The Tim Ferriss Show - Episode 3: Kelly Starrett and Dr. Justin Mager

Episode Date: April 27, 2014

This episode features two incredible guests: Dr. Justin Mager and Kelly Starrett. We all drink wine and get crazy. Dr. Mager is my personal doctor and has helped me with dozens of my crazy experiments, complete with blood testing and next-gen tracking. Kelly Starrett is one of the top Crossfit coaches in the world, and one of my favorite PTs and performance trainers. His clients include Olympic gold medalists, Tour de France cyclists, world and national record holders in Olympic lifting and powerlifting, Crossfit Games medalists, ballet dancers, and elite military personnel. If you're interested in taking your body or mind to the next level, or attempting to become the guy from Limitless, this episode is for you. Enjoy!***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.

This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement, and the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out. Go to drinkag1.com slash Tim. That's drinkag1,

the number one, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Last time, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Check it out. Greetings, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to the Tim Ferriss Show. In this episode, we have two incredible guests and friends of mine. We have Kelly Starrett, who is a performance coach, athletic mastermind. He is one of the co-founders of SF CrossFit, which was one of the first 50 CrossFit affiliates. And his clients include Olympic gold medalists, Tour de France cyclists, world and national record-holding Olympic lifting and power athletes, cross games, medalists, ballet dancers, you name it, special forces. He has also worked with me when I was doing training and research for the 4-Hour Body.

We go back quite a ways. He is a monster. He can do a standing backflip, run an ultramarathon, and can also, I think, power clean 300 plus pounds. He's a beast. And then the other person we have joining us or joining me, joining you guys is Dr. Justin Major, who's been my personal doctor and go-to performance doc for several years now, many years, in fact. And he is an MD. He also has background exercise physiology. And when it comes to performance enhancement or living an optimal lifestyle and not just getting your recommended daily allowance and surviving, he is my go-to man. And of course,

as it would have it in SF, Kelly and Justin know one another. So we had a bunch of wine and decided to mind meld. And that is this episode of the Tim Ferriss show. I apologize for the background jazzy Euro music, but I am currently in Verbier, Switzerland for the first time. I highly recommend it. Looking out at the mountains here, no better place to record an intro. And I hope you enjoy the show. Thanks for listening. 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 it seem like what if i get the album i'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over metal endoskeleton

we are fucking live at casa ferris and this this is the first podcast threesome that I've dared to venture into. But I have two fine gentlemen, two scholars and gentlemen. Kelly Starrett, doctor, professor, just a major. And yes, I've been fucking with the audio and it took me so long. We've already had two and a half glasses of wine on empty stomachs. But I think this is going to be a good session. It's an experiment, like everything else. So it'll take us a little while to get past the awkward formality of this extremely clumsy podcast intro.

But, Kelly, for those who don't know you, who is Kelly Starrett? Dancer. You can't see on the podcast that these are my real calves. Even through the table, I can feel them pulsating. That's true. Engorged calves. We started, people may know me because I showed up a little bit in Thoroughbody. That's when we first did.

You sent a tweet out in the universe. I need some deadlifting help. We kind of went down the rabbit hole a little bit on that. I have tight quads. My back is bent out of shape. Weird how that works. You're a male athlete. Check the box.

Our handle is at MobilityWOD. We started a little project in open source. Why doesn't everyone know how to fix themselves? Which is what I'm sitting here with Dr. Major, which is so good. And we have this like Bermuda Triangle of knowledge sharing. We've all known each other for a while. Yeah. Well, what's interesting is the shift for me, as we kind of were gearing up and talking about this, is the shift away from personally around performance.

I've sort of been obsessed in a performance whore for as long, you know, let's lift more, let's go faster. There's always our proof of concept. You're in a better position. Let me show you because you can generate more wattage. Correct. But I have to be honest. I mean, I feel like that's this 1% and that the people we need to be talking about are

moms and dads, people who are in pain, how to prevent this stuff in the first place. These are the bigger conversations. Now, you're co-founder, co-creator, co-conspirator of SF CrossFit. Yep. With my wife, Juliette. That's right. Sweetheart, and can probably outlift me also. And as well as your, how old, five-year-old?

I have an eight-year-old and a five-year-old. Yeah, I think your five-year-old can also out front squat me. Can I jump in just for one second? Yes, you may. 60 Minutes has been following us around since October. And they were like, hey, can you show... Since October? That's a long time.

That's a lot longer than 60 Minutes. I had to pull it because everyone gives me the four-hour shit. Oh, do they really? Yeah. Funny how that works. I don't know how many hours they're going to use, but the best moment for me was we have the, they're like, hey, can you show proof of your concept with correspondence? I was like, no problem.

Let's do something easy like picking something up. So here's this bar. Everyone should be able to bend over. Keep your back flat. Everyone agrees you shouldn't round your back when you pick something heavy, right? Well, that actually is easier said than done. And so, of course, she just rounds and rounds and rounds and will just teach you, hey, you shouldn't round your back when you pick something heavy, right? Well, that actually is easier said than done. And so, of course, she just rounds and rounds and rounds and will just teach her, hey, you just got to be able to reach into the crib without rounding your back and pick up your

baby. Just hit her with the birch stick? Basically. Stop saying. And she couldn't do it. And on camera, everything's there, live. And I was like, well, why don't we pull in an athlete who can do it? So I was like, Georgia, my eight-year-old.

Comes right in. Doesn't, she must be my daughter. Doesn't even flinch on camera, like producers, microphones. But just deadlifts it up. I mean, it's like 25, 30 pounds. Not a big deal. But just, and then she kind of looks at the correspondents like, what's your problem? And literally, you can see the producers back in the middle, like that's good TV. I have daughters who we don't want to be professional

athletes. Not my, I, if you, I mentioned to get your takes on this, if you could have a kid and would you, you know, we'll ask this later on, but would you let them be athletes? It's a great question. Well, we'll come back to that. We'll come back. Because I think that's a big topic. It's an important topic. But before we do that, part three of this amazing trilogy. Dr. Major, Dr. J, Justin, we've known each other for a while. You've been my doctor for many different things. Helped me review blood tests and all the ridiculous, various masochistic things that I do to myself.

Correct. And what appealed to me about your background, among other things, is you do have a sports background, yet you also have a practicing medical background. And I think that combination sort of allows you to understand the malfunction that I have, which is this compulsive self-testing. So I just, uh, I, I'm really happy that three of us are here because I feel like you guys cover so much complimentary ground.

Um, but maybe you could give people a little bit of background on yourself and just what you're up to these days. Yeah. Well, I mean, just as you said, we'll,

we'll henceforth refer to me as Justin. Yeah. Well, I mean, just as you said, we'll, we'll henceforth refer to me as Justin. Okay. I will refer to myself in the third person. No, I mean, I, I do, I, I have an exercise physiology background and degree. I mean, in that really, I had no agenda towards medicine. I was just, um, kind of curious to go to college, uh, after my, you know, football career was not going to make it much further than high school. Um, but you know, I was interested in human performance and, and kind of, and just human experience, like what makes us alive, what makes us tick.

Yeah. True or false. Did you have a pull up rack in your office? I do. Absolutely. They go, bam. And that was screen device. Do you have a good doctor? Yes or no? Yeah, that was when you, when you showed up, you're like, okay, that's great. Is my doctor going to die before I do? If yes, find another doctor. Right. Absolutely. Uh, you know, so, you know, I, I actually just wanted to, you know, study physiology. How, how does our body work and how can we have it perform? And I actually, by the way, my, my fifth year of undergrad, uh, uh, I was on that plan too. Absolutely. Uh, that's a lot of fingers and toes. Uh, but, two classmates behind me just lamenting how difficult it was to get into physical therapy school at the time. And they said, wow, it's almost as difficult as medical school.

And we have all the prerequisites. And it was the first time in my mind. I'm like, you know what? I don't really want a fucking job. And I'm really interested in the human body. And so why don't I just kind of, you know, delve into med school? And so, you know, I looked into it, took the few remaining classes I needed to get and went into it.

I had no idea. I didn't even have healthcare growing up. My father's physician, my grandfather's physician, and I was like, no way I'm going to PT school. I mean, like that was like a med school, no, PT school, yes. It's so interesting. You just need to know one doctor. So I think I'm like, and way I'm going to PT school. That was like a med school, no, PT school, yes. It's so interesting. You just need to know one doctor. So I think I'm like, and major is my doctor too. Yeah, well, here we are.

Wow. Yeah, no, absolutely. That's scary. I hope he hasn't been looking at your blood work. True or false? No, it's all. True or false? You guys are definitely going to live through the weekend.

Kelly's definitely going to eat some more fish oil than fish is going to consume. Yeah, no. So anyway, I went through the training with some interest in orthopedics. But the more I got into it, the more I was still interested in sort of, okay, what makes us well? What makes us thrive? I mean, it just made the most sense. And so that's kind of when I went through, I became interested in endocrinology because I just felt that if you can kind of understand the hormone systems and how they would have such local effects on cells and global effects on kind of, you know, directly on your

physiology and secondarily on your behavior, which obviously is going to, you know, feedback and affect your physiology. Uh, it made the most sense. And I also, you know, became really interested in, you know, kind of Eastern philosophy. I've always been sort of a searcher and I felt it fascinating that, uh, the, the chakras that are described in kind of, um, yoga culture, Ayurveda culture, um, yeah, corresponded to these like nerve plexi, which are these little mini brains outside of our brain, and also these endocrine hormone glands. And so I came across some work from Joseph Campbell and Heinrich Zimmer where they're talking about the relational issues of the chakra,

and it just made so much sense. So that was my intention, other than once I got further along in the conventional medical model, I just could not understand their black and white etiology. We're going to treat the absolute abnormal highs and the absolute abnormal lows, but this very wide range of gray that we all live and function with, we're not going to touch that. That's normal. If you're listening and you don't know i mean people may not know but you have worked as a functional medicine like correct basically let me just tell a backstory my wife after her second child um basically bled to death during right during birth and had seven

transfusions i think wow right and uh when we finally bumped into Dr. Major, her gelatin hematocrit was terrible. Ferritin was zero. I mean, just really, really, really low. B vitamins tanked. And it was Major who started – you were the physician who started to put the pieces together and taking this global approach. And that's where we really became – I was always like, hey, why are we working mechanically as a physio at the limits of your range? Why can't you just be full human? And it was the first person I ever run into as a physician who said, you know, being down

at this bottom end is not, that means you're alive. That's the RDA, the minimum dose of vitamin C to keep you as a human being. That's not thriving. And you changed my family's life. I mean, you resurrected Juliet from headaches and death and all the gnarliness back into a full-fledged woman. You changed so many of my friends' lives by just taking a bigger picture, which is what we've got to get people to do. I mean, that's what's so interesting about this. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. I mean,

it's very humbling because I think the more that I look into things, the more blown away at the complexity of trying to understand how all the pieces of physiology work together and how the human body works together. And to me, I think that, you know, looking down the road, when we start leveraging the power of technology intelligently to apply it to health and human performance, we're going to have some really incredible finds. But, you know, one thing that we had said off-camera or off-recorder, I should say, is that, you know, when we're looking at high-end performance, it is so fancy and it is beautiful. It's a beautiful art form to see people perform at their highest. But I think that where humanity and where we as individuals stand to gain the most is to actually take those principles and apply it to the rest of us. You know what I mean? So, like, whereas, like, you got, you know, Tim, you're out here experimenting on the fringes of physiology and what limits can you push. And Kelly, you're over here working with really impressive high-end athletes and military

and all the people that you've shared with me that you've worked with, and you're trying to get that extra 1% or 2% or 3% that's going to make a difference between a 10th-place finish at the CrossFit game, say, and a second place or first place finish, when you can actually take those same principles and apply them to the rest of us, then you're going to see 30%, 40%, 50%, 60% gains in function, in health, in vitality. You know, what's so, people don't understand is. It's not this we move the needle 1%, 1%. You know, I read your book, really, The 4-Hour Body, like legitimately,

and was like, this is like reading like best practice, which is so – because you basically took best practice for people. And, you know, I'm not eating cinnamon and doing squats in the stairwell, but you get the idea, right? We all have our own grade of weird, you know, so that's my choice. But what you did was really give people a manifesto for pulling out the big holes about are you sleeping enough? You know, are you, like, the more and more I realize you can't cheat your physiology, you can't deny your stress level, you can't deny your sleep, you can't deny your nutrition, you can't deny your hydration, you can't deny your movement practice. And you really – I mean now having written a book, I mean like – A big book.

A big, heavy book. And we're in the second edition and two more. Congratulations. Yeah, I think. I'm on the second page. I'm on the third page. Be careful what you ask for with that book stuff. Again, I think. I'm on the second page. I'm on the third page. Be careful what you ask for with that book stuff. Again, I keep reading it.

Yes. When I think about the daunting task about putting people out, of getting us out of the way, because we were just talking to someone the other day, our next door neighbor, who has chronic headaches, is out of shape, is French, eats a wretched diet, doesn't exercise, and she's getting Botox injections in her neck. In her neck? Of course. Wait, why in her neck? Because the neck is causing the tight muscles causing the headache.

Obviously. I thought maybe she had turkey neck, so she was like tightening it up with the Botox. That would be, you just have to tap the body. Yeah. But I think the problem is that people, there's so much misplaced precision. And you've said, why aren't you looking at this? How are we measuring lifestyle and nutrition? You are saying, why aren't you just doing these basic things?

And why can't you experiment on yourself? I think you've really given people, I think there's a tide change where people are being responsible for their own health and nutrition differently because we have access technology. The QSing movement has qualitative self you know, self has blown open what's possible. You really gave permission to think of like, I'm an N of one. Yeah. I'm not going to, I'm not going to stop eating carbohydrates and what happens? Like you have that right to just dink, to tinker. You came in and we're like, Hey, we can measure that.

And if you're already doing this best practice, how do you know it's best practice? Yeah. And that was what was so amazing because you're, like, I refer, we have complex friends. I refer them to major. I'm like, you should really talk to what's going on, you know, our guy. And what this has really done is saying, once you pull out the roadblocks, you may need some additional help to reset the system, the stasis. But, you know, now we're left with how do we manage, how do we deal with people who we know are going to be compromised? Your job is going to compromise you because you're just under so much stress.

You're a soldier. You're not going to sleep. Now what? Yeah. Well, that brings up – and if any of you can hear the odd talk, talk, talk, talk noise, that is a senile cat that lives above me that loves playing with a Super Bowl. So there you have it. That deserves more wine. Thank you, Kelly.

Justin. Yes. I really do want to call you Dr. Major. It just sounds so credible, which you are, of course. So I wanted to ask you of the, uh, the common practices that you see in medicine, uh, particularly as it pertains to blood testing or testing in general, just establishing a baseline, figuring out where you are. Uh, what are the most, what are some of the tests that you think are neglected? What are some of the common perhaps mistakes or glaring deficits of how traditional medicine approaches testing? So you can tackle that for many. Yeah, no, I'm just trying to figure out because there are a lot of people listening, I'm sure who go to the doctor once a year, they get a snapshot. There's no trending. If they're in

range, see you next year. That's it. You know what I mean? The check engine oil, the check engine oil light is not on. Yeah. Carry on. Right. Yeah, exactly. No, I, you know, I mean, it is a huge, it's a huge box to open, but, um, but you know, a couple of the things that you, you know, kind of alluded to with even, even as you kind of led into that is that one is that first you have to kind of, there, there's an, there's a, there's a psyche and an ideology of like, we, we want to judge things as good and bad. Uh, and so there's this idea that inflammation is bad. This is good, you know, high cholesterol, bad, this is good, you know, low cholesterol, good. Um, and so like one, you have to understand what blood testing actually represents, you know? So first of all, you said the first thing, it's a snapshot. It's

a moment in time and we're not, uh, an object, we're a process. Uh, you said the first thing, it's a snapshot. It's a moment in time, and we're not an object. We're a process. So you have to understand not only like you have to understand the context of what the person or the individual is in comparatively to what the blood test is. I'm listening. I'm going to get us more. Carry on. More grape extract. Absolutely.

You know what I mean? So, I mean, say something like, you know, there's some literature that suggests that if you have high LDL cholesterol, you can actually build more lean body mass at a quicker rate. So, if you're in a strength-building phase, it actually might be to your advantage to actually have that present. So, you need to know context. You need to know that it is a snapshot. I actually think that it's a tragedy that testing is so damn expensive, given that technology in fields like information technology and computers has increased exponentially at such a better price point. We need people to get many more data sets, you know, and there are companies like Theranos that are out there trying to break that barrier down. Um, but, you know, so I want more testing. I want context. And then you have to understand what the marker

actually represents, not just a judgment of whether it's a good or bad marker. What the hell is cholesterol? You know, I, I like to ask that to physicians, especially if they're antagonizing me about my practice methods. You know, I say, hey, you know, what does cholesterol do? And it's interesting because a lot of them will take a step back and they'll fumble because they're so indoctrinated into the algorithm of all I really need to do is identify high cholesterol and treat it versus understanding, versus understanding what the hell, uh, cholesterol, what purpose it serves, uh, in the human body. Um, so when you're asking Tim, like what markers I would look at, I mean, it's, it's tough. I mean, I can tell you what I look at most, you know, commonly, uh, I look at, you know, I mean, I look at things like, um, homocysteine, which is a, which is a marker of metabolic efficiency. Um, and you know, conventional medicine looks at it as if it were elevated, it can increase your risk of having blood clots and

strokes and heart attacks. Um, but really there's this common cause cog in the human body that takes carbon units and transfers them to other molecules, whether we're building things in the body. And so the ability of the body to actually do that is called methylation. It's donating a carbon and a hydrogen. And so methionine is an essential amino acid, is a main donor. And then you have B12 and folic acid, which are vitamins that are crucial for recycling that process to keep the metabolism going efficiently. So like I look at it, I mean, and that's something where with Juliet, um, when we looked at her homocysteine levels, it was, they were tremendously higher than you would want. Uh, you know, and so then we said, okay,

wait a second. Is she B12 deficient? Is she folic acid deficient? Does she have a gene variation that doesn't allow her to activate the folic acid properly? And so we went down those paths and we kind of uncovered that and sort of gave her body a break and gave it some relief and allowed it to actually catch up metabolically, which strangely enough, improved things like her mood. Correct? How about her awesomeness? We'll just go with that.

But you bring up – I mean, the first and foremost is that you're – in my education, I was given a cursory – Cheers, boss. Cheers. Again. Go. Eye contact. Eye contact.

Thank you. I'm Scandinavian here. I'll be the judge if I got that. I don't want bad sex for a million years. That would ruin our relationship. Again. I had to dig and go back and sort of review. I think one of the problems is, and I think you've done a good job of this, Tim, is that you said, hey, look, if we give people better ideas, they'll make better information, they'll make better decisions.

You absolutely disempower. And people don't have any of the information, which is free, which is available. Now it's easy to find. Like when you started For Our Body, it was a wasteland. It was tough. When you started it. It was super tough. And now if you have to honestly say that now, how many years later? So when did you start writing that book? 2008. When you started. It's super tough. And now, if you have to honestly say that now, how many years later? So when did you start writing that book?

2008. To 2000 now. Yeah. It is a completely different universe. Different landscape. I mean, you can go to gluten-free magazine at the... Yeah. All right?

I mean, like something has changed. Oh, yes. Right? So if that's changed and people are taking fish oil, you know, you have to educate yourself because if you're not asking your physician or developing a relationship with your physician and hoping that they're going to initiate this conversation, you're wrong. And this is, I think the real issue is that you've got to, it's on me to ask for some of these basics.

Oh, definitely. And I think also, and Justin, I love your two cents on this, but I imagine I'm somewhat compulsive with my blood testing. I've toned it down cents on this, but I imagine I'm somewhat compulsive with my blood testing. I've toned it down a little bit, but I mean, I used to be like every two to four weeks. Granted, I was doing some pretty fucked up stuff to myself, but now it's just once every two or three months. It doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger. That's right. That's right.

Hormesis. Hormesis. Hormesis. That's kind of like Princess Bride. That guy slowly takes small amounts of poison so that when he goes against exactly the sicilian when death is on the line then you win the game so uh but how often do you feel uh people should and i agree with you that it's it's kind of silly how expensive it still is um to to have proper blood testing done.

And I'm actually involved with a company called Sano Intelligence, which is hopefully going to develop basically what looks like a nicotine patch that can do tracking of biomarkers and trending of biomarkers 24-7. Amazing. We'll see. Obviously. Sign me up. Yeah. Absolutely. Right? How do you know'll see. Obviously. Sign me up. Yeah. Absolutely, right? How do you know what you know?

Honestly, you know? Yeah. People say diet and exercise. I love this. Greg Glassman is like, oh, yeah? Which diet and what exercise? Fool. You know what I mean?

Like, really? Really. And you mentioned something that was really latent. I think that I don't know how much you stepped on this or not, but there is a genetic component to this whole thing. Yeah. It turns out, wait for it, I don't process saturated fats like everyone else does. You don't? Yeah.

I can't eat bacon five meals a day and come out unscathed. How did you figure this out? Because I had my blood tested and I had some of my genes tested. What they said was you don't handle the saturated fats. You need a little bit less saturated fat. You should be lean paleo or lean-ish, right? Correct. So how did you change your diet, supplements, et cetera, as a result of that? Well, essentially Major put me on some niacin that I tinker with.

I like it just for the flush. I don't mind the flush. People freak out about the flush. I'm like, it kind of feels – I don't mind it. Maybe I should take some more flush again. Niacin flush. Just wait until you have men of feels – I don't mind. Maybe I should take some more flush again. Nice and flush. Just wait until you have menopause. It's going to be –

Truth. Yeah. What happened was that I stopped eating as much bacon. The pieces for me, when I ran into the manger the first time – I thought that was an exaggeration, the bacon. No, no, really. It was. And I stopped eating as much red meat because all the red meat I was eating was mostly grass-fed.

But sometimes it wasn't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure. And so I made decisions. I started eating more fish. I started eating more chicken. I started eating more leaner things. And that has made a difference.

But I was living the lie that i see so many people living we're like oh i can live on five hours oh really well there's not a single study where you need only five hours of sleep and people like oh bill clinton i'm like yeah and he had a hard fucking heart attack like you know and plus he's a fucking android like i mean he's like right he's bishop from aliens i mean he's that guy. Comma, heart attack. Yeah. Both. He died. Yeah. We kept him alive. Stop that. Yeah. I mean, like, you know, but I think I stopped.

I was traveling and not sleeping. You know, this is interesting. I work with San Jose Sharks. Yeah. Right? Mike Potenza is the great strength coach there. Really integrated approach. But the Sharks have to travel.

It's a hockey team. They have to travel in all the time zones. And they started working with the sleep researchers at Stanford. And Stanford, Shannon Turley and the strength and conditioning there, they're doing like progressive integrated approach, which we'll bring back to something we said earlier. But the Stanford people say for every hour of time change, and all the people who are listening who are time travelers, they travel from East Coast to West Coast. It's an entire day for every hour. Wow.

And I started taking my... So wait, what does that mean? So if you travel five hours across the country... It takes you five days to normalize again. That's how... Have you ever seen this study? What if you fuck yourself... Well, fuck yourself. Fuck with yourself.

Here we go. What's up, small one? You can only optimize it. With melatonin. You can only optimize it. You're still... Intermittent fasting might help too. Right.

That's right. So. I'm going to come back to that. So don't let me forget. Or you can go for it. Well, this is it. So what, how, how do I minimize the compromise? Which is one of the things.

Because a lot of people are only going to be in one place for two days, right? Right. Sharks. They're bouncing. You fly back and now you're screwed again. Yeah. And all you have to do is you can get a blood glucose meter at, which I think is the cheapest form of testing.

Oh, really? You want to find out what the real truth is about your life? Go pay $12. Go to Walgreens. Yeah, exactly. So I start taking my blood glucose, eating like a monk. Okay, I'm not going to drink wine. I'm not going to eat cookies.

I'm going to like, but I would come back and I would be, my blood glucose would be 99 because I would just be fucked up from the travel. And I'd be like, oh, pre-diabetic. That's great. And I'm doing everything right and I'm pre-diabetic. And I would be pre-diabetic for like 24 to 48 hours. Wow. And now I have a glass of wine to unwind because that's how I'm coping with the sympathetic stress. And you can see how I suddenly cycle into this piece.

I stop sleeping more. I have to travel less because I've been able to make some changes. I sleep plus nine hours a night. Yeah, me too. Me too. And everything has changed. People always ask me, they're like, oh, you must sleep like two hours a night. Like, it's a waste of time.

I'm like, no, no, no. I love it. Pounds of muscle. 10 pounds. In what period? How long? Since October. That's a lot.

Yeah. I mean, you're already a pretty meaty dude. You're like one of your quads is probably my body weight. I guess. I don't know. You know. On's a lot. Yeah. I mean, you're already pretty meaty, dude. You're like one of your quads is probably my body weight, I guess. On a weekday. There was a study, I think about two years ago now, where they calorically restricted two groups of individuals. And the intervention was that they restricted, they allowed one group to sleep eight hours. They restricted sleep to five hours in the second group. In that second, they both lost about the same amount of weight.

Actually, the group that slept five hours a night lost like two kilos, and the group that slept eight hours lost 1.9 kilos, right? What they did that was more sophisticated was they did body comp. Body comp, yeah, cool. The group that slept five hours lost 60% more muscle, 50% less fat. Group that slept eight hours. You know what I mean? So there's huge, no doubt. You know what I mean? That, you know, getting that integration time and getting that sleep and that repair and that recovery. I mean, I always use the heart as a nice example of life where people are like, wow, the heart's always working.

It's beating every, you know, as soon as it stops beating, you start beating, right? Right. But no matter what the heart rate is, it maintains a one-third work, two-thirds rest ratio. Yeah. And so that's a great kind of thing that I think that we should bring into our lives. And it's one of those things where I actually think that some of the work that you started with the self-experimentation, and then when you start having the personal digital health tracking device. Was it Zio?

Was that the sleep thing? Zio. Oh, Zio. Yeah, it's unfortunate they went out of business. Ben Rubin. It was good. I really enjoyed that. It was ahead of its time.

That's the problem. People don't understand? It was good. I really enjoyed that. It was ahead of its time. That's the problem. People don't understand what Google was. Well, right. Not to like totally pull us off track, but there is no track. So there's no, uh,

no fault there. The there's, it's, it's unfortunate when you have fantastic ideas and implementation that are just two or three years early. It was two or three years early. And as a result, it's really expensive,

right? Because the componentry, especially in say hardware hasn't become cheap enough. Mass adoption isn't there. Like, Quantified Self, I was at the very first Quantified Self meeting. I think it was in 2008 at Kevin Kelly's house, founding editor of Wired in Pacifica, just in a living room with 20-some people in a whiteboard. And I talked about performance-enhancing drugs and freaked everybody out. It was great. Yeah. And, uh, and, uh, it was

a weird fringe thing then it's like, but now how many people have Nike fuel vans? How many people have job on vans? How many people have Fitbits? And it's become a normal thing. And I remember people were asking me, they're like, when is this? How about counting your macronutrient blocks? That's QSing. Yeah. I mean, like just being self-aware. Yeah.

Yeah. It's like, so, you know, Zio was a few years ahead of its time. And it just, as many are, when you're on the front lines, it's like, all right, you're going to take the arrows first. You're just a couple of years early. It's just like there were MP3 players before the iPod too early. And then Jobs came in and was like,

thanks for doing a lot of free R&D for us. That looks really promising. Now we're going to kill you all. Here's what you can do. Have a cup of coffee at 1 o'clock in the afternoon. See how quality of your sleep is. Don't drink caffeine after. Keep your caffeine in the morning. See,

I mean, you can test this. Yeah. You know, these are, or the zeal was a great way of actually measuring it and seeing it. The quality of your sleep sucks when you have that four o'clock pick me up. Oh,

definitely. And you know, it's, it's a, this is something that Seth Roberts has talked about a lot. Um, who's a professor emeritus from Berkeley. Have you guys ever met Seth?

No. He's an interesting guy. He's a very, very smart guy. He wrote this diet. He wrote a book called The Shangri-La Diet, which sounds almost as bad as the four-hour work week in terms of information or I'm sorry. Whatever. I named Becoming a Supple Leopard because of you, motherfucker. Oh, it's perfect. No, I like your title. Catches in your car. You can't forget it. People are like, what's a supple leopard? I'm like, for our body, bitches.

Yeah. Seriously. That was the impulse. Thank you very much, Tim Ferriss. You're welcome. And it's like the more like an infomercial product sounds, the more mileage you're going to get out of it. So supple leopard is fucking money.

I like it. Where the hell was I going with all this? The Shangri-La diet. That's right. So Seth noticed that if you consume calories, it could literally be sugar water, sucrose in water. If you consume calories that are disassociated from a known food and you pinch your nose so you void the olfactory portion of it, you can inhibit your appetite by like 40% kilocalories consumed per day.

It's fucking wild shit. Right. And, uh, but how do we dissociate that in the first place? Yeah. No, no, no. But what's it, what's so fascinating. I mean, the point that Seth has made before, uh, is that, you know, science is good at testing hypotheses. Traditional science is not

good at coming up with novel ideas. And if you want to, and I think that the, the American public and just the global public in general, but I think especially in the U S in lieu of religion has come to treat like science in quotation marks as like the church the gospel absolutely and therefore they're like oh well how do you know that have there been they have a couple of buzzwords that they can throw around which is like has there been a double blind randomized placebo control blah blah blah on diet and you're like no because the following hundred reasons no one can profit from it. Therefore, it's hard to find funding.

Secondly, it's a longitudinal study, really expensive. Thirdly, it's observational. So blah, blah, blah. They can't really, they can infer, but not prove cause and effect, blah, blah, blah, blah. So what that means is like, if you really want to figure out like, is coffee fucking up my sleep? You have to do yourself. It's not going to be sponsored by the government or the NIH. Sorry. It's just not going to happen. And if it's going to happen, it's going to take five to

10 years. So guess what? Surprise, you're responsible for your own life and you need to test yourself. The good news is with tools, whether it's a Zio or you could use a band that, and this is an inference obviously, but that measures movement. You can get an indication of what might be, say, deep sleep. And that's really empowering. I mean, I'm just like so excited. I cannot wait until we get to a point where you can track important biomarkers without a phlebotomist, right? Because right now it's like that's just expensive. It's a lot of people.

It's a lot of mailing. It's not all the time. Like it's not right now, it's like, that's just expensive. It's a lot of people. It's a lot of mailing. It's not all the time. It's not right now, every day. There's a lot of distance between the cup and the lip. You know what I mean? Wait, wait, explain it. I like how that sounds. Many a slip twixt the cup and the lip.

That's the joke. I've never heard that. I'm so embarrassed. I feel uncultured. You are sitting with two doctors. Even though you are the most experienced amongst us. Just that notion that if I see, I get a panel every three months or once a month because I'm

really ahead of the curve. There's a lot that goes on. How did I manage that piece of work? I went through two weeks. My kid didn't sleep. I think what's interesting now is we're seeing so many people come up with best practice. I'm like, are you a monk? Do you not?

I started playing around with RestWise. Did you know Matt Weatherly White and those guys at RestWise? Yeah, what's RestWise? I don't know. Well, they came up with a really good algorithm for are you recovering from your workout or not. Is this like heart variability test? No. No HRV.

They looked at SAO2, so your oxygen saturation in the morning. Because if you dipped a couple beats, then you saw inflammation in your lungs. So you could actually – you know that question, the burning old question? We figured this out because we were watching it. I have a cold. Do I exercise or not? Yeah. You know what I'm talking about?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And 50% of the time, you gamble and you're like, bam, I got better. I thought you were making a jerking up motion. No, that's jerking. That's the dice throw. Okay. I don't know how you're going to sell it. Oh, wow.

That was very true. And 50% of the time, I exercise and I get sick. Well, it turns out that you just track. You can get a little oxygen sensor on eBay or on Amazon for like $10. They're cheap. They're so cheap. Right? So that technology is brought down.

And if you dip one or two points, you're seeing inflammation in the lungs, which indicates the severity of your cold. That it's not upper respiratory. It's starting to go lower respiratory. And now you shouldn't breathe hard because you're going to blow that out. And we just – for athletes, we're saying, hey, don't exercise. If you see this thing. And people were able to train through colds or not train through colds. But they looked at that heart rate in the morning, resting heart rate, obviously, old

marker, soreness, a whole bunch of things. It took like 45 seconds to kind of do the gambit. But our daughters used to come charge us in the morning, and we'd go from zero to, I'm awake, holy shit shit like what's going on and my heart rate would spike every morning and i wouldn't lay there quietly taking my heart rate and we're like well this is fucked and like so i think i think this is the problem like we ask i ask every single professional team and i go everywhere and say well i'm like do you use heart rate variability do you use some kind of metric of, you know, with your fallen Joel Jameson or someone else

looking at heart rate, you know, and they, they're like, yes or no, because it's, it's, it's so sophisticated, but we're getting the snapshot of a 22 year old who drank, you know, went out and drinking monster Red Bulls and, you know, and it doesn't, it's a lot of misplaced precision. Yeah. Well, there's, there's, there's a, there's a couple, a lot of misplaced precision. There's a couple things that I want to comment on that you brought up.

One is that the interesting thing is that I think that one of our problems in progress and no matter what field we're talking about is that we assume that we know what the hell we're talking about.

We're going to perfect, you know, further. Right. Absolutely. So, you know, because you just said, you know, we wanted to look at this and observe. I mean, in all these big breakthroughs in science and medicine oftentimes are kind of these observations that are unintended observations. Cialis and Viagra being a huge one. Penicillin being a huge one, right?

So I think that, you know, when you're talking about digital health technology or self-experimentation, the opportunity there is discovery. And when you have an N of 1, you have self-discovery. When you have 5 million N of 1s, then you have a collective discovery. And so I actually think that like health tracking and personal health devices, I think it's actually going to be part of like the next human rights movement where we actually get to understand and know how damaging some of the aspects of society and work and our work-life balance and all that stuff actually really impacts us. Another thing that I thought of –

Nailed. 100% agree with that. Yeah. And another thing that you actually bring up that I think is a good counterpoint is that I'm actually working with an individual, Sammy Inconin, who was one of the co-founders or founders of Trulia, the real estate website. And he is a really, you know, big triathlete. And he and his wife, they actually decided that they're going to enter into the open ocean rowing race from Monterey to Hawaii, right?

And they don't have open ocean experience. And then they're going to do it on a low-carbohydrate diet to bring awareness to kind of like the dangers of fructose and high carbohydrates and that sort of thing. And their expedition is called Fat Chance. It's really interesting. That's a lot to take on. It is. No, it's amazing. You know, Zabriskie trained this whole last year using UCAN, this modified starch.

Yeah, SuperStarch. Yeah. I just got some UCAN over there. I mean, these modified starches now, you know. I mean, not to hijack what you're saying. No. This is so interesting, but people are tinkering with millions of dollars on the line. Right.

No, absolutely. I mean, what the one thing- I'm going to be the ass for a second. Who's Zabriskie? Zabriskie is the track superstar. Ah, David Zabrinsky. Cycling badass. Okay, cool.

But he started working with Mark Sisson because what we're finding is now, as you said- Oh, he works with Mark. Yeah. Oh, cool. N of one becomes N of 500, N of 1,000. We start to know patterns. It's about pattern recognition. It is.

And you can't eat like a douchebag, even if you're an endurance athlete, buffering it with exercise and all of a sudden you stop and whoop, you fall apart. You have to come out unharmed at one rep or a million reps or a million days because you're going to be 110. If you end up pre-diabetic and you're 40s or 50s because you're a triathlete eating exactly what they told you to eat. Eat gels a hundred times a day. We didn't know.

Okay. How many gels do I need? You know, Kelly? Right. I mean, this is so interesting. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, so to finish with Sammy, like one of the things I really appreciate when I first met him, we were talking and he said, look, you know, I was training for a triathlon and I started doing, you know, heart rate variability and tracking and just really getting very comprehensive about what he was doing. And he was trying to figure out what his edge for overtraining in his training volume was.

And he said at the end of like nine months of doing all these different, you know, basal body temperatures, you know, morning heart rate variability. He said that what he found was the most reliable source of information for him was when he woke up, what his instinct was. How did I feel today? And he said that that was the most reliable indicator of how much he can push volume and train. And the beautiful thing about that is, is that, you know, some people would say, ah, well then look at all that bullshit of heart rate variability. And so, which I think is a fantastic piece of information. I also think that, you know, mental, emotional states, um, really can influence that just as much as physiologic states like overtraining. And so it's tricky. Right. Um, but, um, at the same time, like his, of looking into this led him to a heightened state of confidence in his inner compass. And like to me, I think that that's ultimately the victory because a lot of times when I'm working with, you and analyzing and all this technologically advanced tools and data, which is really fun.

At the end of the day, what I really want to give back to people is kind of this empowerment that listen to yourself, get involved with yourself, have a high expectation for your life and for your health and for what you can achieve and go after it. You don't need all the technology. It's a good animal. It's good animal health. It's starting to knock off the big ass heavy boots you're walking around because you can't hear it because you're hungover from your ambient sleep. You know, you can't hear it because you drank five nights a week. You can't hear it because you haven't slept.

You can't hear it because your diet is shitty and you don't move at all. You don't even have a movement practice. I mean, I think that's, you start to be able to, you really, like if you eat

like an ass, Tim, you know it. Yeah, yeah, of course. I get heartburn and diarrhea. And I'm not saying it's not worth it because sometimes it's worth it. But I know

what's coming down the pipe. I mean, literally. I have a dumpling evening coming tomorrow. I'm like, all right, let me gird my lines and my GI tract. I'm ready. Bring me my brown pants. This might be too medical, but what still fascinates me is that

how much hot wings burn my lips and my ass. Just a little 12-hour delivery. We were having Chinese food with Georgia, and Georgia has – I've been weaning my daughter's – Your daughter. On to hot food. Now, this is five-year-old hero.

Yes. Which one? Georgia. Can't be both. Old, old. Okay. They're both my kids. I'm warning you on the hot food.

Georgia is like – Frank's Red Hot was her gateway drug. Yes, it is. And now, literally, I saw her sneak my, like, Belizean habanero sauce. She put a little dot on something the other day, and I was like, do I mention it? Like, I just let it go. I pretend like I didn't see it. Yeah.

But we were having Chinese food, and I was like, Georgia, take a spoonful of this hot chili paste. And she's like, no, no, no. I was like, $20. And she's like, and I was like, $30. And how old is this stuff chili paste. And she's like, no, no, no. I was like $20. And she's like, and I was like $30. And how old is this stuff? Eight. Nice.

And I was like $50. That's a fucking, that's like a Scrooge McDuck backstroking through a fucking pool of honey. I know, I know. And literally I just kept going higher and higher. And then, and then literally she starts to go for it. I was like, you know, that's going to be hot twice. And she's like, what do you mean? And I was like, you know that's going to be hot twice. And she's like, what do you mean? And I was like, you've never experienced that.

I had to explain to her the ring of fire. And she's like, there's not an amount of money, Dad. Sorry. And she walked away. Wow. She sounds like the next Warren Buffett. That's an amazing conclusion. I was like, what?

There's a money. So she has the intelligence of Juliet. Oh. Did you ever see that experiment that you could ascertain self control oh with the cookies do you remember that did we have this conversation

no we didn't but I know it's not you know this experiment no you should talk about it go for it this is amazing they basically said that if you could delay

personal gratification and like success in life success in life if you could delay personal gratification then that really was a good measure of how you were going to do in life.

Yes. Because I would work hard towards a goal that is transient or in the future. Yes. And you could measure that in kids if you literally gave them a cookie and said, if you just wait, I'll give you two cookies. And literally, Georgia was like, how long do I have to wait to get three cookies? That's beautiful. She was on it. And I got bored and I was like, all right, here's three cookies.

Obviously. Wow. That's amazing. Yeah, that's interesting. For men, that instinct of how you feel in the mornings, people are just out of touch with really the gut instinct. It really is true about so much. Desire to train. I'm 40 now.

I just turned 40. It's going to be a good decade. Congratulations. True fact. I'm 40 now. I just turned 40. And so much... It's going to be a good decade. Congratulations. True fact. I turned 40 last month. Oh, hey. I'm nipping at your heels. I'm 36. I'm getting there. Jesus sat under the tree for how many days? 40 days. Buddha sat on the tree for how many days? 40 days. It wasn't

the tree. It was the desert. But it turns out 40 is this purification. It's a serious... I could use it. I'm solid. Rome believed that the 40 is when life began. You lived now and you can be 40. One of the instincts

some of the best coaches in the world. It's so interesting when you hear, you understand what the masters say. You have that Zen colon. When the frying pan is hot, we cook. The coach knows when you're doing well or not well based on the day. And it doesn't matter what metric it is. It's a lifetime of pattern recognition. It's data chunking. It's all the things that we think are important. The coaches, you're not moving well, we're going to back off volume. We're going to back. And that's why it's so important.

People have coaches when they can do it. Well, here's a question for you. So in your experience, and we can talk about specific to high-level athletic training, what makes a good coach in your mind? What's a good coach? What characterizes a good coach versus a mediocre coach? Or a great coach. What makes a great coach? It's some intangible, can you understand what you're seeing? I think that's really...

Because a lot of people are really good at... I know some really, really talented programmers who read the studies from the 80s from the Russians, but they don't know what they're seeing. And then also... So they're good at prescribing but not observing. Yeah, and then there's a huge

psychosocial component to this whole thing. And to pull that out makes you an ass. What do you mean? Well, if you don't know what's going on in your athlete's life and how to motivate or back off or meet the needs. If you're a good therapist, you immediately match the posture and position of your patients. So if someone comes in to talk, I'm up like this and if someone comes in with, I really will match their affect and tone pattern

and I speak very slowly or, you know, and you have to relate and literally people would peg me. I'm a big guy. I'm 6'2", 230 and people would be like, meathead

and then they'd be like, wow, I didn't realize that you could work with that 98-year-old, you know, woman and I was like, well, it turns out I'm a person and relating to that person is what's most important. Not, you know, one size fits all. It's that coach who can motivate underneath that. How do you, how do you codify that and teach that systematically? It's tricky. Right. Super tough. It's a science and art. Just every aspect of life has that science component it has that art component i mean an

hour before i came here tonight i have a i have a high level executive in san francisco say i need to stop over for five minutes he comes and he describes having chest pain you know what i mean and we're like you know in the in the intense five minutes yeah totally you know i mean it's like and you know and he and he's like i called my cardiologist and he said go to the ed uh and i'm like emergency department yeah and i was like yeah that's a pretty good recommendation uh you know what i mean like why you know why risk it and that sort of thing but but you know he's like well one one, I have a giant meeting tomorrow. And we talked it out and that sort of thing.

And ultimately, I still say he is in control. I mean, it's why I like working with executives in the sense that they have a good sense of destiny and they have a lot of sense of personal responsibility. So on one hand, I checked in with him. I'm like, look, a lot of people are in denial of what's going on. Uh, and I don't want you to be in denial, you know? And, uh, and he, he, he checked in with that, but I, but I also did say to him that, you know, one of the things that I, I appreciated in when I worked in the hospital say was that I had a sense of like instant recognition of a sick animal. Uh, and so when they come in and they look sick, I'm like, okay, something is really wrong with this individual. And so then you start really kind of like digging in versus he didn't look like a sick animal,

you know what I mean? Uh, and so I at least, you know, shared it with that. I didn't want to give him like, you know, false confidence, but there is an art of like knowing that's nonverbal, uh, that's just kind of, you're just with somebody. What you just said was really cool because like, you know, I came across an Edgar Allen Poe, um, quote, and he said that if I really want to know, um, what another man is thinking, I fashion my face and my posture as closely as I can to what they're showing me, and I just kind of see what emotions arise. And you know people that way.

And those things are integrated systems. Why shouldn't they be? Literally, what was that great study that was like slouching causes cortisol to rise because it's a defensive like... It's a posture. It's a posture. Absolutely. But people have forgotten that the brain exists for one reason.

To move you through the environment so you can interact, feed yourself, cognition bootstrapped on top of that. Not die. Fuck things. That's right. I think those are two big priorities. That's it. But that's the first piece. And then cognition is bootstrapped on top of that. Not die. Fuck things. That's right. I think those are two big priorities. That's it. But that's the first piece. And then cognition

is bootstrapped on top of that. Feed yourself, reproduce, run away from danger. Right? Not die. Yeah. Have lots of sex.

Right. But those things are vertically integrated. True. You know, and so, but what's happened, you know,

Daniel Coyle's book was fantastic. I'm sorry, say this again? Daniel Coyle's book, Talent Code. Oh, dude, this book has come up over and over again.

I still have not read it. Looking at skill as a biologic acquisition. Talks about these little Russian factories for tennis players and all that. You've got to read that. You also have to read, and everyone needs to read, David Epstein's The Talent Gene. I don't know. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Sports gene, maybe? Sports gene. I don't know brilliant brilliant brilliant sports team maybe sports team

you'll find it like really looking at this genetic component to chunking learning huge huge like you have a skill

but like you also have an innate ability to learn a skill right and what makes you you my if you ask my wife like what are my two skills

she'll say I can mimic anyone which allows me to understand how you move and why you move it really has changed my practice if you ask my wife, like, what are my two skills? She'll say, I can mimic anyone, which allows me to understand how you move and why you move. It really has changed my, my practice. You don't want to mimic me, man.

You'll flick up your hips. Again. And, uh, you know, the key is, you know, like I literally, I became obsessed.

I watched Lincoln and I watched a day Lewis walk like Lincoln. Amazing. And I left walking like Lincoln, walking like Danny Lewis, walk like Lincoln. And I was like, that fucked him up. Like, and Julia was like, you've got to stop doing Lincoln. And I was like, that fucked him up. Like, and Julia was like, you've got to stop doing that.

And I was like, that guy had these problems. And like, I was like, like he lived in that, that weird posture, you know? And then I have pattern recognition and like being able to mimic those things really, really matters. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, actually I was having a conversation with Dana Carvey one morning and Dana Carvey, like church lady. Yeah. Like church lady Dana Carvey.

And one of the cool things he said to me, and I didn't really, he's like, we were talking about his impersonations. He's like, yeah, he goes, really, you gotta just, it's pattern recognition. And so he like broke into talking to me about, talking to me from the voice of Barack Obama. And he was just having a conversation with me

just following the intonations and the ebb and flow, you know, that I don't, I'm not even going to try it. But it's pattern recognition. It was total pattern recognition. Caricature drawers, same, they identify the patterns. Absolutely. They see the patterns. And I mean, I think that this is, you can turn that on yourself a little bit. And I mean, literally like it's so, people are so easy to read and so transparent.

Yeah. And it's interesting because like, you know, there's all these kind of mystical statements too, that it's like, if you know yourself, you, you'll know all people. Uh, and it's like, and it's, and it's that polarity, even in medicine where, you know, we all have a unique set of circumstances. We have a unique set of genes. We have a unique set of environments. But we are overwhelmingly fundamentally human. And as soon as we kind of grasp that and find kind of like the balance point between those two polarities, that's when you really kind of grasp the whole picture. You know what I mean?

Because I used to be such a big, you know, kind of detractor of like genetics, you know what I mean? I'm like, ah, God, it's all about gene expression and that sort of thing. And I still think that that's one of the graces of it all is, is that, you know, you have your genetic disposition. And by the way, there's a lot of intelligence there in, in almost every gene. When people look at it, they're like, oh, that's a deficient gene. I kind of look at it like, no, how is that a survival advantage? And so if you're like APOE genotype is one that, quote, unquote, has the thrifty gene so that you absorb every freaking calorie you can out of fat, you know, that's through your diet. It's a huge survival advantage. It's a huge survival.

It's a superior gene. It just found its way into modern life where we just have so much availability. Donuts! The problem. You know what I mean? The Krispy Kreme friend they do. So understand it. Let me jump in for a second.

So this is a question I'm always fascinated by. I mean, you guys are both very world-class at different but overlapping things. So Kelly talked about his sort of two two unique gifts among hundreds i'm sure at least three at least three i tricked a woman and julian to marry me yeah three smart move smart move definitely raise the average on on the on the on the offspring so what uh what do people consider you or what do you consider yourself world class at like what what are or or gifts like what what what makes you different from other doctors? You know, my honest, my honest answer to that is, is that it's, I am extraordinary,

extra ordinary. You know what I mean? Like I, I don't like, I, I feel like I came into life with a set of circumstances where I threw myself to life to kind of help me out. You know what I mean? And I did not have an ego. I had an openness that I wanted to just kind of, I wanted to know. I wanted to survive. You know what I mean? I came from a broken home and kind of a borderline impoverished situation. Where did you grow?

Pittsburgh. Are you talking about my life or your life? Yeah, no, absolutely. No, no. And it's one of those things where, yeah, no, I mean, I resonate with what, and we haven't had a long talk about that, but what I know of your life. There's a lot of overlap. And I think that that openness really just gave me that

opportunity to, to, to have, um, humility and to also have people recognize that in me. And they just shared, um, what was most helpful. And there was no kind of agenda where like I had a father that, you know, had this like, you know, agenda for me and expectations and that sort of thing. People just interacted with me and they just kind of shared and they just felt that, you know, agenda for me and expectations and that sort of thing. People just interacted with me and they just kind of shared and they just felt that, you know, I was a comfortable person. So, um, so, so really like, I don't like, I'm not comfortable with the idea of expertise. I mean, I, I think that life is intelligent. We are all amazingly intelligent and it's not so much that there's nothing that I have

and bring to the table other than just a humility and an openness to it. Kelly. Kind of something you said about being coaching, I just heard, is what makes a good coach is you stop trying to – you don't make any value judgment on what a coach is doing. You try to start to solve or think of what problems the coach is trying to solve. And suddenly, everyone becomes an open book. Because I look at your work and I'm like, what problems is Tim trying to solve? What are you trying to solve?

And I start asking the why behind the cue, the why behind the methodology. This coach has seen this set of problems and they've prescribed something. This physician has seen this set of problems. It's prescribing something. And suddenly the openness is that like you can learn from everyone. You're listening, you're watching, and you're asking that behind the scene question. You'll never hear me criticize or critique a coach publicly ever because that person is trying to solve a set of really problems that are large. I want to know what it is that they're seeing and what they're trying to prescribe. And then we start to develop best practice out of that and that openness. I mean, I don't have any conversations. I still am blown away. We just had, you had this

offhand throw a comment that you're what your blood is filtered through your eyes every how many hours? I don't know. I mean, I would say that when you filter four to six liters of fluid through your body at rest and it goes up to 20 to 40 liters per minute. All your blood goes to your eye? Absolutely. And your eye, you have to have UV. And one of the UV is a pathogen killer.

And what if, I think you said that and I was like, holy crap. What if we're always wearing sunglasses all the time and we don't get UV? And one of the reasons you have to get UV is for your vitamin D and these other problems. But, you know, what if it was really filtering your blood through your eyes? I mean, I just think Absolutely. There are treatments that people take blood out of the body and run it through UV filters and put it back in you said that and i was like i literally was like i banned sunglasses in my house i mean like because i was like oh you know you started collecting these these spider webs of information

and trying to coalesce it into best practice i mean really is like you had an idea where you're like huh i can experiment myself and i can write about that, but I can start to work with these masters. I can start to establish baselines. You know, one of the, the, the kind of, uh, themes of today has been this baseline with testing. Greg Cook is a good friend of mine and we, we have really worked hard now and we're actually co-writing a book about establishing movement minimums. Cool. Baseline minimums.

I like that. Because, and I love his example. You know, he's become a really dear friend, but. Where is he now these days anyway? Oh, he's just burning the world down in Tennessee. Yeah, Tennessee. Trying to do more stand-up paddle boarding, you know. He's a genius.

But one of the things that he's saying is, hey, look. Also made a cameo. Yeah, that's right, that's right. For our body. You know, if you right. That's right. For our body. You know, if you can't. As did Justin. True facts. Yeah.

You know, this notion. People thought he and I were really diametrically opposed. And when he and I started talking, we were like, oh, my God, we have these big problems we have to solve. If we don't collaborate and share sources, we're fools. He's like, look, do you remember in middle school, you bent over and your gym teacher screamed you for scoliosis? Oh,

all right. I was like, I'm not sure where you went in middle school, but I was on the wrestling team and that didn't happen. Wrestling team. Right, so your PE teacher was not very sophisticated, but screening for scoliosis. Right. And the issue is why have we been so divorced from – how about this? If you, man, you're listening.

If you wake up and you don't have a boner. Right. There's a problem. There's a problem. Yes or no. One or zero. Boner, no boner. Right. And what the Jungians would say, how was your dreams? Tell me about your dreams. That's a problem. Yes or no. One or zero. Boner, no boner. You know?

Right. And what the Jungians would say, how was your dreams? Tell me about your dreams. That's how they agree each other. What did you dream last night? How did you, like, what did you process? Let's talk about it. And literally we should be saying to each other, did you have a boner last night?

Did you wake up this morning? I mean, like, that's so bright line, know thyself. But if you ask that question, I mean, like, that's one of those data points. It's so easy to know. Binary. Do I have a boner, yes or no? Yes. I can then backtrack and say, I was stressed.

I didn't have sleep, cortisol, food. Choose any one of the simple roadblocks, and I can see immediately my function. I bet if you correlate a boner to, like, how do you feel today? Pretty close correlation. Yeah, one to one. One to one. Yeah, I mean, not only does that simple, yeah, actually does not only that simple kind of measure.

Actually, my sponsorship dollars go up every new safe owner. So please, continue. I have no sponsor. Does it not indicate, it indicates deep sleep with good kind of growth hormone, FSH, LSH, LH, HBTA, the whole thing. Absolutely, with testosterone responsiveness, no doubt.

Another interesting thing that comes to mind is that when you look at kind of the class of drugs like Viagra, Levitra, Cialis that help with erectile dysfunction for people, if you look at the medical literature, it says it's most effective in psychogenic causes of erectile dysfunction. And then when you look at kind of what the hell does that drug do, it preserves phosphodiesterase inhibitors. And when you look at kind of other animal models, where they say like, you know, the waterboarding equivalent for rats is to kind of let them swim around in a fucking bucket. Fucking to exhaustion. In a bucket. To exhaustion, right? Absolutely.

No rat boner. No rat boner there. Absolutely. We call that rat flaccid. I feel like, bro. How you feeling? Rat flaccid. Rat flaccid.

Swimming in a bucket. But, you know, that really decreases their brain's phosphodiesterase. And so it's kind of really like, you know, you had mentioned this, I think, before we started recording, where, you know, you're really into kind of parasympathetic, sympathetic nervous system tone. And it really gets back to that. I mean, I'm really telling, you know, to me I'm more convinced that, you know, the mind directly influences the physiology or indirectly influences the behavior patterns, but

it's really all about kind of understanding how your nervous system kind of interacts with your physiology and you've got to get on there. You said parasympathetic, sympathetic tone. Let's just like break that down for people.

When you are at rest and you're in a good homeostasis, non-threatened environment, you breathe in, for example, your heart rate accelerates. When you breathe out, it decelerates. Correct. That is a good indicator. When you breathe in, it decelerates. When you exhale, it accelerates a little bit. Is that what you said?

No, I think I said the opposite. Does it accelerate as you breathe in? No, no. It actually slows down. Oh, that's right. It slows down. Correct. That's 100% right.

Because if you were trying to cheat the test at the grocery store, you hold your breath or slow. Okay, all right. Yeah. So the problem is that people get into this state where there's no variability in their heart rate. Right. That's the heart rate variability in heart rate variability. That people start to fire up their adrenals. They get in this fight or flight response.

They're not sleeping. They've just played a game. They just had a meeting. They're cinched down. We see people cannot go to sleep. One magazine was the Red Bull magazine. One of the best players for the All Blacks was bragging

about after big games he can't fall asleep. He has to stay up playing video games all night. I was like, red flag. Tired and wired, right? Oh, is that it is? Yes. If you have a child where you're not releasing cortisol in the morning. That's right. If you have a child, you know this, that sleep begets sleep. That a tired kid

will not go to sleep and will not sleep well. And so if your kid has a crappy night's sleep, you're in for another crappy night's sleep. And it really is like sleep begets sleep. Do you mind next time? Sure. Nah. It's big of you. I'm generous. What's so interesting for me is we started looking at this. I started becoming interested because so many of my professional athletes and my soldiers were coming back, were vampires, literally not sleeping at night.

Especially, I was working with, let's say, the military's elite, elite doing the scariest jobs. One of my friends deployed to Afghanistan recently, and his testosterone was 270. Yeah. And this is a guy who played Division I football in the Rose Bowl. No androgens. Zero. Yeah. By the way, if it's less than 300 in your 60, it's treatment level testosterone.

Right. We want something like, was it 900? That's the upper end? 800? Absolutely. No. I mean, I think 800 to 1,000. That'd be pretty high.

That'd be 900. Yeah. Absolutely. No. It's what I've seen to 1,000. That'd be pretty high, 900. Yeah, absolutely. No, it's what I've seen. But then again, you know, two bottles of wine twice a week. What's worth it? I'll tell you. Boner, yes or no? It's like the Krispy Kreme, yeah.

So the issue, though, is that, you know, so I started looking at, well, how do I impact that? What are the ways, without having to measure it, knowing that I'm compromised because I'm under stress because I have a newborn because I don't sleep because whatever, how can I, because that's what I think what you did is you remove for me, this is really when I started, I respected you in a way that like, I really had no respect for you up until the point. And what I, what I think was so great is you removed even the need from – like it was subjective so much. Like you said, hey, go get a blood test.

But you also said, you know, this is black and white. Do you feel better? What's going on? And you just sort of removed like why don't you even do – you know you're compromised. You know your diet is shitty. You know you're not exercising. Take away the roadblocks because we know you're already compromised. And this has been a real shift for my own brain.

You know, I started last year. I was in a Blue Angel jet in a shitty position. I sat in the helicopter. I jumped out of an airplane strapped to someone at 25,000 feet. I mean, I just did like I did all these things where I was compromised. I wore body armor for 10 hours. I was like, there's no way not to be compromised. So if I know I'm compromised, what then?

And I think what was so great about, and is so great about your thinking, is you basically start the assumption that you're compromised. Why don't you do these steps and start to uncompromise yourself? Because you know you're compromised. And at the very least, it may do nothing.

At the very most, it may change your life. Yeah. Which is sort of this best practice in nutrition. Simple, soft diagnosis, right? Right, right. And it could be just a few moves. I mean, that's what I appreciate about your teaching, whether at SF CrossFit or through the wonder of the internets is it doesn't have to be complicated. No, it can be as complicated as you want to make it, but it doesn't have to be complicated.

So actually, I'd be interested to ask you, like, if people are going to do a self-evaluation, this is really nice. I'm very happy with it. So for those who are curious about the various clinking and so on going on. We have The Mascot 2008 from Napa Valley. This is from Will Harlan, H-A-R-L-A-N. This is one of those Edit Sober. No, what is it? Write Drunk, Edit Sober. It does not apply to podcasts, by the way.

The Mascot 2008, really, really nice. And we're having a 2010 Malbec Route 40 from Mendoza. I'm a sucker for that because I lived in Argentina for so long. But in terms of movement evaluation,

minimal movement, what should people look at? I mean, the basics. like the top three or four. Some office dweller who spends God knows how long, seven to 12 hours a day seated in front of a laptop. 100% the health care crisis of the future. More and more research is saying that when you sit, have a sedentary lifestyle, sit more than eight hours a day, that's a sedentary lifestyle. That's the equivalent of killing yourself slowly. It's smoking and jogging.

The physiology is known to us that when you sit down, your leg musculature turns off. Your blood glucose rises. You can see a spike. Just because, right? If people at home, have you ever sat on an airplane and had cankles? Have you ever had that? You got off an airplane and your ankles are swollen? Yeah.

Well, that's not the altitude. That's because you stopped contracting any musculature in your legs when you sat. And it's the musculature contraction that drives all the lymphatic drainage of your whole system. The whole system is wired for movement. Remember that brain analogy? Right. And if you stop moving, what ends up happening is you get stasis and congestion, which is a for movement. Remember that brain analogy? And if you stop moving, what ends up happening is you get stasis and congestion, which is a big

problem. And for me, for the athletes, I'm like, oh, now your ankles are congested and now your Achilles is junky and now your feet don't. What do you think of compression pants for flying? No-brainer. Okay. Wear compression socks, wear a pair of compression pants. The compression pants get hot. They really get

hot. It's a problem. So very least wear some compression socks. I have a buddy who wears – he's a former kind of professional level rugby guy. He's just like, fuck it. He wears like shorty shorts with fucking compression pants underneath when he flies. I love it. How much does he weigh? He's a big dude. He's like your size.

That's what I'm saying. You can do whatever the fuck you want. He's like, I don't care. Yeah, yeah. Say something. I dare you. He's the Hulk, yeah. But I think that there is a best practice that you know you're going to be compromised.

I look at sitting as this – it's interesting. I've worked with Esther Gokhale. Who is that? She's the Gokhale Method. She talks about sitting. Oh, wait a second. Of course. Eight steps to painless back.

That's right. That's right. And she really is saying, look, we've lost this. I mean, look at the Victorians. They sat upright. The Macintosh chair is a 90-degree angle. And then in the 20s, we started slouching. It became fashionable.

Furniture design reflected that. We sort of lost this very uprightness, this integrated piece. We're doing a lot more sitting. And God forbid you're bending over. You know, I just saw a study that adults are spending two and a half hours a day on their smartphones in a forward flex, rounded upper back position, shoulders internally rotated, adopting that position for two and a half hours a day. And then when your shoulders are pinched and you have neck pain, I'm like, go fuck yourself. Well, exactly.

That's why I need to go get a massage a week just working on like my pec minor and fucking internal rotation muscles. Right, that's right. Because my inverse venatus wants to punch me in the face. That's right. And that is the universal posture of somebody who's just lost. You cannot, I mean, look at Wimbledon. Look at every winner.

The winner cannot help but declare himself upwards and backwards. Of course. And the loser cannot help but declare himself forward and down in an involution. And for people to not understand that the body and the brain is one integrated unit in the way that you treat your mobility and your body and your posture is directly influencing your physiology. Oh, yeah. It's insane.

That's it. Just to lay down one point. Is this like Cartesian duality of mind and body? It's total horseshit. It's just like, look, your brain is an organ. If you want to improve, people ask me all the time, like, what smart drug should I take? How can I improve my cognitive performance? I'm like, fix your fucking diet.

And I'm like, in your posture, look at your body. Yeah, yeah. What are you doing? It's the same system. So it's like, if you want to improve your thinking, you're going to improve your mental performance, improve your physical performance. It is one in the same.

And it's pretty cheap and it's free sleeping. We've just started playing with this, uh, all the new mattresses. So a, I think that modern man needs to sleep on a soft mattress and this is going to piss people. So tell me,

tell me. So I am, I'm sleeping on a shitty mattress on the floor right now because I just moved into my place. Let me retract all my statements. I'm sleeping in the... I have also

been taking a very hot bath in sort of a Japanese style of hoodoo every night and magnesium. So I've been sleeping like a prince. But I have been sleeping like a prince. But I have to buy a new mattress. So tell me. What should I do?

Let's back up and talk about sleep hygiene. One is the room pitch dark. They've done studies where you can shine a laser on the back of someone's knee and people pick it up. It's light. Like you cannot have your phone in your room. You cannot have a TV in your room. It needs to be black, black as night. In fact, a good study just came out that showed that any light in your room can be the cause of so many problems around sleep, sleep apnea, some of this nighttime arousal problems.

Wait, nighttime arousal? I mean, like you make up a case. What are we talking about? It's too bright in the room. Yeah. I agree. It needs to make up a case. It's too bright in the room. Yeah. It needs to be dark. It needs to be quiet. So, you know how cheap a night mask is?

Like, you're sleeping in a strange hotel as an executive. You know, I hate it. I can't find a good sleep mask. If you have a recommendation, tell me. But I have, like, shitty fucking airplane. There's one that has a small one that's a cup that doesn't get in your... I would try it all. You mean, like, suntan bed type of thing?

Not so tight, but there are a couple that are just a little bit smaller in a cup. Not a very obtrusive. Don't really have it on. Earplugs. It needs to be silent in there. Yeah. I have like 3M gunshot worthy. There's a lot of good research saying that you should eat your carbohydrates at night because that helps boost serotonin.

So if you're going to eat, you eat at night. That's what I've been doing, honestly, because I've been having these kind of business-y whatever the fuck. And it's like you'll have something like Indian and you're like, all right, honestly, I'm not going to be winning any bodybuilding competitions. So it's like I'm going to have some brown rice. Give me some naan. Don't even go. Just say naan. You know you some naan. Don't even go, just say naan. You know you have naan.

So, but at night, as long as I'm basically intermittently fasting up until lunch, it's fine. that's right. So, when can you control,

so, we say, you know, you need a big breakfast. Well, it turns out you don't need a big breakfast. Maybe,

I like your model, protein, 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes. Like that changed your family's dynamic a lot. Eat some protein in there because you've been fasting.

Maybe some fat or just fat. Whatever you're doing, Bulletproof coffee. If you want to put butter in your coffee, it's up to you. Get diarrhea

from the coconut oil or whatever. The fucking MCTs. Tell me about MCTs and your GI. Tell me. It's a fucking, you don't want to do that

right before you go to the airport. Am I right? So what we're basically saying is if you add a bunch of coconut oil MCTs to your coffee in the morning, you're like a goose. Meaning you're going to shit a lot of guys. Disaster pants. Yeah. So – but the sleep piece then is maybe some carbohydrate for dinner because you should probably – Mark Sisson is like, hey, just keep it around 100 grams.

Yeah. And good luck eating 100 grams of greens. Dude, that guy is a specimen. I give him credit. Like, I've met up with him. Like, that guy is, he walks the talk. But he also doesn't, isn't freaked out. Like, he likes coffee and he has a little sugar in his coffee.

Yeah. But because the rest of his life is organized around some exercise and sleeping enough, it doesn't throw the whole thing out of balance. Yeah. You can buffer it. You know, we're, we're humans of adaptation, like, and we confuse that adaptation ability for survivability, right? For thrivability. And I think because humans are always, I believe always working towards like thriving.

Otherwise we would have died off a long time ago. I mean, if you just care and feed the plant a little bit, give the animal a little bit extra sunlight and a little bit of food, it blossoms again. I mean, that's really what we're doing. If you upregulate, and one of the cheapest, you're spending so much of your time asleep. It should be dark. It should be a little bit cold. What I would say is after-

What do you consider cold? You set your temperature at 60s. Okay. I'm at 64. I'm happy. Perfect. Perfect. That's fine.

This is not hot. But what I would say is going to bed hot fucks up your serotonin production. Unless you go into a Japanese bath or you take a hot bath so that you cool off quickly so that your blood is raised to the surface of your skin. And then you have a rapid cooling period. And then you sleep really well. So what's the rapid cooling? What are you doing?

I am getting out of a hot bath, toweling off, and then I'll continue to sweat. And I will take a hot shower. And after that, you're fucking cold as shit because you've gone from extremely hot to extremely cold. Okay. So this is the point, is that that cooling has to happen. Yeah. How do you sleep in a hot environment? Horribly.

You sleep horribly. That's the point. So the hot bath relaxes you. It's one of the ways we figured out how to hack that nervous system. I can tap into that parasympathetic response. People can go from zero to 60 and they pride themselves on it. Bam, I wake up, I have coffee. Bam, cup of fear. The cup of fear, good to go, hit the goal. But they cannot come down. And we don't teach that. So this is where I've said, hey, look, develop a soft tissue practice before you go to bed at night. Turns out, like what, 10 or 15 minutes of rolling around on a ball or rolling around on a foam roller kicks on a huge parasympathetic response.

That's why I'm saying, hey, stop rolling before you exercise. Stop it. Roll after you exercise to bring you down out of that sympathetic state. If you have something that's gristly, you're not rolling. You're trying to break up gristly so you can move correctly, right? But tapping into that, work on your diaphragm, diaphragmatic breathing, weird how it matters so much for stress regulation. How would someone exercise that or practice that?

Get a ball before you go to bed, put it on your body, roll around on the floor for 10 minutes and see what happens. Have you ever had a massage? Yes. How do you feel after the massage? Like you want to bed, put it on your body, roll around on the floor for 10 minutes and see what happens. Have you ever had a massage? Yes. How do you feel after the massage? Like you want to fight someone? No. Your voice is all low.

So this is really the piece is how do I affect my physiology through practice, right? Right. And working on – so one of the problems with sitting is that it compresses your diaphragm in that crappy position. Yep. And now you have bad diaphragm function, which is one of the biggest assets to your parasympathetic response turning off, right? Do you know the incidence of bladder dysfunction relative to pelvic floor dysfunction in America? It's a big problem. It's because we sit so much.

So if we look at the pelvic floor, the diaphragm, both diaphragms in the same chamber, which are compromised from sitting. Right now we have bladder continence, which is a billion dollar industry with diapers for adults, for women. I love diapers. Okay. Oh yeah. Sumo, I'm looking around.

I see what you're doing. But this is a lifestyle hack, you know, and I think that's what's cheap. It's low. It's low budget. Sleep better, you know. Why aren't you hacking your sleep quality, you know, without drugs? Sleep's huge. I mean, by the way, sleep train, sell me on that pillow top.

Oh, well, so, oh, yeah, mattress and pillow. Jesus Christ. Give me this off. Give me this off. You did all this, David Blaine. Yeah, you did all this. Oh, we're out of time. Jesus Christ. Give me the stuff. Give me the stuff. You did all this David Blaine. And all that. Yeah, you did all this. Oh, we're out of time.

You did all this misdirection. All right. So what I think is that most of the athletes I'm seeing, most of the people I'm seeing are extension sensitive. We sit and we're trying to exercise. And that puts us in. It means your pelvis, if it was like a funnel, you're tipping your funnel forward all the time.

And that's putting a lot of stress on the joints. Imagine if I took your elbow and grabbed it and extended it, hyperextended it a whole bunch. It would get irritated. After a while, that's happened to your back. So what happens is for a lot of time, we were seeing men particularly who had a lot of disc pathology, right? They were lifting and exercising or working in these rounded back and they were having

disc problems. And we found that if we slept them in extension, we put them on a hard bed and they slept, but sleeping in a hard bed by decessing drops you into extension. People did better with flexion related injuries around their discs. But I think what's happened is we've seen a shift in people now because they're sitting so much. Their psoas is tight. Iliacus is tight.

QL is tight. The fascia is tight. The quadratus lumborum. Boom. And what's happening then, which we're also extension sensitive in the exercise we're doing, and what's happening then is we're extension sensitive, and what we need to do is sleep in almost like a hammock. And if I can, you should wake up in the morning feeling awesome.

You shouldn't have to get into the shower and be crippled to loosen up the lower back. And I think people listening will be like, holy crap, that's me. And I tell my athletes, I want you to sleep on the softest surface you can get your hands on. And that doesn't mean memory foam because the memory foam locks you into extension. It means you need to spend some time. Here's a quick test that I've developed. Ready?

It's very scientific. I'm ready. Lay on a bed, at a sleep train, wherever you're going. If you have to – on your back, if you cross your feet, your bed's too hard. Dude, I do that every night. Of course, because what you're doing is you're getting out of extension. Or you do the dreaded figure four. You tuck one foot underneath the other foot, like the Heil Hitler of your legs.

You know what I'm talking about? I'll usually do like the sole of the foot to the inside of the opposite knee. Oh, very, very tree pose of you. Yeah, very tree pose. Very, very advanced and sensitive. That's interesting. Yeah, I need a softer bed then. That's what that would mean.

What sensitive means, because some people are like, no, put a pillow underneath your knee. I'm like, so you need a prop to put you into flexion in your bed? Can you see how fucked that is? Why don't you get a softer bed? Check this out. Softer bed. What should people look for? How do you find a softer bed? Whatever.

Lay on the bed for as long as it takes. If you have to cross your legs, it's two. You should be able to sleep on the floor and not get up and be crippled. This is the issue. But we're not those people anymore. We're not. So before bed, foam roller, lacrosse ball.

10 minutes. Hip flexor. No. What are like the top three? I'm not even talking about trying to address your movement dysfunction or the mechanical problem. I'm talking about trying to kick on your parasympathetic nervous system by doing soft tissue work. Okay, yeah, yeah. Like a little massage before you went to bed.

You know what I'm saying? So what would you hit? So check this out. We've talked about this. What's the, like, the... It doesn't matter. Put the ball wherever it hurts. Okay.

You know? I mean, really, it's that... What are the most likely places to hurt? Piriformis, glutes? No, I think it's more simple. Biceps, sir. You can tell the tissue is normal. Well, you should see.

We do the soft balls into the temporalis and the masseter and people freak out. I'm like, oh, weird. How that hurts. You've never worked on that tissue ever in your whole life. That's where I went with my other card. Yeah, that's true. I used to grind my fucking face too. Weird.

So this posture of sitting forward, round your back, right? Anyone who's been on a computer knows that position. My neck is killing me. What happens is your short neck flexors pull your jaw out of position. It pulls it back. And it's one of the mechanisms

for all the tightness that we're seeing in the jaw. And clenching your teeth, guess what? Causes a cortisol response. Totally. And cue being stressed out or not reset.

I mean, like, it literally is connected one to one that way. Yeah. So, you know, you're like, oh one to one that way. Yeah. So, you know, you're like, Oh,

where a mouth guard that'll prevent you from grinding your own teeth down, but you're still fucking clenching your teeth at night. Right. Why do you need a mouth guard? Start asking the question. Why? Well, it turns out I'm stressed and I sit in a shitty position and I don't do

anything to manage that. Yeah. Yeah. So what we've just got it, we just got a new bed because we took our other bed up to the mountains

but all the new beds you can get a moldable frame it looks like a craftmatic adjustable bed and I I hate to say it but there was a company

I'm sure you're ready for 40 I'm ready welcome to the show cheers I'm ready I don't have a bow and I sleep in a

craftmatic adjustable bed that's great pass me the wine I don't have a bow and I sleep in a craft bag. Pass me the wine. That's a blackout, but you can raise up the feet a little bit and put yourself in the soft mattress and in a little bit slightly better position and sleep. And when I'm happening, you'll you, one of the things that people wakes people up is they're a little back.

They turn on their side. What is the first hour of your day look like? Do you have a ritual? Do you have a routine? I sleep until 7 o'clock every morning. I have two daughters. Yeah. We have put it on them to wake us up.

Yeah. So we put it on them. And then let's get my kids out for school. Okay. That's it. Oh, by the way. Hold on. There's more to that.

We hot tub. In the morning? All the girls. What time? 6, 4, 5, 7. Okay. So as soon as you wake up, boom, hot tub. And if you have access to hot, and everyone knows, hot shower, you know, what's the old

mantra, like shit, shower, and shave? You know, like you're not- I haven't heard that yet. If you need to reset your whole system, shave your face, have a good one. Wait, wait, wait. But it was shit, shower, and shave. Shit, shower, and one. Wait, wait, wait. But it was shit, shower, and shave. Shit, shower, and shave.

You can change your whole life in a shit, shower, and shave. Yeah. What about you, man? Justin, what is your morning routine? Do you have one? I just got back on Vitamix.

We grind greens into a tasty tape. You cannot eat enough vegetables as a human being. Dude, Vitamix is amazing. And really like- Have you tried... So the two things I've tried, I want to know what your

cocktail is. Athletic greens, I like a lot. I mix that with glutamine usually in the mornings because I'm lazy and I'm like, let me call it... Instead of laziness, I'll call it intermittent fasting. Yeah, right. But also mixing matcha

with... Oh, really? Ice and water, just cold matcha. Uh, you like four barrel, I believe last time we had, last time you tortured my hips and we were at your house, we had four barrel, which was very nice. Uh, what are you, what's, what's your routine? Do you have more in your routine, Justin? Not so rigid as much as like, you know, I also have a soon-to-be 7-year-old, 5-year-old, and 2-year-old. And so it really just… It's full house. It is.

I mean, and it's mostly waking to, you know, one or three of the children. And I typically, you know, I actually typically start with about 20 minutes of like play with them. Yeah. And then, you know, then I, you know, basically will just get ready and roll into the office. So I don't have like a morning like movement ritual that's formalized, but it's just more. I don't think you should lift heavy weights in the morning.

It's hard. You just take way too long to be prepped for that. Way too lazy. I feel like my pain threshold is so much higher based on all the amazing, uh, appropriated research from Russians. Like I feel like my pain threshold is so much later in the, uh,

late. Between two and four o'clock. Yeah. Well, it's the way I've looked at it as sort of a, God, I have to look back. I wrote about this, which is why I absolved myselfclock. Yeah. Well, the way I've looked at it is sort of a... God, I have to look back. I wrote about this, which is why I absolved myself from remembering it. But something like eight to ten hours after waking.

So for me, because I wake late, I tend to find sort of like six to ten p.m. is when I can lift the most. That makes sense. Which isn't much. I'm like benching like 85 pounds. It's pretty sweet. I'm on your bench, bro. It always comes back to that. So what's – all right.

So Kelly, functional movement-wise, if there were one movement where you're like, you know what? I want to see if you can function as a human being. Put your feet together. Yep. Squat to the ground. That's it. Feet together, squat, you know what? I want to see if you can function as a human being. Put your feet together. Squat to the ground. That's it. Feet together. Squat. You know why? Because anything overhead, hands in front. Let's talk about that. You can live functionally

hands by face. You might not be able to swim. We're talking about just one movement. Squat. Put a fist between your feet. Squat to the ground. Feet straight. It's a crucial point. We're talking about just one movement. Squat. Put a fist between your feet. Squat to the ground. Feet straight. Right? It's a crucial part.

We're looking at ankle flexibility. We're looking at hip flexibility. We're looking at excursions. Pretend like you're a smoker in Vietnam. Go. Exactly. Sit down. Have a smoke.

And literally, can you... For me, it's the most problem piece because it speaks to how far away from you are from baseline. Can I take a poo in the woods? Yeah. Can I have dinner in Thailand? Can I – can you rest on your own frame? Right. And how about – can I relate to people around a campfire?

I mean, it's so primal. And it just says a lot about our function. But if people are honest, they may go weeks and months without actually squatting all the way down. Oh, for sure. They just don't use it. So your body's like, don't need it. It's out of here.

You know, it's amazing. That single metric alone would change. Right. You know, you should be able to sit all the way down, butt to ankle, and keep your back flat. Yeah. Someone should be able to hand you a huge load, your back's flat, stand up. No big deal. I mean, and not to push you this way, but like one thing that I find is a fascinating topic that I would love to hear kind of some of your thoughts on is really kind of this relationship to pain.

And because I guarantee you, myself included, that if I tried to do that, you know, fist width, you know, squat down to the back of my ankles. Ask the hills. Yeah, ask the hills. I'm going to experience a lot of, you know, pain and discomfort. Well, the pain piece is interesting. You know, resting state of the human being is pain free. Shouldn't have pain. Good article in New York Times just came out like a week ago, basically said that adults over 55 stop reporting pain

to their physicians because it's like, oh yeah, I'm always in pain. And pain is one of those biomechanical markers that we know for pathology. Unrelenting pain at night is one of the things that I'm like screaming pathology, like cancer or something insidious, right? Really gnarly. But if you're moving poorly, your body's telling you something's wrong with your mechanics if you're in pain and you should be pain-free. If you push on a tissue, if you lay on a ball, grab a kid's ball, grab a baseball, put it somewhere. It should not hurt to compression. Anywhere in your body, you should be able to put that ball and put a lot of compression on it. if your tissues are stiff, that's not normal.

It feels like beef jerky. It should be like layers of warm silk sliding over steel springs. That's our analogy. That's how your body should work. But it's not. Right now, we're sitting on our butts. We're compressing all these beautiful tissues, right? Just not normal.

But if you push on something and it hurts, the tissue is stiff and telling you it's stiff because you've created a micro stretch underneath that compression. So one of the ways that we know that you're not normal is that it hurts the compression. So you should be pain-free. And if you move and something hurts, then that gives you information. It's testing one or zero, but you're getting immediate feedback that something's wrong. And the problem is we have zero baseline from which to work. A, understanding what is just normal baseline movement of being a human.

And B, not optimal, just baseline. Like I could do this and you should be able to do it cold. You don't need to warm up and prep. Do kindergartners stretch before they sprint for the monkey bars? Hang on a second, I'm doing my dynamic leg swings. That's bullshit. That was the notion of supple leopard. A leopard attacks and defends at full physical capacity instantaneously.

It's full leopard. Sleeps 18 hours a day and then it goes. But if human beings, you should have that full physical capacity also, but we're not using it, so we lose it. We don't know how compromised we are. You should be pain-free and people should have a template for even taking a crack at their knee pain. If you have deep pain, you're like, what'd you do about it? And they're like, I went to my doctor. I'm like, so you saw that your windshield wiper fluid was low. And so you went and saw your

mechanic. What did the mechanic say? Like, what the fuck is wrong with you? That, you know, why didn't you have windshield wiper fluid? and the problem is we have just disempowered people for generations we have no idea of how to basically do the simple maintenance right now and what would you say between kind of like what i would call chronic stable pain versus like an acute pain because i i think it's a big thing that comes up in my practice where when somebody tells me that they have a joint that's in pain or a part of their body that's in pain, I say, you know, what happened? And if they don't have a story to me, that's like, you know, I was, you know, kite boarding and it kind of ripped my shoulder and now I'm in pain. You know, I consider that kind of more of a chronic stable injury, correct?

No, I think that's wrong. I think that the – let me give you the examples that I sat in surgery with a friend, John Wellborn, played in the NFL for 10 years. His knee looked like a garbage dump inside, like a garbage dump. Like no ACL, moon rocks floating in the fluid, like stalagmites, stalactites, like literally like bloody cortical bone showing and bleeding into the joint space. moon rocks floating in the fluid, osteo, like, stalagmites, stalactites, like, literally, like, bloody cortical bone showing. Yeah.

And bleeding into the joint space. Like, the worst knee you can imagine, right? Just so gross. No knee pain. And what I think people forget is how robust engineering is. You know,

your iPad, you fracture and shatter the glass in the iPad. The iPad still works. You know, and that's what your body is. It doesn't work. It's a pain in the butt to negotiate that.

But there's so much. If a horse gets a cold, you put the horse down. I mean, it's so touch and go. You lose a lung, you still climb Everest. True fact. That's actually been done. You like this true fact thing. True fact.

I like it. It's not a fact. It's a true fact. Big difference. And I think what we're seeing is I think people have blown through their genetic inheritance, this tolerance for eating terribly for generations, for decades, and then all of a sudden being diabetic or moving a certain way because your body is – you're set up to be able to reproduce quick. And your body has got your back over and over and over and over again.

And all of a sudden you've worn a hole in your kneecap, but you're 27 and a runner and your physician's like, Hey, you should maybe stop running. And you're like, you can't control me. You're the worst doctor ever. And the doctor is saying something so reasonable. She's saying, you know, you've worn a hole in a bone that's designed to be 110 years old. Something's wrong.

And I think pain is the same way. Sometimes we have people who have, you know, bad arthritis. But I clean up their movement pattern. And a lot of times what people don't realize is, remember, that brain piece is that movement and pain are the same pathways in the brain. And I could be wrong, but I think it's the DCML pathway. Bless me. Dorsal columnar medial lumbiniscus. Man, I went to grad school.

I'll take it. I can't. I could be wrong. Got me. But the problem is that... One acronym, too much writing. Two of us. Someone will...

The issue is that when you injure yourself, you shake it out, right? Because the movement blocks the pain. And you can see this on YouTube. Oh, yeah, absolutely. People get hurt and they run away. Ah, ah, and then run, right? Because the running blocks the pain signal, right? Well, it's like when I fucked up my thoracic spine, this doctor, I mean, there were a bunch of issues with him, but he worked with a bunch of hockey teams anyway.

He started tapping my trap and he's like, hey, can your pain i was like no that's really interesting he's like yeah exactly he's like all right so let me then proceed to prescribe you a bunch of fucking unnecessary temporary drugs but uh it's amazing how much that movement or even uh palpitation masks pain that's right and so what we know about with chronic pain people, I'm like, well, you have pain during the day? No, what happened? I laid down in bed. And at one in the morning, woke up and my shoulder was throbbing.

I'm like, well, what happened in bed? What happened was that you stopped moving and your brain got the full impact of your pain sensation. Gotcha. Right. So one of the aspects of this is, you know, if we movement and pain get mapped. So if something's going on painfully for over two months, over a month, it's a chronic pain state, chronic pain condition, and your brain starts to map the pain pathway

with the movement motor pathway and those become conjoined. So Yanda started talking about this. And one of the ways that we're able to help people get out of chronic pain is to give them a new motor program, i.e., you don't squat with your knees in. You move differently, and your brain recognizes. It's so sophisticated. Continue the iPad analogy. You need to know how the iPad swipes on and swipes off. You don't need to know how the touchscreen interfaces with the software.

That's already happening underneath. You need to know how to turn things on and off. So if we can give people a brand new motor pathway, you squat a little more efficiently. Maybe I get you off that hot piece of bone. And maybe I'll also put the needle down in a brand new motor pathway that is pain-free. Because that boded well for us. I mean, it's one of those survival instincts that if you're moving poorly, then your brain starts to remember, oh, you got injured this. Even though the noxious stimuli is gone, every time you move, you still get the pain sensation.

This is the chronic pain conundrum. And so what we do is we burn out people's nerve roots. We do radiofrequency ablation. We put nerve roots. We do radiofrequency ablation. We put them on. What is radiofrequency ablation? They basically go in and they fry out with radiofrequencies, like radio waves. They burn the nerves of people's backs. And then they're on.

Seriously, let's turn these off. Let's turn them off. Let's pull the cords out. Because we don't know how to help you. Remember, your physician, and remember, I'm drinking wine with a physician. Your physician is on your side. And this is what people have forgotten. The physician is working to the best of their understanding.

However, they also have a defensive medical practice, oftentimes due to the litigious nature of the United States legal system, I would imagine. Maybe you can comment on this. It's just like, how much are physicians hamstrung from doing what they know is best because they fear

some type of blowback? You can answer that, but how is a physician supposed to treat you in 10 minutes or 15 minutes? And you have carried your bullshit into the physician's office. You can answer that, but how is a physician supposed to treat you in 10 minutes or 15 minutes? Well, right. And you have carried your bullshit in the physician's office. I don't sleep. I move like shit.

I don't exercise. I'm stressed out. My knee hurts. Stop. Right. No, and I would say there's a trained cynicism that happens over time where you don't believe that people are going to be willing and open and empowered to change. And so you just end up managing who they are. You know what I mean?

And so one of my big questions to you is basically helping people to understand that there's a pain of injury and there's a pain of transition. You know what I mean? pain of injury and there's a pain of transition. So when one of your coaches like Diane Foos, who I work with, when she teaches me new moves or proper biomechanics, one or two or three days later I'm like, holy shit,

some of these muscles that I've never used properly before are really talking to me. I'll let Justin give the outsiders insight. Diane Fu is an Olympic lifting subject material expert.

She teaches me how to move quick. And exercise. Diane's a coach at our gym and is the best Olympic lifting thinking in the country right now, in the world right now. She's very smart. But only also because she can coach kids up to elderly. She knows how to scale up and down.

And yet she's working to limits. So what's up with CrossFitters and tattoos? I have to ask. You've seen Diane. I'm more just a tattoo on a thruster. Okay, bro?

Thruster? I like that. I'm going to put that on my fucking LinkedIn. My LinkedIn drop-off. Our new phrase? No. Our new phrase

is not how much you bench. It's do you think you can do a double body with a thruster? Oh, yeah. Yeah. You just bring it up. You're going to be sore.

That's okay. People are so disassociated from their bodies that they can't make a correlation between I ate something and I feel like shit with I moved and I'm sore and that's okay versus I'm hurting.

It's all clumped into one thing. Yeah. No, you know, my own personal story was like, you know, strangely enough, like roped into a flag football league by Bob Weir, a guitarist of the Grateful Dead. As insane as that sounds. As it happens. As it happens. You know, I sprained my left happens. You know, I sprained my left knee, you know what I mean? And from that, it just created

a series of, like, musculoskeletal... Let me ask you a serious question. Yes. Why did you think you were prepared? Had you prepared to play fight football? No, no. I was... I'm a diner! Absolutely. Absolutely.

And, you know And that left knee injury reduced my range of motion, which converted over to my right knee, lost its range of motion without pain, and created this entire pain cycle where I became like basically trying to rehab myself and doing some things. But I basically came to Jesus and said, look, I'm going to go down to Kelly's gym and I'm going to get some help. And basically when I started working with Diane, she just basically started teaching me proper biomechanics of fundamental movements, which included these Olympic and powerlifting moves, right? Yeah, that's right. And what people don't understand is that if you drill down on the technique of any sport, it's the best expression of physiology. Coaches have hacked this from the other side. They know how to get the best out of their athletes, bait for longevity, for performance, based on what's the best expression of human beings. Yes.

And I think that's the best expression of human beings. Yes. You know, and, and, and, and I think that's the global, of course, there's some shortcuts, you know, NC2A is a great example of, you know, spending, throwing kids on the bonfire because there's another kid coming in. Right. I mean, that's, that's exactly what we're seeing in the world. Pretty amazing business model. It is amazing. We'll pay you nothing.

Or the army. Right. And you can extend that to professional sports too. A hundred amazing. We'll pay you nothing. Or the army. Right? And you can extend that to professional sports, too. You know what? We're going to put these professional athletes and we're going to pump them up with all these catabolic agents like prednisone and anti-inflammatories and let them go out there and

ruin their bodies and compete. Not to get into really controversial territory, but I'm just astonished by how vilified anabolics are. And then you have people taking cortisone injections every single match they play in the French Open. They don't get cortisone injections in the NFL anymore because people demonified the

needle, so now it's old. And I'm like, oh, great. Oh, that's better. Less effective. Thank you, great. Oh, that's better. Less effective. Thank you, liver. No, no, no. I mean, if any athlete is out there, like I've been waiting all along for like players associations to kind of actually stand up for that same thing. some type of analgesic or catabolic agent to break down their tissue to enable them to perform when nobody's allowing them the kind of technology and enhancement of science to kind of give them some anabolic support. And I'm not saying that you don't uncheck that system and you let people

just kind of take anabolics, you know, unchecked and push the limits. You know, I agree there has to be some limits and there has to be something to kind of monitor that. But at the same time, like when you hear somebody like Rodney Harrison from the Patriots say, like, look, I'm a 36-year-old athlete and I have 22-year-olds that are coming to try to take my job. And if I'm enhancing kind of recovery and rejuvenation from this brutal sport. You guys are going to come down on me and judge me about that. I've talked to coaches. I think it's bullshit. High-level coaches in the NFL that have athletes show up the next day after a game. Primarily so they can move, so they can metabolize the tortle.

Yeah. Oh, Jesus. Dude, we don't wait to go out and drink after this event because you don't realize what's in your system. Yes. Tortles. That's right. We've talked about this. Which is a big anti-inflammatory. Yes.

And I don't think what people realize is there's even a connection between the tortle, the anti-inflammatories that they're giving, and the severity of the brain contact. These things go past the blood-brain barrier. Suddenly we start to see greater brain bleeds because of it. I mean, like, it's all matched up. I mean, like, we could go down this rabbit hole, but, I mean, we are so naive about what's happening at Dixmore. Right. And you have to understand that, like, something like corticosteroids and anti-inflammatories, they're basically designed from a survival instinct to sell the fucking long-term farm to get through the current situation. Yeah, the truck-like buyer that could kill you.

I mean, it's really terrible that that's allowed to occur without the compensatory enhancement of recovery. If you were listening and you go to the Football Hall of Fame speeches just last year, look at the number of coaches being crippled. Don Shula helped by four people across the stage to accept his award. And that's because he played football and then led the CEO lifestyle of not sleeping, culture of machoism. He destroyed himself. And now he's sitting down 16 hours a day. The stress and the poor nutrition. And didn't support himself to be the highest level, high stress CEO in the same environment as like, hey, we've come through.

We can keep these guys alive with cortisol. It means disaster. And these guys alive with cortisol. And, you know, it means disaster. And those guys are crippled. And like that, remember, you have to come out unharmed at one rep over a million reps. And we're not talking about trauma. That's an aside. Bad stuff is going to happen to you. We're just talking about the preventable disease.

Yeah. Guys, like I watched Jim Harbaugh. I was like, I went to Candlestick for the last game. We had some kind of sideline passes, and I watched Jim Harbaugh kind of hobble onto the goddamn field. And I was like, man, this is the fucking quarterback. You know what I mean? How the hell? What's the condition of the rest of these people,

you know, 10, 20 years after. So what, this is just a random aside, but it's related. How do you, how does your work with high level military differ with professional athletes? Same. We treat the military guys like high level athletes, but with less resources. Excellent. We treat the military guys like high-level athletes, but with less resources. They explain. We know they're asleep. They don't have the option of eating well all the time. So my helicopter pilots come in, Apache pilots.

They're just being sent out. What pilots? Apache pilots. Apache. Apache helicopter tech. Yep, got it. And I'm like, are you eating yes or no? Have you had water today, yes or no? You know what I mean? Have you had water today, yes or no?

You know what I mean? Like 810, same thing. Like the amount of turnaround. Guys are going to sit. So we look at them as having less option. So I expect more from the professional athlete, and I expect that the military athlete, the high-end military athlete, the tactical athlete is going to be more compromised

because they have fewer support sources. Military. The military. It the high-end military athlete, the tactical athlete is going to be more compromised because they have fewer support sources. Military. The military. Yeah. It's a disaster. Oh, dude. Those guys are fucking amazing. I mean, it's just like because of where our body – I mean, I've really realized I've had interaction with two groups of folks that are very different but related.

One is hedge fund guys so hedge fund guys are either like job of the hut or they're like i'm gonna do the iron man three times a year and they're all and i'll listen to you and i want nct yep so can you make me the guy from the list or uh on the other hand you have guys who are drawn to certain aspects of, for our body, like the ultra endurance chapter, uh, particularly, uh, that are Navy SEALs or Rangers or military guys.

And I'm just fascinated and amazed by how much those guys do on so little. Cause they're like, yeah, you know what my advantage, like I'm good at metabolizing garbage. So like I can eat anything and I can go run a fucking 50 mile run. And like, that's what makes me superior. And it's, it's really fascinating to see.

We've run this experiment though. So what is best practice? And the key is my grand, my step grandfather, stepfather-in-law, whatever, is an engineer. I don't know what that means, but I'm going to go with it. But he calls it a boundary spanner, and you're a boundary spanner. And really the problem is that we have these siloed pieces of information, and people aren't looking at best practices at the community next to them because they don't think they can relate. And so suddenly, if we can relate those communities, then we can start to kind of drill down on what's best practice.

And Dean Karnasas, his buddy, such a stud. A lot of it was made of the fact that he ordered a pizza one time and a run. That guy eats like a monk. And then it matters less

what does he need to eat. During the marathons, he knows his macronutrient combinations. He's got things that don't upset his stomach. But like, boom, comes back to monkdom. So he controls what he can control when he can control it. And then there's other times he makes the best decision available to him. So if that's, I haven't eaten anything, and the only thing I have available to me is like Otis Spunkmeyer muffin, you're going to eat the Otis Spunkmeyer muffin.

Eric Cressy said really well. He's a performance baseball coach. Eric's cool, dude. He's cool. He can deadlift like a motherfucker, too. He's a big, strong guy. We're homies. He was like, look. He's good at the shoulder mechanics. Yes. Are you going... I'm going to give my kid pizza

if that's the only thing I can fuel them with for the day. I'm going to make the kid pizza if that's the only thing I can fuel them with for the day. I'm going to make the best choice that I have. And if we just have people make the best choice with the tools they have, already we see. Dude, I'm so happy you brought up Eric because, like, I remember I asked him some, like, two-liner question about the deadlift. And I was like, you know, my right sartorius is really bothering me because of blah, blah, blah. Like, how should I modify my sumo? And he sent me a fucking dissertation.

It was like 10 pages long. And I was like, you know what? You have no idea how happy this makes me that you are so obsessive about lifting heavy shit off the floor. The best coaches in the world are all talking. They're all talking. Yeah. And they're all comparing notes. And they're all showing each other all of their data and all practices. Because we all realize

that ultimately the thing that matters is the programming. How many times a week do you need to deadlift? I don't know. That's up to you and your coach, but not how to deadlift and the problems. So people are really generous and people are still stuck in web 2.0. I'm like, yeah, it's my secret sauce. You know, like that's bullshit. 3.0 is people are like, here's my model.

Here's my methodology. If I have something proprietary, you know, we understand. But I mean, the real thinkers and innovators are just as transparent as can be, which is exactly what. Well, because the idea is worth next to nothing. It's the execution. That's right. Which is the hard part, which is worth everything. That's right. And if you have any confidence in like,

in your, in yourself and your abilities, you don't have to, you don't have to hoard secrets. You share that. You know what I mean? And it's really the dynamic because there's, there's always that continuum of growth and understanding.

And so like, why do you have to create a proprietary product? Give it away. There's always going to be this advancement. Yeah, 100%. We're seeing. It's been exciting. And the coaches that we feel like are closed-minded and territorial are just really like,

that's why the 70s and the 80s happened. Shit didn't get evolved. There's a real epoch right now. I keep talking about this. This epoch of renaissance where people are crossing boundaries. You and I, there's a physician talking to a physio, talking to an entrepreneur, you know, biohacker. Right. But like

we're all using the same language and working on the same sets of problems. How do we improve the human condition? Right. Simple. Yeah, it is. I want to be pain-free. I want to have, you know, I want to be lucid and successful. And, you know, I want to be functional, really functional when I'm 110. Right.

You know, and that's it. Yeah. No, and what you're alluding to, too, is that it's, you know, the intention and the expectation is kind of the primal drive. It's like, what do we want to create? You know what I mean? Because we've, at this point in humanity, we've created all the current circumstances that we're experiencing.

And so really the big question is kind of what is our expectations for ourselves individually and collectively? And it's the intention that's going to drive the questions. It's going to drive the inquiry. It's going to drive the answers. It's going to drive the investigation. And that's really what's going to actually lead us to accelerating humanity, human potential. And that's really what's exciting to me. It's not really about what you know and what you can commandeer.

It's really about the dynamic interplay of throwing this out there to all of us as individuals and having us figure this out as citizens of humanity and pulling it back and sharing and, and bouncing these ideas off and incubating this and seeing what the hell happens. Like that, that's what excites me. You know what I mean?

And, and there's all kinds of possibilities there. This is a fucking fun format. I like this. I think this is my favorite format so far. Yeah. I've tried a bunch of stuff with this like this. I think this is my favorite format so far. Yeah. I've tried a bunch of stuff with this weird podcast that I'm experimenting with.

I don't want to cut us short, but I feel like we probably need some food, considering that we've had three or four bottles of wine, which has been really amazing. So I'm going to close with a couple of things cause I feel like we should use some calories and maybe we can do the Japanese soak. Uh, what are you most excited about these days? Kelly Starrett. I think we're.

Starrett. That is correct. Starrett. We can, uh, we violate the diphthong. It's not Starrett. It's Starrett. Diphthong. Bam.

Dude, diphthong. Fuck that diphthong. Fuck the diphthong. I diphthong fuck that diphthong fuck the diphthong I think boner I think we can solve some significant

public health problems and we're on the verge of being able to prevent a whole host of public health problems because it's not it's

the practices are getting easier. You know, let me give you an example. Obesity, child obesity is a gigantic problem in America. You can't mandate exercise in schools. You can't do it. There's not enough PE, PE is cut. If you had kids stand at their desks, that's it. Just stand at your desk.

They burn another 50 to 100,000 calories a year, which is like 22 marathons. And suddenly take away the chairs, could stand and literally, you know, they don't fidget and we can manage this. And that's just best practice because you shouldn't sit anyway. And you know, they do plenty of sitting outside the school. So if you just take away the chairs, so watch what happens. That's the kind of social change we're seeing, we're going to see. Cool. Yeah. What do you know, JM? You know, my bottom line of what I think that we have to kind of face going forward is basically this question of realizing who we are and our potential individually and collectively. Like I heard when I was in medical school that I think is a really interesting thing that impressed me was I actually came across like a 1984 lecture by Tim Leary.

And basically at that point, what he said was that there's this entity coming along called the intranet is what he called it. And he said that, look, it's going to connect us on a level that we haven't been connected. You know, similar to how like the Gutenberg printing press, the semi-ated printed books and information for everybody to kind of take in by themselves. And, you know, in the development of written language actually helped humanity kind of evolve. So there's this internet, there's this connection on a global scale, uh, in a non-local scale that we have, and we're going to be able to share ideas and information, um, where we wouldn't have been able to do it. And he said that there's going to actually be, he predicted that there's going to be a lot of social unrest that results from this. And then he said that after that, we understand how to harness that power.

And to me, what I'm most interested in is how that we can all kind of come together as global citizens, start asking kind of the deeper questions of humanity and contributing to this and figuring out big answers and accelerating kind of human potential in the human race. And to me, that's what kind of excites me looking forward. And that spans across all kinds of avenues, political, medical, social, whatever. Let's all get together. Let's share our ideas. Let's think critically, and let's use our technology to kind of accelerate

what we can figure out and what our potential is. And I think that's what excites me. Smart, dude. You can't have six toes. I'm having six what excites me. Smart, dude. You can't have six toes. I'm having six fingers. I'm doing it. Cool. Well, guys, we're going to get some food. I owe you guys some calories.

I think Thai food is on the menu. I was thinking, Kelly, of force-feeding you a bunch of lentils, just to have legumes to give you shit from the paleo community. But I shall regress from that and be more reasonable. Kelly, where can we find out more about you, what you're up to, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera? What should these billions of listeners check out?

Yeah. If you know where to start, we put out about 600 free videos on Mobility WOD. Mobility W-O-D as in Workout of the Day dot com. You can search it. You can search for WOD. Including me stretching my quad on a car hood like a police officer. That's right. We did that. You dig deep enough.

There's Tim deep in the day trying to take on a... That was your public service message, bro. That was. But, you know, that's where it started. So, you know,

you can't believe that if you start taking a crack at this yourself, you can fix it. You're that smart. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed.

Yeah. Just where should people check you out? Or what would you like to impart to these masses? Yeah, you know what? My honest parting comment is to not check me out. Just fucking look in the mirror. Check yourself out.

Good luck on the podcast. You know, and... I like that. Check yourself out. Blood test. You know, and... I like that. I like it. And, you know, my aspiration is to go underground and be a ghost. But, so... That will result in a lot of people Googling your name. Absolutely.

Yeah, it's good. But anyways, yeah. Cool. You know, empower yourself. Okay. Figure it out alright gentlemen thank you so much that was awesome we'll get some food

ladies and gentlemen we will talk to you shortly I'm soon with wait a second let me rephrase my English shortly I am sure with our next podcast and that is brought to you courtesy of wine thank you very much good night

if you want more of the tim ferris show you can subscribe to the podcast on itunes or go to fourhourblog.com f-o-u-r-a-t-o-u-r-b-l-o-t.com where you'll find an award-winning blog tons of audio and video interview stories with people like warrenett and Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park, the books, plus much, much more. Follow Tim on Twitter. It's twitter.com slash tferris. That's T-F-E-R-R-I-S-S. Or on Facebook at facebook.com slash timferris. Until next time, thanks for listening.