The Tim Ferriss Show - Ep 55: The Science of Strength and Simplicity with Pavel Tsatsouline

Episode Date: January 15, 2015

This episode was a real treat. It was one of the most enlightening and lucid conversations about physical training I've ever had. Show notes and links from this episode can be found here. Pavel Tsatsouline is Chairman of StrongFirst, Inc. and was born in Minsk, USSR, which is now part of Belarus. In the 1980s, he was a physical-training instructor for Spetnaz, the elite Soviet special-forces units. Pavel is now a subject matter expert to the US Marine Corps, the US Secret Service, and the US Navy SEALs, and he is widely credited with introduced the now ubiquitous kettlebell to the United States. Over the last several years, Pavel has become a friend, and his input was critical to the success (and experiments) of The 4-Hour Body. Whether you've heard of him or not, prepare to have your mind blown, and I don't say that lightly :) All episodes and show notes can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast***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.

Why don't you, Paul, if you don't mind, just tell me about what you had for breakfast this morning as a soundcheck. Soundcheck, breakfast, coffee. Okay. Optimal, minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question? Now would have seemed the perfect time. What if I could be Ali?

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and tools and resources that you can use. And this episode was a real treat. I had so much fun with this. It was easily one of the most enlightening and lucid conversations about physical training I've ever had. And we covered everything, meaning strength, flexibility, endurance, and beyond. And my guest is none other than Pavel Tatsulin. And yes, that is how you say it. He is chairman of Strong First Inc. and was born in Minsk, not Minsk, Minsk. I always have so much trouble saying that. Not that I say it that much. USSR, former USSR, which is now part of Belarus. In the 1980s, he was a physical training instructor for Spetnaz. That's also another one I want to mispronounce always. It's not Spetsnaz, it's Spetnaz, the elite Soviet special

forces units. Pavel is now a subject matter expert to the U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Secret Service, and the U.S. Navy SEALs. And he is also, perhaps you know this or not, he is widely credited with introducing the kettlebell to the United States. The ubiquitous kettlebell, which is called kettleball by almost everyone. Maybe that should be changed, make things easier. In any case, over the last several years, Pavel has become a friend of mine. I'm honored to call him a friend and his input was critical to the success and many of the experiments of the four hour body. Whether you have heard of him or not, stick with this interview, prepared to have your mind blown. And I really don't say that lightly. You're going to enjoy

this and you will have a lot to take notes on. And there will of course be tons in the show notes at fourhourworkweek.com forward slash podcast. But without further ado, here we go. Please meet Pavel Tatsulin. Pavel, welcome to the show. Thank you, Tim. I'm so thrilled to have you. And I thought we would start with the answer to a question that I ask all of my guests, which is, how do you pronounce your name properly? Pavel Tzatzoulan. Tzatzoulan. That's right. And you'd mentioned before we came on what you tell people at Starbucks if you order coffee. And what is that?

It just has to be Pablo. Coffee for Pablo. There's no other way. And I have really admired your work and expertise and also just your method of teaching, quite frankly, for so many years. And I was having trouble piecing together how we first came in contact. Of course, I was well aware of your work prior to us having any direct contact. But do you recall how we came to know each other? Yes, I do, Tim.

As you, I'm a big fan of simplicity in my life and different aspects of my life. And four-hour work week really resonated with me. And at that point, I remember writing an article. And I entitled that article, Ferris Bueller's Day at the Gym. And I sent you that article and submitted it for your blog. Oh, that's right. That's right. Okay. And that really set a cascade of events in motion.

And I became very, very fascinated. I mean, of course, like a lot of people, I think I was initially exposed to you as the strength trainer who used the word comrade a lot and really hadn't delved into a lot of the details of your strength training specifically, which we'll of course get into. And I guess there are two questions I'd love to ask, but the first is, what do people consider you, the people who know you well, what do they consider you world-class at? Tim, I have been able to take very complex subjects, take them apart, and put them back together in a manner that's very simple, that can be delivered to regular people

without losing the essence of the systems. So I'm talking about specifically serious strength training. I'm talking about both programming and I'm talking about what I would refer to as the body language of strength. And could you explain for people who are perhaps not inductees into the world of strength training yet, what do you mean by programming? Programming, planning your training. You go from

A to B. You want to add 50 pounds to your deadlift. This is what you do. And unfortunately, the world of programming is very confused. Well, the whole world of fitness is very confused. And again, what I attempt to do is to bring principle-based training. So when you understand the principles, applications are many. Applications are easy. Right. And I think that's where I feel such a degree of kinship with what you try to do with these subjects. Because of course, whether I succeed or fail, and sometimes I do both, it's very much what I try to do with the subjects that I tend to obsess on. And for those who aren't familiar with your background, you've worked with many different types of elite athletes and also special forces and so on. Would you mind just giving a little bit of background on your bona fides, so to speak, some of your background as it relates to training? Sure, Tim. I used to be a PT training instructor,

physical training instructor for SPETS NAS, the Soviet Special Forces, and my education is in sports science. And I did, over the years, train a number of high-end units in the West. I've been a subject matter to the U.S. Marine Corps, to the U.S. Secret Service, to U.S. Navy SEALs and others. And my methods are used officially by some very high-end military and counterterrorist units in two countries that are main allies of the United States. What I do, pardon me? Oh, I'm sorry. No, I was just, my brain erupted with something nonsensical. Please continue.

So what I do is I take methods that perform very well in very rugged environments, and I take these methods and I apply it to other environments. So if somebody decides, I just want to change my life, I want to get stronger, I want to have a better game of tennis, I want to succeed in a given sport, I'm sure at this point, thousands of photographs that are sent to you by deployed troops overseas or people in special forces of their kettlebells or their rigged gyms with sort of makeshift pull-up bars and whatnot. What is it that you have to keep in mind when you're designing or why have your methods had such appeal for elite military? What are the things that you've considered perhaps that other people have not for those types of trainees? Well, Tim Plutarch, who said thousands of years

ago that the training of a soldier and the training of an athlete is radically different. That an athlete has the luxury of a pampered lifestyle and the soldier doesn't. So this is pretty much the difference. So what you want to do is you want to build the training that becomes, in the words of one of my favorite authors, Nassim Taleb, anti-fragile. It's a type of training that thrives on a very harsh environment that's really robust in these different environments.

And that's pretty much the difference. How do we do that? We have to strip all the non-essentials down, pretty much what you do in your work with business, uh, with business, with lifestyle and so on. And once we get down to the things that really matter and we apply them, then, uh, everything suddenly becomes very simple. Have you spent any time with, uh, Nassim? No, I have not. I have not. I'm looking forward to it. I should, I should introduce you guys at some point. He's, he's exactly what you see is what you get if you've read his books. And, uh, I think you guys at some point. He's exactly what you see is what you get if you've read his books. And I think you guys would really hit it off. What you just said brought to mind

a conversation that I had with a friend of mine who was formerly Navy SEAL, and now he's doing things that he can't tell me about. Not that he could tell me much about what he did before, but he, and actually not to be named, but now that, now that I think of it, you introduced us. Let's call him Victor. Victor. Yes. Victor, amazing guy. And Victor is, is the most efficient trash compactor I've ever seen in my life. He can eat anything and make fuel out of it. And he was criticizing in a very good natured way, some of his colleagues, because he said, well, you know, some of the guys that I work with out in the field, you know, some of them are the bodybuilder types and they get really grumpy if they can't have their protein shake every two or three hours. He said, I view it as a real competitive and practical advantage that I can consume anything and then go for a 30, 40, 50 mile run.

Well, and Victor, for his strength also, that gentleman is exceptional, both in his strength and his endurance. But for his strength, he relies on the nervous system, not so much in the muscle tip. And again, that's what's so different. You can, if you look at a typical person and how do you get them stronger? Let's say that you have a four cylinder engine. And what the person would do is they would make that

six cylinder engine. But before you're firing in two, now you're firing in three. But if instead what you do is you learn to fire in all four. So there are ways of training your nervous system to engage your capacity so much more fully. And if you look at high-level performers at light body weight in some fields, let's say a very high-level martial artist, somebody very skinny breaking a stack of boards, or very skinny guy like Lamar Gant,

deadlifting five times his body weight. So this is so much about the concentration of mental force. And for your listeners, I could give a very simple example how you can do that in your gym. Let's say that you perform, try it for the simplest exercise possible. Try it for the dumbbell curl or barbell curl, because I know your sissies out there, you'll do that. And so let's say that you're going through your curls and things are suddenly starting to get tougher. So when they suddenly start to get tougher, I want you to just crush the dumbbell or the barbell or the kettlebell, whatever it is that you're curling, just white knuckle pressure. And what you will see is you're definitely going to be able to get several more repetitions

out. I'm going to give you two more techniques in addition. Once you have practiced that, then on the next set, in addition to crushing the bar and the way up, also contract your glutes as tight as possible. Like somebody's going to kick you in the butt very, very tight. So you just like crunch a walnut. And at the same time, tighten your abs as if somebody's going to kick you, which, you know, somebody might.

So if you do that, if you do these three things, if you contract your glutes, contract your abs, contract your grip, everything that you do, absolutely everything is going to be greatly amplified. And this is just a small example of the skills of strength that I do teach. And we're going to dig really deeply into this because I have personally reached a point where I want to return to the training of an athlete who's trying to optimize relative strength as opposed to just packing on slabs and pounds of muscle, which quite frankly, just my frame and my joints and my entire system is finding aggravating to sustain just the full-time eating.

Well, the full-time eating, Tim, that's what gets you. Oh, my God, it's the worst. Especially as someone who has, depending on how you look at it, like the most acute form of conditioned like body dysmorphia or orthorexia possible through a decade of wrestling. It's just my eating habits are really astonishing. Sort of like a German shepherd who's broken into the pantry and eating sticks of butter on more than a few occasions.

But the question I wanted to ask you next is, what are the biggest misconceptions that people have about Pavel Tatsulin? And I'm training myself to say Tatsulin because I've heard everyone say Tatsulin. So I'm trying to correct that. But what are the biggest misconceptions that people have about you? Well, Tim, they call me the kettlebell guy. They call me the father of the kettlebell, which I appreciate very much. I did introduce together with my business partner, I did introduce the kettlebell to the West. And right now the kettlebell has become a mainstream but what i'm really all about is about the principles the underlining principles of strength training the underlining principles of power generation and it doesn't really matter what modality you use whether you

use the kettlebell the barbell your body weight whether you're arm wrestling fighting lifting rocks it really doesn't matter so I am not about the kettlebell. I am about the principles that make it strong. What I have done is I have reverse engineered the way the strongest people move naturally. And I have brought it to the people. I've shown to people how to move in this manner and how to shave off years and if not decades of training to progress to a much higher level. You've worked with some incredible strength athletes. Would you mind mentioning some of them?

I mean, some of them you've co-authored books with, but who are some of the strength athletes or strength trainers that you've collaborated with? Andy Bolton. He's the first person to deadlift over 1000 pounds, he's an amazing athlete, he's a very very smart trainer, so Andy Bolton and I we have written a book together called the Deadlift Dynamite

and the reason Andy and I have written this project together is again Andy's a very smart trainer and his particular style of deadlift looks exactly like the kettlebell swing that I teach. So it's, again, that fit of the body language. I have written a book called Easy Strength with Dan John.

Dan John is a strength coach extraordinaire. You would really love interviewing Dan on the show because… He's a beast. Dan is, and he's so… again, he just gets past the fluff. He gets to the things that matter. And Dan does not try to impress you. Dan tries to guess the results. So Dan and I, in collaboration with Dan over the years, we have taught each other a lot.

And our views and strengths are very similar, even though they are colored in some way. So that's why we have written this book called The Easy Strengths. And so Easy Strengths was about making yourself strong for your sport, not making, lifting your priority. That's what easy strength is about. And just since you brought it up, what are some of the things that you've, what would be an example or examples of things you've learned from Dan? Dan has a terrific concept of the quadrants, the four quadrants. On one grid, you're going to see the level of development. On the other one, you're going to see the level of development the level on the other one you're

going to see the level of specialization it's really quite hard to explain that over over audio but if you look up type in dan john and quadrants that's a terrific concept so what that allows you to do is it allows you to place yourself today in the particular quadrant according to your status according to your goals and select the correct type of training for yourself that alone is going to save years of preparation for you so that's just one of the many things Dan and I have exchanged these little tactical tidbits and details over the years. And I highly recommend Dan John's work to anybody, anybody who's an athlete or anybody who thinks of himself or herself as an athlete.

And I'd love to, I want to personally give a few examples of just how quickly or how significantly you can shave off what people assume is required to make massive gains. You introduced me to Barry Ross in Los Angeles and that became the effortless superhuman chapter in the four-hour body. And I was able to put, I would have to say, it must have been between 100 and 150 pounds on my deadlift in less than three months.

I mean, it was just crazy. And particularly when you consider the inputs or the total amount of time under tension and actual lifting frequency and time. It really, I've seen, just given that we are cut from the same cloth and that we try to distill very complex things and, and use 80, 20 analysis and so on. I've seen a lot of disproportionate outputs for inputs, but it really just, it really blew me away. And the,

the testing of assumptions where in that particular case, it's a deadlift based protocol. That's using what many people would consider the weakest range of motion. So from the floor up to the knees effectively, uh, really impressed me. And then to, to highlight your, uh, a couple of the points you made earlier, the, the crushing with the grip and the, the abs and the glutes. I recall, uh, when I did, uh, uh, RKC one and RKC two for those people not familiar, the Russian kettlebell certification one and two, which was a tremendously positive experience for me.

Thank you, Tim. And encountering Max Plank, if I'm getting – that is his last name, right? Am I getting that right? Is that Max, Big Max? He was – I believe that's the fellow whose name is coming to mind, but there were a few people, yourself included, who I did not pass all of the tests for RKC2 the first time around. And one of them, if I'm remembering correctly, was cleaning and pressing a kettlebell that's roughly half your body weight. And, uh, I, I, I, I was, I guess I ultimately made three attempts and I failed on the first two attempts. And with a few minor corrections, just as moving my weight slightly back towards the heels, cleaning, uh, with my elbow closer to basically dropping my

elbow a little bit, uh, lower, and then really focusing on the grip, I was able to press it. And the third attempt felt easy. And it was just astonishing. Also, some of the demonstrations that you've done in front of trainees where you've taken people out of the crowd and said, all right, who's somebody who would consider their, and I'm paraphrasing here, but your maximum press X number of kilos, and then you'd bring them up and in front of everyone within five minutes or so. You'd increase their press by whatever it might be, five kilos or 10 kilos. You once mentioned to me in a casual conversation, I called you for some type of training advice, or it might've been via email. And correct me if I'm wrong, but you said, when in doubt,

train your grip and your core. Could that right? Could you elaborate on that? Because I think it's not advice that many people have received. Well, Tim, there is such a thing as called irradiation. So the phenomenon of irradiation, what it really means is if you contract a muscle, the tension from that muscle is going to spill over to the neighborhood muscles. So for your listeners, I'd like to try this. Make a fist. You're probably going to feel tension in your forearm.

Now make a tight fist. You're going to feel tension in your biceps, triceps. Now make a white knuckle fist. You're going to find that tension is going to spread into your shoulder, your lat, your back, and so on. Okay, folks, you may relax now. And the same thing happens. So certain areas of the body have this great overflow of tension. So the gripping muscles are amongst them.

Why? In part because they have such a great representation in your nervous system, in your brain. And as for the abs and as for the glutes that has a lot to do with creating your intra-abdominal pressure so what does this mean exactly visualize your muscles as speakers and visualize your brain as the gadget that plays the music whatever it is these days iPad iPhone whatever and record player doesn't matter and the amount of your pressure the pressure in your abdomen, the intra-abdominal pressure, that's the amplifier.

That's the volume control. So by increasing the pressure in your abdomen, it's like you're turning up the volume and vice versa. So when you're trying to stretch with increasing your flexibility, if you see somebody, they're trying to do a split and you see it's uh the person is creating high intra-abdominal pressure and that just increases the tension of the muscle instead what you need to do you need to completely release and let go and bring it down so for strength we do the opposite we have special techniques where you increase that pressure and maximize your power.

So those are just a couple of the different ways we can increase your strength. And that's what you've seen in my certification. FYI, I am no longer with that organization, so my company today is called Strong First. And SFG certification, that's in curriculum that you have learned by then.

And, uh, the, um, just to, to touch on two points, and then we're going to, uh, jump into more training and ask about how you would rank certain aspects of what people would traditionally consider perhaps fitness. Uh, the, what would be a good, what would you, what would you recommend as good methods for developing the grip and core or abdomen for those people listening if they wanted to take a simple protocol and perhaps experiment for the next few weeks? Is there any basic approach that you might suggest for those two things sure it can be done in conjunction with a full body training regimen that uses let's say kettle bells climbing ropes and so on but if it is not then what i recommend that you do is you get some

grippers so the company is called iron mind iron mind.com and they carry hand grippers. So the company is called iron mind, iron mind.com. And they carry hand grippers. One thing you need to understand is these are not those little sissy plastic grippers you get at a, you get at a store. These are heavy duty grippers. They go up to 365 pounds, which a couple of people in the world have done that. And they also do have, they also do have resources on how to do that. But even without reading how, I can tell you how to train. So get yourself a couple of GERPRs, use their chart, their recommendations that Iron Mind offers, and start training them in the manner that I refer to as Greece the groove. Greece the groove is a highly simplified training methodology that's been derived from Soviet weightlifting methodology. So in a nutshell, this is what the groove. Grease the groove is a highly simplified training methodology that's been derived from Soviet weightlifting methodology.

So in a nutshell, this is what you do. Throughout the day, every day, whenever you feel fully recovered, so you have to have at least 15 minutes of rest between sets, maybe 30, maybe even more, is you're going to do a set, and you're only going to do about half the repetitions that you're capable of. So for example, you picked up a particular gripper, you start squeezing it, and you probably could do it 10 times, but you only do five and you put it down. Let's say

you later on pick up a gripper that's a little heavier. Maybe you could do three reps with it, but you do only one. And in this particular manner, you accumulate reps, and you keep going and going and going. And everybody tells you that's impossible to get strong in this particular manner. Yet science and experience shows that this makes you strong. This makes you strong fast. This makes you strong in a safe manner. And you can apply a safe manner. And you can apply this particular methodology, again, I call it Girish Diguru,

to any strength exercise or any strength endurance exercise. Just to give you an example of its effectiveness, my father-in-law, former Marine, at the age of 64, started following this routine. He was able to do about 10 pull-ups at that point. In several months, he was up to 20 when he tested. And he could not do that many as a young jarhead. So you young bucks out there, you can definitely get this done. So this is how you guys are going to train your grip with these grippers.

Carry it with you throughout the day. You're not going to get sweaty. Just whenever you feel like it, just take it out and squeeze. As for training your abdomen, there are many different methods of training the abdomen, but you have to abide by the following rules. You have to keep the repetitions to five and under, no more than five reps. Anything more than five reps is bodybuilding. And you need to make a focus on tension, make a on contraction as opposed to on reps and fatigue just to give you an example of the plank you know the plank is a kind of a

fashionable exercise in the core training circles and by the way we don't use the word core that's thrown first why don't we use the word core because well because people who use the word core they do things we don't like we don't like at all so we just say we just say midsection and uh so the plank so traditionally they would put you in the plank and you're supposed to stay in this plank for a couple minutes and what's happening is you see this poor person who cannot even assume the proper posture to start with and then as fatigue sets in uh other muscles, wrong muscles start kicking in. The back starts arching. The butt starts shooting up.

And what you're doing is what Greg Cook calls putting fitness on top of dysfunction. And what we do instead is if we do a plank, we call it the hard style plank, we would do a plank for no longer than 10 seconds. And when you do the plank, you try to contract everything, absolutely everything. When I showed that… Everything, the shins, your forearms, your neck, everything. Everything but your neck and face. Everything below your neck, you're going to contract.

It's not for folks with high blood pressure, heart condition, and that's true for pretty much any type of training. But for everybody else, it's an extremely powerful tool. So you get down on a plank. You make fists, okay? You contract your abs. You contract your glutes. You contract your entire body. You pretend that somebody is walking in a walk-by and kick you in the ribs, which, again, somebody might, at least at my course. And Andy Bolton and other top powerlifters who have taught this technique,

they swear by this because this is the abdominal training for strength. This is not just some nonsense that you do cranking out the reps. So to sum up your abdominal training, find whatever abdominal exercises that you like. It can be the plank. It can be some kind of a sit-up. It can be something from your book the for our body it can be something from my book the heart style labs it can be something else that's not important as long as it's a good exercise that's been recognized that it does work

and three times a week do three to five sets of three to five reps. Okay, folks, just remember this. Three to five sets of three to five reps. Focus on contraction. Don't focus on fatigue. Don't focus on the reps. And I promise if you do these two things for several months, you work your grip in this matter. You work your abs in this matter. Everything that you do today is going to be stronger. I don't care what it is. It's a bigger deadlift. It's a tennis serve. It makes no difference. You're going to be stronger. And in the case of the, the ab, let's just the, the, the midsection and we're working with the plank. If people decided they were going to keep it simple just so they can remember it and do three sets of three reps,

three times a week. Let's just say Monday. Let's do just three sets of 10 seconds, three sets of 10 seconds, 10 seconds, three times a week. Yes. And try to contract everything below your neck. Got it. And, um, I just, as a, as further exhibit exhibit a, uh, I've always had, and I'd be curious to dissect this just for a second, but I've always had difficulty with pull-ups. I have a relatively strong pull from, say, the floor in large part thanks to wrestling and other types of strength training, but also the Barry Ross protocol. When it comes to pulling myself up to a bar though, I can use weight for low repetitions, but I've never been able to do higher repetitions very well. And I did this greasing the groove walking around San Francisco for a few weeks where anytime I passed construction scaffolding, I would jump up. And there are enough crazy people in San Francisco, fortunately,

or unfortunately that it didn't really raise any eyebrows. They're like, Oh, is this some crazy guy doing pull-ups with a backpack, whatever. And I would do, uh, two or three pull-ups and then I'd just continue on my way. And it was, it was astonishing. Uh, I, I didn't really test my max, uh, repetitions, but how, how much my velocity, I guess the equivalent of bar speed, increased over that period of time. I mean, it really became much, much more explosive. It was just astonishing. But for people who have perhaps trouble with higher repetition pull-ups, how would you

troubleshoot that? Well, Tim, I guess, first guess first of all depends on how repetitions mean if it's if your goal is 20 or 25 strict pull-ups yeah let's let's use that then yes that's one thing because if you go beyond that and in russia in russia they even have specialized competitions where they do strict pull-ups for some crazy insane reps, then training becomes so weird and so state-of-the-art that you better not even bother. But most people don't need to do that. So if you want to be able to do 20 or 25 pull-ups,

you can achieve that level purely by training your strength, which means that you never even have to do more than five reps in training. And just whenever you go out and test, then you're going to get those reps. Here's something here as a note about strength endurance. The more resistance that you're overcoming in your endurance effort, the more strength helps. So what does that mean? It means that if you're strong, that is, let's say you have a good deadlift, that's going to help you carry beer kegs to the second floor. But on the other hand, it's not necessarily going to help you hammering a nail all day, if that makes any sense, because hammer is light, beer kegs are heavy. So when you're doing a 25 repetition effort, the weight is significant.

It's still a significant percentage of your one rep max, so that can be bumped up purely just by getting stronger. So that would be my recommendation. For people who have a hard time doing pull-ups to start with, I would recommend start by learning to get tight through their abs. That's very important. There was an article a couple of years ago saying that women cannot do pull-ups, which is, of course, absolute nonsense. In Strong First organization, we have some ladies who can do, you know, we have a lady in Boston, Amanda Perry, who can do strict dead hang, 14 pull-ups, neck to the bar. So the way we do pull-ups is no kipping, no swinging,

pause on the bottom, and you have to touch your neck to the bar. So she can do 14, for example. So she's a much better man than most women, and that's the way. Just for those people who have not tried this, having gone through some of this training with if you have just done if the difference between doing a strict pull up or what you envision to be a strict pull up where you kind of throw your chin up above the bar height versus pulling in to touch your neck slowly to the bar is so different as to, it's not a difference in degree, it's sort of a difference in species. But anyway, I challenge everyone to try that. It's really

challenging. Well, Tim, for people who have a hard time just to get started in pull-ups, and again, that's true for some ladies, many ladies, that's true for a number of gentlemen as well. A lot of the problem is they're unable to contract their abdominals strong enough. They're unable to even assume the strong posture. Remember I told you earlier that I reverse engineer what the strong people do naturally. So if you watch a gymnast perform any kind of maneuvers on the rings, let's say, you will see something called the hollow position. So what's the hollow position? The hollow position is the body is like your tail is tucked in and your body kind of forms a, it's like a dish. Your body looks like a dish pretty much. So if you want to learn to do pull-ups, first you need to master the hollow position.

It's very easy for you to type in, you type it into your search engine, the hollow position, find a picture, see what it looks like, and just practice this hollow position, this hollow rock. Listen, the exercise is called the hollow rock. I explained it in my book, Hard Style Abs, but I'm sure you can find it anywhere else. And so you practice this hollow rock, and this hollow rock is going to not only strengthen your abs, but it's also going to teach you how to acquire that position. And then after that, you can start working with assisted reps, and that's a very big difference. We're not talking about negatives. We're not talking about forced reps.

We're talking about assistance reps, assisted reps. So what's the difference? The difference is an assisted rep feels like a moderately challenging rep that you do on your own. So your training partner or your trainer is going to push you in your mid-back and enable you to do that with some degree of difficulty, but definitely not make you struggle. And when they've done a study on young gymnasts years ago in the Soviet Union, and they used this type of methodology, they called it artificial controlling environment, where the partner allows you to do a perfect repetition, but in a way that doesn't really kill you, that doesn't make you struggle. They found that the speed with which they progressed was absolutely remarkable.

So practice on your hollow rock. Don't forget your grip. And then start three times a week with the help of your training partner. Do, let's say, three to five sets of three to five reps of assisted pull-ups. And I just want to reiterate again that low reps are key, guys. If you want to be strong, you need to keep your reps at five and under. And at five reps or under, is what you're really working on, and I'll get out of my depth and into yours pretty quickly, but the neural pathways and the recruitment of motor neurons

and firing capabilities and so on? Pretty much. You're going to have a high level of neural adaptations, and you're also going to build some muscle as well. So you're going to build the high-threshold motor units as well, but it's not a bodybuilding protocol. You'll build some muscle, but it's not really the end goal itself. So you are trying to avoid the fatigue you're trying to avoid the burn because whenever you start experiencing the burn that's from something called the hydrogen ions that leads to a whole lot of problems for you so one of the problems is it interferes with the command that your brain

sends to the muscle to contract. And another problem that it creates, these hydrogen ions literally are destructive. So if you leave them around the muscle for too long, they really start destroying your muscle. So just keep those reps under and five, three to five. Don't worry about getting bulky. You're not going to get bulky. It's not going to happen. And approach your training as a practice. So this is another very important point, Tim. This is a super important point. No, I'm glad you're bringing this up.

I hate the word workout. The word workout does not exist in the Russian language. We talk about a training session or we talk about a lesson. We never talk about a workout. Just think of what does the word working out, what do you envision? Sweating and grunting. Let's see how much I can punish myself and drain myself.

So the goal is not to get stronger. The goal is just to get worn out. And there are simpler ways of doing that. Run up the mountain. The idea here is practice. Strength is a skill and as such, it must be practiced. And if you approach it in this manner, not only you're going to get stronger so much faster, but you're going to truly enjoy your training process. Training should be something that should be enjoyed.

No, this rings so true to me. And it was really a revelation just coming from the masochistic world of the few sports that I practiced. And I certainly did not get to a world-class level, but competed on a national level in a few different sports. And the mind shift from depleting your reservoir or reserves as much as possible to identifying the skills and practicing them, even if you feel better at the end of a workout than at the beginning, it was really a huge shift for me in a few places, certainly in strength training. I think that Barry Ross's protocol was eye-opening in so much as, just like you mentioned, put 100, I think it was around 120, this is all detailed in the 4-Hour Body, so I'm losing the specifics, but about 120 pounds on my max deadlift through the full range of motion,

not just the range in which we were practicing, in a short period of time and gained fewer than 10 pounds of additional muscle. And you probably enjoyed your training, too. Loved it. It was just amazing. I mean, it felt on fire. I mean, partially because you're blowing a foghorn into your nervous system's ear when you do it. But the other area, and I think this is such a fantastic principle that applies to so many different areas, was in the world of swimming.

And some people might recall, if they followed my stuff for a while, that I was not able to swim a lap in a proper pool until I was in my 30s. to looking at total immersion, where they really focus on the skill of deconstructing the biomechanics of swimming, challenging the assumptions of how swimming is taught. And it became this really joyful, wonderful experience. And I was able to go from basically zero laps to sort of 20 laps per practice in less than 10 days. So it's, an important shift, and I'm glad you brought it up, which kind of leads me to the next question, and it's about prioritization. So when people think of fitness, particularly non-athletes, I think that there tends to be a very scattershot approach, and there's a paradox of choice challenge that they have where they're fed a lot of recommendations from many different people and they have strength. Let's just talk this strength, not necessarily muscle gain, but just getting stronger. They have hypertrophy. It's increasing their muscular size for lack of a

better description, endurance, flexibility. How would you rank these in order of priority and why? Tim, as long as the person has the required mobility and symmetry, the priority is always in health. The priority is always strength. Strength has to be first. So the first step that you do is you assess your mobility. You find specialists who can do that. FMS would be a recommendation of mine. Greg Cook's FMS. Functional Movement Screen. Functional Movement Screen is going to find out how mobile you are and also how symmetrical you are.

So as long as that is dialed in, that is in place, you have to get strong. And strength is the mother quality of all physical qualities. And that's not a statement by me. That's a statement by Professor Matveyev, the father of periodization, one of the greatest sports scientists ever. And greater strength increases your performance in absolutely everything. So you can see, of course, okay, of course, yeah, being stronger is going to help you in, let's say, punching somebody harder or lifting something. But how is that going to help me if I'm, let's say, a triathlete? How is that going to help me if I'm a marathon runner? It is going to help

you in several different ways. One is the perceived level of exertion is going to go down. Several years ago, Norwegians did a very interesting study where they put elite endurance athletes, some were bicyclists, some were runners, on a pure strength regimen. That's four sets of four reps of heavy squats. It's about as pure strength as it gets. And in the end of the study, not surprisingly, all these guys were stronger, they could jump higher and so on, but they were not impressed with that. That didn't matter to them. What did impress them is they ran faster. Their times, their race times went down

because strength just makes, enables everything else. If you're trying to let's say lose weight being stronger is going to help you do that because you're going to have uh you're going to have a bigger furnace you're going to train yourself much harder and the exercises that are fat loss exercises so it really doesn't matter what it is that you're trying to achieve strength is the number one attribute you need to address. And that's why my company is called Strong First. You know, I love that you – one of the things that I love about you, Pavel, is that you say what you mean and mean what you say. And I just – there's a degree of clarity that I envy. And I might include it for people, but when we did our sound check, I asked you to give me an answer so we could test the audio, what you had for breakfast.

And what was your answer? Coffee. And that was it. That was the sound check. I love the simplicity. Now, speaking of simplicity and also sort of undoing the confusion that a lot of people suffer from, what are the most counterproductive myths or misconceptions about strength training that come to mind? Well, the number one, Tim, I guess, is the idea that you have to go to failure every time you train. Right. And I can tell you one thing, that the Soviet weightlifters, I have done a very thorough analysis of the Soviet weightlifting methodology through the 60s, through the 80s, the glory days. And I found that they typically did one-third to two-third of maximal repetitions per set.

So what does it mean? If let's say that you're using a weight that's your 10 rep max, 10 is all you could do if you push yourself very hard. They would do three to six consistently. Now, you'd probably ask yourself, okay, I'm not a weightlifter, and what does this so-called stuff from the 80s have to do with today? Well, two things. First of all, even though a person who is not a lifting athlete is not going to train exactly as a weightlifter or powerlifter, nevertheless, the methodology has to be derived from these sports because these are specialist strength sports.

So they just have to be adapted to your needs. Second of all, this particular Soviet methodology is still superior to this day. This is very interesting, but you keep hearing about all these new world records set in the sport of weightlifting. Well, if you compare the world records of today to the world records of the 80s, you will see that in most cases the records today are inferior to records in the 80s. How can that be? They accuse people of doing drugs, and they changed weight classes twice since the 80s. Of course, it's so wonderful. I'm so happy that today nobody does drugs anymore. It's just terrific. And so if you look at the lifts performed by Soviet lifter Yuriy Kvardanyan in 1980 at the

Moscow Olympics, these lifts have never been exceeded. These lifts have never been approached. So this particular methodology does work extremely well. It's still the best methodology, period. Later on, the Soviet powerlifting team adapted this methodology for powerlifting with tremendous success. They dominate. And the same particular methodology has been adapted to bodyweight training, kettlebell presses, and so on and so forth. So it's the same thing that can apply for everybody because this is principle-based training. So the major misconception is that you have to go to failure. So that if you just overcome that and if you make it a habit to do one-third to two-third of the repetitions that are possible and do more sets instead, you're going to make much greater progress.

You're going to do much safer. And folks, you're going to enjoy your training. And how does the approach shift if your focus is maximal hypertrophy? If you're after maximal hypertrophy. It's volume. So they figured out in the Soviet Union that there's a direct correlation between volume and hypertrophy. So you just pretty much have to do more sets. You're going to have to do more sets in the like 60 to 70% of your max range. And a whole bunch of sets of five and six, just many of them. And your rest periods might be compressed a little more.

But that's it. If you do that, do this a couple times a week, many sets of five or six. Don't even worry about how many. Just keep going. Don't kill yourself. Enjoy yourself. Eat more. You're going to get bigger. It's unavoidable. It's just as simple as that. Of course,, I've, of course I've, I've spoken with, uh, with fans and written about the app, the applications of two failure training for primarily hypertrophy, just because you're, you're doing so much with the sarcoplasm and maximizing the sort of, uh, cellular volume, um, that the, the challenge is not so much the training with hypertrophy, it's the eating. It's just, I mean, you really, you feel like the Japanese hot dog eater Kobayashi after a while. It's just waking up in the middle of the night to eat meals and whatnot.

It's that's by far the most punishing aspect of it for me, at least. It is, Tim. It is. Any tricks there? Also, nobody knows. Also, nobody knows. Yeah, there are a couple of tricks, but I'll mention them in a second. Nobody does know exactly what happens on the cellular level when you try to stimulate muscle

hypertrophy. Anybody who tells you that they know, it's just speculation at best. There are a number of theories some of the theories are more credible than others but the fact is we still do not know and what makes this soviet weightlifting methodology of the 80s so spectacular is that was a purely empirical methodology they tried to explain what happens in the cellular level but they didn't try too hard. It was pretty much a trial and error. They would analyze the training logs of successful lifters and successful competitions.

They analyzed this data. They made recommendations. And it's kind of chicken and egg. Where does this start? Scientists watching what the best lifters do or the best lifters, the best scientists telling the best lifters what to do. It was kind of both. And they kept narrowing it down, narrowing it down, narrowing it down. And this is how it works.

But we still don't know exactly what happens there. What is your, I definitely want to touch on the tricks for not making yourself nauseous all day when you're trying to pack on pounds of muscle. But before that, what is your favorite pet theory? Even if it's speculative at this point, what is your preferred theory for muscular growth? Okay. Vajin Patasinke's theory makes most sense to me. And according to this theory, when the muscle comes, the contraction comes to an end or close to an end, when you have depleted the creatine phosphate in the muscle, that's the primary stimulus for hypertrophy, according to him. And again, what could that possibly, well, how can that possibly do? And if the muscle contraction stops, not as a result of mounting acidity, and that's very, very important, but as a result of there simply not creating phosphate, supposedly the cross bridges no longer can really disengage properly.

And by cross bridges, you're talking about the myosin and actin? Actin, myosin. That's right. Supposedly, this is what tears them apart. Supposedly, that's what causes the microtrauma that makes the satellite cells do their thing. So that's one fairly credible explanation. I don't know if this is true or not, but training, in my experience, that Pratashenko's approach to training, where you're going to hit it pretty hard, the set would probably be about 20-30 seconds in duration, if you're trying to target your high-threshold motor units, and then you're going to have to stop, and you have to rest a long time between the sets. So this, it does make a lot of sense there is another theory that works fairly well with it uh professor victor silayana according to him the role of creatine

phosphate here is once you deplete your creatine phosphate and you do have a lot of free creatine, which is pretty much a byproduct. What that does is makes a membrane of the cell permeable to the hormones, anabolic hormones. Very interesting. So what Silyanov says, there are four prerequisites to muscle hypertrophy. One is obvious, that's the presence of amino acids. The second is the presence of anabolic hormones, which obviously has to do with the capacity of your endocrine system, but also your training as well. Training stress does seem to do that. And third is the presence of free creatine.

Again, the same thing. A lot of free creatine is formed when the muscle is pushed hard, but not before it gets acidic and finally the fourth one is uh the presence of hydrogen ions not not for too long so again hydrogen ions it's again it's uh something that you get out of muscle contraction any muscle contraction and the service that they do for muscle hypertrophy, according to Silyanov, is just like the free creatine. They make the membrane permeable to the hormones. So then what happens is these hormones, which are pretty much messengers, they go into the cell. And as they go into the cell, they get the whole process of transcription, translation, protein synthesis going the also the very interesting element of uh

siljanov's theory and silyanovs methodology and again something that uh sits well with me i'm having observed training effective training is very long rest periods between sets so siljanov recommends five to ten minutes of rest between the sets and that rest has to be active so you pretty much have to move around so you don't just you don't just sit you just move your way of your arms you kind of shake your muscles you shake your legs you walk and that's supposed to get rid of the clear out the hydrogen ions as quickly as possible because having them there briefly is good having them there there for too long is not good because they're literally destructive. It's a charged particle.

That's what it is. So they're walking or are they on stationary bikes, on like an aerodyne? You don't need a stationary bike. You just pretty much want to walk. There's a particular type of relaxation exercises, Tim. We call them fast and loose exercises that all Russian athletes do. So pretty much what they are is, if you may remember my kettlebell certification, I had people stand and kind of shake out their arms and legs. Right.

So you just pretty much shake your arms and legs and you just walk around. That's pretty much what you do. So that is Silyanov's theory theory which also seems to make sense notice that in both cases where there's fantastic because we're siljanov's you are going to push yourself much closer to failure to rep max so when you're training just for strength you don't need to do that you just do one third to two thirds of your maximum reps when you're trying to train for hypertrophy yes you can do just simply more submaximal sets but sometimes you just have to push yourself harder. Not to failure still, but harder.

And Suleyanov also has the most fascinating slow twitch fiber protocol as well. I'd like to tell you readers about it because there are a lot of misconceptions about training the slow fibers. Well, if you think about slow fibers, well… Which most people associate with endurance. Yeah, exactly. And they do have endurance, that's true. But they are also, people think, well, they're thin, they're weak, they're small.

And why should I do that? Why would any self-respecting power athlete, you know, demean himself training the slow fibers? And Suleyanov has a very different point of view on this. First of all, if you look back back in the six, in some studies done in the sixties, if you compare the strengths of your slow fibers and fast ones, uh, they are just as strong for the same cross section. So, which means that if you have a bundle of slow fibers, that's as thick as your finger

and you have a bundle of fast fibers, that's as thick as your finger. They're equally strong just you know the slower bundle is going to have more smaller fibers but it doesn't matter number one number two because their velocity of contraction for the fast fibers can be 20 40 higher for the slow fibers the presumption is well i need to move fast. I can't afford that. But Silyanov's work has found out that even in sprint, 50% of the output is provided by slow fibers. And he says, even though in vitro, that may be true, that these fibers are contracting faster. But in vivo, in real life, in sport activities, you're not really going to go so fast. So that advantage is no longer valid. He has put experienced sprinters on a training protocol

that hypertrophied their slow fibers. And these sprinters improved their sprint for 100 meters on average from 10.9 seconds to 10.7 just from just from this slow fast slow fiber hypertrophy and there is additional benefits of hypertrophy for slow fiber something we can discuss a little bit later if we talk about if you choose to talk about endurance is these slow fibers come pre-equipped with mitochondria which means they have a lot of endurance. So for other types of athletes, that can be very beneficial. So Silyanov has this fascinating training protocol for hypertrophy of slow fibers.

So here's how this goes. He says the biggest problem that you have is typically people just try to go and burn them out. Well, but all that does, again, that just the gig comes to an end because of the mounting acidity. That's not the right stimulus right there. You want to make sure that you exhaust that creatine phosphate, get that free creatine flowing. So how do you do that? You create occlusion. So he would have you do occlusion.

Yeah, it means basically the contraction prevents the blood flow. So it's a constant tension. What bodybuilders would call constant tension. And what you would do is you would do, let's say, squats. You go a little bit below parallel. You go a little bit above parallel. You're going slow. The time frame is 30 to 60 seconds. That's the duration.

And you have to come to failure or close to failure. Now, this is, again, this is what's really fascinating. After that, and this is what's so different from the traditional slow to reach training, is you have to take that same five to ten minute active rest. Because he says if you don't, that mounting acidity is going to mess everything up. And on one day a week, typically you would do four to nine sets in this manner. And then three to four days later later you do a second day where you do one to three sets so that's a protocol one more time super slow movement no rest 30 to 60 seconds in duration one day a week four to nine sets three to four days later one to three sets

five to ten minutes of rest in between active rest. By the way, active rest can also mean working different muscle groups. That's very fine as well. And just to tell you how effective this protocol is, he put a number of athletes, experienced athletes from different sports who knew how to squat on a back squat protocol using these types of reps and sets and so on. And in eight weeks, these guys increased more than, added more than 25% to their back squat.

Holy crap. Yeah, and you realize these guys were not your typical American college subjects. You know, the guys with very fast thumbs, you know, Facebook people. No, I'm talking about athletes. And what percentage of their one rep max were they using for these 30 to 60 second sets? Because that's a challenging micro range of movement. Okay. The typical guidelines, you have to find it for yourself because that depends on your fiber composition.

Right. find it for yourself because that depends on your on your fiber composition right typically it's about 30 to 60 percent for your lower body and 10 to 40 percent for your upper body so why is the difference and the difference is uh is determined by the fact that your upper body is more fast which so if you look at an average person an average person is going to have about 70 fast which fibers in the upper body and the lower body about 50-50. So you have to use a lighter weight, relatively speaking, for the upper body to stay in that time frame. I see. Got it. But it's a trial and error, Tim. It's just trial and error. No, of course. And what would you suggest they Google or search for to learn more about this? Nothing, I'm afraid. But I think that's... And that means don't search for, quote, nothing, I'm afraid. But I think that's... And that means don't search for,

quote, nothing, I'm afraid. That means you can't search for it. But if you listen very carefully to what I said, they should have no problem doing that. I can give you a couple of exercises, other exercises that you can do. So for the lower body, you can use the back squat, or you can use the front squat. And for the upper body, you could use something like the diamond push-ups for the triceps. And what you need to do is you need to adjust the difficulty based on adjusting elevation. Elevate your hands if you want it easier. Elevate your feet if you want to make it harder. But again, the idea is to come to failure in 30 to 60 seconds.

And for the push-up, you're going to be working in the mid-range. So you're never going to come to lockout. You're never going to come to the bottom. You're going to slowly keep working through that mid-range. If you want to do this for the upper body, it's probably the best idea would be some kind of a rolling machine. And again, you're going to be working through the mid-range. Or curls.

I hate to say it but yes curls siloyanov siloyanov has been extremely successful with athletes from very diverse sports uh he's worked with national team for judo sambo uh full contact karate bicycle racing soccer and these guys have seen terrific, terrific results from this. So you guys might want to give it a try. That's the fascinating, the most unexpected aspect of that for me is the five to ten minute rest sets. That's really fascinating. And I should also, I'd love to underscore one thing for people. And please correct me, Pablo, if I'm getting this incorrect.

But a lot of folks think about the burn as being a product of lactate or lactic acid, but it's actually a byproduct or a side effect, primary effect of the hydrogen ions that you were talking about. It is. And I think that has a lot of implications. There's some swelling, some nerve endings there. Yeah, it doesn't. Really, folks, it really doesn't matter. The only thing that you need to realize is this.

On this particular training protocol, you go for this burn. This burn is needed. The important thing is that burn is over after 30, 60 seconds. And then you try to get rid of it as fast as possible. And for other types of training, if you're trying to train for strength, you want to try to avoid the burn altogether. The burn is your enemy. I have two questions on the details here. The first is, if free creatine, I guess that's just free creatine in serum, although I could be wrong on that, is one of the stimuli that produces the training adaptation. Can you accelerate that or even catalyze it with

supplemental use of creatine, monohydrate, for instance? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. And then the second question is related to what some people have called the golden era of steroids, which was the 80s, right? So I guess what I'm very curious to know is why have the Soviets changed their approach or what has prevented them from attaining or surpassing the records of the 80s? And understood, obviously, that athletes are still using many different types of performance-enhancing drugs. But what has changed? And why did they change it? Tim, I think Dan Gianna has said it really well.

It worked so well, I got bored with it and I stopped doing it. Yeah. yeah and before shortly before uh their death uh not you know in the last decade both vasily alexeyev who is a you know great champion and uh akadzy varabiov was a great champion and a sports scientist they criticized his practices very very heavily alexey medvedev who uh also has done the same thing. They say, basically, you guys are barking up a wrong tree right here. So I just think that people are trying to get fancy. It's funny that what's happening in Russia is probably reflecting that whole trend,

Western trend that Nassim Taleb would call neomania. People love the new. People just absolutely love the new they're they're forgetting that what stuff that will work it's worked much better you could consider the results the results were superior back then the same thing you can look at the power lifting methodology uh the also going back to the 80s, the classic American powerlifting methodology, the classic cycling, as exemplified by lifters like Ed Cohn and Lamar Gant and systematized by Marty Gallagher. Again, people are saying, well, we have better training methods these days, and they're showing different numbers in the squats and the bench press and so on, to which I said, well, in the squat and the bench press, it has become impossible to really compare apples and apples because of all these crazy shirts and suits that people are wearing. But in the deadlift, you're still seeing, look at the record tables.

The record tables, a number of the deadlift records are still set back in the 80s and 90s. And they're still sitting. These are old-time historic records. And even the advancement of some assistance gear for the deadlift and advancement of the longer bars, whippier bars, and so on, yeah, it improved some pulls, but still many of these records still do stand. And the 80s is a fascinating era for strength.

I wrote a blog a little while ago that I called Forward to the Past. It was inspired by the upcoming 30th anniversary of the movie Back to the Future. And the point I made in there, look, you know, if Marty McFly wanted to travel, there are plenty of reasons to travel to today's day. But looking for strength advice, he would have been much better off staying home. Because the weightlifting methodology of the 80s, the American powerlifting methodology of the 80s, they still remain superior. And that's not something you can argue yeah ed cone even for people who are not familiar perhaps especially for people who are not familiar with powerlifting i think would just be fascinated by by ed cone what was it he pulled uh oh god i'm blanking here 901 probably is his best that's the one i will

body weight that was 220 or something wanted 220 that's want a 220. That's crazy. God, sanity. And Ed has set somewhere close to 100 world records. And he has competed in weight classes, you know, so many different weight classes over the years. And he also had a remarkably injury-free career, just really remarkably. His hips gave him – I mean, he's had hip issues since then. Do you think that's a result of sumo-style deadlift? I doubt it very much. Youlift? I doubt it very much. You do? I doubt it very much.

I mean, deep squats, if you talk to somebody like Greg Cook, if you talk to somebody, Professor Stuart McGill, you will find that deeper wide squats could probably lead to some problems. Sumo deadlift is extremely, extremely unlikely. Very interesting. And one of the things that— And by the way, Tim, sorry to interrupt you. How many people do you know who don't sumo deadlift anything heavier than a newspaper and have to go get their hips replaced? No, exactly. And this is actually something I was going to

bring up, which is when people see the Lyle Alzado's of the world or the bodybuilders who get cancer and they go, oh my God, the steroids cause cancer. And it's like, well, you have to look at it in the context of how many people out of a thousand would get cancer, whether they're in the gym or injecting steroids or not to really have a fair assessment of causal factors. So your point is well taken. Sorry to interrupt you. I'll interrupt you though. And I will say one thing. No, keep interrupting. Many of these guys, many of these guys who competed at a very high level in the 80s and the 70s are very healthy and doing extremely well. If you look at Gallagher himself, he's right now, he's in his 60s.

He's very strong, very spry, fully healthy, hikes in the woods every day. If you look at weightlifters, well, forget the 80s, let's go back a little farther. Rudolf Glückfelder, he was a Soviet German. He was an Olympic champion in weightlifting at the age of 37. And that's something that's never been replicated. Absolutely, it is incredible. Today, he's somewhere in his mid-80s. And every day, as part of his training regimen, he does jump squats with 200 pounds, 90 kilos. So he goes rock bottom in the squat and jumps up. And that's a guy in his mid-80s. And in fact, he looks so good.

Some journalist came to interview him and said, excuse me, sir, may we speak to your dad? That's amazing. Wow, something to aspire to. I've been – just on the weightlifter point, I've been spending time with an amazing gentleman named Jerzy Gregorek. I'm not sure if that rings a bell, but he – Yes, it does. He's a very nice man. He's a Polish, very accomplished lifter.

Very accomplished, world-class weightlifter, I think, primarily in the master's division. But he's, I'm speculating here, probably in his mid-60s. I'm spending time with him, and he can still throw, I don't know the exact weight, but two to three hundred pounds over his head in the snatch, no problem. Does Jersey still can do full splits? He is, he is amazingly flexible. I haven't asked him to do any Van Damme type stuff for me. Uh, but his, his ability, his, his hamstring flexibility,

which of course is much more than hamstrings. But what I perceive, what a lay person would perceive as hamstring flexibility just blows my mind. It's, it's amazing how flexible this guy is. So I'm very interested in the long game. But increasingly interested, you know, the older I get. I'm 37. I can't. I'm certainly not going to be winning any Olympic gold medals anytime soon in weightlifting.

My father took up powerlifting at the age of 71. He's 77 today. He deadlifted 413 pounds without a belt. And he set several American records in his age group and over training for five years. So he put on 20 pounds of muscle. If you look at my father, if you look at him from the back, you will think that this guy's got to be in his 40s and he looks like a wrestler he's just massive and uh stew mcgill when he examined him he says he's got he's never seen such muscular development of a 70 year old and uh he started when he was 71 would would you consider the uh and please disagree if this is not the case, but if you had to pick one movement for strength, longevity, would the and something you're not, it's not going to give you the same satisfaction of lifting heavy weight. But those are the two main full body exercises.

The full body expressions of power that will go such a long way for you for longevity, strength, just the quality of life. What are the biggest mistakes that people make with the deadlift, whether that's technically or in programming? What are the biggest mistakes? And not asking you to repeat things you've already said, but are there anything top of mind that... Well, Tim, I think the very big mistake is because they think, okay, I have picked up things from the floor. This looks so simple. It's not an Olympic lift. Therefore, it's very simple. So I'll just start piling on place and start training. The deadlift is a very technical lift. And even if you're just a

recreational lifter, you owe it to yourself to learn to deadlift correctly. So that's as simple as that. So I say that's the primary mistake and that mistake goes for every exercise that people do out there. Yeah. And I would highly recommend people check out your book with, now I want to say, with Mr. Bolton. Deadly Dynamite. Yeah. Really very, very dense. Shifting gears just a little bit, dense in the best way possible. No fluff. I'd love to shift gears and just ask you a few questions about sort of your philosophies and your thinking, not so much the highly specific training questions, but when you think of,

for instance, the word successful, who's the first person who comes to mind for you? Tim, I am fortunate enough to know many successful people. And I think that what separates them from the rest is the CEO of Strong First, Eric Frohart, he put it very well. He says, balance with priorities. Balance with priorities. So Eric, yourself, and many others are fortunate to know they exemplify success for me. And what are the habits that you've observed that allow people to have balance with priorities? What are the things they do that other people don't do? Or maybe the things they don't do that other people do.

Well, I think one is calm. These people are calm. Because people who are hyper, they get so trapped in their reactive mode, they get too trapped in the everyday minutiae of their work and their existence. So they just do not pause and they do not think. Again, Eric has a great quote from a Vietnam era seal, which says, calm is contagious. Calm is contagious.

So when the person is calm, then he or she has the time to meditate, reflect, set the priorities and set the balance. Yeah, that's certainly holds true from what I've seen. And the opposite, of course, is true. Hysteria is just chasing the tail. Absolutely. Chicken little. This guy's falling. Yes. Everything is urgent. Sounds like the internet in a nutshell right there. That's right. Do you have any morning rituals? What does the first hour or two of your day look like typically? I like to ease into my day. I will get up early, 6 a.m. typically, and my wife and I will just have coffee and read the newspaper and make small talk,

and I really take my time. I pointedly read a paper, not watch TV, not get any kind of electronic news or radio. I really appreciate the calm of print because whenever you're watching tv it's just the latest news the breaking news and it's again that same tail chasing after that if i if i decide to lift train with kettlebells i'll go to the beach and do that if i do not do that this morning i'll just still go to the beach for half an hour. What time is that typically? That'll probably be about seven o'clock. And I will take a dip. I'll meditate a little. I might stretch a little. So again, it's a time to be composed. After that, it's a time to do creative

work. So I will either write or I will do research. And when I do that, I very pointedly have the email down. So my whole email application is down. If I need to use the intranet for some research, you know, the browser will stay up, but not the email. And my colleagues know to call me if they have something urgent. And not a lot of people call me because I have my business card only has my email so that's good so does it have your email and it says please call if urgent no phone number no it doesn't no my obviously my colleagues do have that so and when I write I will sometimes change the environment I'd like to go to a coffee shop or go to a park or something. And I do have a particular method when I write. So I will just select some topic and I work on this topic. And as soon as I hit the wall on this

topic, I just switch to something else. I never fight the writer's block. I just, absolutely. I just have a lot of different things, a lot of different projects, chapters, articles, books, whatever, going at the same time. And I'm very flexible about it. And I also do let my books evolve. And sometimes they evolve in a very unpredictable manner. The Naked Warrior started out as a book for strength training in the field for the military. And then it evolved in a sort of a manifesto for reverse engineering the body language of the strong. So I just kind of let that happen.

Towards the end of the day, it's make a call, make a call with my coworkers, take care of some business, dinner with my wife, and pretty much relax. First read some nonfiction, then read some fiction. That's a pretty standard day. I like my days. I like the sound of your days, too. Do you listen to music? And if so, what type of music?

What are the most frequently played songs or albums on your iPhone? My music tastes are, I like the yin and yang. I don't like stuff in the middle. So on one hand, I enjoy 1980s heavy metal. I like Accept, Iron Maiden, Saxon. These are my favorite bands. On the other hand, I will listen to Jackson Browne, Carla Bruni, Yves Montand.

So in my opinion, music has to be either you know yeah it's on or off it's like everything yeah exactly seriously if you think of performance it's the same thing the art of physical performance is the art of turning on the switch and shutting it off for maximal strength you have to turn it along for maximal flexibility and endurance you have to turn it off and for a lot of sports it's the ability to turn it on and off, on and off, back and forth, back and forth, tension, relaxation. So I do like these extremes in my music. Right, so you're either Vivaldi or Pantera and no pop music.

No, this stuff in the middle has no right to exist. And when you're writing, are you writing, do you write on a laptop? Do you write? And if so, do you use Word or some other program? Or are you writing in a journal? How are you jumping between these various articles that you're working on? Tim my right in the ward. And what I do is I have a very peculiar type of organization of data in my mind. In my mind, I have many different shelves with many different projects and many different research studies and so on. So I can kind of see in my mind what connects with what. I see the pattern. So I can go back and forth.

And I really think that the computer does enable me to do that so much easier. And I'm generally not a fan of technology, but I have to say that the word processor, it's one piece of technology that I'm a very big fan. I think on the page. I don't think in my mind, I think on the page. Yeah, that's something that I've heard from a number of good writers is that they have to write to clarify what they're actually thinking. It's not like they form the thought and put it down. They use the process of writing to clarify their thinking. Do you have a private journal or anything like that?

No. You do not. Okay. And just since I love talking about this, but I won't take too long, a recommendation that really was a game changer for me is using a program called Scrivener in place of Word. And Scrivener, as it sounds, what that allows you to do, it was originally designed for movie scripts, I believe, for screenwriting. And what it allows you to do is have all of your various documents, which would each otherwise be a separate Word file, in a table of contents on the left-hand side of the screen, which you can move around and modify and put into folders, which I've used for all of my last three books. And then you can look at two different pieces of writing on the right-hand side. So what I'll typically have is a folder that's all research documents. And I will have a split pane on the right side where the top is what I'm working on,

what I'm actually writing. And the bottom right is the research document. So rather than having a million windows open with different word documents, and as you've probably experienced, once you have enough of those open, eventually it just craps out on you and jumps off the cliff. Uh, I've, I don't think I've ever had in however many years I've used it, Scrivener fail on me. And it's because it strips out a lot of the bloat, but, uh, you might really, I don't think I'll definitely try it. Yeah. me. And it's because it strips out a lot of the bloat, but you might really, I don't think I'll definitely try it. Yeah. It's a fun program to play with. And I don't have the mental, uh, I have too many plates spinning at once in terms of, of articles. If I'm working on a larger project, like a book. So Scrivener helps me to codify that, which I find very

helpful. Um, how do you change your, do you change your typical routine on the weekends? Is there anything that you do differently on the weekends to decompress or otherwise? Not a lot. Go to church, go for a hike with my wife, Julie. But otherwise, pretty much every day I try to have a balance of work, a balance of family, a balance of recreation, and a balance of self-improvement. Speaking on the last point, self-improvement, what are things that you're currently trying to or would like to improve about yourself? Well, about myself, that would be private. Tim, you know, I think that... It's just between us girls – It's just us girls.

It's just between us. You know, I think that oversharing is one of the major malfunctions of the modern world. So I think I'm going to keep this one to myself. But I'm going to tell you what I'm trying to improve professionally. Okay, that's fine. As I mentioned again, I have been able to dissect the very successful weightlifting methodology of the 60s through 80s, which is extremely complex methodology. And I've been able to bring it down to the underlying principles and codify it and write up algorithms. So what I'm doing right now is trying to bring this very sophisticated, very amazing system of training to regular people who just want to get stronger. So I am in this refinement phase. Got it. And so to touch on that, just as a segue,

I'd love to talk about flexibility because I get a lot of questions about flexibility. I don't consider it my area of expertise, so I constantly refer people to your work. But I'd love to hear you talk about where flexibility fits into the picture or when it does. Because I think for me and for other people, there's a lot of confusion around mobility versus flexibility. One of the questions I get most often, for instance, is how do I get to the full side splits? They want to go between the chairs like Van Damme. And is that a worthwhile goal? Is it a terrible goal?

There's a lot coming at you at once. But how does flexibility fit into the picture or not for what types of people? Okay. Well, first of all, let me tell you about the goal of the split, whether you, if you choose to achieve that, it's achievable. I will tell you a great success story. He's one of the strong first instructors and he is truly a product of the system. The gentleman's name is Steve Freese and he's a music professor. He was severely injured. His lower back was herniated very bad. He spent eight or nine months in bed and focused. It was very bad. And then he decided to become a man, decided to train seriously for strength, for flexibility, train like a real athlete

after getting the proper medical clearance and so on, of course. So fast forward to today, Steve Freedis, who is 59, if I'm not mistaken, he holds a number of American records for his age group in the deadlift, and he deadlifts without a belt. And Steve Freedis, 59-year-old man, who used to have horrendously messed up back, can do suspended side splits just like Van Damme. So you big sissies out there think that you're too old or too whatever.

You just got to shape up. All right, touching on the... All right, I'll raise raise my hand i'm one of those sissies if if and i've i've had this i think there are many to-dos that are there's the they're the nice to have things than the must have things and for me it's been at least a decade maybe 20 years where I've had these suspended side splits on the to-do list. And it just gets renewed. It's kind of like car insurance. I renew it every year, but I never really make any use of it. Tim, we'll deal with that. We'll get you there. Whether it's a worthwhile goal or not to pursue, obviously, there's the obvious just because it is there.

And there's no way of judging that kind of goal. Somebody climbs to the mountains. Somebody learns to do a side split. Is that something that you need to do for your performance outside of several sports like taekwondo or gymnastics? No, you really don't. Is that going to improve your well-being? I do have to say that the sense of freedom that you have on your hips when you consistently can do a full split, it's really pretty awesome. To have that feeling of freedom in the hips, you can only know that

freedom if you also have known what not to have it, if that makes any sense. Right, of course. So I will periodically, you know, for a while, I kind of would not treat it too seriously, take some time, you know, stretch very lightly, kind of stay my, maybe at 70%. And I'll just make the push again and bring it back. And I always really enjoy that feeling of freedom. So that's, it's a decision. But let's talk about this mobility and flexibility business. Let's talk about how people should proceed about it. So mobility, pretty much we're talking about the full range of motion in the joint when the length of the muscle is not an issue. So let's use an example of a full squat. Okay, so if you're in a full squat, you know, not a whole lot of muscles are preventing you from hitting that range of motion. So there may be a possibility that you need to just pretty much get your joint moving smoother.

So what does that mean? Folks, it just literally means just doing a whole bunch of squats very slowly. And not very slowly, just slowly and building up progressively range of motion. I'm also an academician. I'm also the famous Soviet scientist who was a kind of health guru he would perform these movements every day he would perform 100 squats every day and 100 other of other things if you're not up for doing that you just simply hold down to the doorway so you just unload yourself partially you shift your weight more to the heels to make it easier on your knees, and you start squatting.

And don't go to pain. You know, be very progressive. Go as deep as you can. Eventually go deeper. Just do multiple sets. And the same thing is true really for pretty much for all the other joints. But obviously the hip joints, that's a big one. And everybody needs this type of training.

I like a very simple joint mobility protocol. Obviously, you can make this as complex as you want, seriously. And many people have. But in my book, Kettlebell Simple and Sinister, that's my latest book, I give this protocol where there are just a couple of different exercises you do. One exercise you do is you just kind of move a weight around your head in a circle, a halo, loosen up your shoulders. Another exercise you do is a very particular type of squat, kind of a prying goblet squat. That's a terrific exercise.

So you can do a search online, prying goblet squat. And just for people, I remember the first time I heard you say that, I embarrassed myself at the certification because I thought you were saying goblin squat. And I asked you what a goblin squat is. So it is a goblet, like drinking out of a goblet. It's a goblet squat, the name by Dan John. And it's a terrific type of a squat that's literally squat for the people. See, the problem with the squat exercise is most people don't know how to move well. They're tight, and you try to put a bar in their back, and they just cannot do that.

So the goblet squat is kind of a squat for the people that then developed. And the prying that is added to that is something that really allows you to increase your mobility and flexibility. So what you need to do when you're trying to get your flexibility increased, let's say that and mobility, let's pick any exercise that you're doing, any kind of stretch that you're doing, whatever it is. So there are certain rules that you need to abide by. And I call these the three S. So use your strength, find space, and spread the load. Use strength, find space, spread the load. So what does that mean exactly, Tim? Well, let's use an example of the squat. Using strength for the squat means pulling yourself down into the squat instead of just dropping yourself. Using example of the split, instead of trying to drop yourself down into the split, you're very actively pushing your feet out like you're trying to spread the walls apart. So spreading the walls apart, that means you're using strength.

Find space. So what does finding space mean? Finding space means just pretty much kind of prying and moving your body into the position and trying to find more space in the joint. And also try to loosen up the fascia, that sheet, that fiber sheet around your muscles. It's a very good analogy would be trying to pull a post out of the ground. So let's say you're trying to pull a post out of the ground. It's a concrete post. You pull on it hard and it's not going to come out. And I can tell you because I have tried. What are you doing down in Southern California? No, no, no. That was not in California. Vandalizing parking lots. Back in the past, we had a house and we bought a house and there were some things in the back that I wanted to demolish.

So I'm trying to pull out this concrete post. So I tie a nylon rope to this post, attach it to a crowbar, get a nice strong sumo deadlift position. I pull. Well, what happens is the nylon rope rips and I do a backflip into the pile of dirt. Because I'm very smart, I do this two more times. And then my wife, Julie, walks by. She says, you know, you could just kind of wiggle it around, pry it. I said, oh, that's right, honey. So the same thing is really with your flexibility.

So let's, Tim, let's use the example of the straddle. Let's say you're trying to get the straddle. Instead of simply trying to force yourself down so straddle meaning side splits a side split but maybe lying on your stomach or maybe sitting up doesn't really matter either way so you look like a frog on its stomach pretty much so what you're trying to do is what you're trying to do is not just force your way in one direction but you're trying to kind of pry it and loosen up in every direction possible. So let's say that you are resting on your forearms and you're trying to get into this straddle. So you're first pushing your legs out, but then you're also kind of tilting your pelvis back and forth. Then you're going to try to kind of wiggle your butt side to side. Then you will

try to turn your body one way. You're going to try to turn your body the other way. So pretty much what you're doing is you're taking advantage of the fact that your fascia that covers your muscles, it runs in all sorts of different directions, kind of like plywood. So you need to loosen it up in a lot of different ways. So if you keep going in different directions all around, you will progress to this goal so much faster. So use strength, find space, and spread the load. And again, spreading the load just pretty much means that you are not just trying to focus on that particular joint. So you're just spreading it all around. And relaxation is the absolutely, relaxation and patience are the two things that are absolutely

fundamental if you're trying to get a high level of flexibility, like a split. You see, you'll get a recommendation. Let's say, oh, hold the stretch for, and they'll give you some duration, 30 seconds or whatever. Like, how did they arrive at that number? I have no idea.

Just somebody decided, well, that sounds like a nice round number. Let's recommend that. But what you're trying to do... It's disturbing how much of the world comes about that way. Well, it's like how many glasses of water you're supposed to drink a day. It's just the same thing. So yeah, hold the stretch for 30 seconds. But the fact is you're trying to wear out your stretch reflex. You're trying to let the muscle relax. And depending on your fiber composition,

depending on your mental state, emotional state, training history, injury history, that can take different time. So just don't worry about it. So you just get in this position. You kind of pry a little bit for a while. And then you just relax. And when you relax, you try to breathe through that tight spot. When I say breathe through, I'm saying just listen to my breathing. You completely release the tension, totally.

If you do this, which is pretty much what most people do when they're trying to stretch, you're tightening up the muscles. You just have to completely let go. You have to be patient. And you have to spend a good half an hour, 40 minutes on this type of practice a day if you really are serious about reaching that level. How long? I'm sorry. About 30, 40 minutes. But even if you don't, well, there are ways of doing it faster, Tim, but that involves isometric stretching.

And that's a little bit more technically involved to talk about here on the show. But even if you do not pursue this extreme flexibility goal, even if you just want to be flexible to whatever level you want to be flexible, understand that the idea of relaxation, breathing, and patience are absolutely fundamental. You have to be patient. Flexibility training is not something you should ever do when you're in a hurry for some appointment. It's something you should save for the end of the day. Let's say you're watching some TV show just in going stretch or you're reading a book. One of my colleagues, Dr. Mark Chang, a strong first senior instructor, he has these beautiful side splits. The way he worked up to his side split is he would just sit and read a book in a straddle on the ground.

And then at some point, whenever he felt like he could, he just tried to spread his legs a little wider and that's it. You go back to reading his book. So you see, acquiring flexibility, it's an exercise in patience. So if you do not have the patience or if you do not have the time, I suggest you just give up. And the isometric, just to touch on that, is that a variant or perhaps the same thing as PNF? Pretty much.

Like sequential sort of contractions and release? So here's how this works in a nutshell. Imagine that you are, let's say that you're stretched out far, and it feels like I cannot go any farther. The muscle cannot get any tighter. Then you slowly contract that muscle. Slowly, it's important for safety. And you build up the tension, and you hold that tension for a while, and then you release that tension.

The important thing is, again, release. And when you have released, you'll see this contrast. So in a way, you kind of climb from the fire into the frying pan. It's still hot, but not as hot. And you can eke out just a little bit more range of motion. So these isometric contractions can be added to any type of stretching. And the idea, the very important thing about them is you need to make them steady. Do not make them jerky in any way.

The only thing about them that's sudden is that release. Otherwise, steady, steady, steady. And when you're holding the contraction, and this is hard to quantify, but as a guideline, what percentage of maximal contraction is that? You know, there are various there are various uh methods some of them attempt for you to bring the tension to a very very high level gradually still very gradually but very to a high level to the point where the muscle literally shuts down something like a tendon organ just fires boom so just goes that's an advanced technique it takes takes a lot of

practice uh you can go or you can just go for a very steady tension of about 30% and just try to stay there for pretty much as long as you can handle it. Just the important thing is that the tension doesn't diminish. When you feel like the tension is about to diminish, whatever level that you've chosen, then you just release and then you pry a little farther, pry a little farther. Mark Cheng has one of the most impressive Turkish get-ups I've ever seen. Right. Very impressive. So for people who are not familiar with that move, you could certainly do a search and see some examples.

That is a very, very, very technical move. And the Turkish get-up, the beautiful thing about the Turkish get-up, that someone like yourself who is a minimalist would appreciate, is you get done so much with so little. It's one of those amazing all-around one-stop shop exercises. And some food for thought for people in general when you think about training, earlier we talked about various tradeoffs, what to do in the program, is training is just like a budget. Budget for a person who has a regular paycheck. So you have to decide, am I going to buy a couch or am I going to go on vacation? Am I going to get in debt and do both? Am I going to buy a really good couch and not go on vacation

or buy a cheap couch and take a short vacation? Do you see my point? So there are a lot of choices, a lot of trade-offs. And these trade-offs have to do with both your time but also with the capacity of your endocrine system. Your endocrine system can only handle so much training. And all these different types of training, they are added up. And plus also the stresses of your life and so on.

So whenever you're deciding on what it is that you do for your exercise, you have to identify really what's important, stripped and unessential, and make compromises and sacrifices somewhere. Yeah, true for so many areas. I wanted to come back to something you said about oversharing earlier. I guess it was flaws or the the dangers of oversharing the malfunction the malfunction even better of oversharing so that's that's kind of my my business model i guess but um so the the uh the i'd love to say it's my opinion i'm not judging oh no no no you can feel free to judge i think i i think that oversharing is a problem also. But I'd love to hear your thoughts on what Americans could learn from perhaps the culture you grew up in, in the former Soviet Union, or vice versa. Because I personally, and this is not meant as a slight at all, I have so much respect for so many people in the former Soviet Union. Most of my observation has been in the sports

arena. I mean, looking at people like Konstantin Konstantinov or Dmitry Klokov or just these amazing specimens. But I have a very tough time when I meet some people from the former Soviet Union socially with getting through the cultural differences. And I'm usually, I don't usually find that hard unless there's a lot of vodka involved. Well, that's the social lubricant. You just need to drink more vodka. That takes care of it. So what could Americans learn from the culture you grew up in or vice versa? Okay. Well, first of all, I'm speaking about the Soviet culture.

I'm not talking about the current culture, the post-Soviet culture, because unfortunately, this is my observation, that oftentimes when different countries learn something from America, they choose to learn not the things that are worth learning. I really would like to see for Russia to learn about free enterprise, about fair competition, about freedom. And unfortunately, the things they're learning are not. These are like reality to me. That's what they're learning. And that's not unique to Russia. That's pretty universal around the world for some reason. Instead of getting the best from America, people are just sort of getting the Las Vegas version of America. And what people can learn, what Americans can learn is they can learn to limit their choices.

You mentioned earlier the paradox of choice. Is it Barry Schwartz book, right? That's right. It's a very good book. I enjoyed the book very much. And I think that is very true. When there are so many choices to exercise, these choices are difficult. It takes a lot of processing power. There's a great moment in a film,

Moscow in the Hudson, an old film with Robin Williams, where he walks into an American grocery store and he sees coffee everywhere. He says, coffee, coffee, coffee. He just passes out. So what is very difficult in this country is exercising the choice because options are just so many and choices are difficult. And in fact, you will find out that a number of Eastern Europeans who have failed to assimilate, who failed to make the life in America are the ones who just have a hard time making choices. They're used to for a lot of choices being made for them. And there is obvious downside to that in terms of freedom. There is obviously an upside of it because there are fewer distractions.

So you personally, not you, Tim, but the listeners, you need to figure out how to limit your choices. Then make these choices and stick to them. The Konstantinov and the Klokov and these other Russian athletes you mentioned, these guys do not train with 360 degree butt squeezing Scott curl bench that you see in the typical gym. These guys have the basics and they just hammer, just absolutely hammer on the basics. I'm a big admirer of the free enterprise system unfortunately as much as that's worked in so many fields and industries is completely failed in the exercise industry and fitness industry because it's constantly chasing its tail tail with the novelty

the new the best the whatever and it's a fad that just goes away again. But the simple fact is certain things just do not change. What I think also I think Americans could really learn is they could learn from themselves. They could learn from the past. I have a great idealized image of America that I did when I was growing up. And that came from my favorite film is The Magnificent Seven. It's interesting that they showed that film when my dad was in the service and it came out first and then I saw it many years later. They showed it again.

And I was just very impressed with this ethos that you can see there. These very strong, self-reliant people who don't waste words, who do not get stuck in a part of hierarchy, who set it right into the sunset. I think it's very powerful. I think if America would just a little bit more reconnect with what makes it great, it wouldn't have to search elsewhere we can talk about american exceptionalism there is such a thing as american exceptionalism because no other country has that same sense of freedom has the same opportunities and that same spirit of everything is possible. No other place.

So even people who go out and start criticizing America, that usually happens because of envy. That's really all it is. So maybe let's just go back to the older times. Maybe some of them didn't even exist, the Old West, whatever it is, where just people had the pride in being pioneers, the pride in just getting ahead. Or let's even look, Tim, let's even look in the 50s or 60s. Like today, where do the brightest young people, what do they end up doing?

They end up designing apps, right? Well, in the 50s and 60s, they designed spaceships. Right. So the dreams were just so much bigger. And right now, ooh, here's this hot new app. Ooh, golly gee, Martha. So let's just try to go back to what made this country great, to grand vision and not just the petty little app stuff.

Who are some of the people for you, whether current day or hundreds of years ago or more, who exemplify the best of what America has to offer? If people listening were looking for role models to revisit or to try to emulate, who would you put on that list? I'd say the founding fathers, Ben Franklin, definitely. There are so many great people in American history

that are worth emulating. There's the great generation of the World War II. These were the quiet people who just went and got the job done and didn't whine and complain about the lack of opportunities and life is hard and we're having it so tough. There are many. I have, and just, you know, even people who are just,

even people who are younger, I have a good friend named Stoney. Stoney was a Marine, he found in Vietnam and just Stoney is just such a great person who has such a positive outlook on life. He just is a true American. You will not hear him complain. He thinks that America is about great things. And that's what seriously, this is what disappoints me as an as a naturalized American, because I think America is so much bigger, so much better than it's than it has been. So just look back into what it was before. No, I'm, of course, born and raised here, but very much feel the same way. And it's been uplifting to me, though, to see that although the kids building apps, some of which are very world-changing, I think, but many of which are not and are

very trivial. If we look at apps as just the new software applications and mobile devices as the new computers, there are people changing the world. But there's also been a resurgence of people aspiring to be like Elon Musk, for instance, who is building spaceships. And that's been really reassuring to me in some ways. But the Ben Franklin example, I think, is a great one. And for anyone who hasn't read the Walter Isaacson biography of Benjamin Franklin, it's a fascinating, fascinating picture of a deep, very capable, but also hilarious figure.

I wanted to just in closing, a few more questions. But the first is, how do you personally limit your choices to avoid the coffee, coffee, coffee experience and the distraction. What are some ways in which you contain those choices in life? Tim, professionally, I use the same technique that you use for voting. I remember that you mentioned that you don't like following the current affairs before you vote. You just talk to a number of people whose opinion you respect and who vote the way, who believe the way you do. So I do the same thing in training pretty much.

So when I do research, most of my time is spent reading the classic Soviet texts and studies. And once in a while, I'll rise up my periscope and I'll talk to several people I respect in the industry and ask, what's going on? What's new? And they will just brief me on that. Most of the time, frankly, nothing's going on. So this is an example of my technique. I am very ruthless about limiting my communications. I am very protective of my time to write.

I'm very protective of my time to read. And that's about it. No, that's, I think this is a really important topic and I appreciate the answers. And I also encourage everyone to think about how they can create their own choice, minimal lifestyle so they can preserve their creativity and unique abilities for the stuff. Well, I think also we need to teach people around us to understand that not to overcommunicate. Again, it's an interesting modern phenomenon that it's uh play by play everything has to be play by play it's like you know kids in the car are we there yet are we there yet uh no we're driving we're on route and uh no so uh this has been really fun pavel i really appreciate the time uh thank you how what are My pleasure. What are you up to, focused on currently?

Where can people learn more about you? Where would you suggest people look to learn more about the things you work on? Thank you, Tim. My company is called Strong First. Strongfirst.com is the website. And we are about changing lives, making the world a stronger place through strength. So we teach various skills through courses, certifications, and so on. So just please stop by at strongfirst.com.

And I also recommend you pick up a copy of my book, Kettlebell Simple and Sinister. And I can assure you that this book definitely fits with the spirit of this conversation. There's absolutely nothing fluff, no fluff there whatsoever. And just to also add my own two cents related to my direct experience, Pavel's methods, your methods, Pavel, and those that you've distilled from all of the minds and practitioners, the operators that you've researched and observed, really do work. So for those people who know me, I obviously conduct hundreds and thousands of various experiments.

My house right now just looks like a laboratory slash pharmacy. There's so much crap strewn about related to all the various odd human guinea pig stuff that I'm doing. And I've really run the gamut and tested so many things available out there. And in a world that tends to complicate to profit, I think you really simplify to results. And so I commend you for that. And I've seen tremendous, tremendous transformations in my own life, thanks to a lot of your that. And I've seen tremendous, tremendous, uh, transformations in my own life. Thanks to a lot of your advice. So I really encourage people to check it out. And this was, this was a blast. So, uh, hopefully sometime we can do a round two in person, but,

uh, thank you so much for the time, Pavel. And until next time. Thank you, Tim. And power to you. All right. Same to you. This episode of The Tim Ferriss Show is brought to you by 99designs. 99designs is the world's largest online marketplace of graphic designers. And I have used 99designs for years, including to get cover concepts for The 4-Hour Body, which went on to become number one New York Times, number one Wall Street Journal.

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