvement now, I'm coming back to poetry, because my involvement with solidarity people, mostly Weyherd and Jersey and then others that they had this, Jaworski, Severin Jaworski. There were people that they were different. They, you know, they were just like loving people I've never seen before, as I said.

When you see a person that love you unconditionally, it's something completely different. It's like you see God. So I brushed off some of it. And then when I went to Sweden, I started helping people a lot, the solidarity people. They suffered a lot. They waited sometimes for their wives and children and they escaped there.

And then the hunger strikes and all of it was happening. And I had this way of talking to people and helping them emotionally, helping, uplifting them, solving in their head a little bit, changing their attitude so their life could be a little bit better. And there was the psychologist, Van der Saai, who noticed that.

And she said, you know what, you have a gift that you do something with these people and they feel better. So she said, let me open the clinic here and then you will be teaching and I will be your assistant. I said, no, no, I'm going to US. I'm not staying in Sweden. So when she heard that, she said, but if you go, you have to write. And I look at her and say, write.

And I say, yeah, you need to write because you have something to pass on. And I said, well, you need to write because you have something to pass on. And they said, well, I've never written anything. So she said, well, just go home and write. I said, okay. So I went home.

That's a very Jersey-like response. I took the page and it was funny. Whatever was on that page coming, it was in a verse. I couldn't write anything differently. So you tried to write poetry, you just went to write... I've never written any poetry. No, and then it came out in verse. As a poem. And I wrote the first poem, Reverb.

So I've written that poem and then, you know, like, okay. And I didn't write another one for a while, but then I went to Germany and then ended up in US, right? When I came to US, I began writing more poems. And the poems, the first book of poetry became about this, my life, the past life. And then about 15 years ago when I was dealing with people and I was watching people when they wanted to lose weight and how that is difficult and how people suffer because they cannot and how people, even though they want to control themselves, even if they want really badly change,

there are forces inside that causes their choosing the wrong things. And they are unable actually to succeed in it. And I saw this suffering here in this room over and over. And one day, because I thought that poetry is something else, you know, it's not really, it shouldn't have any purpose. You write a poem because you are moved by something or disturbed by something and you make the poem. It's like Baryshnikov said, you know, I dance and my dance is supposed to disturb and not really make entertainment.

It's an art form and it's when you create art, you are disturbed by something. So when I watch people suffering because of the inability of controlling themselves, that emotional intelligence was not kicking in, the attitude would not change. I thought, if they suffer, then they need poetry, that they deserve poetry. So poetry is not something more than that. The first time I link poetry to something like simple weight loss or something. Yeah, right? Because poets are supposed to be not purpose.

Right, but in this case... But I sense really that pain. I sense pain and I sense suffering. Practicality. I connected first time a poem to that problem and started writing poems. It took me about four years to write this first book of poetry, The Food for Your Soul.

And she had different poems, different situations. Some of them, all of them, they have really one purpose. All of them, they talk to the person and they try to connect to that place in a person to come out of the situation positively, so to come out, to solve the problem and become positive and constructive. So every poem has this movement inside. I can read you now a poem, give you the story.

Sure, yeah. Want me to grab the first book? Yeah, grab the book. Let me read it. And I will tell you the situation. This is just the first poem. Do you remember what your very first poem you wrote was about? The one that came out in verse when you were just trying to write?

I remember, but I cannot recite it. Oh, no, no, but you wrote was about? The one that came out in verse when you were just trying to write? I remember, but I cannot recite it. Oh, no, no, but what was it about? Oh, about change of the... You see, that poem was about the journey and about becoming a good person. So the person that is this enlightened person, the good and kind person. When I sent this poem to Poland,

Aniela loved it. And my mother thought that I got crazy. That I lost my mind. It's also, I don't want to take us down a separate track, but it's also worth noting that Aniela, so you're married at the time with Aniela, and she suggested you leave by yourself, right? So they wouldn't think that the family was fleeing.

So there's a lot more to that. They wouldn't let us go. Yeah, so we'll probably leave that alone for right now, but let's, what is the poem that you'd like to recite? All right, so I will tell you first the story about this poem. Every poem has a story. So every poem has the time

and is locked with suffering and coming out of suffering positively, right? And do something about it, even though it's extremely difficult. So I just look at people and they, it's at least like you do something wrong, you know that you're doing something wrong and you keep doing something wrong and it cannot come out of that. So these are the situations usually that inspired me to write the poem. So this poem is about a woman, a nurse in San Francisco. So I teach the class. I'm in the class. This is an exercise class? The happy body.

It's about the whole thing. We'll go to the happy body because I didn't finish the happy body yet. There's a lot more to it, actually. So this woman tells me that she cannot find the time to exercise. I said, we cannot find 30 minutes to exercise? No. And she told me what she does. I said, okay, tell me. So she told me what she does.

She has two jobs and she has children and she's single and her life is really tough. And when she told me, I just, you know, I couldn't say anything. It's just like it's really a person that struggles, a person that doesn't have time, right? Okay. But, you know, I'm not an easy to give up on things like this. You have to have time, especially when something is good.

And over time that brings goodness, you have to somehow find time for it. It has to be the way. But I didn't know what was the way. And I'm driving home from San Francisco, and I'm meditating. Something is wrong about that, but I don't know what. I don't know how to grasp that whole situation and how to deal with it.

It's the person that is struggling. The person works, you know, almost whole day, has children, has to make money, and doesn't have time for exercise for 30 minutes to improve the life through it. So I came home, went to meditation, spent there two or three hours of meditating, wrote this poem. Let me read it to you. So the title is Who Cannot? Every night when I wake up, I walk to the kitchen,

and every morning there is still food on my face. How can I stop myself? His coach fought for a moment and then told him, Think about all those people who stopped themselves from owning and killing and having fun because they finally saw how others suffered. Without them, you would still have slaves, the Holocaust, and a world just for men. Becoming a man like that is your only chance, because there is no one else to force you. Don't you expect too much from me?

Do you really believe I can be a man like that? Who cannot? So the poem focuses on great people in life, those who know that something is wrong, and they would not let it go. They would keep doing even though whatever it was needed to change the situation. So there were two people, two lawyers in England who stopped the slavery. And I watched this documentary, they lost friends, they lost money, they lost almost everything.

But they really achieved that place where we didn't have slavery anymore. Amazing, right? So there is something sometimes in us that we see from the moral point of view, if something is wrong and we go for it. I came back to San Francisco, read the poem in the class, and people started commenting on it. And it came to the woman, and she said, I will never say I cannot to my children anymore. I will rephrase it, but I will not say I cannot. I see now how painful it could be

and how damaging it could be for my children. And I was sitting here and I was thinking, really, about myself and my time. And I saw myself that I watch TV, that I read novels, and I don't have to do. That actually I have time. So you see that the poem helped her to go into the, finally to her own world and accept that she was doing something that she could stop and she could do something else. And on the cover, I just want to, I think it's worth noting, at least on the cover of this, this is the Mastering, the Happy Body Mastering Food Choices book. But the diagram, or I should say rather the illustration is a circle. The circle's cut in half. And one half is white, one half is black. And one half is labeled master, the other is labeled fatalist. And then in the middle, there's a small circle, half of which is on either side, and it says choice.

So I'd actually like to ask Naval something. So Naval, you and I have talked a lot where I tell you I'm going down to train with Jersey and you're like, no, no, no, he's too intense. I can't go down there and train. And then I talk to Jersey. He's like, how's Naval? God, that guy's so intense. And this is always what goes on. But I remember chatting with you at one point and you said, well, I feel like I should just pay to go down and talk to Jersey because the training is really expensive, but it's very cheap therapy. Yeah, I actually did that on one occasion where I came down, we just talked for two

hours. Yeah, he's a cheap therapist. I mean, it's wisdom, right? Someone like Jersey has encountered huge difficulties in his life, has done world-class things in multiple disciplines. And there's just a wisdom to that that I don't think we respect in modern society anymore. We always crave what's new, but I would argue that what's old and time-tested and proven, you know, when there's someone who's 62 and fit beyond imagination sitting in front of you, that you should listen to what that person has to say. Even if you've heard it before,

you can hear it a new way, a new time with a new intensity and it might make a difference. Not to cut off your question, but you're talking about choice, right? Master versus fatalist in choice. The single most impactful thing that I've heard from Jersey, and there's many, but the one

that always stands out is just the philosophy of hard choices, easy life, easy choices, hard life. And I think it's worth digging into that a little bit, because I think that kind of unites what you're talking about with exercise, with nutrition, and with psychology, right? It's kind of the overlying, overarching principle. And it's obvious, but it's not at the same time. It's the practice of it that's hard. Yeah, I think that I learned from weightlifting that, that constant search for making something actually difficult

that would help you to get better. And you search for it. So the progress is, it can happen only if you are on the edge, when actually is something difficult. So I told a car racer in LA about 20 years ago, how the progress happens. He's an off-road racer, La Baja 1000. Right. His father was breaking records.

So Billy Robertson, really fantastic driver, 20 broken bones and really tough, you know, tough. You cannot get really tougher. This is tough. This is Olympic weightlifting. This is off-road. Trucks, you know, like 10,000 pounds and going 140 miles per hour on uneven terrain. It's just amazing things.

And he was also on the motorcycle, very fast motorcycle, 160, 170 miles per hour. He was racing this stuff, yeah? So he was diverse in his possibilities. And I coached him for, you know, flexibility, power, and, you know, getting ready for this competitions. So he was, his father was in Baja Tausend, broke the records in 1960 on a motorcycle, 48 hours without stopping. So they were just getting gas from helicopters. And he said that when he finished,

he couldn't straight his fingers for one week. We're just gripping the handlebars. Like that. So, you know, so when I talked to him, he said, you know what? It's,

it's like this. I understand this, this way. So when I, when I race the car, so I have to bring the car to the place of when the tires are spinning, losing the traction. And then I slow down to capture the traction. And then I have to speed up again to lose the traction. And then I have to speed up again to lose the traction, and on and on and on and on. I can only progress when I am in that area.

So that is the same with all athletes and whatever we do, right? So that's the difficult choice. You bring yourself to the losing the traction so when you uh imagine let's say a weightlifter would be the same story you have to come to the place where the records are and you break the records very little. And if something happens, you go back to catch the traction. When you heal injuries, it's the same thing. You go to the place where it's difficult and you try to stay there. If the body lets you, you stay there and you you getting stronger in it or more flexible.

If you sense that something is wrong, you go back. So the masterpiece is how to find that place. Where is it really? Where is that place? And you cannot really, because if you spin too much, you completely lose the speed and you lose, right? If you don't bring yourself to that place, then you cannot improve.

So the only way to improve would be to have progress, but that progress depends on these difficult choices. And the masterpiece here is to lose the traction, catch up. Lose the traction, catch up. So when you're on the happy body, you're the same way. You are supposed to come always to reach for something more, just slightly, you know, like a quarter inch or something, and then you know where you are and you're reaching for it.

And that is the athletic brain. The fitness brain is to exercise without it. So the whole fitness today is just kind of that way. You go to the gym and you just exercise, but you are not really bringing yourself for the tires to slide. So you're not pushing that direction. You don't know where it is even. And because of that, you don't have progress.

I have people sometimes come here and then, oh, I exercised for 10 years and I didn't change. Well, there is no change because there is no progress. There is no reaching. There is no hard choices. So difficult choices, easy life, right? So we are all good with easy choices. Actually, easy choices is fun. We will always choose what's easy. That comes naturally for us. Fantastic. Everybody is good about that. Everybody

can write a book about that. It's easy choices. So, of course, we will do everything but not difficult. Well, because of that, we cannot progress in life, right? But those of us that can choose difficult choices, they will have progress and they will have improvement and they will have easy life because of it. But you have to be okay with it. And I was faced with this first time really in weightlifting. Coach me that way. And I can't, that this fine line of searching for difficulties,

but that difficulties cannot be too much difficulties. It has to be just slightly. So you get the good feeling, you get better, and then you go to the next day and do the same and get better. And then eventually the quantum shifts happen when you actually progress a lot, right? And then back up a little bit and so on. Well, one analogy that I remember you used with me at one point, which changed my thinking or at least opened my mind to different possibilities

with flexibility and mobility. I remember in the beginning, I had terrible ankle mobility, really bad ankle mobility, and it led to all sorts of knee problems and hip problems. And in the many different types of training that we've done together, the concept of achieving that flexibility through movement and motions, as opposed to holding static stretches for a long time, was relatively new to me. And I remember at one point you were talking about the hinge,

a rusty hinge. Right. And how you can't try to force it too much. You'll break it like a paper clip. So you go back and forth and it's creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, and it's barely bending and then click, and you get a little bit further. And then you oil a little bit and you do creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, and then click and you get a little bit further. And then you oil a little bit and you do creak, creak, creak, creak, creak,

and then click. And then you have these really unexpected, for me at least, quantum jumps where I would go from feeling stuck, stuck, stuck, stuck, and then next workout, boom, all of a sudden I have three or four inches of additional reach. And that was a new experience for me.

It's funny how things happen to us. Like Naval, you said about that I know so many things and came from many things, but we remember things in life. So my father was a locksmith. He was a steel worker and he was a locksmith. And I remember I was probably five years old and he he was showing me with the rusted really hinge and how we work with it it was beautiful you know like he put some oil and move it a little bit it gave me and i was working with it, I sensed where it was stopping and helped me to feel how

much really to push it. I still remember it. And you see like, so when I talk to you, he was my master. He was really showing me how to break that hinge the right way. Not to break it completely, but to open it, to restore it, to rejuvenate it. And eventually after about half an hour, that hinge was moving with oil and everything like new.

It's wild. It's wild, yeah. But when you are open to this, you use this metaphor, and I use this metaphor with you, but I remember that my father and working on that hinge, and it's a juxtaposition, right? And with those juxtapositions we use constantly in poetry and and in life you have to to help people to imagine so I want to help people to imagine another story which which I quite enjoyed so we've we've had a number of lunches here and you're just saying before we started recording that I guess in terms of the

the units for Weight Watchers what was was it? What are they called? Oh, yeah, yeah. They have heard the points. Points. So there was a woman before. Who's comparing the diet on the happy body, which I guess gives her seven points. Yes. But you eat a very high volume,

or I shouldn't say very high volume. You eat primarily vegetables or relatively low protein. And we've had a lot of soup here, and delicious vegetable soup, which you also had for breakfast, and we get these gigantic bowls of soup, and I just remember barely starting, and scalding hot, and I had three or four spoonfuls, and you were done with your soup. I'm fast, dude.

No, I know you are. That's faster. Let me get to this for two minutes. done with your soup and uh i'm fast no i know you are so so so couldn't didn't you at one point i could swear you told me this story of meeting someone who claimed to be the fastest soup eater could you tell that story yeah so you know i was like you know very fast eater of hot boiling soup. This is in Poland. This is boiling soup. This is not really hot, yeah? So my father was really good in that too, for some reason.

But I was a lot better than him. I could eat really a bowl of soup extremely fast, boiling. So when I was a weightlifter in Poland, we had this group of athletes that we hang out and we went to have soup and we went uh to this uh bar and we get tomato soup hot you know really steaming and we started eating so there is there was this table, long table, and about five of us on one side, about five on the other side. All the track and field boxers and wrestlers, all the athletes, weightlifters. And I finished. And the guy on the other side of the table, he looked at me and he was surprised.

He said, you finished? You ate your soup? I said, yeah. But you cannot be. And he said, what cannot be? And he said, I'm the fastest eater. Nobody was ever faster than I. And I said, not anymore.

It's over. I said, I don't believe that you just did it. It's impossible. I said, oh, come on. You know, you want to bet? Oh, everybody was happy about the bets because, you know, weightlifting is always bad, you know. So, we bet always, you make it or not,

you know, how much and so on. So, we started betting, yeah. So, we bet on you make it or not so so we started betting yeah so we bet then of course he ate half of the soup and I ate the whole thing

and that was it but the other story is this so I go to Warsaw and to fast eating we go to Warsaw and to fast eating. We go to Warsaw and in Warsaw, I go to the academy, the fire protection academy. And this is my first day. I'm depressed.

I'm without my mama, you know, my mama. And that was my mama's son, you know, always. And I couldn't really live without my mama, you know, like I was always like making the way that I would be home. So I'm sitting as I'm looking for the place. So I found this place that three guys are sitting and they are from all from Warsaw. And I sat there and they all, the one of them is really this street smart guy, right? So I eat, I eat slowly and so on. But there's not much food, yes?

Everybody wants more food that they really serve. So he tells me this, you know what, I have the idea. And I said, what is it? Whoever will finish first will help the other to finish the food. So I look at him and I'm just thinking, laughing inside. He says, you just pick up the worst probably person in this world. He's just the worst one. That bad, bad one. So I said, okay. Next day, he didn't

eat his second and dessert. I ate his second and I ate my soup, my second dessert, his second and dessert. Next day, he started from the second. Yeah, like pork chop and potatoes or something. Yeah. So he left the soup. So I ate his soup and dessert. So he said, oh, I don't want to do it anymore.

I said, well, if you don't want, you have to pay. So he paid. It was a lot of money. It was like two months of work, but we became really great friends. When we're bad, we're bad. You know what? One day we were at this Olympic weightlifting seaside during the summer, and they were always bringing food to us and they brought one day this cabbage stew with meats and so on in this basin you know like really big probably about maybe 20 pounds of it and then we always wanted to eat more of of course. My friend Otto, he said, you know, we could eat the whole thing. And the others were laughing.

It was about 40 guys. And then, you cannot eat this. Yeah, we could. Wait, it was 40 people and you and your friends said we could eat the whole thing? Yeah, we could eat the whole thing, yeah. So they started really laughing. I said, Otto, come on. I said, no, Otto, we cannot eat this.

You know, it's just too much of food. So when you actually put the spoon down vertically, only the tip of the spoon was seen. And the basin was between, when we sat in front of us, was between my legs and his legs. It was so big. It was gigantic. Gigantic.

And Otto said, we'll eat it in one hour. I said, no, come on. And then, oh, come on, Giorgina, we'll eat it. He said, okay, we'll try it. So they started betting and the coach said, no,

no, no, I know you guys. One hour? No, 30 minutes. I said, no, no, no. I know you guys. One hour? No, 30 minutes. I said, no, 30 minutes. We set up on eventually 30 minutes. I said, okay. So we ate and we started eating and we were fast in this. And then it was about left maybe, know like uh two pounds left i couldn't make

it it's just like two pounds lost the band couldn't make it it's just like full done that was 11 p.m 8 in the morning or 7 in the morning we were back in the restaurant and otto was sitting in front of the milk milk with rice probably more than a gallon two gallons and people were laughing and said oh otto what do you eat of course you want to bet and started betting otto ate the whole thing there oh my god. After eating, I was like, I don't know, it is 10, 15 pounds. So in a way, this is liberating because you're obviously very healthy and fit,

but you have an eating disorder. Of course. And you love vodka too. So you have your vices. I love the volume. So my challenge as a master here is coming in yeah so uh you cannot let the fatalist really win with you because if you do your life is not going to be good yeah so what you want has to happen but for me you know to control the

volume is really tough so i can eat 10 apples within 10, 15 minutes and then another 10, follow with another 10, right? Until my teeth cannot really make it, so I stop. So I had to come out with strategy how to eat an apple. So I came out, I told you before. So I came with the really strategy for it. So I drive with my daughter to Santa Clara from our home to take her to gymnastics.

Takes about 30 minutes. So I said, okay, I will take the apple and I will finish that apple there. For me, it's a big challenge. But, you know, when I actually achieve that, I switch because I'm a taskmaster. So I switch my brain from taskmaster of eating the apple very fast to actually waiting 30 minutes to eat it. That became my task. So actually eating fast the apple became secondary.

So now I do it all the time to help myself. And I have a lot of people here my way because people who are social, I call them you know like social beasts like i i'm a social beast i love people i love to you know go for dinners and parties and so on all the time i'm a social beast so drinking and eating and so on so how you can be this and you can be lean and you can be a certain body type and so on. So you have to have data. You have to have a plan. You have to have strategy for that. And you can be, but you can be everything, but you have to have some strategies how to deal with it. So I created this timing myself. So I will take a prune, let's say, and I will time 10 minutes. I will finish the prune in 10 minutes. So you wait for 10 minutes and then you eat it?

No, no, no. You take 10 minutes to eat it. I take 10 minutes. Like I take 30 minutes to eat an apple. No, I would not wait, but that would not be fair. But it's a challenge. It's a goal you set for yourself. Challenge is good. I'm a really taskmaster, right? You know, like a lot of tasks at that time. So it's very difficult for us to be masters in that you predict the time that you are good in 10 years or five years.

Yeah. I am that way too. You predict the time that you are good in 10 years or five years. Yeah. I am that way too. But to get there, you have to be also the master of this small task. So I am really good in eating and very fast. So I had to somehow trick myself to be the master with 30 minutes and the eating as a secondary. So this whole book about mastering food choices, mastering exercise choices, and so on, and rest choices, they are the books of dialogues.

How I came out with this book is that when people were coming here, I heard different voices. Since I am a poet, so I sensed who is talking and what is the power of the talk. Is it the fatalist? Is the fatalist really strong? Or is the master? Or is the, how much master is there 60 40 fatalist and i started really hearing this dialogues with within the the head with the in the mind of the person

of my clients all over all the time so i i got the idea one day to come out with five different voices. And then one would have the voice of the fatalist, 100% voice. So the picture is that the choice is up to the fatalist, 100%. This is the most traumatic situation for the person. The person cannot come out of that situation. The fatalist dominates, yeah. Dominates suicidal situation, drug addicts that you cannot come out.

You have to have help outside. That's how I was helped in Poland. The miracle helped me to come out. You were actually an alcoholic before you discovered weightlifting, like a real alcoholic. I was a real alcoholic. Three years losing my blackout every day. I was blackout sometimes for two, three days. I left on Wednesday.

I came back on Sunday. I didn't know the days were before. I thought it was Thursday. So, and three days, three years like that. And so, you really have to be lucky.

How did you get lucky in that situation? What got you out of that? Well, that's the story, the other story right so day so I am drinking with my buddies you know and we have somewhere in the pub drinking beer and things and you're like 18 years old time 19 something like that that was bad I am 19 Yeah. So 18 and a half. So during this talk, when we are talking, there's another guy, and he's drinking with us, and he says that his mother threw his weightlifting equipment out of the house.

And I said, well, you know, bring all of it to my house. I said, yeah, sure. You know, alcoholics, alcoholics always say everything, but they don't mean it. And the next day they don't remember, right? But next day I was always already drinking in the morning. So I'm drunk at 3 p.m. on my couch, and there is a knock on the window. And I go there, and I open the window. Mirak is there.

I said, what is it? And then he said, I have the equipment you told me to bring, that I can have it and train in your place. Really? I said, okay. I said, just bring it there. But I will take it up. So he brought everything in, set up everything.

But he didn't do his workout on his own. So he tries to pull me in. He said, Jersey, come and do a little bit and go for the beer. Oh, yeah, I was just like, yeah, sleeping, kind of fubbing up and recovering. I said, no, no, just you go. No, no, let's go, you know, do a little bit and go. So somehow he was inviting, you know. He created this space for me to walk in the right way.

So that's amazing, you know, when that space is created. You know, your friend, the doctor, Mike, Michael. Oh, Michael. The doctor, Michael McCullough. Oh, that's right, McCullough, definitely. So he said that what we do, we create this possibility for uncomfortable situations to make them comfortable.

So that's what happens. And then that's what happened to me, that I didn't want to lift weights and so on, but he invited me the right way. So I did a little bit. We went for the beer. And then next day, kind of the same, we were drinking and then we were lifting and he was kind of okay with it. And so the days were passing, I was drinking with him, lifting with him and drinking. But as months started passing on, I noticed that I was getting stronger because of this

lifting and stronger and stronger. And my strength was coming back because I was also the lifter between 13 and 15 and a half. That's when I lost. I was in high school and fell really into darkness. So he, training with him, my body was coming back, you know, and my master was waking up. And I really started choosing less drinking or drinking not so hard liquor, you know, sometimes not drinking,

and definitely more exercise. We started really lifting more and lifting more, lifting more. And after about five, six months, we were really lifting. And I didn't even notice the change so they changed so he he pulled me out of the place he saved my life and actually in full circle your happy body workout helped me stop drinking because it's the only workout that i've ever done where you insisted strangely enough that it has to be done daily and And a lot of other people will say, well, if you're doing weights, and there's a light weights component to happy body.

I think of it as a combination of weights, yoga, and meditation. But it has to be done seven days a week. And you even said to me at the beginning, I was like, well, what if I go to the gym and do something else? What if I go for a run? What if I sprint? You said, I don't care. Do all of those, but do happy body also.

So you have to do it seven days a week. And it's the first thing that I do. It's very convenient because I can do it at home, but just my weight's next to the bed. But if I've been drinking the night before, it's terrible. It becomes an ordeal. So the daily morning habit of the workout breaks the nighttime going out drinking habit.

They kind of work in opposites to each other. Yeah, also, you know, it is created to deliver the daily hygiene for the body. It's really brushing teeth. So you do the habit, but it was created to have this daily routine every day, every day into the habit and do it. it and that that would set up right away your mood, better mood, set up the way of becoming better over time, be proud of that. I call it that what happens to people when they really do it on daily basis, when they come through the door, right away they are happy. If they don't do, they are not happy.

It's like with this winning and losing. So when they come, they are happy. And I recognize triple happiness. So I wrote in the, I got this in the book, triple happiness. So triple happiness happens when people achieve what they want. Yeah, they get it. And they are happy that they lost weight or they are more flexible or they are stronger or their posture is better. They're happy because of it.

But then after a while, also, they are happy because they became the person that could do that, that could achieve that. So they became this mind of achiever. And once they do really their happy body and they achieve and they become this attractive body, something is attractive about the happy body people because they are not tired, they are not exhausted, they are happy. And there is something about them that attracts others to them. And so that is the third happiness because you deliver happiness to the outside. Other people are happy when they look at you and it's something about you that makes them happy

so i call it triple happiness i like that you get the goal you become the new person on the way to getting the goal and then you project that to others and maybe inspire others right so question you jerseys this is a bit of a left turn from what we're talking about right now but what is your daily diet look like what types of meals do you have? What do they look like? Well, in the morning, I will have either juice or soup. And what type of juice, what type of soup? It's all vegetable.

Usually, the soup is, we make vegetarian soups, clear vegetarian. What was in it this morning? What did you have? I had the juice. Oh, you had the juice. What was in it this morning? What did you have? I had the juice. Oh, you had the juice. What was in the juice this morning? The juice was beets, carrots, celery, spinach, parsley, and ginger. Got it.

And just one glass of juice? Yeah, one big glass of juice. That was breakfast. Yes. What is your favorite breakfast soup? I love all soups, but potato, when the potato is in the soup, I love it always. It gives, because we make differently soup. We cook, boil in the pressure cooker. That's really fast. And then blend in Vitamix. So it's a puree. And the soup that we make

is we put into the pan, half of it is carrots, onion, celery, and parsley. And other half is the- Parsley. Parsley. Got it. And other half, parsley root. Oh, parsnip. Yeah, the root. And the other half is the flavor of the soup that you want.

If you want broccoli soup, broccoli. If you want cauliflower, cauliflower. If you want potatoes, potatoes up there. So that makes really strong tomatoes, tomato soup. And you call it that way. So it's fantastic. So you have the base, which you described, and then the flavor, which is the second half

within the pressure cooker. Yeah, and then you blend, and then you have your soup. So soups usually we have for lunch, usually. We cook always the soup. You have the, what, Daniela, the soup that you're allergic to? Oh, eggplant, right. The one thing that'll kill me. What is that?

Yeah. It's a challenge. Yeah, a challenge. Hope you know how to do an emergency cricket out of me. So then I have a snack. And the snack usually is the bar that we make. So bars that we make our own bar. This is in the afternoon.

Yeah, around 10. It's a seven is let's say juice or soup. Oh, I see. Then you have a bar as a snack. What are the bars made out of? So the bars are made out of apples, chocolate, prunes, all kinds of spices like turmeric, cayenne, cinnamon, ginger, then added seeds to that. And the seeds can be flax seeds,

sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds. And then everything is mixed. We can add some dates to it to bond everything together. And then I take it out of the food processor and make everything, put it together into this bread-looking thing. It looks like a bread and I cut it into pieces. pieces you can add after all the nuts to it and whip them in or you can uh you can mix them in the food processor before it's up to or not to use them at all people today prefer not to use nuts because the belief is that seeds are better for the skin aging and nails and so on. So we have movement towards seeds more than nuts, but still we make both.

And then you have soup for lunch. Yeah. And then do you snack again or do you just go to dinner at that point? No, we have, then I have about four o'clock snack. Okay. That four o'clock snack,

I can have a juice or I can have like prunes or the dry fruit or I can have some almonds or use the bar or soup. So, you know, I love soup. So I can eat soup, you know, three times a day. Yeah. What is dinner? Dinner is interesting because dinner could be any combination of the protein and veggies or any different strategies. So now I have different strategies for eating dinner my way.

So I love potatoes. So yesterday I boiled potatoes and I ate potatoes. You just had boiled potatoes? Baked potatoes. That's it? Yeah. So I love potatoes. and I ate potatoes. Wait, you just had boiled potatoes? Baked potatoes. That's it? Yeah. Okay. So I love potatoes.

I want more potatoes. I love them volume either. So, you know, we were just in Vegas and my daughter competed in gymnastics. So we went to this, when I arrived, there was nothing to eat. I ate French fries. So my snack, I didn't have to eat. I ate French fries. So my snack, I didn't have my bars. I ate French fries. At 1 PM, went for lunch, I ate French fries. I love French fries. So if I can eat French fries, I will eat French fries. I wouldn't eat anything else.

Anything made of potatoes. So we went to this Italian restaurant. So yeah, we are inside and I read all the menu. I don't like anything up there. So, and there are two other couples. And then I go out of the restaurant, I go to the burger, I buy my French fries, bring it back and I eat over there. $1.65. That must have gone over well with the restaurant. And I say, what is it?

And they say, well, you know, I love French fries. And truly, my French fries is the best food on this menu. There's nothing better than my French fries, really. You know, you have French fries, you have potatoes, you have vegetable oil. It's just great food. But when you're eating French fries, you're just eating the French fries. You're not having a burger. You're not having a giant meal where French fries are a side.

You're basically calorie restricting. Oh, yeah. I count that too. You see, the happy body is not a diet. The happy body is an approach for people to help them to control calories, volume, to achieve the body they want. Bigger body, smaller body, or maintain the body, but it gives this people a way of manipulating and food and the volume and the time and so on. So tech people, these new generation people, details people, they thrive on the happy body.

Why? Because they love the numbers. They love the quantifying, self-quantifying, all this. They love this. And the happy body is all numbers. For real, yeah? So they really get it right away to the diet. They get to the exercise.

They get to the detail of all exercise and the breathing and so on. They love this stuff. So it's a perfect system for independence, self-control, self-coaching, which was created that way 25 years ago, but people were not getting that. You know, my generation was really, had difficulties in that. They were more foodie, more toward having fun, but no control.

This generation is different. This generation has some kind of emotional intelligence, is willing to compromise, is willing to, and having fun with actually all this quantifying. I'd love to ask you more about that, especially with the meal replacement stuff like Soylent. But before we get to that,

I did want to hear your dinner. Yeah. What are you having for dinner get to that, I did want to hear your dinner. Yeah. What are you having for dinner tonight? Oh, I never know. But like what's an average dinner? What is a protein source? I love, let's say, cauliflowers. You know, like if I eat the one thing,

it will be either potatoes, cauliflowers, broccoli. I will steam and put the salt on it, eat big, you know, bowl of that. cauliflowers, broccoli, I will steam and put the salt on it, eat a big bowl of that, and that's my dinner. So sometimes we make steaks because Natalie eats steaks or fish, so I can eat a little bit of that. So you eat very little animal protein. Very little. Like, you know, I am like, you know, my experience, the different story with my situation and

prostate. So this, which your family has a history of prostate. Seven years ago, we went to Poland to find out because my grandfather was coming from Białorusz. And so we went there to, and nobody could find any trace what happened to the family when my grandfather came to Poland. So we went to engage others

to go to Białorusz and find the roots and who we were really, yeah? And because there is no trace. So we were there, we were at the cemetery, and my mother had five brothers. And I'm standing there, and then this family person is telling me that these are the, here you can see here there are five your mother's five brothers are there and they all died at 55 and around that and they died because of what the

same thing i said what was it prostate cancer oh i was 55 looking at this graves as what that's not good news so I when I came home boom I went to my doctor I said we need to check you know prostate and so on so she checked and said, it's big and it has nodules and so on. So I said, oh, not good. So she said, let's do PSA. Came 9.5. Holy moly. This is a blood marker for prostate inflammation.

I said, not good. So this is what I will talk later on about, you know, organs health and physical health. Yeah. So they, they are two different things. So I, I said at that point, so she sent me to the urologist and he said, we have to do biopsy. I said, no, no, no, no, we slow down now. We need to slow down. Because I read also, you know, you can trust people or not, but some people said that if you make a puncture, you can actually, blood can travel, and actually, if it is cancer there, it can spread it.

So I said, oh, that's not a good idea. So I went to my doctor. I said, okay, give me half a year. Because he said, well, if it's the problem, it grows slowly and so on. Give me half a year and we'll come back. So, okay. So I started really researching and finding my best way of approaching how to deal from the food point of view. And then at the same time, I sent 23andMe to find out what my DNA and things are and so on. So it comes and 33% chances, prostate cancer, first killer.

So serious stuff. So do you want to know really what would kill you? Like people say, do I need to know what can kill me, right? And some people don't want to know. I want to know because I'm going to do something about it. So if I die, then I have to know before that I did everything so I wouldn't. But I don't want to be dying and thinking, oh, if I did that and that and that. I don't want to be that person.

So I explored everything possible, started my diet. So no animal protein and strictly vegetarian and also no grains, just no grains at all, only vegetables, fruit, and some seeds, nuts, and making the bars. And after half a year, PSA, five. Another half a year, one. Another half a year, 0.1. And it's like this every year. So my doctor checked the prostate. Smooth, nice, beautiful, young.

I went back to urologist. He said, wow, is it the same prostate? I said, yeah, it's the same one. There's nothing to do. It's young. It's smooth. No nodules, nothing. All right.

So I don't know. It's our daughter. So it could be that when you start aging, like 35, or when you are 50 and 60, you have to start switching to a different way of eating. You have margin for error, narrower and narrower. So I say, when you get older, you have to be more perfect and more perfect and more perfect.

And then you have to find a way to accept what you need to do to become better. And to accept that, okay, you accept the happy body. It's a preventive system and it will help you to prevent weaknesses and so on. It will, but you have to have time for it. So I want to point to something now. So the one thing is strength and fitness and the other is organs in the body.

So there are two different ways. So when you think about organs, you have it about eating. When you think about fitness, you think about physical training, right? Definitely the organs are aligned toward they are healthy when we have certain body weight, not too big. So any restriction on the diet works very well. So the research points that mice that was put on a restricted diet would live 40% longer. 40%. We are talking about 60 or 100, right?

Yeah, yes. So it has to be some kind of control like food, like I control my volumes. If I didn't control my volumes, I would be 300 pounds very fast. So there was a woman in France who lived 128 years. So we had this friend from MD geriatrics,

and then he talked to us about that in LA. And he said when they did autopsy of that woman, all the organs were aged evenly. All right? But he said, when we open somebody that is 70 years old, 80, one organ is done, is killing the body. All others could go for another 50 years. Wow.

That pointed me to something, yeah? Pointed to me that wholeness, general way of approaching food is extremely important. The quality of food is important, even though you eat meats or whatever, but you choose organic and so on. And then the more veggies you eat, the better. When the physical body is created the same way. So I put together the organs with joints. So when you think about joints of the body, they are like organs. When your elbow is not good, you cannot do anything almost with the body, right? It limits you completely. You cannot use the body. You cannot train. You cannot get better.

One joint is enough. And it ruins your training system. It ruins your progress. It ruins your getting better. So the flexibility now is extremely important that you have flexibility everywhere around the joint. And so you are not getting the tension from any place. Because once the muscle is on one side of the joint tighter, so it will bring the bones together there.

And once it happens, the pressure happens. Once the pressure happens, inflammation happens. Once the inflammation happens, arthritis happens. Once the inflammation happens, arthritis happens. Pain comes in. So the happy body is the system that stretches evenly whole body system. So it's a holistic system, everything, every day.

So that's why it's hygiene, really. And it works really perfectly for athletes because I don't do the same way, the happy body, as people. So for people, it's every day, and they challenge themselves, and then they do this routine. But athletes use the happy body as massage. So I do one or two rounds and I'm searching for any tension. So for me, I use like half of the weight that I could. So I work on 50%, maybe 40%. So instead of, you know, 40 pounds dumbbells, I will use 15 or 20, which is very light for me.

But I will have to reach all the capabilities of my body. And sometimes I'm sore somewhere. I'm in pain somewhere. I'm tight somewhere. And the happy body helps me to release it every time. And so I coach the same way every athlete to do the same thing. Golfers, I said, you play golf, you go to your room and you do one round.

Once you do one round, always you will know your body and you know where it get tighter. And then you will gently work with that tightness to release that tightness. Yeah, you identify your weaknesses as a diagnostic tool with the happy body very quickly. Right.

And one thing that really also opened my eyes was doing the opposite of what I had been, what had been drilled into me over many years. And there's a lot of rethinking of this over the last five or 10 years since Olympic weightlifting has exploded in popularity. But I suppose one of the 10 commandments of lifting for a long time, at least in the United States, was squat to parallel. Don't go lower, keep your shin vertical. And I had some knee problems. I had a lot of leg tightness, a lot of hamstring issues, and I'm not a doctor. I don't play one on the internet. But once I started focusing on getting maximum mobility in the ankle, the knee, the hip, jutting the knees forward and getting my ass down to my

heels, once I started slowly progressing towards that, my knees have never felt better because I think in part, I have so much room. I have so much slack that is available to me. I guess the way you put it was, I'm blanking, reserve. I have so much more reserve now than I did before. You know,

when, so to imagine the, the angle that we become, you can look at runners and they will be all kind of different angles and tightnesses. So when you look at sprinters, the gait is the longest. So they are the most flexible, right? When you look at 400 meter, less flexible, and then one mile less flexible. Marathon runners would be the least flexible. So when they will squat, they will not even reach parallel level because the quadriceps will be very tight, right? The quadriceps quarters so if you want to really squat down and be really

down and set like you know so Jersey sitting all right just just to describe here so jerseys and socks perfect just ass to the ankles a body upright no discomfort whatsoever so yeah so i'm sitting and i can read the book here right so uh i'm sitting that i'm sitting that way but imagine that my quadricep is tight yeah that's the chinese people you know like they sit for thousands of years that way yeah and they don't have a problem with knees in japan they call that which is the shit squat. Also, this is the place where we were like seven months old or eight.

And we were that way. Every one of us. Right? So there's no limitations of hips believing that we are limited and so on. Nobody had. We all were that better in squatting than on standing. So when we stood up, it was just, oh, it was too hard. Yeah. When we were about nine months old, we went back to squatting. It was better to squat and to be there than actually stand. So think about

we were better in, in squatting than standing. Everybody that way. So we can be back, but come back to the knee. So when I sit like that and my quadricep is flexible, then you have patella here, right? And then you have another ligament here attaching to the bone on both the patella and the bone. It's touching right below his kneecap. Yeah. So if the quadriceps is tight,

then presses the patella down. And that is inviting for the meniscus problem, yeah? So if the quadriceps really is flexible, it never happens. See, I'm 62 years old, weightlifting for almost 50 years, never have any problems. All right. But when I tell people, they don't want to do what I do. They want to do their stuff and they debate with me that it should be parallel and this.

Are you crazy? So show me some kind of greatness and then I will follow it. But if you are talking bananas, then there's nothing for me to follow because half squat is not good enough. Yeah, this is simply, it's funny. Well, and also I should just point out that you're talking about athletes and everyday people. And those people listening might imagine, okay, everyday people, they're using super lightweights, they're doing this, that, and the other thing. But I've seen videos of another patient of yours, or I shouldn't say, well, in a way, your patients, your students. You showed me a video of a gentleman. I think he came to you as a war veteran who had a body brace on because he had so much back pain. I think he had some type of spinal issue

that he couldn't move at all. And you showed me a video of him doing an elevated stiff-legged deadlift. So he's standing on a platform with 315 pounds for I think six repetitions or something. And he's in his 50s or 60s. No, he's in 70s. 70s. It's fucking insane. And he's in his 50s or 60s. No, he's in 70s. 70s.

That's fucking insane. But that's the coaching, right? You know, when you coach the right way, you take 10 years. You did this podcast with somebody, Daniela told me about. Somebody talked about 10 years. Oh, it could have been quite a few people because a lot of them think in those terms. I mean, the people who are great. Oh, it was Coach Summers.

It was Christopher Summer who used to be the former national men's gymnastics team coach. So when I talk to you about the coach, about the 10 years, 10 years is just really good time. So when you have 10 years or 5, 10 years, you can really make a lifter, you can make a poet, you can make whoever you want, but you really need that time. So Craig was the one that... Craig, that's... Craig, yeah. So he was in Vietnam and grenade exploded near him.

And he was taken to the hospital and his disc shattered so they remove all the pieces and sanded the vertebrae and left them that way so four years after he is in a brace and he, a cane and cannot walk. So he found me in Frank's gym in North Hollywood. He asked me to train and Frank said, "'No, you're not going to train this guy.' So this guy is lawsuits, you know." Lawsuit, right, yeah.

Right away. Just waiting to have, especially with Jersey. Yeah, yeah. So I said, Frank, you have, especially with Jersey. Yeah. Yeah. So I said, Frank, you know, he's a good guy. Let me bring him here.

Talk to him. He just needs help. You know, he's not going to do anything, you know, bad to the gym. I said, okay,

bring him in. But he's really terrible. It was just like, yeah, it's okay. So, Craig, bring him in. But he's really terrible. It was just like, yeah, it's okay. So Craig came. I talked to Frank, Craig, so on. And Frank heard Craig and said, okay. So I started training him. He couldn't bend holding this stick.

He just like maybe five degrees bent and that's it. He just, like, maybe five degrees bent, and that's it. He was in pain. So at the waist, standing straight, he could only bend forward like five degrees, a few inches. Yeah, just pain all the time. He was four years in pain, chronic pain, constantly, without a disc between vertebras.

So I slowly, gradually, the same way, like with everybody, step by step, work with him, flexibility, flexibility, some movements. And after about two years, he could do stiff leg deadlift all the way down. So his flexibility improved, but the strength was not yet. So I started really working. Once the flexibility is done, your aim is strength. Once the strength is down, speed.

Yeah? So that's how the things should progress. So after about 10 years, I brought him to do 315 pounds stiff legs that showed you the video yeah and just so people understand this is a really low stiff leg deadlift this oh yeah this is not to the thighs touching the the feet yeah that's how long the bar to the with the bar 315 pounds this is the guy, you know, who was injured. His life completely changed, you know. He became better than ever, yeah? So every year, he asked me to come and do the video.

Now, because when we left, and when we left, so we are here. So I don't coach him. You moved from Southern California to Northern California. But he knows what to do. He does his training, and he keeps his 315 pounds. He's 72 or 73, still does his 315 pounds the way that I taught him. It's amazing. It's amazing to see it.

Very happy, confident, have a good life, and then he wouldn't, right? So it's fantastic. It's a great story. What would you say to someone who's saying they're training in a gym, they want to take this approach, but they feel impatient because they have people around them who are throwing a lot of heavy weight around and maybe they feel insecure about using light weights or working on flexibility what do you what do you say to that person well you're talking about trainer like or the person no no to to a uh not a coach but to to somebody who's they want to improve but this is very common in the u.s where people get impatient they want to do muscle ups tomorrow or or they want to do Olympic snatch with body weight tomorrow.

I don't know, but, you know, I am, you know, I'm like a wolf, you know, like I pee around and then make my space. So we trained in a gold gym. I had a weightlifting team. This is in Venice? In Venice, yeah. So we were there for about four years. I had a team before I moved my team to UCLA. And so people were like you said.

So I started throwing weights on the ground, like boom, boom, boom. So it would be kind of dangerous for others to come in. So it created my space. And I said, why are you throwing weights? So they said, well, you know, it's just preventive, you know? kind of dangerous for others to come in. So it created my space. And I said, why are you throwing weight? So he said, well, you know, it's just preventive, you know? So people don't come in, right?

But you have to learn to stand your way. You have to become like a vegetarian that you don't eat other food and nobody is going to change you. So you have to become the same way everywhere. You have to have your way. If you are the happy body, you are the happy body. You connect, focus completely on what you do and keep doing that. It doesn't matter what people think.

What really matters is are you getting better because of what you do? Are results there? Is the progress there? It's more important, more interesting to know that somebody doesn't like you or something, you don't have space. You always have space. So I'm never interested in knowing why I am fat. I'm more interested in how to get lean.

I'm not interested in how to get poor. I'm interested in how to get rich. So your focus should be always toward that positive thing that you want to. Somebody wrote a book, How Not to Write. Does it mean you know how to wrote a book, How Not to Write. Yeah. Does it mean you know how to write? It's funny, people. They think that if they know how we get fat,

they assume that we know how to be lean. Oh, it's a completely different story. Not the same. Not the same. So why do you waste your time on doing something what you don't like or the message and knowledge that you can get, they cannot use at all. Right? So you have to stand your ground.

And wherever you are, you have to be the happy body. You have to know that you are the happy body. What it means? It means eating this way, this way, that way, and exercising this way, that way. Wherever you are, it really doesn't matter. You go to the hotel, you pick up two bottles of water, you do the training. Yeah? You go to the gym, you do the training.

If people are pissed off a little bit, well, you keep training. So don't focus on them, whatever they are doing. Just keep doing your way and don't focus too much on people, whatever they are doing just keep doing your way and not don't focus on on too much on people whatever they so it's more important is that you do the training and and more important is that you are calm and not too angry because you know once you focus on that you become that and it's not a good energy really so you just be meditative with what you do and they will leave you alone right because nothing to do with you. If you're a vegetarian, I cannot do anything about you, really. But in the 80s, people would challenge you. They would try to convert

you back. That's how it was. You were a vegetarian, people didn't like it. Oh, come on, this and that. Today? No. They passed that. At least in California. At on, this and that. Yeah. Today, no. They passed that. At least in California. At least, maybe somewhere else. So just a quick question on, you mentioned anger and being relaxed. One of the things that's very different about training here, as opposed to, say, in a gym or with most coaches, is the very end of the workout or the session. So you bring people into a room, very comfortable room. You have them lay down, maybe put a light blanket on them.

You spray. What is it that you spray on them? Lavender oil. Lavender oil. And then you turn on classical music and you have them lay down for a few minutes until the end of a song. Why? What is the purpose and what are the different components?

So imagine that I am 20 years ago in the World Gym in Burbank and coaching in North Hollywood Gym and coaching Billy Blank that created Taibo. Thomas Griffithin, he was in Karate Kid 3 and other taekwondo guys, powerful guys. I put everybody on the ground, in the gym, at the finish,

five minutes, the music. They loved this. Toughest guys, the boxers and so on. They loved this five minutes. Why I came out with it because you know like i needed something to calm down people and in weightlifting we do the whole recovery system and the recovery system is sauna ice baths and all all that helps you to pacify and to recover for the next day. So I thought about what could be for use for people. And that was the time when we meditated.

We did TM and we looked for other forms of meditation and we were exploring a lot of music and effective music on people. And we liked the music and meditation and the music idea. So I collected 11 pieces of music that I thought that we could use as mantra for people to switch this sympathetic nervous system to PARA. And what also was the situation that people would go home and after the training, they were too excited and that they could pick up fights and not be nice to each other and kind.

But so I wanted to fix that. And the way to fix it, I couldn't send them to saunas because it was not there. So I came out with the meditation, but not really meditation because people like relaxation. So I call it relaxation in the book. And five minutes of music would be perfect, and five minutes people would put up with it.

So I found a piece of music that had profound effect on me, and it was like a poem that I can read thousand times, and I am never tired of it, and every time it gives me something. And the art is that way if it's really art powerful art it's forever it's it's um it's always different and forever i can read poem you know hundred times thousand times and i read it always anew, and always something happens to me. So with the same, that piece of music was-

What is the piece of music? It's a Thais meditation by Budapest Orchestra. So what meditation? Thais meditation. How do you spell that? Thais, like T-H-A-I-S. Okay. Thais, meditation. And so it's a mess in it. It's a really composer, I think from 1800s.

And he created that piece of music at that time. So it's not like it's something new. I never liked new age music because it would make me numb and I didn didn't feel anything and it's like nothing was happening one time i tried to use my own music for the meditation and jersey said no you use happy body music so um okay yeah if you're jersey's house it's jersey's way well you know it's not my way it's like it's tuned it's perfect actually this is Well, you know, it's not my way. It's like, it's tuned. It's perfected. It's the Mercedes way, you know? Actually, this is the best thing that I found. So, and you know, in a way,

in a way you should trust the master. You should trust, you know, somebody that lives for 50 years and is a poet and pick up that thing. Yeah. All right. You don't have to, but if you can come out with your five minutes, it's fine.

I'm okay with it. I would test it anyway. Yeah. But you know, the, the five minutes, the piece of music becomes, uh, becomes a mantra after a while. So just five minutes at the beginning, you, you can can open your eyes you are irritated and so on but after a month or two you get calmer and you relax faster and so that switch from sympathetic nervous system to para is quicker you calm down and two years, you hear this music and you already calm down.

It's like mantra. I don't even have to say my mantra. If I sit, I close my eyes, I'm almost there. It just happens. But at the beginning, was that I had to repeat my mantra 200 times to get even half a second gap of silence in my brain, right? So now I don't have to unless I do it. So this five minutes works the same way. So our chapter, why it becomes more and more powerful, it calms you down, and it's used for that purpose. So you build that association.

And if you have something important in life, you listen to it just before and you do it. Yeah. So it calms you down. You have exam or something, then you listen to that and you go to the exam. So you relax to the point that your memory is open because that's what happens. You need to open your memory, but you open your memory in the best way when you calm down. If you have any kind of anxiety, your test is not going to be good. Right.

So and the other thing is that your recovery process is kicking in. It means your digesting system is returning and you start recovering the body after training. So after a story about this, funny story is our happy body people are going to get married. And we go there and they chose to play this music when they walk out and then the music is played.

And there are other like 20 people with their happy body and everybody is looking around because they know the music. And they are so happy. You know, everything is just this happiness the music brings in, but also depth of that music and the meaning of that music is outstanding. I don't know how they feel about this. I like it. I think there's also a Pavlovian response where if you just start associating with relaxation, then you just have to hear a little bit and you're relaxed, just like you're talking about with the mantra as well. But yeah, it's a good use of music. So we could keep talking for hours and hours.

We've got birds, cats, dogs, rain, tea. We've got everything going on. And we could talk for hours and hours. I think this is probably a good place to put a temporary pause on this session and we'll do maybe a round two if people enjoy it, which I suspect they will. Jersey, where can people find more about the happy body and everything that you're up to? Is there a particular website that you'd suggest? Probably Amazon is the best. Amazon. The books are there, all the books on Amazon uh also on itunes but uh amazon uses now really great ebook

system that is fixed layout right now a book is fantastic for it and it was not like that you know seven years ago when we can you you needed really conversion and problems and so on. Now, they have their own app that outlines the whole thing, fix layout, and you have one on Kindle. And it's there. It's amazing. And it's beautiful. Wow. You know, I said, holy moly, that looks cool. So you would recommend starting with the happy body book.

There's a hardcover. Well, you know, okay, a little bit about the book. The book, the main book is the plan, is the goals and is the plan and is intelligence. And it has everything with strategies and intelligence built in. Okay, that's engineering right so then people need emotional emotional intelligence

they need something that would help them on the road they need something to build transitions from the one that runs marathon to the happy body or to sprinting.

And we need those transitions built up. And it's not going to be easy. It's not going to, difficult choices again. So if I am in front of two potatoes and one, and I know that one is enough for me, and two is too much, then I have to respond to that. I either have to respond to the fatalist that says, oh, come on, one potato is starving, eat two potatoes.

But the master says, well, but we calculated. One is enough, and you will be happy after because you will not get fat oh come on fat you know what only you live only once yeah so why not two maybe three is good that would be better so you have a constant this situations and then a day you can maybe have 100 different possibilities to make a choice and you can make as a fatalist or the master. All the master books are written to trick the fatalist really so when you come to the middle level when you have 50 fatalists and 50 master the dialogues in the book end up with the master tricking the fatalist and that makes the 51 master and 49 fatalist it means you will choose one potato right it will be difficult it will be

tough we know it's tough We know it's tough. You know, it's tough to become better in doesn't matter what is that. It's always difficult. That's why it's easy life because when you do, the life becomes easy because of it. So in every book there are 12 different dialogues that prepare you to different situations. The book doesn't end up on that. It also gets you to writing your own dialogues, writing your own ways. How would you write about, you know, potatoes and choices with 75% fatalist and 25% master

and then 50-50 and so on. So you explore your own mind your own attitude your own way of thinking and it helps you eventually to lean toward being a master once you are there then you achieve anything what you really want you can achieve the happy body really because you will be okay with eating on time but let's say at 3 o'clock. But if you're not okay, the fatalist will say, I'm not a monkey, I'm not going to eat at 3 or 2 and 1, what is it about that? I am a free man, I want to eat whenever I want.

That's the fatalist, right? So the master says, we have a plan here. What plan? I don't want any plan. Of course. So Plato gave us fantastic image. He said, if the chariot is the body and the horses are our emotions and the rider is our mind, so if the horses are dragging the rider against his will, danger is coming.

It's fantastic. You know, it tells you everything about, you know, whatever you want to achieve. Paying attention to our emotion, working with them is important because horses are great. They are just wild and they want their own way, right? Like my eating 10 apples or 20 apples. So I have great horses, but also I need that mind would control my horses. If I do that, that I go really great, yeah? Because great horses.

So don't punish the horses, yeah? Don't really do something to these horses or calm them down in a way that you would give them drugs. No. Use the horses, but turn them where you want to go. Correct. And then when you do that, you can achieve a lot because they are great horses. So you have other book of poetry, you have this three, and then there is one that we've written with Natalie, with Aniela recently. I got this. This is the book that is a collection of stories, because stories are important you know like um there's so many people here and they say you know you have this way of telling the right words to the right person in the right time over and over what is it you know and and i say nobody can say what is it and nobody can use it. There is no method for that.

So where is it? And it's in the story. Somehow the story works that way and the ambience where you are in the story is working. So it's opening a possibility to agree in the story with somebody who is tricking the fatalist and becoming the master. So it's a collection of the stories, but the stories are connected to the happy body and collections of lectures. I have lectures, like Triple Happiness is one of the lectures, yeah, inside. And then there is 12 poems from this book.

The whole reading is designed, the purpose is for people to read over and over. Because, you know, we live around people that they are not masters, the opposite of it. And we have sometimes masters around. So our purpose would be to find masters, find a way how to be around masters, how to be around people that are positive, how to read books that are positive, how to watch movies that are positive, how to watch movies that are positive, yeah?

But positive, always positive. And usually American movie ends on positive, which is good, it's fantastic. It's supposed to be that way because it gives you this feeling that at the end we're okay. It's important. So every dialogue ends up that way because this is a fantastic way of making the brain, the mind,

the way that will turn every situation, will find the strategy within every situation to be positive, to use it positively. All the, you know, when you read, you know, the whole introduction, you see that so many bad things happen, but every bad thing can turn into a good thing if you do it, because there is a way to make it happen that way. So there is no end of the world. So that's why I say the past doesn't exist. It's what exists.

It's now. What we do now counts. What is it that we do? It becomes past anyway, right? But once it becomes, more interesting is what now? What we are doing now? We are drinking tea. We are talking to some people that will listen to it.

That's what we are doing. But in one hour, it will be the past. But then it will be in that time, you have to be there and not here. You have to be in your time zone because only in the present you can change. You can get better. So when you do the training, you are doing the training. When you eat an apple, you eat an apple, right? So you are there.

When you listen to the music, you listen to the music. You are present. That's mindfulness. That's what exactly it is. And to really embrace yourself with everything that's possible in life, what is positive, is extremely important. That's people and books and whatever it is, but try to be around people who don't do three things. They are not sarcastic, they don't complain,

and they don't blame. They don't blame. Blame. The three killers of happiness. It's just get out of that. So can you say this one more time? Sarcasm, complaining, blaming. No sarcasm, no complaining, no blaming.

Yeah, if you can do that, and a lot of people that come here, they hang on on that. And once I turn them around, that they will stop doing this, they become so happy in life. Because they focus on that, what is really positive about their children about what they do at that moment and so you can always find that it's it's it's just you you you have to stop one thing complaining that trump is there right because you have so many people here they don't like trump i say i said listen he is the president. We will be the president. Find what's positive. There must be something positive and focus on that. Don't focus on negative stuff. Focus on positive. Where is it? And once you explore positive, good things,

then something happens. But it's very difficult, right? It's easy to read the book and be negative about the book it's not easy to read the book and talk good about the book yeah because you have to somehow have a craft of saying why the book is good yeah so so whatever is not good in life is easy for us whatever is good is difficult that what takes us and makes us better. So I think it's a skill, it's a practice, like we've talked about, and this has been extremely fun. So Jerzy, first and foremost, thanks for everything that you do. And I encourage you-

Thank you for being here. Of course. You made that place, you know, you for being here. Of course. You made that place, you know, you blessed the place. I hope that you will come and bless it again. I will be sure to come back and embarrass myself and get yelled at because I need that as my medicine. Naval, any parting thoughts or comments? I think you've got a lot from Jersey.

There's a lot of wisdom here. The only part that maybe we didn't cover that maybe something in the future is I know that no man is an island and Jersey's here because of three amazing women in his life. And that's probably what kept you from being an alcoholic

or a student martyr of some sort. So we'll have to cover that in the future. But his wife, Aniela, is every bit as amazing. I encourage you to research her and read about her in the Happy Body book also. I would say, even though it's Happy Body, Jersey gave me a second body,

which is how I describe it sometimes to people because my first body wasn't that great. I like the second one a lot better. And I'll keep improving it. Now that he said it takes 10 years and I have no one to blame but myself, then it gives me the inspiration to keep going so thanks jersey oh you're welcome second but i like second body because uh so i i see that first 50 years is first body but also it's the nature versus nurture so you have the nature use the body, you don't care, you just, the body

is fantastic, is restoring itself, is recovering itself and it's very, very forgiving. The next 50 years is nurture. It's time to be intelligent. It's time to be, to have goals. It's time to have plans. It's time for that. So if we start nurturing the body, we can easily go for another 50, right? And that's our second body. And then there is this gracefulness on the road that we really need to learn.

And once you get that gracefulness, then you can, uh, your journey can be pleasant. Your journey can be progressive and your journey can be joyful. And, you know, and you don't have to wait until you get, become the happy body. Like you go to a college and you complain all the time because you cannot have parties, you have to study, and it will be eight years before you're MD, and then you will be happy. Well, you'll not be happy.

Because once you become MD, you will be happy for a while, and then something else comes in. So it's very important that you are happy in that moment and then something else comes in and then it so it's very important that you are happy in that moment present moment present moment my biggest success is always like when i have a good time when i don't have a hangover after people you know i used to have hangovers of the people uh 20 years ago or 30 but they don't have a spiritual hangover yeah like hangover you know you don't know a- You mean like a spiritual hangover after you spent time with someone? Hangover, yeah, like hangover.

You don't know what happens to you, but when you talk to people, you don't have a good time, right? So I don't have these things anymore. I have a mindful connection to people and dinners with people that they are really good people too so um to have a dinner with friends and not to have hangover and have a good time i think this is the biggest

success you can have in your life because you know you can be rich and no friends, right? Or no true friends and no present moment. But, you know, when you go with four people into a restaurant and everyone is present, everybody enjoys the walk and sitting at the table and having tea or drink and dinner and is kind and nice to the waiter. And you start conversing about things and you care for things and so on. And then something happens to you because of the conversation, something positive happens. What more it could be in life, right?

Agreed. You're good. You got that. that checks the box uh well we we have a lot of other things that we we could cover that we should cover at some point i agree on aniela who uh is just an incredible woman and i remember my three women who can still climb a tree that i'd be terrified to climb to get a kite out or a ball out or a Frisbee out and has that incredible physicality that is nurture at this point that she can show to your daughter. And it's just, it's incredible all around.

And what I'd like to end on here is, A, as everybody knows who's listened to this podcast a lot, you can find show notes, links to the different Happy Body books, and much more. Maybe some videos of Jersey at 4hourworkweek.com forward slash podcast for this episode and every other episode. If you want to use the new shorter URL, you could try tim.blog forward slash podcast, and that'll take you to the same place. And I think we can put a pin in it with the quote that Naval brought up from Jersey. Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life. So Jersey, thank you so much for taking the time.

Thank you. It was fun. Thanks, Naval. And to everybody listening, until next time, thank you. Work smart, train smart, and play often. Friday 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 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 4hourworkweek.com. That's 4hourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront. Wealthfront is the future of financial advice. They've become incredibly popular among my friends in Silicon Valley and across the country because they provide the same high-end financial

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so they can deliver all of this sophisticated financial advice and these services at a fraction of the cost of a traditional financial advisor. So at the very least, go to wealthfront.com forward slash Tim and take their free risk assessment survey. It only takes a couple of minutes and Wealthfront will recommend a personalized portfolio of investments. In other words, they'll tell you exactly where they would put your money. So even if you don't use their service, you have a huge leg up and you have additional information for making good decisions. They use investment theory to automate good financial behavior and decisions that people typically don't make, but should. So go to wealthfront.com forward slash Tim to get your

first 15K managed for free, or just to get more details, check it out wealthfront.com forward slash Tim to get your first 15K managed for free, or just to get more details. Check it out, wealthfront.com forward slash Tim. This episode is brought to you by Audible, which I've used for many, many years. I absolutely love audiobooks, and they're one of my favorite ways to pass the time when I travel. I'm on the road all the time, and Audible allows me to consume many more books than I possibly could otherwise. I have two audiobooks to recommend right off the bat. The first is perhaps my favorite audiobook of all time and it's the only audiobook I've wanted to listen to twice in a row. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. It's amazing and you will thank me. There are a few different versions. I like the version that Neil narrates himself. One of the most soothing voices of all

time. The second book is Vagabonding by Rolf Potts, P-O-T-T-S, which had a huge impact on my life and formed the basis for a lot of what would later become the four-hour workweek. So go to audible.com forward slash Tim and you can choose one of these two books or any of many, many other options. That could be books, magazines, and much more. As a listener of The Tim Ferriss Show, you can also access a free 30-day trial. Just go to audible.com forward slash Tim. You can't make more time, but you can make the most of it. So turn your travel or your commute into something more with a free trial at Audible.

Go to audible.com forward slash Tim to start now and get your free 30-day trial.