#180: The Secrets of Gymnastic Strength Training, Part Two — Home Equipment, Weighted Stretches, and Muscle-Ups

This is another jam-packed episode with Coach Chris Sommer, the former US national team gymnastics coach and founder of GymnasticBodies http://www.gymnasticbodies.com/. As a world-renowned Olympic coach, Sommer is known for building his students into some of the strongest, most powerful athletes in the world. While this is a stand-alone episode, you can (and should!) check out his last appearance http://fourhourworkweek.com/2016/05/09/the-secrets-of-gymnastic-strength-training/, which is one of the most popular podcast episodes. We cover a lot in this episode, including: What home equipment should someone invest in first (for $100 or less)? What are Coach Sommer's thoughts on weighted stretches? What does lower-body GST look like for a 40-year old former athlete? The best distinction between "mobility" and "flexibility." Exercise progressions for bar muscle-ups and most common mistakes in training for muscle-ups. Foam rolling or mobility tools: Do they have a place in GST? If so, favorite uses? How should taller people (say, over six feet tall) adjust GST? How should women adjust GST? And much, much more. Enjoy! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by 99Designs http://99designs.com/tim, the world's largest marketplace of graphic designers. I have used them for years to create some amazing designs. When your business needs a logo, website design, business card, or anything you can imagine, check out 99Designs. I used them to rapid prototype the cover http://99designs.com/tim for The 4-Hour Body, and I've also had them help with display advertising and illustrations. If you want a more personalized approach, I recommend their 1-on-1 service http://99designs.com/tim. You get original designs from designers around the world. The best part? You provide your feedback, and then you end up with a product that you're happy with or your money back. Click this link http://www.99designs.com/tim and get a free $99 upgrade. Give it a test run. This podcast is also brought to you by Wealthfront https://wealthfront.com/tim. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive (in a good way) set-it-and-forget-it investing service led by technologists from places like Apple. It has exploded in popularity in the last two years and now has more than $2.5B under management. Why? Because you can get services previously limited to the ultra-wealthy and only pay pennies on the dollar for them, and it's all through smarter software instead of retail locations and bloated sales teams. Check out wealthfront.com/tim http://wealthfront.com/tim, take their risk assessment quiz, which only takes 2-5 minutes, and they'll show you -- for free -- exactly the portfolio they'd put you in. If you want to just take their advice and do it yourself, you can. Well worth a few minutes to explore: wealthfront.com/tim http://wealthfront.com/tim.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Tim Ferriss?

  Now, what is the appropriate time?

• 0:12Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:23Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by 99designs. 99designs is a great partner for creating and growing your business. It's a one-stop shop for all of your graphic design needs, whether that's a logo, website, business card, or anything else. I used 99designs to get book cover prototypes for The Four Hour Body, which went on to become a number one New York Times bestseller. I also use them for banner ads, illustrations, and other things. With 99designs, designers around the world compete to create the best design for you. You give feedback and then pick your favorite. You end up happy, or you get your money back. It's very simple. You can check out a few of my own designs and those of yours, meaning Tim Ferriss Show listeners, at 99designs.com/tim. And right now, my listeners, you guys,

• 1:08Tim Ferriss?

  will get a free $99 upgrade on your first design. That's 99designs.com/tim. Check it out.

• 1:18Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront, and this is a very unique sponsor. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive, in a good way, set-it-and-forget-it investing service, led by technologists from places like Apple and world-famous investors. It has exploded in popularity in the last two years, and they now have more than $2.5 billion under management. In fact, some of my very good friends, investors in Silicon Valley, have millions of their own money in Wealthfront. So the question is, why? Why is it so popular? Why is it unique? Because you can get services previously reserved for the ultra-wealthy, but only pay pennies on the dollar for them. And this is because they use smarter software instead of retail locations, bloated sales teams, etc. And I'll come back to that in a second. I suggest you check out wealthfront.com/tim.

• 2:03Tim Ferriss?

  Take the risk assessment quiz, which only takes two to five minutes, and they'll show you for free exactly the portfolio They'd put you in. And if you just want to take their advice, run with it, do it yourself, you can do that. Or, as I would, you can set it and forget it. And here's why. The value of Wealthfront is in the automation of habits and strategies that investors should be using on a regular basis, but normally aren't. Great investing is a marathon, not a sprint, and little things that you may or may not be familiar with, like automatic tax loss harvesting, rebalancing your portfolio across more than 10 asset classes, and dividend reinvestment add up to very large amounts of money over longer periods of time. Wealthfront, as I mentioned, since it's using software instead of retail locations, et cetera, can

• 2:45Tim Ferriss?

  offer all of this at low costs that were previously completely impossible. Right off the bat, you never pay commissions or account fees. For everything, they charge 0.25% per year on assets above the first $15,000, which is managed for free if you use my link, wealthfront.com/tim. That is less than $5 a month to invest a $30,000 account, for instance. Now, normally, when I have a sponsor on this show, it's because I use them and recommend them. In this case, it's a little different. I don't use Wealthfront yet because I'm not allowed to. Here's the deal. They wanted to sponsor this podcast, but because of SEC regulations, companies that invest your money are not allowed to use client testimonials. So I couldn't be a user and have them on the podcast. But

• 3:28Tim Ferriss?

  I've been so impressed by Wealthfront that I've invested a significant amount of my own money, at least for me, in the team and the company itself. So I am an investor and hope to soon use it as a client. Now, back to the recommendation. As a Tim Ferriss Show listener, you'll get $15,000 managed for free if you decide to open an account. But just start with seeing the portfolio that they would suggest for you. Take two minutes, fill out their questionnaire at wealthfront.com/tim. It's fast, it's free. There's no downside that I can think of.

• 3:59Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, my savvy, sexy friends. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers from all different walks of life, industries, areas of speciality, to tease out the routines, habits, tools that you can use. This episode, we have Christopher

• 4:20Tim Ferriss?

  Summer, and this is his second appearance, but this is a standalone episode. He is the former US national team gymnastics coach. His last episode was one of the most popular that has ever been on the podcast. He's also the founder of Gymnastic Bodies, which is a training system I'm currently testing. Been using it for a few months now. I have no affiliation with it. I don't get any kickbacks. As a world-renowned Olympic coach, Coach Sommer is known for building his students into some of the strongest, most powerful athletes in the world. We covered a lot the last time around, and this episode has many, many answers to a lot of your most common questions. For instance, what home equipment should someone invest in first for $100 or less? What are his thoughts on weighted stretches?

• 5:04Tim Ferriss?

  If there's a place for them in gymnastic strength training, GST, what are the best examples of how to use them? Sample exercises? What does lower body GST look like for a 40-year-old former athlete, for instance? We talk about, or he brings up, the best distinction between mobility and flexibility that I've ever heard. Exercise progressions for bar muscle-ups. What might those look like? Or at the very least, tests that you can use to determine if it's even safe for you to attempt training for such a thing. Foam rolling or mobility tools? What does he think? And do you change gymnastic strength training? Or how do you change it for tall people, say, over six feet tall, or for women? So, there you have it.

• 5:48Tim Ferriss?

  And if you would like to test out Gymnastic Bodies, I, again, have no type of affiliation whatsoever, but Coach will be putting up some sample videos that feature exercises mentioned in this episode and others on gymnasticbodies.com/tim. It's also a sales page. There are a couple of different discounts and whatnot for you guys if you want to try it out. But they should be adding, and probably have already added, videos at the very bottom or somewhere on that page for you to check out. And if, for whatever reason, they are not there, you can go to YouTube and look for Gymnastic Bodies and find all sorts of good stuff. So without further ado, please enjoy my second public conversation.

• 6:32Tim Ferriss?

  We have had dozens. Second public conversation with Coach Summer.

• 6:39Tim Ferriss?

  Coach, welcome back to the show.

• 6:42Speaker 00

  Thank you, Tim.

• 6:43Tim Ferriss?

  It is very nice to be on the phone yet again. And I thought we would start with what we were talking about very briefly before we hit record. And I said, you know what, people might find this of interest. So as context for folks, I've been doing some rings work, gymnastic rings work, and with some assistance of equipment that you helped to put together and set up, which includes the 50/50, some people call a variation of the dream machine, which basically is a harness that allows you to decrease the weight you're supporting on your hands, and then power levers, which

• 7:20Tim Ferriss?

  look like Robocop gauntlets. And you can attach the rings on top of your forearm in different places with many different holes running from the wrist to closer to the elbow, so that you can shorten the fulcrum, I guess, to improve your physics. So in this way, you have progressive resistance with the rings, which is otherwise very difficult to achieve. So it's very, very cool. And I did something stupid while playing around, or not playing around, actually, I was taking very seriously, iron cross work, and hurt my right wrist. And it's, I thought it was broken, I had MRIs, it appears to be a ligament

• 8:05Tim Ferriss?

  strain. But here we are, three weeks later, and I can't hold a push-up without decent pain on the back of the right wrist. So I was asking you what I might do at this point to speed recovery. And I would love to restart your answer and go from there.

• 8:25Speaker 00

  Okay. All right. Good deal. Now, before we go into the healing part, let's, let's review how the accident happened, so that all the listeners don't think I'm an asshole who destroyed you.

• 8:35Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, right. Yeah, exactly. And, and also, one thing that Coach asked me before we got started, is he goes, I thought you were smart. And I said, to which I answered, the older I get, the less sure of that I become. The, I was subconsciously compensating, I think, to cheat a little bit in this movement. So, so with the power levers, you don't need to use a false grip, and you have metal very close to the top of your wrist. And as I was doing these

• 9:08Tim Ferriss?

  Eccentrics, well, I was doing positive but also lowering into an iron cross and then doing statics. I started rolling my hand into a false grip unnecessarily where you're basically supporting the rings across your palm and wrist as opposed to solely in your palm. And that drove the top of my wrist into the metal to such an extent that I sprained.

• 9:31Speaker 00

  And kept driving it in.

• 9:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, well, this is, this is where I remember I was in a.

• 9:39Speaker 00

  Exercise after exercise.

• 9:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, so then I continued with Maltese and Vic's work because I was in Paris and it took me like three weeks to find a place where I could set up all this equipment. So I was like, God damn it, I'm gonna get this workout done. I literally, Coach, you'd be proud of this part. You'd be ashamed of how stupid I behaved otherwise, but I took a separate suitcase with me overseas just full of equipment for training.

• 10:08Speaker 00

  That's what we do it.

• 10:09Tim Ferriss?

  And so I finally, I get an Uber and managed to get to the one gym in Paris that might let me set this stuff up. And then literally in the first two sets, act like an idiot and hurts my wrist. And I was just like, absolutely no fucking way, I am finishing this workout. So there you have it. But, so yes, I take full, I take full blame for that one. What should I do?

• 10:33Speaker 00

  All right, so Tim and I were talking just before we started recording and that this is a connective tissue injury where the ligaments in that on the top of the wrist got mashed, got compressed up into the metal, you know, over and over and over. So they're basically, they're, they're really, really bruised. And because the connective tissue heals so slowly, remember from first podcast, that connective tissue's metabolic rate is one tenth that of muscle tissue. So basically, once it's hurt, you know, there's, there's no way to get off the train. You have to ride this to the end and it's gonna be a while. Now, what we can do to kind of finesse this, though, is understanding that metabolic rate.

• 11:17Speaker 00

  Ice, then, for connective tissue work, you know, we use ice initially to help reduce inflammation. But then, after that, it will actually slow the metabolic rate because it doesn't have its own capillary system and it gets its blood through diffusion. So what we'll do instead is use heat. I first came across this, wow, early 2000s. We had an athlete who had severs. Usually happens when athletes, when they're growing, they're very, they're strong athletes, especially when they hit a growth spurt. Severs is irritation of the Achilles where it goes down into the heel. So when they're tumbling, they're running, they're sprinting, you know, that heel gets painful.

• 11:59Speaker 00

  And he'd been growing for a while, so on and off for the better part of a year, we had tried ice with no results, no results at all. In desperation, if you will, trying to find other answers, which is usually how good answers are found when the everyday stuff isn't working, came across an ultra-marathoning site. And against all convention, they said, use heat. They had had wonderful responses with it. So ours was super simple, went and got a hot cold pack, throw it in some boiling water. Takes a little practice figuring out, you know, how long to leave it in. Think we were two minutes, perhaps.

• 12:43Speaker 00

  You want it just warm enough that it's right on the edge of being too hot for comfort. And then just leave it on and let it cool naturally. In a week, we had better results from that heat a couple of times a day than we did from a year of ice.

• 13:01Tim Ferriss?

  And at what point would you make the switch? So if someone, let's just say, an anonymous idiot who goes to Paris and mashes their wrist into metal repeatedly, is it, is it two weeks later, three weeks later? Or how do you, how do you course map the symptoms?

• 13:21Speaker 00

  24 hours, 24 hours to control inflammation for as far as ice is concerned. And then I jump into heat.

• 13:29Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. Okay, so it's a, it's a, it's a quick. It's a quick jump then. And did you, with this particular athlete, did you use any type of contrast therapy going from that hot to cold, hot to cold, or did you keep it to the hot?

• 13:44Speaker 00

  At that time, we'd never used any hot water. We used the hot packs.

• 13:49Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 13:50Speaker 00

  And so we would just lay them on top. Now, I think it was, at that time, we weren't combining, but it could be very interesting. The issue that you run into if you do contrast baths with a wrist is that you have to soak the whole hand.

• 14:05Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 14:05Speaker 00

  And then, it's not like an ankle, the hands. Of course, you're pulling out the oil, your hands, you know, it's tough to get any work done. We're with an ankle going back and forth, no big deal. For those listening, a contrast bath is simply alternating between room temperature water and then ice water, two separate buckets. Set a timer, go for a minute in the ice, and then just set your phone to beep in a minute. And what we'll have athletes do is just, you know, throw a movie in. The protocol is keep alternating buckets back and forth as long as you can stand it without losing your mind.

• 14:42Tim Ferriss?

  And why use room temperature water as opposed to hot water?

• 14:45Speaker 00

  Excellent. Well, what happens is, it's, I first stumbled across this, I don't remember the name of the trainer, but it was the guy who was working with Michael Jordan back in his heyday. And Michael had had a game one evening, rolled his ankle, and had a game the next night. So it was an oh shit moment. So, you know, Michael, like anybody who's a high level performer, is dedicated. He's obsessed with doing his best. So that evening, he did the contrast bath protocol for two hours. You know, be, switch, switch, switch, next night, on an injured ankle, scored 40 points.

• 15:22Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 15:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. The nice, the nice thing with the contrast bath is, the cold is there long enough to reduce inflammation, but then it goes back into the room temperature, and it's not been cold long enough to reduce circulation by an extreme extent. So you kind of get the best of both worlds.

• 15:43Tim Ferriss?

  Now, is there, is there any reason to keep the warmer water at room temperature versus hot water?

• 15:52Speaker 00

  The difference going back and forth between we've never used more than room temperature, it could be significantly uncomfortable because the ice water is ice water.

• 16:01Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 16:02Speaker 00

  You know, we make that. So we just want to bring it up enough. We don't want to make it hot. We're not trying to make soup, but just enough to get a little blood flow back into the cold again.

• 16:14Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. All right. I will go get some reusable heat packs or ice cold packs. Looking at home equipment, this is something that came up quite a bit after our first chat. What home equipment should someone invest in first?

• 16:32Speaker 00

  To get started?

• 16:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, to get started, if anything. Like, let's look at the, on the inexpensive side, like $100 or less, and then if you have unlimited budget.

• 16:43Speaker 00

  Okay. Actually, you know, super simple, and I designed it this way on purpose because you've got to test the water. You've got to find out, is it my thing? You know, do I enjoy it? Not, it's not, it's not always just a matter of, is it effective? Does it work? Obviously, it's effective. Obviously, it works. But then it becomes a matter of, you know, is this my flavor of ice cream that I like?

• 17:05Tim Ferriss?

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:06Speaker 00

  You know, so, basically, they need some floor space, they need a bar, you know, they need an overhead bar, maybe some light dumbbells, a dowel. A dowel will be a long straight stick. And other than that, they're kind of pretty much good to go. I mean, we really went out of our way to make it as, as simple to get started as possible.

• 17:27Tim Ferriss?

  What would someone use a dowel for? And, I mean, I have a few in mind, but for people who aren't familiar. So this is effectively a broomstick, or even perhaps a PVC pipe?

• 17:38Speaker 00

  Yep. Broom handle, a long wooden dowel. We use that for different shoulder mobility. So when we, when we train adults, so, this kind of goes back to the, the general structure of development, is before we can get into the really cool stuff, light hair on fire, get all strong, yada, yada, yada, we first have to undo years of damage from desk patrol.

• 18:03Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 18:04Speaker 00

  And that means mobility is jacked up. So we're going to use the broomsticks, the dowels, with a little bit of weight on them, to start rebuilding that shoulder girdle mobility.

• 18:17Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. And so for those people interested, I mean, this is in that category, we would have various types of dislocates, right?

• 18:28Speaker 00

  Dislocates, some flexion work where they're working on lifting their arms overhead. Probably for adults, their greatest deficit, especially those who've been having any type of a professional career, you know, that involves paperwork is they're going to have extremely poor shoulder extension. To describe shoulder extension, standing upright, hands at my side, lifting my arms back behind me.

• 18:53Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I would put myself in that category for sure. And the, the shoulder extension, I mean, I've seen some improvements. Now granted, I've gone from absolutely disgusting to watch to just moderately offensive to watch, but, but it's still a large improvement. You would actually be very impressed with my progress that I've made prior to the wrist injury that is on one thing, which is if, if people look up dislocates and they use a normal grip. So let's just say people are starting with a dowel in front of them. They're holding it like a barbell in a deadlift with their arms slightly wider. So it's overhand

• 19:35Tim Ferriss?

  grip. The, the opposite of that in some ways would be the dorsal grip, right? Where you start with the bar behind you and you're holding it as if you're going to try to do a bicep curl through your legs, right? So your palms are facing forward. So you might recall when I tried to get my arms, I couldn't get up at all. But then when we started at the top, my wrists were so inflexible that I couldn't bring the bar down at all. So I've made a lot of progress on dorsal. So it's really

• 20:04Speaker 00

  Very good.

• 20:05Tim Ferriss?

  illuminating to me to look at not only the shoulder restriction that I have, but how

• 20:12Tim Ferriss?

  It is affected by shifts in the grip, right? Because this is, this, this might be one reason why people are like, oh, I've got great shoulder extension and they're using regular dislocates, let's just say, to assess that. And then they go on the rings and they're not prepared for it and they're going through all these different types of hand positions and arm positions and boom, they tear something and they're out of commission. The dowel, you could also use dowels, I remember if you could, for hollow body rocks or arched body rocks, correct?

• 20:42Speaker 00

  Sure, sure.

• 20:43Tim Ferriss?

  And that's something, why, why is that helpful? And so for, for people listening, the hollow body position would be, well, one way to think of it would be almost like a, a diver in the Olympics when they're jumping on the diving board before taking off. So they're not arched, they have sort of a slightly concave, if you were to lay on your stomach, put your hands out in front of you, put your toes on the ground and then lift your body off of the ground a few inches? Is that a fair assessment? Sort of a...

• 21:17Speaker 00

  That would be, that would be the arch if they were laying on their stomach. If they did the opposite, laying on their back, that would be the hollow.

• 21:22Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, right, right, right. So just what, what I'm just trying to explain is the hollow body position, right? So the, if you're on your back, you're sort of rolling on the pelvis with posterior pelvic tilt, right?

• 21:38Speaker 00

  Yep, just everything tucked under. Think, think of the body as a long flattened C, letter C.

• 21:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yep. And what, what does holding the dowel achieve with, with the hollow body rock in that case or the opposite where you're on your stomach and kind of doing a, again, that flattened C? But what does the dowel accomplish?

• 22:00Speaker 00

  Give them something visceral to feel. So with, as far as shoulder girdle is concerned, if they shrug their ears, their shoulders up to their ears, that would be scapular extension. If we do the opposite, that would be depression. So when they have that, the holding it with just a regular grip and they push that dowel up above their head, that helps them physically to activate the shoulder girdle and get that extension through the shoulders.

• 22:26Tim Ferriss?

  And for people who've tried either of these, and I encourage people to try them, try it with and without a dowel and it's, and video yourself if you can, because it's, it's incredible how... Having something to hold on to can address a lot of the problems that you have. At least in my experience, that was true with the Arch Body Rock in particular.

• 22:53Tim Ferriss?

  And what other pieces of equipment, if any?

• 22:56Speaker 00

  For getting started, that's a pretty solid list. Because a lot of their stuff, we're not, even though I know they would like to, right? They can't jump right in. They're gonna have to pay their dues. We're gonna take six months, maybe eight months. We're gonna do some strength work, but primarily, we're gonna address those joint deficits, those mobility deficits. Because if you can't get in the correct position, how can you exercise in the correct position? You can't. It's, I was speaking with someone the other day, and we're kind of pointing out some of the fallacies in traditional training, where it's just kind of accepted that as you get

• 23:36Speaker 00

  older, your body can no longer tolerate doing overhead weighted work. You know, you can't, you can't do, "I'm a strong guy, I can't do military press anymore." And rather than them trying to find out what the cause of that deficit is, they just kind of accept, "Oh, yeah, my shoulders are fucked, I just can't lift my arms over my head anymore." And I'm the exact opposite. I said, "Seriously? You find it acceptable that you can't raise your arms over your head anymore?"

• 24:07Speaker 00

  What if there's something on a shelf? I mean, we're not talking world-class performance. How about if you want to be in your closet, and you just want to get a suitcase down, and, "Nope, shit, I just can't, you know? I'm just gonna live in a life where my arms don't go above my shoulder forever." And to me, that's just asinine.

• 24:24Speaker 00

  We're not trying to be contortionists or anything. We're just, you know, this is your natural range of motion, and you're gonna sacrifice this for the rest of your life? Rather than, "Okay, well, what caused this?" Well, what caused it was a steady diet, and nothing wrong with these exercises, they just did them to exclusion, a steady diet of bench press and curls. Which is gonna make the pecs really tight, it's gonna make the bicep really tight. Now, there's nothing at all wrong with bench, there's nothing at all wrong with curl. But it has to be done in a way with a balanced program that maintains that healthy range of motion in the joint. We don't just get tighter and tighter and tighter. What are they just gonna eventually lay there and not move? You know, it'll be there.

• 25:06Speaker 00

  Sometimes some people, a nice thing to do, especially for, uh, for the listeners here, they'll get a big kick out of this. First time I saw this, blew my mind. Go to YouTube and enter in the search, enter "high-speed karate chop." High-speed karate chop. Yeah, I know, so cool. Such a, such a corny thing to say. What they'll see is going to blow their mind. First thing they're gonna do is gonna be at regular speed. Uh, black belt's gonna be there and he is going to break a cement block with his hand. I've done it, I'm sure a ton of listeners out there have done it. No big deal, right? Breaking a cement block with their hands? Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's not, it's not like you get, you get attacked.

• 25:51Speaker 00

  I mean, you'll, you'll see it and for those of us who didn't say, "Yeah, yeah, that's what it was, dah dah dah." There's training for it. But then what they're going to show is they're gonna show what happens to the physical structure at 4,000 frames a second. It's astounding what happens. It's astounding and it's also important to remember that this happens in all athletic activities. What we think happens when we're training is that our bones are getting denser and firmer and stronger. Well, what this video is going to show that as his hand comes down on that block and he's trying to break it, that you'll see the bones almost liquid, folding over themselves.

• 26:34Speaker 00

  Going through, oh yeah, the first time I saw it, I was completely freaked. I was like, "What in the hell is this? He's, he's crippled himself. He, it's over, it's done. He, his whole hand is snapped." And then you see the bones come back.

• 26:50Speaker 00

  This then, when you see it, it's important, it's always important to try to look for the core principle of what's going on. What this is illustrating is our eyes aren't fast enough to see it, but this is the essential nature of what our skeletal system does. It's not to be strong and stiff and brittle. It's to absorb force and then rebound back against it. So if someone's playing tennis, if it's a running back, someone jumping, any of this, the bones are designed to be for plyometric training. They're designed for this. They've actually taken some older adults and will put them on something as simple and gentle

• 27:30Speaker 00

  as jump rope. And just that small impact from the jump rope built more strength than traditional weightlifting. This is why we'll see older adults, when they fall and they break a hip, it's not that, it's that the bone bent and it kept bending. It didn't come back again.

• 27:53Tim Ferriss?

  With just to underscore something you said earlier, which is a lot of people give up, blame age, "I'm just fucked, my shoulders are done, sorry, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna assume this desk sitting position for the rest of my life," or whatever it is. There is an Instagram account that you introduced me to, which anytime I feel like copping out with some BS excuse that is repeated by a lot of people my age, I'm 39 right now, I look at, I'm not sure I'm pronouncing it correctly, but Matt's Train. So people should check this guy out.

• 28:26Speaker 00

  Ah, Matt's Train.

• 28:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 28:27Speaker 00

  M-A-T-S-T-R-A-N-E.

• 28:30Tim Ferriss?

  Correct. So 53-year-old who's doing gymnastics, strength training.

• 28:34Speaker 00

  Who started when he was 48.

• 28:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, started when he's 48. So this is, it's a great account, currently has about 2,500 followers, so I'll be curious to see where it is.

• 28:44Speaker 00

  About to get a lot more.

• 28:46Tim Ferriss?

  About to get a lot more, but very inspiring to watch this guy.

• 28:51Speaker 00

  Very inspiring. And Matt's was in the same position as a lot of the listeners. Matt started training with us because his doctor told him, Matt's owns a restaurant supply company, he's one of the co-owners, and it worked in huge hours. And the doctor pretty much told him, if you don't start taking care of yourself, you go out and get some exercise, you're not going to be here in a couple of years. I mean, it was literally that point blank. It wasn't, "Well, I'm a little concerned. Maybe you could do a little better." No, the doctor flat out told him, "You're gonna be a dead fucker if you don't go fix it."

• 29:24Tim Ferriss?

  I like doctors like that. I need to find somebody who speaks to me like that.

• 29:29Speaker 00

  We need more of those.

• 29:31Tim Ferriss?

  So, let's talk about just something we'll see a lot in that Instagram account, which is stretching. And specifically, I'm not gonna belabor this point, but on the gear side of things. One question I often ask people is, what have you changed your mind on in the last few years? And I don't know if this is in the last few years, but could you talk about stretch straps for a second?

• 29:54Speaker 00

  Stretch straps?

• 29:55Tim Ferriss?

  The straps that appear in the... You have Orange demonstrate using the straps for very stiff people in the hamstring series.

• 30:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, for years. And this was just me being national team. Because as a national team coach, your reality, my reality, I'm sure all other national team coaches, our reality of what is average, of what is normal, becomes skewed over the years, simply because of the quality of the athletes and how exceptional they are that we surround ourselves with. And we quit looking at them as exceptional, and it just becomes our normal day-to-day experience. And so, we look at other people then, not as regular. We start looking at them as, "My God, they're seriously fucked up. How did they get out of bed in the morning? I don't understand." Well, we kind of, at first, brought that same one to their stretching.

• 30:52Speaker 00

  And so, there's a piece of equipment called a stretch strap, which is, basically, it's a long circle of nylon strapping that is then sewn into kind of mini loops. They just make a daisy chain of it.

• 31:10Speaker 00

  Then, we also like to use yoga blocks. We use those to accommodate reduced range of motion. Now, for years, I thought those were just silly crap. I thought, you know, "Take the training wheels off the bike and go out and ride the damn bike." And I was completely wrong, completely wrong. What it does is you can use this combination of the blocks and the stretch straps to actually, someone who's crazy, crazy tight, it gives them an opportunity to actually get some work in. So they can

• 31:44Tim Ferriss?

  Start progressing.

• 31:45Speaker 00

  Sit down, yeah, start progressing. I mean, and that's the name of the game. But what we try, where I've come to now is they don't need to start exceptional. We don't know how far they're going to go. We just had someone share, he's been doing the stretch courses for a year. A really good student, Ryan Bailey. He just sent a testimonial in. It's ridiculous, it's ridiculous. How much progress he made in a year of just consistent stretching. He's got full chest, two legs on his pike now. He's got, he can sit down, he can pull his, touch his head to his toes. His splits are almost all the way down and

• 32:29Speaker 00

  and just, he's astounded, he can't believe it, he's ecstatic. And part of that was, we just started and let them scale the movement according to where they are right now. Because in order to make progress, you first got to accept where you are.

• 32:46Tim Ferriss?

  Right, and if your starting position because of inflexibility is posturally unsound, right? Because you don't have the blocks, you don't have, then you're just developing compensations and problems that will

• 33:00Speaker 00

  Let's even be more specific. We've got people who can't sit on the floor. They cannot, and by that, I mean, they can't sit on the floor with their legs in a straddle and sit up straight.

• 33:11Tim Ferriss?

  Legs straight in front of them and together.

• 33:14Speaker 00

  Yep, either legs, legs straight together in front of them or legs apart, right on the floor and straight. They can't do it. Their back, their glutes, their hamstrings are so tight that in order for them to sit on the floor, they have to slouch. They have to slouch. Rather than opposite, right? Being able to sit up tall with a flat back and instead of sitting on their sacrum or their tailbone, sit on their glutes and their hamstring.

• 33:41Tim Ferriss?

  And so, one potential way that you could use the block in that case would be sitting on one or two yoga blocks.

• 33:46Speaker 00

  Exactly, exactly.

• 33:48Tim Ferriss?

  And which I had to do if people really want to feel Ridiculous. You can try to do something called, I guess, what was I doing? It was straddle pike pulses.

• 34:05Speaker 00

  I did enjoy those.

• 34:06Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah, I sent coach videos of these. There's a good chance you'll have a glute medius

• 34:14Tim Ferriss?

  contraction, we'll call it, that

• 34:16Speaker 00

  Call it contraction.

• 34:17Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. A severe cramp that will lead you to fall over in pain.

• 34:22Speaker 00

  For those who haven't seen the video, Tim is an excellent dancer as he was rolling around on the floor.

• 34:29Tim Ferriss?

  Why do you, when someone's doing, say, a hurdler stretch? Okay, so, and I'll just assume people know what that is. You can look it up if not. But why do you elevate the heel of the straight leg on top of a block?

• 34:45Speaker 00

  Well, it would depend, right? Because maybe if they are more advanced enough that they can be on the floor, will elevate, because what that will do is most people will, without realizing it, allow the knee to go bent. So then where the hamstring crosses the knee and where the calf crosses the knee coming up, neither of those are being addressed then. But more than likely what will happen, especially when they're starting, is rather than elevate the foot, we're going to elevate, we've had people that are so tight, they have to start sitting on a chair in order to try to get in the right position. They have their feet on the ground out in front of them and they actually have to elevate. And it's, it's not, it's what the hard thing for them is you just, you know, you gotta be, gotta be

• 35:30Speaker 00

  understanding of where your body's at. It's not a good thing, it's not a bad thing. It's a what it is thing.

• 35:37Tim Ferriss?

  And if we're expanding to weighted stretches, this is a question that a number of folks have had.

• 35:46Tim Ferriss?

  What are your thoughts on weighted stretches? If there's a place for it in GST?

• 35:51Speaker 00

  Oh, it's essential.

• 35:52Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 35:52Speaker 00

  It's essential.

• 35:53Tim Ferriss?

  What are some of the best examples of how to use them? For novices or novices or intermediate?

• 35:59Speaker 00

  Yeah. Maybe before, before an example, you know, is why?

• 36:03Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 36:04Speaker 00

  Why do a weighted stretch? And the reason is, an adult is so tight. He's so tight and he's strong at the same time that the weight of his torso, for example, or her torso, isn't enough to help them bend forward.

• 36:21Tim Ferriss?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:22Speaker 00

  So he can't make any progress. He can't make any progress. But if we take them and we stand them up, for example, and we let them hold a weight in their hand, it's not a giant, you know, we're not, it's important to separate mobility work from maximal strength work. Well, we're not, we're not Conan, we're not Tarzan, which I saw that movie yesterday. It was kick ass. Legend of Tarzan. Okay. We're not, we're not going out there and trying to be He-Man and Super Macho. What we're trying to do is remodel connective tissue. And it has its own schedule, 210 days for first cycle of adaptation. Well, right away, that means I gotta calm my ass down and I need to be patient here. That's, that's six to seven months. There is no rush.

• 37:07Speaker 00

  You can't rush. Right? Because this, this is hardwired into us. You can't force it. So what the weighted mobility allows is to gradually take that strength and that tightness that we have, and instead of it being a negative, use it as a positive. So now that have that little bit of weight, even if it's, let's say it's a Jefferson curl. It's kind of a curling deadlift movement. And they start with a kilo or two. Just that little bit of extra weight for the muscles to have to work against. Now the muscles start, think of it as flossing, start loosening up. They start fatiguing a little bit, which leads to them relaxing, which leads to that increased range of motion, which would never happen without using the weight.

• 37:53Tim Ferriss?

  And there are a couple of, well, the exercise that comes to mind immediately is the one you mentioned, Jefferson curl. And for people who aren't familiar, just because I don't want to assume everyone's heard the first episode, Jefferson curl, and feel free to jump in and correct me here, but imagine you are standing and you could certainly start not elevated, but let's just assume you're standing on a step or a block and you have a barbell in front of you, empty barbell, and you would then tuck your chin and curl down kind of one vertebra at a time. It's basically a slowly curled back stiff-legged deadlift.

• 38:30Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 38:31Tim Ferriss?

  Where you might target to have your wrists get past your toes. Is that a fair description?

• 38:37Speaker 00

  That would. And probably the primary difference between it would be a stiff-legged dead, it's going to have slightly bent knees, whereas the Jefferson curl is going to be completely straight knees.

• 38:47Tim Ferriss?

  Right, right. So no soft knees. What are some other examples of very effective weighted stretches? Because I saw tremendous returns and progress with the Jefferson curl in pretty, in pretty short order. And

• 39:02Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 39:03Tim Ferriss?

  I remember I asked you, when should I be doing Jefferson curls at one point? Because I didn't see them in some of the workouts. And you said, oh, Jefferson curls are to us, Jefferson curls are like breathing to us. I said, oh, okay. So I should probably do them more often then. What are some other exercises that you find particularly effective as weighted stretches?

• 39:25Speaker 00

  The shoulder extension work. So what'll, what'll happen is so few times, everything they do, most of us do conditioning wise, is anterior delt, front of the body. They're going to do bench, they're going to do curls, they do all these things, and they very rarely put their hands back behind them in extension, very rarely. So they actually create their own shoulder impingement.

• 39:53Speaker 00

  So that weighted and now we have, think about we have this, the pecs are so strong that the shoulders are rolled forward. They're strong and they're tight. Sometimes people mistakenly think that in order to be strong, they have to be tight. That's not the case. So what are we now today is Friday. So it's opening ceremonies today. So real games are just getting ready to go. Uh gymnasts are going to be first out of the gate. Um, they're going to see ridiculous strength and power, right? Different strength, power is strength multiplied by speed. So they're going to see ridiculous amounts of power. They're going to see huge muscle mass.

• 40:33Speaker 00

  And they're also going to see an athlete that's very supple and mobile and agile. So it's very possible to have both.

• 40:42Tim Ferriss?

  And the, the shoulder extension works, would that take the form of dislocates with a little bit of weight on the bar?

• 40:49Speaker 00

  Um, it probably, the dislocate is going to be from the front all the way to the back. The shoulder extension work is starting upright, grasping a bar, some kind of a bar with a little bit of weight. It might be as little as a pound. You know, our athletes went all the way up to 20 kilos. But, uh, you know, start, start where they're at and then without allowing the torso to move at all, just using the shoulders, lift the bar up behind them.

• 41:17Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 41:18Speaker 00

  Goal is to get to 90 degrees. If they can start rolling overhead, their grip is too wide. So narrow that grip in a little bit, lift again and keep going. Goal is to get down to shoulder width and still being able to lift to 90 degrees.

• 41:34Tim Ferriss?

  I saw a video on your Instagram account of a very peculiar exercise that I'd love to get your two cents on. And, and sometimes I wonder when I see some of these exercises, I'm like, did Coach Sommer just come up with something for his own entertainment value? To see how many thousands of people he can get to do this. But, uh, this one was, was interesting. It was someone standing on a bench, like a bench press bench. There, they were holding on to a, what looked like a 45-pound plate, could have just been a bumper plate of some type, underneath the bench. So imagine if you, if you put the 45-pound plate, let's just call it a plate, underneath, directly underneath the middle of the bench.

• 42:15Tim Ferriss?

  Then they reached their arms down on either side of the bench, grabbed this plate, stepped up onto the bench, and then went from bent knees to straight knees, trying to bring their head to their toes, effectively, or shins, with the plate beneath, like, they can't lift the plate up, of course, because it's under the bench. What is this, what is this movement? And what is the, what are the applications or values of it?

• 42:41Speaker 00

  That's, that's a weighted pike, and that was part of my Elite Athletes' daily warm-up. And then, because it's me, of course, so, some of them, the 45-pound plate wasn't enough, so I was kind and generous enough to go over and help press down on the plate for them, to give them some extra range of motion.

• 43:02Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. And what would they, would they, would they do a, a short number of repetitions?

• 43:09Speaker 00

  For that particular one, yeah, they, they could go, there's a couple of ways we could program that. We could just go a straight 30-second hold, so, straighten the legs, hold for 30, that was very common for us. We would also do what we call a 10 by 10, so that would be, starting from a squat, straighten up, little pause, back down to a squat would be one, do that 10 times, and then the 10 by 10 part comes from on the 10th one, hold that weighted pike for 10 seconds.

• 43:38Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. Yes, no, I've, I've done shorter versions of this for you before.

• 43:44Speaker 00

  Just one more, a quick one. I'd kind of like people to stop, the reason we call it mobility instead of flexibility, is because in their heads, they, they think flexibility is being rather passive. That there's, there's no strength involved and I'd like them to start considering that usable flexibility or mobility has a strength component to it. That if we have extreme flexibility, that's not supported by strength, that's actually dangerous.

• 44:16Tim Ferriss?

  It's a liability.

• 44:17Speaker 00

  It's actually dangerous. Yeah, it's a liability. I can get my joint way out here and it can be under load suddenly on the field of play and I get hurt.

• 44:25Tim Ferriss?

  Uncontrolled range of motion, yeah.

• 44:27Speaker 00

  But if there's strength throughout that range of motion, well now we've increased our athletic ability. We haven't decreased it.

• 44:35Tim Ferriss?

  This is a question that came up quite a lot from listeners. What does lower body gymnastic strength training look like?

• 44:43Speaker 00

  Ah, such a great question.

• 44:46Tim Ferriss?

  And let's just say for a 40-year-old former athlete, right? So it's somebody who's not hobbled, right? But maybe that there's a recreational athlete.

• 44:56Speaker 00

  They think they're not hobbled.

• 44:57Tim Ferriss?

  They think they're not hobbled, right?

• 44:59Speaker 00

  They think they're not hobbled. Cause I'll, I'll share a story to, to show that they're more fucked up than they think they are.

• 45:06Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, sure. Go for it.

• 45:07Speaker 00

  Our, our, our very first seminar that I did, working with adults way back 2007, 2008, had some really athletic people show up, really strong, you know, by, by regular everyday standards. They squatted, they deadlift, you know, they, they were strong. And when I tried to do our entry level plyometric work with them, so a kind of a straight leg bouncing that I would do with my introductory athletes, you know, my five-year-olds, they just, it destroyed them. It destroyed them. In fact, the stronger they were, the faster they went down.

• 45:49Tim Ferriss?

  Now, just to dig into that for one second, I apologize, but just for the image in my head, we're not talking about like broad jumps. We're talking about sort of a jump roping movement where they're hopping like for 50 feet down the, down the mat.

• 46:03Speaker 00

  Jump rope with, with straight legs.

• 46:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, got it.

• 46:06Speaker 00

  So rather than, so we, and when we train, we, we Separate jumping movements where the joint is bending and then jumping from rebounding movements where the joints are tight and extended. So the Olympics getting ready to start, can you see some crazy stuff? When they're tumbling on the floor, there's no time to jump because it happens so fast. We're using this, so the body has to be strongly extended so that the connective tissue is what provides the power. There'll be a, if we look at it under, we'll get some people who'll fuss, "Oh yeah, if I look at it under the thousands of frames a second, I can see a knee flick." I'm like, "You know what? Bite my ass."

• 46:49Speaker 00

  No, no one can see that as we're coaching. What the athlete is trying, I'll tell you both as a coach and as a former gymnast, what we're trying to do is be as extended as possible. So what happens then is you take an adult and what have they been doing for conditioning? Well, they've been doing what they know how to do. They're going in and they're doing leg press and they're doing leg extension and they're doing leg curls and they're doing squats and they're doing deadlifts, which are all primary muscle mass exercises. There's no joint conditioning as far as a plyometric factor is concerned. And this, this is kind of what also leads to, and they're always noticed, they're always

• 47:32Speaker 00

  exactly on track, which everything is in alignment. Well, that's a separate discussion, but there's no impact. So they get really, really strong and this is what leads to that kind of weekend warrior syndrome where they go out now on the weekend, they, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, they conditioned in the gym, they've been working hard, their diet's good, they're doing their cardio and they go out to play softball. And they go to run around the base and they have these strong primary movers, but they haven't done anything for ACL, MCL, meniscus. Their knee goes a little bit out of alignment. They pop their knee playing softball.

• 48:09Tim Ferriss?

  So what would you prescribe to prevent that? And whatever we can give people, obviously, if they want to dig into the deep training, they need to look at the more in-depth and comprehensive courses. But what are some movements that might help?

• 48:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, they actually, some people were really good on the last podcast we did. And through the comments, they put up salsa in our courses. You know, there are specific knee exercises because the trainers will tell you, you should always, always, always make sure your knees track over your toes. But it's literally impossible to do anything that includes change of movement, change of direction, without planting the foot and pushing sideways or in an angle that your knee doesn't come off track. So if all I do is these primary squats and deads, I build this huge, strong muscle mass. And I haven't done anything to prepare meniscus, you know, where it takes the knees off to the side. And there's, you know, either direction and then twisting movements.

• 49:07Speaker 00

  And they don't have to be huge loads. And, you know, we cover all that. Well, we should put up some samples for them. Remind me, Tim, we'll put that up for them. But.

• 49:17Tim Ferriss?

  Could you describe one of the movements just for, just for people who want to get an image in their head? What would one of these exercises look like?

• 49:25Speaker 00

  Probably the simplest one would be a twisting squat. So think of sitting on the ground, cross-legged, or we used to call it sit like an Indian when I was young. Sitting on the ground, cross-legged, and stand up out of it without hands. What's going to happen is as they're standing up, and then we're also, well, we'll ignore the fact that we're going to also push on the side of the ankles. But just from that standing up, right? They're, they're working the ACL. They're putting pressure on the outside of that knee and standing up. We had, we've never done more than body weight on these movements. We've never done more than, you know, for our lead athletes, a single set of 10 in their daily warm-up.

• 50:07Speaker 00

  But what it does is, rather than praying and hoping, you know, and lighting candles and going to church and all this stuff that our knee will never, ever, ever go off track, you know, accept that it's going to go off track and prepare for it. Prepare for it. So.

• 50:25Tim Ferriss?

  Are there any other recommendations that you would have? This is from, this is from a number of runners in the comments for.

• 50:36Tim Ferriss?

  Preventing running injuries besides not running.

• 50:40Speaker 00

  Well, were they specific on the running injuries?

• 50:44Tim Ferriss?

  They were not. So you could pick common issues and how you would address them.

• 50:52Speaker 00

  I'll give an extreme example. So we have a student, Douglas, who every year, he is a maniac for running. He loves to do ultra marathons and he lives up in Montana and he loves to run through the mountains. And he's insane. He's insane. It's his thing. Now, he's been doing the GB stretch courses, which aren't running specific, but they're human body specific, if you will. Right? He's been doing those for a year now and he said, this is the first year that he's going out and doing his 20 mile runs and more,

• 51:33Speaker 00

  where he's not getting tight. He's not getting the injuries that he would have gotten before. He says, wow, my body feels good. And I was a little surprised. I was like, wow, you're feeling good with that mileage? I forget how much he's doing per week. It's something ridiculous. And then he says, no, no, I feel really good. Now, that being said, right, he lives up in Montana, so obviously there's not a lot of running going on in the winter because the snow is hip deep on a giraffe. No one's going out to run in that. So there was enough time for him to address deficits prior to getting back on the trail and running again.

• 52:14Speaker 00

  So I'm not sure how effective it could be with someone who already has a high mileage program. And then we add this, and it will be effective, but it's going to be much slower than someone who is off-season.

• 52:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, let's say they're off-season. What would be some exercises or recommendations for getting to that point?

• 52:34Speaker 00

  Let's see. Well, something that they find out is when we do our...

• 52:41Speaker 00

  Front split course. A lot of people get really, well, we get, we, not as many as before, but we'll get comments of, you know, coach, we start them with calf work, ankle mobility. Uh, we work on tibialis, which is on the front of the shin. We're working on soleus, which is the lower calf muscle. We're working on the gastroc, which is the higher calf. We're working on extension and flexion in the ankle. And we'll get people who are like, god damn it, coach, I can't fucking walk today because of these stupid exercises. Why, why did you put this in?

• 53:13Tim Ferriss?

  So let me hit, let me, let me hit pause. So I remember the first time I did this particular sequence, and I'll just give people some details so they can get the idea. And it starts off with, uh, feet parallel, 60 calf raises and then stretching. And then very quickly, like 60 seconds later, all right, uh, duck, duck stance, feet pointed out, 60 calf raises, and then more stretches. And then, uh, feet pointed in, 60 calf raises. And I just remember, this is the first time I did any stretch workout from you. And I was like, holy fuck. I am like, I'm gonna get buried by this stretch workout. I thought this was gonna be a day off, and I'm only five minutes into it. It doesn't, it isn't actually that punishing

• 53:58Tim Ferriss?

  the entire time. But please, please continue. Yeah, just wanna add some, add some color.

• 54:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, cuz what, what happens is people, it's important to understand that our bodies are capable of generating enormous amounts of power. But it was supposed to be on an as-needed basis, not all day long, every day. What we are by nature, just due to how our physique is designed, is we're endurance animals. So your, your calves are designed for endurance work. You're designed, they're designed for you to go out and kill something, put it on your shoulders, and then carry it through the mountain six miles back home. And people don't train their calves like that anymore. So the calf is an endurance muscle. Uh, your core is an endurance muscle.

• 54:48Speaker 00

  Your arms are an endurance muscle. Uh, just, and just why do it? For example, we used to take my, and we'll come back to calves. We used to have my athletes do very heavy weighted legless rope climbs. And when I stopped doing that a couple of times a week, when I stopped doing that and had them go on a seven meter rope, a triple climb. So up, down, up, down, up, down, jump in the back of the line. Their turn comes back up on a seven meter, up, down, up, down, get in the back of the line, come back up again, up, down, up, down. So what is that? Seven? Seven. Seven ascents in five minutes? Right? Cause they're just, they're just booking and you know, I'm not warm and fuzzy when we're working the athletes, cause this wasn't conditioning. This was warm up.

• 55:33Speaker 00

  This was what we'd consider pre-strength. Right? At, at an elite level, if you can't do that as part of warm up, you're not elite level and you're not strong enough to do advanced strength and advanced work on rings. But what we noticed, just as a consequence of putting that in their daily warm up, is their arms exploded.

• 55:51Speaker 00

  Which is kinda contrary for how I was taught coming up. You know, if you want to get stronger, we need more load. Well, yes, in certain circumstances, but because the bicep and the arms are endurance muscles, cause think about it, I go out and I kill something, does it do me any good? If I can only carry something for 30 seconds? Right. Right? I gotta be able to carry this for long durations of time. Well, calves are the same. Calves are the same. So a good friend of mine, uh, I mentioned the other podcast was the Bulgarian Olympic coach. I learned a lot from Rummen.

• 56:29Speaker 00

  Rummen was the one who found out that connective tissue, uh, like the Achilles tendon, which is what we're training with those high rep calf raises thrive, they're healthy with high rep work. And if so, the converse of that, the flip side of that is if you're not doing high rep work, you're slowly starving that connective tissue. You're slowly starving it because it's not getting enough blood flow because it doesn't have its own capillary system, so it's fed by exercise and movement. Now, it doesn't mean you can't do the high intensity work. You absolutely can, but at least, especially the stronger you are, at least once or twice a week, you need to feed these tissues.

• 57:10Tim Ferriss?

  Feeding sessions.

• 57:11Speaker 00

  Exactly right.

• 57:13Tim Ferriss?

  Tissue feeding sessions. And so if we're looking at these runners, right, and we, so you're having them engorge the calves, feeding the connective tissues, and then looking at different types of bent ankle work before the hamstrings, right?

• 57:31Speaker 00

  Right.

• 57:32Tim Ferriss?

  And are there any other?

• 57:35Speaker 00

  At their level of strength, that's probably sufficient later as they get more advanced. So, once, once we have healthy joints and we have some reasonable mobility, then we can start doing plyometric work for, because plyometric work is what? It's multiples of body weight on impact. What's running? Running is going to be a multiple of body weight during their run. That's why someone who's really weak and deconditioned, when they go out to run, it's like a session from hell. They're just, everything hurts. They're flat footed, there's no bounce in their step, their lungs burn, every, everything hurts compared to someone who's in shape.

• 58:19Speaker 00

  For example, way back when, right, in high school, now, we didn't have the nice floors, the nice gymnastics competition floors that we have now, so we tumbled when I was coming up on wrestling mats.

• 58:34Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I know, they're, they're, yeah.

• 58:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. You did wrestle.

• 58:39Tim Ferriss?

  I know wrestling mats, oh yeah.

• 58:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know them well. And so what happens is, I was, I was repeatedly exposed to...

• 58:48Speaker 00

  10 to 14, when we've measured at Olympic Training Center, when someone does basic tumbling, a round up back handspring backflip, they're hitting 14 times body weight. Well, not 14 times for one single time in training, but turn after turn after turn after turn. Because it turns out that how we increase the strength of connective tissue at really high levels is very high load, very, very short duration, fractions of a second, high intensity micro burst. That's the fastest, most effective way to build connective tissue strength on a joint that's prepared to do so. So, I had a crush on a girl in high school and she was a big runner.

• 59:30Speaker 00

  I'd never ran a day in my life, except from chores or something. So I immediately went out. She was gonna run in the summer, so I jumped to, shoot, 12 miles a day. I went and joined their elite track club, didn't notice a thing. Within two weeks, went out and ran 20 miles, didn't notice a thing. I remember talking to people, saying, "I don't understand why people have to train for this shit. I don't understand. This is no big deal." But if someone can handle, right, that higher level, more advanced plyometric work, where they're hitting 14 times body weight, 10 times body weight, are they gonna notice when they're running and it's maybe 2, 2.5 times body weight? No, that's nothing. That doesn't even exist.

• 1:00:15Speaker 00

  You don't even notice that. Now, we have to build up to it, though.

• 1:00:20Tim Ferriss?

  What are the, to shift gears to a different, common question, what are the prerequisites for a safe back tuck? So backflip. Now, let me, I can...

• 1:00:32Speaker 00

  Go to a coach.

• 1:00:34Tim Ferriss?

  Let me rephrase this. Like, what should the checklist be even before considering it? Because this is what a lot of people want to do.

• 1:00:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. I won't even touch them with it, because they'll be all out there trying to do it and they're all gonna die. And they're all gonna get mangled and they're gonna land on their head and they're gonna be mad at me. Coach, you told me wrong. So yeah, for, for the technical stuff, anytime that there's inversion, then there's also risk of injury, especially for they're running outside and they're doing it on their own in their backyard. So I really don't recommend it. If, if they want to do it and it's awesome. I mean, obviously I spent my life doing this stuff. I recommend that they go to a good professional instructor. Don't, don't go to your neighbor and don't pull out YouTube and say, hey, cool. Look at this. I think we can spot each other because you'll probably spot him well. And when

• 1:01:26Speaker 00

  it's his turn to spot you, he's going to fuck it up and he's going to drop you.

• 1:01:31Tim Ferriss?

  So let's choose something a little, a little safer, not as much fatality risk or paralysis risk. Prerequisites for a bar muscle up.

• 1:01:43Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:01:43Tim Ferriss?

  Or, and/or the most common mistakes in training for muscle ups.

• 1:01:49Speaker 00

  Okay. Muscle up, you know, people will look at it and they'll go, all right, it's, it's got a pull up component and it has a dip component. And I'm just going to string them together. And what they're missing is that there's a transition. There's a transition where they're going from a pull up where their elbows are pointing basically down at the floor on their pull up to a dip where their elbows are pointing straight up. In between there, that elbow needs to transition through. And in order to make that transition, you have to have shoulder extension. That means I need to be able to let my elbow go back behind my torso. If I don't have shoulder.

• 1:02:33Tim Ferriss?

  I feel like shoulder extension, just to totally interrupt and be an asshole, is like, if you remember Seinfeld, do you ever see Seinfeld? And something bad would happen and Jerry would go, Newman. And I feel like for me, that's shoulder extension. Anyway, please, please.

• 1:02:46Speaker 00

  I think it, I actually think it's for, and it was something that I didn't realize because this isn't an issue with gymnasts, but it took a long time. Like obliques also for adults are huge. If we wanted to go down the issues of adults who are, they're not going to have any thoracic extension. They don't have shoulder extension. Their, their obliques are unbelievably tight and weak simultaneously, which is kind of sucks because at least hopefully if you're tight, you're strong, but they're not. They're just tight and weak. They are, their paraformas is jacked up and their calves from all the desk work and sitting on the chairs are like piano wire.

• 1:03:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I'm rolling out my foot on a golf ball as we, as we speak, standing, standing instead of sitting. So, so coming back to the muscle up though, people miss the transition, what would a, what would the exercise progression then look like? I know we, we need the shoulder extension, so that would most certainly be a piece of the puzzle, but since it's a question that a number of people threw.

• 1:03:55Speaker 00

  Of technique, well, I actually, I think, you know, and again, we got to hammer this home with them, is that they were taught that these gymnastics elements like this, like a muscle up, are skill training, that they're technique training. And I'm sorry, but that's a load of horse shit. It's, it's not skill training. It's, skill training is a triple backflip. That's skill training. This is a strength element. And in order to do this strength element correctly, the body has to be able to get into the correct positions. This is why you saw, oh, we'll say, we'll say CrossFit, for example, where they were doing the kipping muscle ups. Why do a kipping muscle up?

• 1:04:36Speaker 00

  To avoid the transition, trying to bounce from the bottom to the top. And there's, there's issues of when it's appropriate and when it's not. We won't beat that horse to death thing we did last podcast. But they lacked the ability to pull their elbows behind their body. So to my mind, if you can't get in the correct positions, why are you even trying to do the exercise?

• 1:04:57Tim Ferriss?

  What would be some good tests for someone to know if they, I guess these could double as goals in a way? How could?

• 1:05:10Speaker 00

  Russian dips, Russian dips.

• 1:05:12Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, yes, okay. Could you describe Russian dips, please?

• 1:05:15Speaker 00

  Sure. Russian dip, you can need a little bit of a longer dip handle. So get up in a straight arm support, bend down like a regular dip, and then lower back, not, we, we see some people who will lower under their elbows. I don't know who came up with that stupid variation. Don't do it. It's worthless. It's a waste of your time. Lower down and then go on to the upper arm so that you're basically laying on the inside of your bicep. And then from there, pull back up again to the bottom of the dip position and press back up to straight arm.

• 1:05:50Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. So this would be easiest to do on the equivalent of parallel bars.

• 1:05:55Speaker 00

  Parallel bars would be good. I've seen it on elevated weight benches. I've seen it done on stacked plyo boxes.

• 1:06:02Tim Ferriss?

  Now, how would you do it on a bench? Because I would, I have seen the variation, and I'm sure some people out there, if they search Russian dips, will see this on, say, elevated boxes, right? Where someone's lowering down, basically under the forearms.

• 1:06:15Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:06:16Tim Ferriss?

  But, but what you're saying is you want to lower in such a way that you end up kind of on the inside of your bicep. Is that correct?

• 1:06:23Speaker 00

  Uh huh. Well, think of it this way. If they're lowered, and this, this is actually a really good illustration of what we're talking about. The reason they want to stop on their forearms is because their elbows tucked right in at their side. There is no shoulder extension.

• 1:06:37Tim Ferriss?

  Right, right.

• 1:06:39Speaker 00

  Basically, they've, they've skipped the moneymaker. They've skipped the part of the exercise that gives them the benefit in the first place. Rather than going all the way down, getting shoulders back behind them, shoulders back behind their hand, and then as that shoulder starts coming forward, that elbow goes strongly forward behind the torso, or backward behind the torso.

• 1:06:58Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm. Got it.

• 1:07:01Speaker 00

  And if they think they're a real stud, they think they're a real stud. Instead of lowering to the bar, right, do it on the end of the bar. So we, our athletes who do it, some all by themselves, some of the light spot, do it so that the hands are on the rail, but they're lowering and doing the Russian dip, lowering to the regular position of it, but there's no bar under them to catch it. They're just doing it in the air.

• 1:07:23Tim Ferriss?

  [laughing]

• 1:07:24Speaker 00

  Then pulling, because isn't that what a muscle up is?

• 1:07:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I've seen video of this.

• 1:07:29Speaker 00

  [laughing]

• 1:07:32Tim Ferriss?

  What's your take on foam rolling or? Other mobility tools, or so-called mobility tools.

• 1:07:39Speaker 00

  I like it, especially for someone who is just getting started. Because what has happened over the years of them being inactive, and I vaguely remember this back when I used to have hair, but like getting tangles in your hair. Right? So if the muscles aren't stretched out on a regular basis, you know, stuff just starts getting knots in it. You know, I'm just thinking of it as a tangle. And the foam rolling, you know, done well, can be a really nice way to get in there and just break those lumps out, break those knots out.

• 1:08:14Tim Ferriss?

  What separates doing it well from doing it poorly? What are the characteristics?

• 1:08:21Speaker 00

  Well, pain, actually.

• 1:08:26Speaker 00

  Because these knots, you know, it's unpleasant to loosen them up. And so there's got to be some pressure on there in order to break that stuff out. And, you know, actually, some people will present it that there's a difference between pursuing health and pursuing performance, that somehow they're diametrically opposed. And in my approach with all my athletes over the years, I disagreed with that vehemently. Because a healthy athlete is one that can perform better. If he's got athletes or injuries that are niggling in the back of his mind, he can't pay attention at business. So the healthier we can keep them,

• 1:09:11Speaker 00

  the more pain-free we can keep them, the better results we're going to get. So, you know, especially, you know, Olympics right now. Are there going to be some little here and little there? Yeah, but overall, you know, we want healthy, healthy athletes.

• 1:09:26Speaker 00

  With the foam rolling, right? If these knots and lumps aren't addressed, they're gonna get pulled tighter. And if they stay too long, they're gonna become adhesions. All right? And now that's, think of that as we're starting now to replace muscle tissue with collagen. And obviously, that's a horrible, bad thing. I was just recently in England, doing some workshops over there. And I saw a gentleman with probably the most severe kyphotic hunch forward. You know, like, we saw a hunch back of Notre Dame. Yeah. Yeah. This guy was bent 90 degrees forward.

• 1:10:09Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 1:10:10Speaker 00

  And he was walking down the street. And I looked at this gentleman. I was just like, and then I was like, oh, my God, that poor bastard. And then I saw several other people like that. And I think what's important for people to realize, you know, is because everyone's getting older, and we're not getting out of this alive, right? It's gonna happen to everybody. And they need to start looking around, and they need to see these people who are dealing with these issues and understanding that the vast majority of them were not born with that issue. This happened from a lifetime of neglect. And by neglect, I mean, not necessarily, you know, they were trying to do it, but they just didn't exercise, they didn't stretch. And before you know it, boom, now I'm screwed.

• 1:10:54Speaker 00

  And when it gets to that point where that gentleman is, right? There's no coming back. I mean, we can go over crush fractures and how vertebrae change shape and distension in the neck and all this stuff. But the bottom line is, is if we went way back and started with just the foam rolling, even something as simple as the foam rolling, and just broke lumps out, start getting some blood flow, start loosening things up, quality of life's gonna be so much better later.

• 1:11:22Tim Ferriss?

  Is there any difference? This is a, this is a common comment that I saw. Tall people, let's just say over six feet tall, any changes or to training in GST for those folks?

• 1:11:35Speaker 00

  No. No. No. I know they would like there to be.

• 1:11:42Speaker 00

  But you know, we have guys who are six and a half feet tall, six foot six, and they've got front levers and press handstands and rope climbs.

• 1:11:54Speaker 00

  Because what goes with being taller is also increased diameter of the muscle belly. So yeah, it's a bigger frame, but it's also a bigger engine. Now, in terms of acrobatics, because those levers are much longer, if we're actually doing hard tumbling and that, yeah, it's easier the smaller you are. But in terms of basics and stretching, you know, and just being a live human being, no, not so much.

• 1:12:24Tim Ferriss?

  And on a related note, men or women, different training approaches, same approach?

• 1:12:31Speaker 00

  Once they get up to an upper level, you know, we're not going to take the girls into the more advanced ring strength. I personally have it, I don't know if there's some who can, I haven't done it. I will say that in our gym, when Alan was 10, he and Jeffrey, my stand.

• 1:12:50Tim Ferriss?

  Who is Alan for people who don't know?

• 1:12:52Speaker 00

  Alan was my last senior lead athlete for the US national team. So I had him from six to 18. So 12 years of training, 16,000 hours plus that I spent with his preparation. When he was 10 years old, he was capable of doing 15 muscle ups, you know, slow, no kipping, no bouncing. And it was a young lady who beat him. And there were reps in there, I didn't count. Chelsea, one of our young ladies, I was training at the time doing the physical prep for our elite girls, she did 17. They were beautiful. Yeah, she was pretty awesome.

• 1:13:30Tim Ferriss?

  So for people who are coming in off the street, let's just for the sake of argument, say they're 35, former athletes, men and women, are the training approaches the same?

• 1:13:39Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:13:40Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. Okay, so no modifications needed, one way or the other? I've been very impressed with some of the female trainees I've seen on your Facebook and Instagram, and seen in person, quite frankly, at Awaken in Denver.

• 1:13:59Tim Ferriss?

  Who are able to do a slow, and when I say slow, I mean almost slow motion slow, muscle up from a dead hang on the rings, Elset, up to perfect dip position, maintaining Elset, and back down. It's really inspiring and impressive. Okay, here's one for you, and we only have a couple left, and then we'll come to a close. But this is a question from Holly.

• 1:14:32Speaker 00

  I'm feeling, I'm feeling nervous here.

• 1:14:35Tim Ferriss?

  All right, Coach Sommer, "My boyfriend is also a gymnastics coach. What is the most effective way to handle gymnastics coaches when they get cocky and condescending? How do people, how do people best handle you? Thanks in advance."

• 1:14:47Speaker 00

  There's no solution for that. Go date a musician.

• 1:14:55Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, man. So, here's a question, and this is a, this is a common question. And there's, there's part of me that gets it, and you know, part of me who's seen the benefits long enough that I don't succumb to this as quickly. However, this is a question from Mark, and he's talking about some of the gymnastics training that he's doing. "The problem I tend to have is that a lot of the focus, the drills focus on static holds, at least in the earlier stages. Is there a good way to get into gymnastics that is dynamic and fun, more like a CrossFit variation that is geared toward entertaining workouts?" And he says, "I don't like CrossFit,

• 1:15:38Tim Ferriss?

  but I can't deny their programs have a lot of variety and stay fresh. Doing planches for three minutes a day, every day, is really boring, gets demoralizing when progress is slower even steady." Now, I just wanted to, then somebody gets into it.

• 1:15:49Speaker 00

  I was gonna say, he's, he's not doing my program.

• 1:15:53Tim Ferriss?

  Well, so, the, no, no, so even if, even if he's not, yeah, this, this is, I want you to talk about what people can do to keep morale high. And so, he's just talking about maintaining not just from sort of an optimal training standpoint, but from an emotional perspective.

• 1:16:13Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:16:14Tim Ferriss?

  Right?

• 1:16:15Speaker 00

  Well, they probably won't like my answer. They probably, they probably won't like my answer.

• 1:16:24Speaker 00

  It depends on how committed they are to getting results. I look at things that there are two types of athletes, two types of people who do fitness. There are those with an immature attitude and there are those with a mature attitude. And it's not necessarily a chronological division. So, an immature attitude is someone who wants to be entertained. They want that immediate gratification. "I want what I want and I want it right now."

• 1:17:02Speaker 00

  The mature attitude is, "I'm gonna do what I need to do now in order to get what I want later." And it doesn't seem like it's that big a difference, but it's actually rather profound. It's rather profound. You know, if you... And the higher the goal you're aspiring to, the longer the delay there's going to be in that gratification. Now, a beginner struggles with it because they've not yet had a taste of success. So, someone who's been successful has told them, "If you keep nose to the grindstone, these great things will happen." And you're like, "Uh-huh, yeah, sure. I know you're full of shit. I know you're full of shit. This sucks. This is so boring." Once someone gets that first taste of success, though,

• 1:17:45Speaker 00

  they got a little stronger, they lost some weight, they built endurance, they got more mobility, they get to move to a new exercise. "Oh, wow. This worked. Cool. Cool. Okay, awesome. Well, now I'm gonna do it again." And it just keeps compiling and you just learn over time. What I would like them to appreciate is that Olympics are getting ready to go on right now. Not one person is there at the Olympic Games because they spent all their training being entertained. Not one of them. Not a single one. Not just at this Olympics, ever.

• 1:18:27Speaker 00

  So if you want moderate results, or you just want to just kinda, you know, do a little bit and be here or there, then bounce programs, all you want. Bounce programs, all you want. But if you want to actually affect change on the body, you want to remodel tissue, you want to increase your range of motion, correct mobility deficits, you want to get stronger, you want to lose some fat, you want to get your core dialed in, right? So you don't have that big gut hanging over the belly. It took time to break it. It's going to take time to fix it. And we're looking at a minimum of six, seven, eight months, you know, to make a nice, solid start.

• 1:19:07Tim Ferriss?

  Well, one thing I would also point out to folks is that there seems to be, and I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this, Coach, because maybe it's just my experience and maybe it's some type of delusion that I'm having. But I made quite a bit of progress, like I mentioned, with the J-curl and some of these other weighted movements and unweighted movements. But there were some that just would not, they wouldn't, or didn't feel like they were progressing at all. And then about a month ago, when I was overseas, I did a stretching workout and it seemed like almost overnight, everything had leapt forward, like 30%. And it was just nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.

• 1:19:52Tim Ferriss?

  And then all of a sudden, it was enough. It was like I was stuck in between the gears and I suddenly got into the next gear. And it was at about the six-month part, point for some of these movements. Is that common, that people will just like one week, they'll be like, holy shit?

• 1:20:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, completely, completely common, completely common. And tough, tough for a beginner who feels like, God, I'm not getting anywhere. I'm not getting anywhere. You're not getting anywhere. But it's just, it's just the body adjusting. It's just the body retooling. The body, things are progressing, but they're progressing at such a subliminal level that they're not even aware of it. You know, something, think of it as there's just one, a lot of times, it's just one little thing that's kind of throwing a kink in the wheel. It just needs one little muscle to get caught up and then everything else can go forward. And it's just being, being patient. I think sometimes it helps.

• 1:20:56Speaker 00

  It helps for people to understand that this training, working out, fitness, whether it's GST with me, whether it's CrossFit, whether it's tennis, whether it's just hiking in the mountains, it doesn't matter. This is a lifetime deal, that biologically, your body is either on, or it's off. It's either healthy and thriving, growing, or it's dying, it's decaying. There is no in-between, there is no treading water. This isn't a painting that you made. You start it, and you can leave it alone, and walk away for six months and come back and pick up where you were.

• 1:21:41Speaker 00

  Your body is not that way. You've got a couple of days after a training, and then if you aren't coming back and using your body, then as far as your body's concerned, that strength you've built, that mobility you've built, the athleticism you've had, is unnecessary to your survival, and it's gonna start breaking it down. Because it's expensive to maintain, you know? You have to feed all that muscle, you have to feed that metabolism. And your body thinks it's not necessary, and that's where the decay comes in. So you've got to, whatever flavor of their fitness that they enjoy, this is a lifetime gig. They have to go out and do something. There is no escape.

• 1:22:20Tim Ferriss?

  So, there is no escape from Coach Sommer, people. How many times do I have to tell you? And I wanted to wrap up, actually. I pulled this up. I saved this in Evernote because I wanted to have it at my fingertips. No, not on my fingertips is like blackmail material, but rather for-

• 1:22:41Speaker 00

  That's what you said earlier.

• 1:22:43Tim Ferriss?

  Don't you cross me, Coach Sommer.

• 1:22:46Tim Ferriss?

  I sent you an email, because I don't want people to think that I'm just setting up the pins and knocking them all down every day, just hitting home runs every time I get up to plate.

• 1:22:59Tim Ferriss?

  I sent an email to you a few months ago because I was very frustrated with something called particularly frustrated, and I've had multiple points of frustration, but particularly frustrated with something called straddle L extensions, which I, in my workout journal, I nicknamed, I shortened to frog spaz because that's what videos of me looked like. And I'm not going to read the whole email because it's a decent length, but I'll just read a portion of it, which is the following. "Dealing with the temporary frustration of not making progress is an integral part of the path towards excellence. In fact, it is essential and something that every single elite athlete has had to learn to deal with.

• 1:23:42Tim Ferriss?

  If the pursuit of excellence was easy, everyone would do it. In fact, this impatience in dealing with frustration is the primary reason that most people fail to achieve their goals." And I'm not starting this email where it started, "But unreasonable expectations time-wise resulting in unnecessary frustration due to perceived feeling of failure. Achieving extraordinary is not a linear process. The secret is to show up, do the work, go home. A blue collar work ethic married to an indomitable will. It is literally that simple. Nothing interferes. Nothing can sway you from your purpose. Once the decision is made, simply refuse to budge, refuse to compromise."

• 1:24:14Speaker 00

  I'm an eloquent bastard.

• 1:24:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you are an eloquent young man, sir. And so I think that's a good place to wrap up this round two. Coach, is there any particular social profiles or sites that you'd like people to check out?

• 1:24:35Speaker 00

  Okay, let's see. Obviously, we have a Tim Ferriss landing page, jamasicbodies.com/tim. Tim has asked that we're going to update for you guys and put some more material on there. That will in turn take you to kind of a curriculum page, letting you know, you know, what are the stages of preparation, what support are available to you, you know, as you work your way through a GB course. Check out our Facebook page, jamasicbodies.com. Lot of great stuff on there. Check out my personal page on Facebook, Christopher Summer. Good gymnastic stuff, occasional, just kind of...

• 1:25:21Speaker 00

  Crazy stuff thrown in there as well, but you guys are used to that from Tim's page.

• 1:25:29Tim Ferriss?

  And people, people can also check out your YouTube page, which is youtube.com/gymnasticbodies. For people who are curious about the Russian dips, there's a video of the Russian dips right there. Russian dips in Elsit, you can find it if you go to the videos page, it's maybe four rows down. How to use gymnastics rings, standing straddle press, the weighted pike stretch that we talked about is also on that page. Lots of good stuff and lots of exercises that I have also used already to this, up to this point, like the lat flies, which are a really cool exercise.

• 1:26:09Speaker 00

  Excellent.

• 1:26:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, lat flies, just to throw the image out there, it's imagine doing a wide grip pull-up to the point that your head is just below the bar and your arms at the elbow are bent at 90 degrees. And then you're moving your torso, your chest, forward and backward. I mean, that's a very primitive description, but...

• 1:26:29Speaker 00

  Maybe, maybe, maybe a hanging peck deck?

• 1:26:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, exactly. It's like a hanging, you're hanging from pull-up bar, but you look like you're sitting in a peck deck and then you're moving your torso back and forth. That's a, that's a killer exercise. Coach, I really appreciate the time as usual.

• 1:26:48Speaker 00

  Thank you, Tim.

• 1:26:49Tim Ferriss?

  And I'm gonna get back to training this evening and continue my stretch series. And I'm going to go get a heat pack to work on this wrist that I have mangled in my, my own stupidity.

• 1:27:04Speaker 00

  Paris is dangerous.

• 1:27:07Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you gotta keep an eye. I was like focusing too much on the croissants and not enough on proper training. But Coach, as always, thank you very much. And to everybody listening for show notes, as always, you can find links to things that we've mentioned at fourhourbody.com, not a fourhourbody, you can go to fourhourbodyalso.com if you want to see my second book, but you can go to fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. And until next time, thank you for listening.

• 1:27:38Tim Ferriss?

  Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short.

• 1:28:20Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to 4hourworkweek.com. That's 4hourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront, and this is a very unique sponsor. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive, in a good way, set it and forget it investing service led by technologists from places like Apple and world famous investors. It has exploded in popularity in the last two years and they now have more than $2.5 billion under management. In fact, some of my very good friends, investors in Silicon Valley have millions of their own money in Wealthfront. So the question is, why?

• 1:29:05Tim Ferriss?

  Why is it so popular? Why is it unique? Because you can get services previously reserved for the ultra wealthy but only pay pennies on the dollar for them. And this is because they use smarter software instead of retail locations, bloated sales teams, etc. And I'll come back to that in a second. I suggest you check out wealthfront.com/tim. Take the risk assessment quiz, which only takes two to five minutes, and they'll show you for free exactly the portfolio they'd put you in. And if you just want to take their advice, run with it, do it yourself, you can do that. Or, as I would, you can set it and forget it. And here's why. The value of Wealthfront is in the automation of habits and strategies that investors should be using on a regular basis but normally aren't. Great investing is a marathon. Not a sprint and little things that you may or may not be familiar with like

• 1:29:50Tim Ferriss?

  automatic tax loss harvesting, rebalancing your portfolio across more than 10 asset classes and dividend reinvestment add up to very large amounts of money over longer periods of time. Wealthfront, as I mentioned, since it's using software instead of retail locations, et cetera, can offer all of this at low costs that were previously completely impossible. Right off the bat, you never pay commissions or account fees. For everything, they charge 0.25% per year on assets above the first $15,000, which is managed for free if you use my link, wealthfront.com/tim. That is less than $5 a month to invest a $30,000 account, for instance. Now, normally, when I have a sponsor on this show, it's because I use them and recommend them. In this case, it's a little different.

• 1:30:33Tim Ferriss?

  I don't use Wealthfront yet because I'm not allowed to. Here's the deal. They wanted to sponsor this podcast, but because of SEC regulations, companies that invest your money are not allowed to use client testimonials. So I couldn't be a user and have them on the podcast. But I've been so impressed by Wealthfront that I've invested a significant amount of my own money, at least for me, in the team and the company itself. So I am an investor and hope to soon use it as a client. Now, back to the recommendation. As a Tim Ferriss Show listener, you'll get $15,000 managed for free if you decide to open an account. But just start with seeing the portfolio that they would suggest for you. Take two minutes, fill out their questionnaire at wealthfront.com/tim. It's fast, it's free. There's no downside that I can think of.

• 1:31:17Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by 99designs. 99designs is a great partner for creating and growing your business. It's a one-stop shop for all of your graphic design needs, whether that's a logo, website, business card, or anything else. I used 99designs to get book cover prototypes for The Four Hour Body, which went on to become a number one New York Times bestseller. I also use them for banner ads, illustrations, and other things. With 99designs, designers around the world compete to create the best design for you. You give feedback and then pick your favorite. You end up happy or you get your money back. It's very simple. You can check out a few of my own designs and those of yours, meaning Tim Ferriss Show listeners, at 99designs.com/tim.

• 1:31:58Tim Ferriss?

  And right now, my listeners, you guys, will get a free $99 upgrade on your first design. That's 99designs.com/tim. Check it out.