#748: Pavel Tsatsouline and Christopher Sommer

This episode is a two-for-one, and that’s because the podcast recently hit its 10-year anniversary and passed one billion downloads. To celebrate, I’ve curated some of the best of the best—some of my favorites—from more than 700 episodes over the last decade. I could not be more excited. The episode features segments from episode #55 "Pavel Tsatsouline on the Science of Strength and the Art of Physical Performance https://tim.blog/2015/01/15/pavel-tsatsouline/" and episode #158 "The Secrets of Gymnastic Strength Training https://tim.blog/2016/05/09/the-secrets-of-gymnastic-strength-training/." Please enjoy! Sponsors: Helix Sleep https://helixsleep.com/tim premium mattresses: https://helixsleep.com/tim (25–30% off all mattress orders and two free pillows) 1Password https://1password.com/tim easy-to-use and secure password manager for individuals, families, and businesses: https://1password.com/tim (14-day free trial) Momentous https://livemomentous.com/tim high-quality supplements: https://livemomentous.com/tim (code TIM for 20% off) Timestamps: [00:00] Start [05:10] Notes about this supercombo format. [06:14] Enter Pavel Tsatsouline. [06:34] Pavel's background as a world-class trainer. [07:07] Considerations while customizing a training regimen. [09:40] Strength-building principles over equipment. [10:36] When in doubt, train your grip and your core. [12:57] How to grease the groove. [16:08] How not to strengthen the "core." [18:53] Approaching training as a practice. [21:16] Prioritizing strength — the "mother quality of all physical qualities." [23:57] The most counter-productive myths about strength training. [27:14] Pavel's hypothesis for the science behind hypertrophy. [28:01] Deadlifts, kettlebells, and the most common mistakes with both. [29:31] People who exemplify success to Pavel. [30:09] Calmness is contagious. [32:31] Enter Christopher Sommer. [33:23] Defining Gymnastics Strength Training™ (GST). [37:08] Types of strength that most non-gymnasts will not have. [41:10] Biggest mistakes made by those who self-teach handstands. [46:10] Top exercises for identifying weaknesses in strength and mobility. [56:47] The problem with focusing on muscular fatigue when training. [1:05:03] What is a pike pulse and why does it matter? [1:07:45] On kipping pull-ups. [1:11:16] Identifying solutions to pain. [1:18:38] The Jefferson curl. [1:23:06] Why weighted mobility work needs to be approached with a different level of intensity than conditioning work. [1:28:09] If someone is 35 years old, a former athlete, and has never done gymnastics, what's a good exercise and what should be avoided? [1:33:31] 3-5 joint mobility exercises for getting strong. [1:38:52] Preferred way to work on shoulder extension. [1:44:40] A good goal for those seeking to improve mobility. [1:46:15] Yoga handstands vs. gymnastics handstands (aesthetics vs. gold medals). [1:54:20] Coaches who have impressed Coach Sommer the most. [1:55:49] The story of Dmitry Bilozerchev and Alexander Alexandrov. [2:00:36] Differentiating immature athletes from mature athletes. [2:03:43] Training for success. [2:08:43] Describing the systematic approach to GST. [2:16:58] Exercises to avoid for the first six months of GST. [2:18:27] Breaking down the muscle-up. [2:23:59] Understanding the purpose of using various grips. [2:31:28] How Coach Sommer mentally preps athletes for a big competition. [2:41:13] Questions Coach Sommer would ask a gymnastic coach before sending children off to train with them. [2:45:36] Questions Coach Sommer would ask a gymnastic coach who trains adults. [2:47:44] Balancing stretching and training time. [2:52:52] People who exemplify success to Coach Sommer. [2:58:16] Most gifted books. [3:01:04] Morning rituals. [3:05:02] Coach Sommer's billboard. [3:10:12] An ask for the audience and parting thoughts. * For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show https://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show https://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsors https://tim.blog/podcast-sponsors Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts https://tim.blog/transcripts. 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• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep is a premium mattress brand that provides tailored mattresses based on your sleep preferences. Their lineup includes 14 unique mattresses, including a collection of luxury models, a mattress for big and tall sleepers, that's not me, and even a mattress made specifically for kids. They have models with memory foam layers to provide optimal pressure relief if you sleep on your side, as I often do and did last night on one of their beds. Models with more responsive foam to cradle your body for essential support in stomach and back sleeping positions, and on and on. They have you covered. So how will you know which Helix mattress works best for you and your body? Take the Helix Sleep quiz at helixsleep.com/tim and find your perfect mattress in less than two minutes.

• 0:42Tim Ferriss?

  Personally, for the last few years, I have been sleeping on a Helix Midnight Luxe mattress. I also have one of those in the guest bedroom, and feedback from friends has always been fantastic. They frequently say it's the best night of sleep they've had in ages. It's something they comment on without any prompting from me whatsoever. Helix mattresses are American-made and come with a 10- or 15-year warranty, depending on the model. Your mattress will be shipped straight to your door, free of charge, and there's no better way to test out a new mattress than by sleeping on it in your own home. That's why they offer a 100-night risk-free trial. If you decide it's not the best fit, you're welcome to return it for a full refund. Helix has been awarded number one mattress by both GQ and Wired magazines.

• 1:22Tim Ferriss?

  And now, Helix has harnessed years of extensive mattress expertise to bring you a truly elevated sleep experience. Their newest collection of mattresses, called Helix Elite, includes six different mattress models, each tailored for specific sleep positions and firmness preferences, so you can get exactly what your body needs. Each Helix Elite mattress comes with an extra layer of foam for pressure relief and thousands of extra micro coils for best-in-class support and durability. Every Helix Elite mattress also comes with a 15-year manufacturer's warranty and the same 100-night trial as the rest of Helix's mattresses. And you, my dear listeners, can get between 25% and 30% off, plus two free pillows, on all mattress orders.

• 2:05Tim Ferriss?

  So, go to helixsleep.com/tim to check it out. That's helixsleep.com/tim. With Helix, better sleep starts now.

• 2:19Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by OnePassword. I have been using OnePassword for more than a decade. It is one of my favorite products. I met the founding team early on. Love those guys and I have made this product a requirement for everyone on my team. Data breaches affect everyone. They can be catastrophic and my feeling is since that is the case, you need OnePassword. OnePassword combines industry-leading security with award-winning design to bring private, secure and user-friendly password management to everyone. I use this dozens of times a day. It is an award-winning password manager trusted by millions of users and more than 100,000 businesses from IBM to Slack, even including my little team.

• 3:02Tim Ferriss?

  It beat out 40 other options to become Wirecutter's top pick for password managers. OnePassword lets you securely switch between iPhone, Android, Mac and PC with convenient features like autofill for quick sign-ins. All you have to remember is the one strong account password that protects everything else: your logins, your credit cards, secure notes, or the office Wi-Fi password. OnePassword creates as many strong, unique passwords as you need and securely stores them in an encrypted vault that only you have access to. You can also use it for one-time passwords where you scan the QR code and it gives you two-factor authentication with the countdown with unique numbers, that type of thing. So instead of using a separate app for those types of authenticator-type functions, you can use OnePassword.

• 3:48Tim Ferriss?

  Plus, regular third-party audits and the industry's largest bug bounty keep OnePassword at the forefront of security. So start protecting your business today with OnePassword. Companies suffer from data breaches daily, all the time, losing time and money dealing with extortion, stolen customer data and more. I have personally dealt with a lot of these headaches. You don't want them. It is why using OnePassword is a business best practice I strongly endorse and a business solution that I use myself. So check it out. Get a free two-week trial at onepassword.com/tim. That's one, the number one, password.com/tim.

• 4:29Tim Ferriss?

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

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question? Now would be an inappropriate time.

• 4:40Speaker 01

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

• 4:52Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to sit down with world-class performers from every field imaginable to tease out the habits, routines, favorite books, and so on that you can apply and test in your own lives. This episode is a two-for-one, and that's because the podcast recently hit its 10th year anniversary, which is insane to think about, and passed 1 billion downloads. To celebrate, I've curated some of the best of the best, some of my favorites from more than 700 episodes over the last decade. I could not be more excited to give you these super combo episodes. And internally, we've been calling these the super combo episodes because my goal is to encourage you to, yes,

• 5:36Tim Ferriss?

  enjoy the household names, the super famous folks, but to also introduce you to lesser-known people I consider stars. These are people who have transformed my life, and I feel like they can do the same for many of you. Perhaps they got lost in a busy news cycle. Perhaps you missed an episode. Just trust me on this one. We went to great pains to put these pairings together. And for the bios of all guests, you can find that and more at tim.blog/combo. And now, without further ado, please enjoy and thank you for listening.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  First up, Pavel Tsatsoulin, world-renowned strength coach, founder and CEO of Strong First, and the trainer who brought the Russian kettlebell to the West, kickstarting the kettlebell revolution. You can learn more about Pavel's School of Strength at strongfirst.com.

• 6:33Pavel Tsatsouline?

  I used to be a PT training instructor, physical training instructor for Spetsnaz, the Soviet special forces. And my education is in sports science. And I did, over the years, train a number of high-end units in the West. I've been a subject matter to the US Marine Corps, to the US Secret Service, to US Navy SEALs and others. My methods are used officially by some very high-end military and counter-terrorist units in two countries that are main allies of the United States. So what I do is I take methods that perform very well in very rugged environments, and I take these methods and I apply it to other environments. So if somebody decides,

• 7:17Pavel Tsatsouline?

  "I just want to change my life. I want to get stronger. I want to have a better game of tennis. I want to succeed in a given sport." I take these same methods that have been tested by operators at war, and I bring these people the same methods. If you look at a typical person, and how do we get him stronger? Let's say that you have a four-cylinder engine. What the person would do is they would make that six-cylinder engine. But before, you're firing in two. Now you're firing in three. But if instead, what you do is you learn to fire in all four. So there are ways of training a nervous system to engage your capacity so much more fully. And if you look at high-level performers at light body weight in sound fields, let's say, a very high-level martial artist,

• 8:03Pavel Tsatsouline?

  somebody very skinny breaking a stack of boards, or very skinny guy like Lamarck Ants, deadlifting five times his body weight. So this is so much about the concentration of mental force. And for your listeners, I could give a very simple example how you can do that in your gym. Let's say that you perform, try it with the simplest exercise possible. Try it with the dumbbell curl or barbell curl. Because I know your sissy's out there. You'll do that.

• 8:31Pavel Tsatsouline?

  So let's say that you're going through your curls and things are suddenly starting to get tougher. So when they suddenly start to get tougher, I want you to just crush the dumbbell or the barbell or the kettlebell, whatever it is that you're curling, just white knuckle pressure. And what you will see is you're gonna definitely gonna be able to get several more repetitions out. And I'm gonna give you two more techniques in addition. Once you have practiced that, then on the next set, in addition to crushing the bar and the way up, also contract your glutes as tight as possible. Like somebody's gonna kick you in the butt, very, very tight. So you're just like crunch a walnut.

• 9:13Pavel Tsatsouline?

  And at the same time, tighten your abs as if somebody's gonna kick you, which, you know, somebody might. So if you do that, if you do these three things, if you contract your glutes, contract your abs, contract your grip, everything that you do, absolutely everything, is gonna be greatly amplified. And this is just a small example of the skills of strength that I do teach. They call me the kettlebell guy. They call me the father of the kettlebell, which I appreciate very much. I did introduce together with my business partner, I did introduce the kettlebell to the West. And right now, the kettlebell has become a mainstream. But what I'm really all about is about the principles, the underlying principles of strength strength.

• 9:59Pavel Tsatsouline?

  The underlying principles of power generation. And it doesn't really matter what modality you use, whether you use the kettlebell, the barbell, your body weight, whether you're arm wrestling, fighting, lifting a rock, it really doesn't matter. So I am not about the kettlebell. I am about the principles that make you strong. What I have done is I have reverse engineered the way the strongest people move naturally. And I have brought it to the people. I've shown to people how to move in this manner and how to shave off years and if not decades of training to progress to my current level.

• 10:34Tim Ferriss?

  You once mentioned to me in a casual conversation, I called you for some type of training advice, or it might have been via email. And correct me if I'm wrong, but you said, when in doubt, train your grip and your core? Is that...

• 10:45Pavel Tsatsouline?

  Right.

• 10:46Tim Ferriss?

  Could you elaborate on that? Because I think it's not advice that many people have received.

• 10:50Pavel Tsatsouline?

  There is such a thing is called irradiation. So the phenomenon irradiation, what it really means is if you contract a muscle, the tension from that muscle is going to spill over to the neighborhood muscles. So for your listeners, I'd like to try this. Make a fist, probably going to feel tension in your forearm. Now make a tight fist. You're going to feel tension in your biceps, triceps. Now make your white knuckle fist. You're going to find that tension is going to spread into your shoulder, your lat, your back, and so on. Okay, folks, you may relax now. The same thing happens, so certain areas of the body have this great overflow of tension. So the gripping muscles are amongst them. Why? In part because they have such a great representation in your nervous system, in your brain.

• 11:35Pavel Tsatsouline?

  And as for the abs and as for the glutes, that has a lot to do with creating your intra-abdominal pressure. So what does this mean exactly? Visualize your muscles as speakers. And visualize your brain as the gadget that plays the music, whatever it is these days. iPad, iPhone, whatever. And record player, doesn't matter. And the amount of your pressure in your abdomen, the intra-abdominal pressure, that's the amplifier. That's the volume control. So by increasing the pressure in your abdomen, it's like you're training up the volume. And vice versa. So when you're trying to stretch, when increasing your flexibility, if you see somebody, they're trying to do a split and you see

• 12:19Pavel Tsatsouline?

  the person is creating high intra-abdominal pressure and that just increases the tension of the muscle. Instead, what you need to do, you need to completely release and let go and bring it down. So for strength, we do the opposite. We have special techniques where you increase that pressure and maximize your power. Those are just a couple of the different ways we can increase the strength. And that's what you've seen in my certification. FYI, I am no longer with that organization. So my company today is called Strong First and SFD certification, that's that same curriculum that you have learned by then.

• 12:55Tim Ferriss?

  Just to touch on two points and then we're going to jump into more training and ask about how you would rank certain aspects of what people would traditionally consider perhaps fitness. What would you recommend as good methods for developing the grip and core or abdomen for those people listening if they wanted to take a simple protocol and perhaps experiment for the next few weeks? Is there any basic approach that you might suggest for those two things?

• 13:22Pavel Tsatsouline?

  It can be done in conjunction with a full body training regimen that uses, let's say kettlebells, climbing ropes and so on. But if it is not, then what I recommend that you do is you get some grippers. So the company is called Iron Mind, ironmind.com. And they carry hand grippers. One thing you need to understand is these are not those little sissy plastic grippers you get at a store. These are heavy duty grippers. They go up to 365 pounds. There's a couple of people in the world have done that. They also do have resources on how to do that. But even without reading how, I can tell you how to train. So get yourself a couple of grippers, use their chart, the recommendations that

• 14:04Pavel Tsatsouline?

  Iron Mind offers. Start training them in the manner that I refer to as Greysta Group. Greysta Group is a highly simplified training methodology that's been derived from Soviet weightlifting methodology. So in a nutshell, this is what you do. Throughout the day, every day, whenever you feel fully recovered, so you have to have at least 15 minutes of rest between sets, you know, maybe 30, maybe even more, is you're going to do a set and you're only going to do about half the repetitions that you're capable of. So for example, you picked up a particular gripper, you start squeezing it. You probably could do it 10 times, but you only do five and you put it down.

• 14:46Pavel Tsatsouline?

  Let's say you later on pick up a gripper that's a little heavier. Maybe you could do three reps with it, but you do all one. And in this particular manner, you accumulate reps and you keep going and going and going. And everybody tells you that's impossible to get strong in this particular manner. Yet, science and experience shows that this makes you strong. This makes you strong fast, this makes you strong in a safe manner. You can apply this particular methodology, again, I call it Gris Tigru, to any strength exercise or any strength endurance exercise. Just to give you an example of its effectiveness, my father-in-law, former Marine, at the age of 64, started following this routine. He was able to do about 10 pull-ups at that point.

• 15:31Pavel Tsatsouline?

  In several months, he was up to 20 when he tested. And he could not do that many as a young jarhead. So, you young bucks out there, you can definitely get this done. So this is how you guys are gonna train your grip, with these grippers. Carry with you throughout the day, you're not gonna get sweaty. Just whenever you feel like it, just take it out and squeeze. As for training your abdomen, there are many different methods of training the abdomen, but you have to abide by the following rules. You have to keep the repetitions to five and under, no more than five reps. Anything more than five reps is bodybuilding. And you need to make a focus on tension, make a focus on contraction, as opposed to on reps and fatigue.

• 16:15Pavel Tsatsouline?

  Just to give you an example of the plank. You know, the plank is a kind of a fashionable exercise in the core training circles. And by the way, we don't use the word "core," let's throw in first. Why don't we use the word "core"? Because people who use the word "core," they do things we don't like, we don't like at all. So, we just say, we just say "midsection." So the plank, so traditionally, they would put you in the plank, and you're supposed to stay in this plank for a couple of minutes. And what's happening is, you see this poor person who cannot even assume the proper posture to start with. And then, as fatigue sets in, other muscles, wrong muscles start kicking in. The back starts arching, the butt starts shooting up. And what you're doing is what Gray Cook calls putting fitness on top of dysfunction.

• 16:58Pavel Tsatsouline?

  And what we do instead is if we do a plank, we call the heart style plank, we would do a plank for no longer than 10 seconds. And when you do the plank, you try to contract everything, absolutely everything. When I showed that-

• 17:13Tim Ferriss?

  Everything, meaning the shins, your forearms, your neck, everything.

• 17:16Pavel Tsatsouline?

  Everything but your neck and face. Everything below your neck, you're going to contract. It's not for folks with high blood pressure, heart condition, and that's true for pretty much any type of training, but for everybody else, it's an extremely powerful tool. So you get down in a plank, you make fists, okay? You contract your abs, you contract your glutes, you contract your entire body. You pretend that somebody's walking in a walk by and kick you in the ribs, which again, somebody might, at least at my course. And Andy Bolton and other top powerlifters who have taught this technique, they swear by this because this is the abdominal training for strength. This is not just some nonsense that you do cranking out the reps. So to sum up your abdominal training, find whatever abdominal exercises that you like.

• 18:01Pavel Tsatsouline?

  It can be the plank, it can be some kind of a setup, it can be something from your book, The Four Hour Body, it can be something from my book, The Heart Style Abs, it can be something else, that's not important. As long as it's a good exercise that's been recognized that it does work. And three times a week, do three to five sets of three to five reps. Okay, folks, just remember this, three to five sets of three to five reps, focus on contraction, don't focus on fatigue, don't focus on the reps. And I promise if you do these two things for several months, you work your grip in this manner, you work your abs in this manner. Everything that you do today is going to be stronger.

• 18:44Pavel Tsatsouline?

  I don't care what it is, it's a bigger deadlift, it's a tennis serve, it makes no difference, you're going to be stronger.

• 18:51Tim Ferriss?

  And in the case of the midsection and we're working with the plank, if people decided they were going to keep it simple just so they can remember it and do three sets of three reps three times a week, let's just say Monday.

• 19:04Pavel Tsatsouline?

  For the plank, let's do just three sets of 10 seconds.

• 19:07Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 19:08Pavel Tsatsouline?

  Three sets of 10 seconds, 10 seconds, three times a week.

• 19:11Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 19:11Pavel Tsatsouline?

  And try to contract everything below your neck. You gotta be strong. You need to keep your reps at five and under.

• 19:17Tim Ferriss?

  At five reps or under is what you're really working on. I'll get out of my depth and into yours pretty quickly, but the sort of neural pathways and the recruitment of motor neurons and sort of firing capabilities and so on.

• 19:30Pavel Tsatsouline?

  Pretty much, you're going to have a high level of neural adaptations. You're also going to build some muscle as well. So you're going to build the high threshold motor units as well, but it's not a bodybuilding protocol. You'll build some muscle, but it's not really the end, the end goal itself. You were trying to, also you're trying to avoid the fatigue, you're trying to avoid the burn, because whenever you start experiencing the burn, that's from something called the hydrogen ions, that leads to a whole lot of problems for you. So one of the problems is it interferes with the command that your brain sends to the muscle to contract. And another problem that it creates, these hydrogen ions later are destructive. So if you leave them around the muscle for too long, they really start destroying your muscle.

• 20:14Pavel Tsatsouline?

  So just keep those reps under, five, three to five. Don't worry about getting bulky, you're not going to get bulky, it's not going to happen. And approach your training as a practice. So this is another very important point, Tim.

• 20:26Tim Ferriss?

  This is a super important point. No, I'm glad you're bringing this up.

• 20:30Pavel Tsatsouline?

  I hate the word workout. The word workout does not exist in the Russian language. We talk about a training session or we talk about a lesson. We never talk about a workout. Just think of what does the word working out, what do you envision?

• 20:46Tim Ferriss?

  Sweating and grunting and...

• 20:48Pavel Tsatsouline?

  Let's see how much I can punish myself and drain myself. So the goal is not to get stronger. The goal is just to get worn out. And there are simpler ways of doing that, run up the mountain, okay? So, no, the idea here is practice. Strength is a skill and as such it must be practiced. And if you approach it in this manner, not only you're gonna get stronger so much faster, but you're gonna truly enjoy your training process. Training should be something that should be enjoyed.

• 21:14Tim Ferriss?

  So when people think of fitness, particularly non-athletes, I think that there tends to be a very scattershot approach and there's a paradox of choice challenge that they have where they're fed a lot of recommendations from many different people and they have strength, not necessarily muscle gain, but just getting stronger. They have hypertrophy, so increasing their muscular size, for lack of a better description, endurance, flexibility. How would you rank these in order of priority and why?

• 21:42Pavel Tsatsouline?

  Tim, as long as the person has the required mobility and symmetry, the priority is always, and health, the priority is always strength. Strength has to be first. So the first step that you do is you assess your mobility, you find specialists who can do that. FMS would be a recommendation of mine, the very cooks FMS.

• 22:03Tim Ferriss?

  Functional movement screen.

• 22:04Pavel Tsatsouline?

  Functional movement screen is gonna find out how mobile you are and also how symmetrically you are. So as long as that is dialed in, that is in place, you have to get strong. And strength is the mother quality of all physical qualities. And that's not a statement by me, that's a statement by Papiss Matvey, the father of fertilization, one of the greatest sports scientists ever. And greater strength increases your performance in absolutely everything. So you can see, of course, okay, of course, yeah, being stronger is gonna help you in, let's say, punching somebody harder or lifting something. But how is that gonna help me if I'm, let's say, a triathlete? How is that gonna help me if I'm a marathon runner? It is going to help you in several different ways. One is...

• 22:50Pavel Tsatsouline?

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

• 23:31Pavel Tsatsouline?

  If you're trying to, let's say, lose weight, being stronger is gonna help you do that because you're gonna have a bigger furnace, you're gonna train yourself much harder on the exercises that are fat loss exercises. So it really doesn't matter what it is that you're trying to achieve. Strength is the number one attribute you need to address. And that's why my company is called Strong First.

• 23:54Tim Ferriss?

  One of the things that I love about you, Pavel, is that you say what you mean and mean what you say. There's a degree of clarity that I envy. I might include it for people, but when we did our sound check, I asked you to give me an answer so we could test the audio, what you had for breakfast. And what was your answer?

• 24:10Pavel Tsatsouline?

  Coffee.

• 24:11Tim Ferriss?

  And that was it. That was the sound check. I love the simplicity. Now, speaking of simplicity and also undoing the confusion that a lot of people suffer from, what are the most counterproductive myths or misconceptions about strength training that come to mind?

• 24:29Pavel Tsatsouline?

  Well, the number one, Tim, I guess, is the idea that you have to go to failure every time you train. I can tell you one thing, that the Soviet weightlifters, I have done a very thorough analysis of the Soviet weightlifting methodology through the 60s, through the 80s, the glory days. And I've found that they typically did one-third to two-thirds of maximal repetitions per set. So what does it mean? If, let's say, that you're using a weight that's your 10 rep max, 10 is all you could do if you put yourself very hard. They would do three to six consistently. Now, you probably ask yourself, "Okay, I'm not a weightlifter,

• 25:11Pavel Tsatsouline?

  and what does this Soviet stuff from the 80s have to do with today?" Well, two things. First of all, even though a person who is not a lifting athlete is not going to train exactly as a weightlifter or powerlifter, nevertheless, the methodology has to be derived from these sports, because these are specialist strength sports. So, they just have to be adapted to your needs. Second of all, this particular Soviet methodology is still superior to this day. This is very interesting, but you keep hearing about all these new world records set in the sport of weightlifting. Well, if you compare the world records of today to the world records of the 80s, you will see that, in most cases, the records today are inferior to records in the 80s.

• 25:56Pavel Tsatsouline?

  How can that be? They accuse people of doing drugs, and they changed weight classes twice since the 80s. Of course, it's so wonderful. I'm so happy that today, nobody does drugs anymore. It's just terrific. And, so, if you look at the lifts performed by Soviet lifter Yurik Varbanian in 1980 at the Moscow Olympics, these lifts have never been exceeded. These lifts have never been approached. So, this particular methodology does work extremely well. It's still the best methodology, period. Later on, the Soviet powerlifting team adapted this methodology for powerlifting with tremendous success. They dominate. The same particular methodology

• 26:41Pavel Tsatsouline?

  has been adapted to bodyweight training, kettlebell presses, and so on and so forth. So, it's the same thing that can be applied for everybody, because this is principle-based training. So, the major misconception is that you have to go to failure. If you just overcome that, and if you make it a habit to do one-third to two-thirds of the repetitions that are possible, and do more sets instead... You're gonna make much greater progress. You're gonna do it much safer. And folks, you're gonna enjoy the training.

• 27:12Tim Ferriss?

  How does the approach shift if your focus is maximal hypertrophy?

• 27:19Pavel Tsatsouline?

  If you're after maximal hypertrophy, it's Mali. So they figured out in the Soviet Union that there's a direct correlation between volume and hypertrophy. So you just pretty much have to do more sets. You're gonna have to do more sets in like sixty to seventy percent of your max range. And a whole bunch of sets of five and six, just many of them. And your rest periods might be compressed a little more. But that's it. If you do that, do this a couple of times a week, many sets of five or six. Don't even worry about how many. Just keep going. Don't kill yourself, enjoy yourself. Eat more, you're gonna get bigger. It's unavoidable. It's just as simple as that.

• 27:59Tim Ferriss?

  Would you consider the, and please disagree if this is not the case, but if you had to pick one movement for strength, longevity, would the deadlift be that movement or is it not possible to choose one movement? How would you try to answer that question?

• 28:14Pavel Tsatsouline?

  If you were to choose one movement, Tim, yes, I would choose the deadlift or I would choose the kettlebell swing. Obviously, the kettlebell swing is not something you can compete in and something you're not, it's not gonna give you the same satisfaction lifting heavy weight. But those are the two main full-body exercises, the full-body expressions of power that will go such a long way for you for longevity, strength, just the quality of life.

• 28:41Tim Ferriss?

  What are the biggest mistakes that people make with the deadlift? Whether that's technically or in programming, what are the biggest mistakes?

• 28:49Pavel Tsatsouline?

  Well, Tim, I think the very big mistake is because they think, okay, I have picked up things from the floor. This looks so simple. It's not an Olympic lift, therefore it's very simple. So I'll just start piling on plates and start training. The deadlift is a very technical lift. Even if you're just a recreational lifter, you owe it to yourself to learn to deadlift correctly. That's as simple as that. So I say that's the primary mistake and that mistake goes for every exercise that people do out there.

• 29:17Tim Ferriss?

  I would highly recommend people check out your book with. Mr. Bolton.

• 29:21Pavel Tsatsouline?

  Dead of dynamite.

• 29:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, really, very, very dense. Shifting gears just a little bit, dense in the best way possible, no fluff. I'd love to shift gears and just ask you a few questions about sort of your philosophies and your thinking, not so much the highly specific training questions, but when you think of, for instance, the word "successful," who's the first person who comes to mind for you?

• 29:42Pavel Tsatsouline?

  Tim, I am fortunate enough to know many successful people, and I think that what separates them from the rest is the CEO of Strong First, Eric Furlhard, he put it very well, he says, "Balance with priorities, balance with priorities." So Eric, yourself, and many others I'm fortunate to know, they exemplify success for me.

• 30:07Tim Ferriss?

  What are the habits that you've observed that allow people to have balance with priorities? What are the things they do that other people don't do? Or maybe the things they don't do that other people do?

• 30:18Pavel Tsatsouline?

  Well, I think one is calm. These people are calm, because people who are hyper, they get so trapped in their reactive mode, they get too trapped in the everyday minutia of their work and their existence. So they just do not pause and they do not think. Again, Eric has a great quote from a Vietnam-era SEAL, which says, "Calm is contagious. Calm is contagious." So when the person is calm, then he or she has the time to meditate, reflect, set their priorities, and set their balance.

• 30:54Tim Ferriss?

  That certainly holds true, from what I've seen, and the opposite, of course, is true.

• 31:02Tim Ferriss?

  Hysteria is...

• 31:03Pavel Tsatsouline?

  Well, he's just chasing the tail. Absolutely. Chicken little. The sky is falling. Yes, everything is urgent.

• 31:13Tim Ferriss?

  Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Momentous. Momentus offers high-quality supplements and products across a broad spectrum of categories, including sports performance, sleep, cognitive health, hormone support, and more. I've been testing their products for months now, and I have a few that I use constantly. Personally, I've been using Momentous Mag3-8, L-theanine, and apigenin, all of which have helped me to improve the onset quality and duration of my sleep. Now, the Momentous Sleep Pack conveniently delivers single servings of all three of these ingredients. Momentus also partners with some of the best minds in human performance to bring world-class products to market, including a few you will recognize

• 31:56Tim Ferriss?

  from this podcast, like Dr. Andrew Huberman and Dr. Kelly Starrett. Their products contain high-quality ingredients that are third-party tested, which in this case means informed Sport and/or NSF certified, so you can trust that what is on the label is in the bottle and nothing else. So, check it out. Visit livemomentous.com/tim and use code TIM at checkout for 20% off. That's livemomentus, L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S dot com slash TIM and code TIM for 20% off.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  And now, Christopher Sommer, a former US national team gymnastics coach and the founder of the Gymnastic Bodies Training System, known for building devotees into some of the strongest, most powerful athletes in the world. You can find Christopher on Instagram at Christopher S-O-M-M-E-R-1.

• 32:55Tim Ferriss?

  Coach, welcome to the show.

• 32:57Speaker 04

  Thanks, Tim.

• 32:58Tim Ferriss?

  I am excited to finally have you on the show. We've had so many conversations in the last month or two, and I've been so impressed with the subtlety and nuance of the training that you do. So, I've been very eager to have you on the show to explore all things gymnastics and gymnastics strength training related. So, thanks for making the time.

• 33:21Speaker 04

  Welcome, Coach.

• 33:22Tim Ferriss?

  And I thought we could, we could start with just some definitions. So, what would you, or how would you define gymnastic strength training, GST?

• 33:30Speaker 04

  In a nutshell, gymnastic strength training I define as high-level body weight strength training. So none of the training that we do for world-class performance or the acrobatics or technical gymnastics, just purely the strength, joint prep and mobility components.

• 33:48Tim Ferriss?

  And one example of what not to do perhaps, or how gymnastics strength training might differ from the aesthetics that some people, I'm not going to say compromise with, but shoes, we were talking about doing a pike handstand press or holding that position. And the example, feel free to correct my recollection, but was of how a lot of folks kick their hips way out to counterbalance. Instead of doing what? What would the gymnastics strength training version of that look like?

• 34:18Speaker 04

  Good example. So what we see, and this is kind of getting into some handstands, some skill training, but handstand done correctly is a reflection of physical preparation that athlete either has or does not have. So if they lack strength, if they lack mobility, then of course their technical handstand is going to lack refinement. So in terms of that pike handstand, if they lack middle trap, if they lack lower trap strength, then they're going to try to counterbalance by really arching the chest out, sticking the butt way back behind them. Oh goodness. Not even sure how to describe it, like a pike and an arch at the same time.

• 34:57Tim Ferriss?

  Sorry to interrupt, Coach. Just for people who I realize I should have probably defined some terms myself. So pike, for people who are not familiar with this, the easiest way to visualize it, if you don't have any background with that, is imagine you're sitting on the floor. It's kind of like PE class, legs straight and together, bending at the waist towards your toes.

• 35:16Speaker 04

  Bending forward.

• 35:17Tim Ferriss?

  Bending forward towards your toes. And so if you were, imagine you're sitting down with your legs out in front of you, hypothetically at a 90-degree angle, and you put your arms up over your head, let's just flip you upside down so you're in a handstand position. That's effectively what we're talking about.

• 35:31Speaker 04

  Exactly what we're talking about. To hold that, because center of mass is way out in front of the body, then in order to hold that, the traps are what's responsible to keeping the back and the shoulders straight. So if you're not strong enough... And is it, some people say, well, it's just skill training. Well, everything builds upon everything else. So we've got Olympics coming up. People are going to be pumped. They're going to see our Olympic team. They're going to see the other monsters around the world competing on rings and they're like, I want to do that. And they're going to jump right up. I've got friends who are former SEAL Team Six and the first thing they did is jump up and of course they failed utterly. And then they come see us because it's like anything, you know, you don't jump right into calculus. You learn to count and we learn addition,

• 36:14Speaker 04

  we learn subtraction, yada, yada, yada. With enough time and enough layers, enough progression, then we get to advanced math. So advanced ring strength, same deal.

• 36:23Tim Ferriss?

  I remember we were talking not too long ago about the importance of pacing when you're dealing with connective tissue, tendons and ligaments, which is something I'm not particularly well-known for in terms of patience and pacing, but

• 36:38Speaker 04

  I've noticed that.

• 36:39Tim Ferriss?

  But many of the guys who say do outdoor bar workouts, some of which are very impressive physical specimens, will jump up on the rings and they'll be doing, I'm not sure what they would even call them. They're kind of like what would be looked at as like a typewriter on the pull-up bar when you move back and forth from one arm to the other.

• 36:56Speaker 04

  Side to side pull-up.

• 36:57Tim Ferriss?

  Side to side pull-up. And they're like, I was feeling fine, coach. And then suddenly my, you know, I tore my bicep, right? Tore my pack and it was fine until it wasn't. What are some, if you look at the muscles or types of strength that most non-gymnasts will not have, even if they consider themselves reasonably athletic, what would be on that list? And we already mentioned one, which is say mid and lower traps. And of course, I would like to think I came to the table with kind of hat in hand because I recognize how hard a lot of this is. But the more I practice it, the more I'm astounded at how unprepared my body is for these movements. I mean, as someone who has done a lot of pulling from the floor,

• 37:39Tim Ferriss?

  for instance, who has a decent deadlift, I would like to think, I was just astonished at how weak my mid-back was. It was just, it blew my mind. It was completely flabbergassing. What other muscles or movements do you find normals just cannot perform, even if they view themselves as athletic?

• 37:56Speaker 04

  For the lifters, the one that always jumps out at us is their lack of shoulder extension. So if I pick my, if I'm standing upright and I lift my hands forward, that's flexion and I can go all the way up to my arms are overhead. If I'm picking my hands up behind me, that would be shoulder extension.

• 38:14Tim Ferriss?

  Right. So just to paint another picture for folks, like if you stand up and then interlaced your fingers behind your tailbone with your arms straight and then tried to lift them up towards the ceiling, keeping your back straight. So the shoulder extension.

• 38:28Speaker 04

  And what we find is, you know, and a lot of what we'll get sometimes from people as well, I don't want to be in the circus. I don't want to be in acrobat. I'm not interested in skill training. I want, I want strength. And what they don't understand is if you want to achieve world-class levels of performance, technically, that comes first from having a solid foundation of physical preparation, which means correct range of motion, good mobility, good connective tissue. So shoulder extension becomes so, for example, a lot of people fail. They can't do muscle ups because they can't do shoulder extension. They think in their head that a muscle up is a chin up, a little bit of transition that they don't understand, and then a dip. What really happens is we do a pull-up, we get our hands to our

• 39:11Speaker 04

  chin, and then the elbows pull back behind the torso behind them, and there's their shoulder extension. If they can't do shoulder extension, now they're stuck. And they failed to spend all this time working technique and doing rep and doing rep. And what they're doing is they're treating the symptom, not actually the problem.

• 39:28Tim Ferriss?

  So just as some background for folks, the way that we connected was I, at 38, finally decided enough is enough. I've been fantasizing about trying to learn gymnastics in a structured way for 20-plus years, much like my postponing of getting a dog for 20 years. It's just like, why did it take me so long to do this? And I was in Venice, I'm going to give these folks a shout-outs. There's a CrossFit gym there named Paradiso CrossFit, and love the folks who run the gym. And I would go there to train because they would let me use chalk and do all the things that a lot of gyms will not allow me to do. And I met a gent who was doing a body weight workout. He's the only person doing a body weight only workout. And he suggested that I follow gymnastic bodies on Instagram. So I

• 40:12Tim Ferriss?

  started following your company on Instagram and saw older, let's just call it middle aged men, sort of my demo as it stands right now, who had started from scratch doing impressive things. And I had used age as my crutch and excuse for not pulling the trigger in the last few years. So I reached out to Rob Wolf, who was kind enough to introduce us. And then we've collaborated in this experiment that we're currently doing, which is roughly 90 days with a handful of goals that we'll get to. But I want people to understand how we connected. So I'm in the middle of training right now. I have to say, I feel better than

• 40:53Tim Ferriss?

  I've felt, with the exception of a little bit of elbow nonsense that is not from this specifically, it's a recurring thing. Feel better than I have in years.

• 41:02Speaker 04

  Well, that's good to hear, just from this little bit already.

• 41:04Tim Ferriss?

  Just from the little bit that we've done. And the follow up question to that is, when people are training for handstands at home, so self taught, what are the biggest mistakes that they make?

• 41:16Speaker 04

  Well, they won't like the answer. This is a little bit of national team coach attitude coming out. People tend to want what they want, when they want. And that's fine. If I'm looking for mediocre to average results. If I'm looking to really do best effort, I've got to back shit up and I've got to take care of my business. And for most of the adults, it's going to be they have severe compromises in their mobility. Their shoulders don't work well. Their hips don't work. Their knees don't work. Their elbows are shot. Their forearms are tight from all the desk patrol. Their calves are like piano wire from sitting all the time. We won't even talk about hip flexor. Their scabs don't move. Their scapula have

• 41:59Speaker 04

  no motion. They can't protract. They can't retract. Their spine is locked in just a flat or a kyphoid. So they're hunched over. Their lower back is continually arched. And they're just kind of frozen in this position. And then they want to try to move their body. Now, the common one that we get from people as well, these are extreme ranges of motion. These are artificial ranges of motion. And actually, these are your natural range of motion. Problem is, they quit using it. And so it just atrophied. We're not doing anything special. We're just, we have to recreate that natural range of motion first. We've been doing, gosh, I don't know now, maybe since

• 42:39Speaker 04

  2006, working with the adults. And the thing that just, we keep having my nose rubbed in it over and over and over again. Every time I think I have it down, I find I need to take it further. It's just the complete other lack of joint prep and mobility they come to the table with. Even your, your own case is an excellent example. We haven't done anything advanced yet. We're doing all basic. We're doing fundamental stuff and you're already feeling better than in years.

• 43:06Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I think it's, a lot of it has to do with two things, if I'm trying to self-diagnose. The first is

• 43:12Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 43:13Tim Ferriss?

  identifying musculature and motor patterns that I simply had not developed properly previously. Even if I had a passing familiarity, like, well, let me frame this in the form of a question. So can you define what the hollow position is, why it's important, and how, how do most normals do when they do a, say, hollow body rock? Maybe you can explain that, too.

• 43:34Speaker 04

  Most people, I mean, they think of abs, they think lower ab, they think upper abs. They're not going to think about obliques at all, and they're not going to think transverse abdominis at all. So, lower abs are easy, upper ab easy, obliques, okay, they, they understand the sideways, they don't understand how obliques wrap around into the lats, into the lower back. Okay, that's fine. But transverse abdominis, they're like, excuse me, was that English? They don't have a clue. And that's what supports the body when it's in a straight body position. So, for example, ab rollers were, we don't use them in our program, but just as an example, ab rollers were getting a, a bad knock that if you do an ab roller, you're going to hurt your lower back. Well, yes and no. You'll hurt your back if you're

• 44:18Speaker 04

  doing it wrong, if you're arched in your lower back. So, for definitions, if my lower back is arched, I'm an anterior pelvic tilt. If I'm the opposite movement, and I'm kind of my tailbone tucked under, and my lower back is flat, that's posterior pelvic tilt. Well, when my body's horizontal, then my back is supported when I'm posterior pelvic tilt. If I'm arched, it's unsupported by the musculosceps, and I'm hanging by the disc.

• 44:45Tim Ferriss?

  Which is true for a ton of exercises that we do. If I feel it in my lower back, almost universally when I send you videos, the feedback is more PPT, posterior pelvic tilt.

• 44:56Speaker 04

  It should just be a mantra.

• 44:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, and for people who need a way to visualize this, because I realize a lot of this vocab is new, and Coach, feel free to interrupt at any point, but an easy way to think about and remember, anterior pelvic tilt, is imagine that your waist is the top of a wine glass. If you have anterior pelvic tilt to the front, you're going to be pouring wine out the front of that glass, basically out of your belly button. And if you have posterior pelvic tilt, you're tucking that tailbone, you're going to be pouring wine basically down your sacrum, you know, down the back of your body. It's just an easy way for me to remember.

• 45:31Speaker 04

  That is clever. I gotta say, 40 years of national team, and I've never heard it described that way. It may be our go-to definition from long.

• 45:39Tim Ferriss?

  You know, I can't do the gymnastics. I'll have to stick with refining my definitions, although I am making progress with the fundamentals.

• 45:46Speaker 04

  Yes, you are.

• 45:47Tim Ferriss?

  I'd like to talk about the assessment that we did. So I flew out to a great gym, Awaken Gymnastics in Colorado, and we met up.

• 45:55Speaker 04

  That's our GB master affiliate. We only have one in the world. Awaken in Denver is our number one GB affiliate. They're the best at what they do.

• 46:03Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's a fantastic gym, and we did quite a few hours of various assessments. If somebody wanted to try to self-assess or videotape themselves to have, say, someone qualified in gymnastics assess them, if you were to do an 80/20 analysis, like which movements or exercises give you the most data?

• 46:24Speaker 04

  Most bang, most bang for the buck. Well, let's see. No, so what, we went over with you, we checked hanging leg lift. Hanging leg lift automatically is going to tell me dynamic range of motion.

• 46:34Tim Ferriss?

  Is that right? That's like on a stall bar. You don't want to be free swinging.

• 46:38Speaker 04

  Well, it could be, you know, most of them, you know, whatever they can do, it'll, to my eye, as soon as I see it, or our staff's eye, they're gonna know right away whether or not that person has adequate, it's gonna tell us your core strength, and it's gonna tell me hamstring flexibility. That'll do that in one. Bridge. Bridge is a huge one for adults. That's been one of our, we have a thoracic bridge core stretch series. That's been one of our best-selling products.

• 47:02Tim Ferriss?

  That's what I'm doing this evening.

• 47:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, notice, notice, guys, that Tim's real happy right now. That'll change in just a few.

• 47:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, what characterizes, this is a really important question. What characterizes a good bridge? And for people who are thinking of bridge, I mean, it's, imagine you're laying on your back, you put your palms down by your sort of ears, let's say, feet flat on the ground, and then you go up into an arch. Now, I was extremely surprised and found it quite hilarious how bad my bridge was, I mean, terrible, in the assessment, but-

• 47:33Speaker 04

  By your standards, yes. By what I see on a normal basis, yours was medium.

• 47:38Tim Ferriss?

  Medium, it was like a D+, it was like on the verge of pancing. But I realized, despite all of my many years of wrestling, where we did tons of bridges, almost all of my bridging comes from bending at the low back, right? So my lumbar bent-

• 47:52Speaker 04

  Which is a huge issue.

• 47:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, so what is a good bridge look like?

• 47:55Speaker 04

  Little background, so the lumbar, the lower back, is not designed to have a ton of movement in it, a big arch. Your thoracic spine, your upper and your middle back, they're designed to have a lot of movement, they're designed to rotate. Your lower back is not. But when most people do their bridge work, they're so compromised, now, even back up a little bit more, they're so compromised in range of motion in their upper body because they've been hitting the weights hard, they've been doing just a lot of high-intensity training. Now, to preface that, there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that at all. If you weren't one of God's gifts when you were born, you've gotta do something to make up the deficit. The problem is, when they do all that weight training,

• 48:38Speaker 04

  they're not doing it in balance and maintaining their mobility. If they had, they wouldn't have the issues that they ran into. So if all you do is strength, strength, strength, strength, strength, then you can always tell someone who has, they're the curl king and they're the bench press king. They come in and they're hunched over and their elbows don't straighten, their arms don't go behind them, and all they're like, you know, "My shoulders are killing me." Most of the time what we've found is, yeah, their shoulders are completely effed up. I agree, but their biceps are crazy tight also. And that bicep runs up through the front of the shoulder and it's manifesting itself as a shoulder issue. So kind of all these come together, long story short, to cause them a huge problem being able to get into a proper bridge,

• 49:20Speaker 04

  which should be all upper body, no lower back almost at all. But people are doing the exact opposite. They hurt their lower back and they say, man, these, these bridges are dangerous. No, the bridges aren't dangerous. Doing them half-assed and wrong without vetting your sources of information is dangerous.

• 49:37Tim Ferriss?

  I've found it incredibly therapeutic as someone who's had a, basically a frozen thoracic for God knows how long, 10, 10 years.

• 49:47Speaker 04

  Sure. We, we were worried about that. I remember we're like, hmm, we're wondering, well, we'll work through this.

• 49:51Tim Ferriss?

  Tim has the upper body mobility of a Lego figure. What are we going to do? So, but just the progression of doing, and of course, people should look for visual references and I'll point them to a bunch of.

• 50:03Speaker 04

  Exactly. They're in all our courses and it's all.

• 50:05Tim Ferriss?

  And I'll point them to a bunch of resources in the show notes, but can you walk through the checkboxes? Cause I know we've done this even recently. The concept, I don't know why this didn't even occur to me, but of helping to take the lower back out of the equation by elevating the feet.

• 50:19Speaker 04

  Elevating the feet. Yep. And elevating them as high as necessary. Some people are so tight that they basically start in a handstand. And it is what it is, right? The main thing that we try to always hammer with students is they're always in a hurry. I've got to get it right now. Even our conversation, you remember way back when started that way. And I was like, dude, if you can handle it, we need, we need to change gears here. We need to go slow now in order to go fast later.

• 50:45Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you said, if you want to be a stud later, you have to be a pud now. I think were your words.

• 50:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, that, that sounds like a smart ass remark.

• 50:52Tim Ferriss?

  That's a, that's a, that's a good one. I wrote that down.

• 50:55Speaker 04

  I've corrupted you, all your great podcasts and I've corrupted you.

• 50:58Tim Ferriss?

  So what are the other checkboxes? So let's just say they, they get the feet up and they're like, okay.

• 51:03Speaker 04

  Feet elevated to the point where they're not feeling stress on the lower back. Now it'll depend on pressing strength also. If they're very weak in the shoulders, then they're going to have to start from the handstand and work their way down. But we'll assume they've got feet elevated.

• 51:21Speaker 04

  Hip high or higher if necessary, doesn't matter a bit. Then from there, we're gonna work on, most people are gonna be up, they're gonna have bent elbows. So we're gonna work on straightening the arms.

• 51:32Tim Ferriss?

  No matter how close they are, they could be wide.

• 51:35Speaker 04

  They'd be wide, yeah, cuz, gosh, I had one Special Forces guy that came to me years ago. Tough, tough guy, first name Mark. And he had gained eighty pounds of muscle. Eighty pounds of muscle. Oh, yeah, he was just like, holy moly, and he was, he was just a beast. But he had completely effed himself up cuz all he did was gain strength without mobility. And athletically, unless my sport is just purely lifting, unless I'm a power lifter, unless I'm an Olympic lifter, then maximal strength is not my sole criteria for being successful. In fact, usually the strongest athletes in the weight room are not the best athletes on the field of play. And in fact, I don't know a single exception.

• 52:18Speaker 04

  There may be one there somewhere that someone can share with us and let me know. But I've been around the world, I won't say as many people as you know, but in forty years of world-class gymnastics, I've met a ton of people. I've never seen an exception. He couldn't even hang on a bar anymore with his arms straight without hitting his head.

• 52:40Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 52:40Speaker 04

  You think your shoulders are tight, pull him, Mark, and he was like, Coach, what can you do for me? For once, I was at a loss for words, which is rare for me. I think you're screwed.

• 52:50Tim Ferriss?

  So what did you do with him in the bridge? Was he just stuck?

• 52:54Speaker 04

  Well, he couldn't even, this was hanging on a bar. We couldn't even get in a bridge, it was impossible. What we would do with someone like that in Mark, so you're more, so guys, just to give the audience some feedback. I went into Tim's assessment expecting medium, medium, and Tim was much more mobile, much more athletic, much more well-prepared than I had anticipated. So I had spent a lot of time putting a custom program together for Tim that because he did so well in his assessment, I had to throw the whole damn thing away. Cuz basically, he was too advanced for what we had assumed he was coming to the table with. Someone who is crazy compromised, we're gonna have to sneak up on it.

• 53:37Speaker 04

  We're gonna have to get in there, and we're gonna have to first do pec minor. We gotta loosen up pec minor, we gotta get in there, and we gotta work on the bicep tendon. We gotta get the bicep tendon going, we gotta work on. Forearms, get forearms loose. We've got to break the scaps. So there's some motion there. We have to do all of that. It's not high intensity work, but it's got to be done. And as you heard Tim say, the body thrives on it. It's like a tonic for the body. The body feels so much better because it's what the body's supposed to do. A lot of people don't care for it because it's not the high intensity sexy work, but it's that fundamental work that makes the high intensity sexy work possible later. Not only possible, but safer.

• 54:21Speaker 04

  That's a good point because we had, I think, one of the questions that people asked, Tim asked for questions on Twitter, you know, what would you like me to ask Coach Sommer? And some of the people came back with, you know, I know someone who's a gymnast and they're just beat the shit. And my answer to that is simple. They weren't my athlete. They weren't my athlete. We don't train through pain. As a national team coach, for a long time, physical preparation was always our number one priority. We built the physical structure first. Because if you think about it, it's kind of silly. And we see this a lot with people who are getting into weightlifting, they're CrossFitters, they're Olympic lifting, and they're enthusiastic, they're excited, and they want to get that weight on the bar.

• 55:03Speaker 04

  They're trying to build technique with a flawed range of motion, which of course gives them effed up technique and it doesn't work. And then they get hurt. Or you hear someone, oh, I changed my shoe and I blew my knee. Seriously, your knee is that tight that because your heel and your new shoe is a fraction of an inch higher or a slightly different angle that your knee blew? In our training program, we need to call everything, you need an optimal surplus. You need an optimal surplus, range of mobility, range of motion. You need optimal surplus of strength. You need an optimal surplus of stability. You need what you need to perform, and a little extra for when things go south, not if things go south, when things go south.

• 55:44Speaker 04

  And if you're just right in the edge of what you're capable of, and they hope, oh, nothing will go wrong. I hope nothing will go wrong. Oh, it is going to go wrong. Absolutely going to go wrong. And so you prepare the body for that ahead of time. So when it does go wrong, it's like, ah, that didn't hurt. I didn't get, nothing's injured. Moving on next turn.

• 56:02Tim Ferriss?

  Well, one of the questions that you've asked me multiple times when we've been going over different workouts, and I would mention, for instance, I felt it in my bicep. Like, I felt an extreme stretch in my biceps. So, for instance, there's a movement that we've been calling a German hang. A lot of people would call it skin the cat, perhaps, very similar, where you would hold on to, say, a bar or rings in this case. And I'm going to simplify this, of course, but tucking up, going back in between the rings, and then hanging down with as little of a pike at the hips as possible.

• 56:36Speaker 04

  Hmm. Nice flat back, nice straight hips.

• 56:38Tim Ferriss?

  Exactly. And sort of palms facing towards the ground. And I was saying, I really felt an incredible stretch in my biceps, more than in the shoulders. And your question would be, and this is applied to different body parts, where did you feel it in the bicep? This is getting back to the not training through pain comment. And could you describe why you're like, if it's in the middle, I don't really care. And same for like the abs, like, we can smash those all day long. If it's at the attachment points, though, then I want to know about it. Or we're going to dial it back. So, why is that?

• 57:11Speaker 04

  I'm going to sneak around to it. So, most people, when they do their training, meaning, well, and I'm not slamming anyone by any means, and the only reason that we know this and are able to share is because all these years I've been doing this, I made the same effing mistakes that they make. We just survived my stupidity and learned how to do better.

• 57:30Tim Ferriss?

  He has the story of my life.

• 57:31Speaker 04

  So, I think the story of all of our lives, right? I used to tell my athletes, there are stupid gymnasts, and there are old gymnasts, but there are no old stupid gymnasts, because they're all dead. But most people, most beginners, they want to base all their training off muscular fatigue, which is a problem. It's problematic because muscle tissue regenerates about every 90 days. About every 90 days, you know, from end to end, all the cells, everything's done in 90 days. Okay, that's well, that's fine. But connective tissue takes 200 to 210 days. So we have a huge gap. So if I get in and I'm just saying, you know, I'm, I'm not a big

• 58:12Speaker 04

  fan of beginners training to failure, simply because their structure isn't mature enough yet to handle it safely. And by mature, I simply mean enough productive, well structured hours under their belt. So

• 58:26Tim Ferriss?

  Particularly if it's in new ranges of motion, right?

• 58:30Speaker 04

  Particularly if there's joints. If it's a muscle belly, if we're like you said, if we're doing core, we'll beat your core down all day long. And I'm not worried about it a bit because it's just muscular fatigue. But as soon as we get joints involved, everything changes. And it's actually really easy for people to verify because they can think back over all the injuries they've had over their training career, you know, in their athletic career, playing around with the kids in the backyard. The vast majority of those injuries are all joint related. Almost always it's extremely rare for someone to have a muscle belly injury. It just doesn't happen. Yet their training, especially in the beginning, is all skewed just towards muscular development, not connective tissue development. And that's,

• 59:11Speaker 04

  that's where they get into trouble. So when they come to us, the first thing we like is for them to spend, is it going to be boring? It is, you know, 210 days, we're talking six, seven months of dial it back, guys. Dial it back.

• 59:25Tim Ferriss?

  And I think that it's important to emphasize too, that dialing it back, it means that you're not rushing, but it doesn't mean you won't experience a lot of progress, if that's fair to say.

• 59:35Speaker 04

  I think that's crazy fair to say, and you, you found that yourself.

• 59:39Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 59:39Speaker 04

  But what happens is some of them, we run into this, maybe you have also is we, we get some people who are addicted to the rush. They're addicted to the adrenaline rush. They're addicted to laying there in a pile of sweat. You know, they want to do the sweat angels. They want to crawl out of the gym. And the problem with that is if you're a world-class athlete, you can't do that because I have to be back in the gym the next day and train again. I can't afford to destroy myself or the special operations guys we work with. We've got to be able to do both. They've got to be operational. And increase their performance through their training, but they have to go hand in hand. And so it's only in beginners that we see, they think somehow they can cheat time. It can't be done. I mean, connective tissue is gonna take 200 to 210 days.

• 1:00:24Speaker 04

  There's no supplement. You can't paint yourself blue. You can't dance under the moon. There's, there's nothing you can do to speed that up. It's gonna take what it takes. And so we work as hard as we can within those parameters. If there's joint pain, we shut it down. You like your elbow is a good example, years ago pushing too hard. Now that, that, if we tweak that elbow a little too much, it flares up on you. We'll repair it and it's gonna take time, but it takes much longer to repair it than it does to avoid it in the first place.

• 1:00:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, for sure. And just a couple of, of notes, and then I'm going to swing back to the diagnostics, you know, how people can assess, but another conversation, you know, topic that came up. I think I'm sure I brought it up at dinner once was the use of anabolic's or any type of growth agents. And the point that you made, which makes perfect sense is that would just increase the likelihood of having connective tissue problems in gymnasts because the muscular strength and growth would outpace the development of, and the adaptation of the tissues.

• 1:01:30Speaker 04

  Completely would backfire, huge backfire. Where students make their, their greatest gains in strength is to be able to do dynamic plyometric work and straight arm ring strength. Those are your two biggest bangs for the buck. And what we have learned the hard way, that's different. The main difference between working with young developmental athletes and full grown adults is the order in which we need to present the material. As a young, a young athlete, I, I can do all physical components at once. I can do plyometric, I can do straight arm, I can do their mobility, bent arm. It doesn't matter a bit. I can do it all at one time. But an adult who's now fragile from years of making a living, sitting at a desk, day in, day out.

• 1:02:12Speaker 04

  As they get a little older, kids get bigger, levels of activities drop, drop, drop, drop. And they're compromised. We have to build these things in a different order. We have to first go rebuild mobility, then we have to rebuild core. Core, I'm talking not just abs, but obliques and lower back. Most adults, a lot of their lower back pain isn't lower back related, it's oblique related. We have to go in and we have to correct that. Then we can worry about regular strength. Once those things are done, then we can get to the moneymaker, which is their dynamic strength. But with an adult, especially a strong adult, who's been athletically inactive. So they've been doing strength training, but not out moving, doing sports, being active,

• 1:02:56Speaker 04

  you know, outside of their conditioning. Or let's say, for example, all they're doing is squats. And they're very linear in the path of their knee. And there's no meniscus work, there's no MCL work, there's no ACL work. Then they go outside, they play a little softball here all the time. Yeah, when I was playing softball, I blew my knee going around first base. Really? How many kids blow a knee running around first base?

• 1:03:22Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, the supplemental knee exercises that look wacky as hell when you first look at them, that you've had me do, and maybe we can show some of this to people in the show notes. Even in the span of three or four weeks, I've seen a huge difference in knee stability improvement because I haven't ever performed these types of targeted movements before. Coming back to the diagnostics, we talked about the bridge. We talked about the hanging leg lifts. Are there any other movements?

• 1:03:49Speaker 04

  Shoulder extension will be huge.

• 1:03:51Tim Ferriss?

  So shoulder extension would be sitting on the floor.

• 1:03:55Speaker 04

  Sitting on the floor, sitting in that pike that you described earlier, hands touching behind them. And then without letting the hands move, trying to scoot the butt as far forward away from the hands as they could. Just that one movement right there is going to let us see, going to show me their scapular health, can they protract, can they retract? It's going to tell me how tight their pec minor is. It's going to tell me how tight their bicep is. And it's going to tell me how tight their brachialis down by the elbow is.

• 1:04:26Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, the Breaky Alice. Yes, your favorite. My good friend, the Breaky Alice. And also, just, and this relates to kind of daily living. A lot of people who have back pain, myself included, quite a few years ago. If you're wondering if you have a tight peck minor, you can just Google peck minor and figure out where it is. But basically, think right under the clavicle. Get a lacrosse ball, go on the wall and try to roll out your peck minor with a lacrosse ball. And if you have back pain, you don't always fix that back pain by just focusing on the location of that pain. That's a good point. And you start addressing the peck minor. A lot of that stuff is alleviated. And I wanted to throw one thing out there just for people who might be interested. And that is, I think part of the reason I seemed or was better prepared for the assessment

• 1:05:11Tim Ferriss?

  than I would have been otherwise is that I started doing really just one thing, one type of new exercise, which was compression strength training in that pike position. Okay. And did that for just maybe two times per week prior to doing the assessment as I was traveling. And for people who are wondering what this is like, if you really want to feel humbled as I did. I was traveling, I was in Colombia. A very close friend of mine almost got to professional rugby in New Zealand. He's a beast. I mean, athletically. They are beasts. Extremely strong, extremely fast. He's always going to be one of the top performers in the gym when he walks into a weight room. And he saw me doing pike pulses.

• 1:05:56Tim Ferriss?

  And so I'll explain what this is to folks because he was kind of laughing at me. And he's like, what kind of Jane Fonda bullshit are you doing here? You know? I love that name. And, and I said, all right, I'd like, all right, big guy. You're such a tough guy. Let's see you do these. So for those people who are interested, so you're sitting in this seated pike position we're talking about. Right. So you're sitting on your ass on the floor, the upper body perpendicular with the floor and your legs out straight in front of you and point your toes, kind of tense your quads to push the back of your knees into the floor. Then reach forward and stretch forward as far as you can. Get your fingers out on either side of your legs as far out as you can. And then just try to lift your heels off the ground, keeping your legs completely straight and just pulse it up and down like three to four inches, maybe if you can manage that. And just do, try to do 30 of those.

• 1:06:41Tim Ferriss?

  And my buddy. Could not lift his heels off the ground and just fell over laughing. He's like, yeah, okay, those are hard. But that compression, it's if you think about the range of motion that most people train for core, they're doing sit-ups, or maybe they're doing hanging leg lifts up to like an L-sit. So their legs are getting up to kind of parallel height. Well, that last 90 degrees, and especially the last like 45 degrees where you're bringing your thighs towards your chest is so hard. I mean, I had zero strength there prior to doing just a few weeks of this stuff. It just amazed me. And for those people also, we were talking about the transverse abdominis, Coach, feel free to veto this, but I think it's also nicknamed the corset muscle. If you're trying to think of what they might

• 1:07:25Tim Ferriss?

  look like is it wraps around the abdomen. So if you cough a lot or laugh a lot and get really, really sore, it's very frequently often engaging that transverse. But let me ask you, so you mentioned CrossFit, you mentioned a couple of things, you know, drenched in sweat, doing the sweat angels. What are your feelings about kipping movements, like kipping pull-ups?

• 1:07:49Speaker 04

  I had to open that can of worms.

• 1:07:52Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I was asking a mutual friend, I won't name him, and I said, what should I talk to Coach Sommer about? And he said, kipping pull-ups, he'll lose his shit. So I said, okay, I gotta ask.

• 1:08:00Speaker 04

  We started, I was the original gymnastics guy for CrossFit way back in the early 2000s and ended up leaving. I was there before there was the first CrossFit affiliate, when all there was was Glassman working out of that little gym in Santa Cruz. Left just because to do GST right, like anything, a dichotomy that I always find curious with people, especially the CrossFitters, is they will be so on point with dissecting everything they do in terms of their Olympic lifting. You know, my pull is here, my pull is there, my knee was a quarter inch this way. I mean, they're just methodical. And they don't bring, and I shouldn't say just CrossFitters, but then they, other people, they don't bring

• 1:08:45Speaker 04

  that same degree of attention to detail to their body weight work. So one is supposed to be meticulous, and one is somehow just supposed to be thrown together, yet they expect the same quality results. So if we look back in the day, CrossFit, you know, their lifting was nothing by national standards. Now they get people who are qualifying to go to nationals. Fast forward all those years in terms of their gymnastic strength training and they're not even remotely close. They don't match a national team. They don't match a state level athlete, let alone a national level, let alone an international level. They're not even in the same ballpark. And part of the issue is because the kipping pull-ups

• 1:09:28Speaker 04

  were a huge big deal. It was a moneymaker. You know, I'll be straight out. I'll piss some people off, but it was a moneymaker. As advertising for a program, they could bring someone in who's never been able to do a pull-up, have them hold their chin by the bar and let them fall, hit the bottom of that movement, bounce back to the top. And the person's eyes light up and they're like, you know, this is the best effing thing ever. I've never done a pull-up in my entire life. Oh my God. Oh my God. And they're pumped. What they didn't realize is that this person has compromised basic strength and compromised shoulder flexion. They don't have mobility in their shoulder. So they're hitting the bottom of that movement with multiples of body weight. But they weren't strong enough to do a regular pull-up. So now we're going to drop them on connective tissue with multiples

• 1:10:12Speaker 04

  of body weight. That's got to go somewhere. So it's going to force that shoulder to open further than it can handle. And I'm going to bounce off that connective tissue like a trampoline back to the top of the bar. And then to make to pour salt on the wound, now I'm going to do a shitload of reps at the same time. I'm just going to crank on it. And they were getting people who were coming in and, you know, crossFit, there's no proof, there's da, da, da, you know, bullshit, bullshit. You guys can live in a dream world all you want. It was blowing people up. And now the good thing, though, and to their credit, you know, it took time. There was a denial. No, it has nothing to do with it. But now we're seeing a recommendation of, you know, guys, we got to start getting some basic strength built first, some basic mobility. And then at that time, kipping pull-ups?

• 1:10:56Speaker 04

  Absolutely. There's nothing wrong with it. They're healthy. They're good to do on a healthy shoulder joint with a good foundation of basic strength. But a beginner doing kipping pull-ups? Really? That's insanity. That's just pouring gasoline on a fire.

• 1:11:09Tim Ferriss?

  So kipping then is the finishing addition. It is not the starting element.

• 1:11:15Speaker 04

  We started working with adults. Our first, we do seminars all around the world. You know, we spend a lot of time doing hands-on. And our very first one we did, I don't know, 2007 or so. And we've got all these people, we've got all these beasts here and they're strong. And tried to do

• 1:11:33Speaker 04

  My entry level plyometric work on some floor work with them. And the stronger the athlete, the faster they went down. Knees, lower back, ankles, on baby stuff. Baby stuff. I mean, we're not talking anything hard. We're talking about standing in place and with knees straight, being able to bounce down the floor using just your calves. No way. Their tissues couldn't take it. They hadn't done anything like it. Or we had 15 minutes on the schedule. For example, how bad mobility was. We had 15 minutes on the schedule to stretch. Nothing hard, nothing intricate, nothing intense. Just an easy, basic stretch. Get them loosened up for the day. That stretch took an hour and a half to complete. It was an hour and a half, Tim.

• 1:12:18Speaker 04

  It was an hour and a half. There were bodies lying everywhere. It was like I was in Vietnam or we're filming a war movie. I turned to my staff. I'm like, what the fuck am I supposed to do now? They failed warm up. They failed warm up.

• 1:12:32Tim Ferriss?

  Now, in fairness, this stuff is really, you would look at it and just like my friend is like, what is this Jane Fonda bullshit? And I'm like, hey, man, why don't you try this for 10 minutes? And man, it is really taxing. I mean, I remember doing one of the stretching routines, which I'll note, I think is, is might be of interest to people, is I'm hitting each once per week. So there's one that is front split focused. It's a very hamstring focused. There's one that is bridge focused and another that is middle split, adductor and middle split focus.

• 1:13:05Speaker 04

  Inside of the thigh.

• 1:13:06Tim Ferriss?

  And the point that you make is doing this twice a week will not double your progress. It will cut it in half. So you're only really hitting each of these once per week. I mean, there are different daily limber protocols. But I remember doing at the very beginning of one of these workouts. I believe it was, oh no, it was absolutely the, the front split workout. A shit ton, for me, a shit ton of calf raises with a different-

• 1:13:32Speaker 04

  I remember you moaning about that.

• 1:13:33Tim Ferriss?

  Like different foot placements. It's like, okay, 180 calf raises later of different variations. I was like, okay, and I'm only three minutes into this. An hour long stretch sequence. And I know we're bouncing all over the place because I want to give people kind of a buffet sampling of how this training differs. But one of the reasons I respect the programming that you put together and the nuance that you bring to this is that the observation then is, and correct me if I'm, or you can elaborate on this if I'm missing something, but a lot of the hamstring flexibility issues or limitations that people perceive are at least in part due to lower leg-

• 1:14:10Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 1:14:11Tim Ferriss?

  Issues, including the Achilles-

• 1:14:13Speaker 04

  Huge amount of arms.

• 1:14:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, including the Achilles. So you, in this particular progression in the beginning, you're engorging and then stretching the, the insertion point basically around the heel and then again at the knee and working your way up to the hamstrings. And there's a, an athlete who's been on the podcast, Amelia Boone, one of the most successful obstacle course racers in the world. And she's basically pointed out the same thing. And she said, yeah, you can take someone who's really inflexible in their hamstrings, have them roll out their feet with say a lacrosse ball or something like that. And all of a sudden they gain two inches in their descent with the hamstrings.

• 1:14:48Speaker 04

  It's all connected. We found by accident. So we never intended this and we just, part of what maybe helps people to understand the layers of complexity that, that I approach training with is that for years, my, my bread and butter was to produce best athletes in the country. That, that was my job. In order to have a job, I had to produce some of the best athletes in the world. And we, we had to do it from scratch. And so it becomes an issue of, one, an injured athlete is no good to the United States. It doesn't matter how talented he is, how strong he is. If he can't go out on the floor with USA on his chest, we, we can't win a medal with him. So he's got to be healthy.

• 1:15:30Speaker 04

  And then the second caveat that goes with that is that we're trying to find a way- To make the best better. Cause these athletes are already the best on the planet. And you're going head to head with other athletes who are the best. So then, how do you find a way to make something which is almost already perfect, even closer to perfect? And if you do what everybody else is doing, right? Without kind of going out into the jungle, if you will, into Indian country and learning new things, then you can't get a leg up on your competitors. Now, if we go, we have PhDs who come through and this and that, and we always give them major shit, major shit.

• 1:16:11Speaker 04

  Cause the way people think the world works is that they do their research, they write about it, they publish it, we learn about it and we implement it with our athletes. That is not how the way the world works. The way it really works is you've got high level world-class coaches who are super bright, decades of experience, you know? Just my last senior athlete alone, I had 16,000 hours into training Alan. 16,000 hours spread over 12 years.

• 1:16:39Tim Ferriss?

  What is Alan's last name?

• 1:16:40Speaker 04

  Bauer, Bauer. So yeah, you guys gotta celebrate Alan. He, uh, OU just, uh, won national NCAA championships again. Major blowout by the, uh, largest margin in NCAA history.

• 1:16:53Tim Ferriss?

  Wow, that was, well, as of this recording, very recently.

• 1:16:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, that was just, uh, this, oh goodness, the weekend of the 15th. I think we're scheduled here to come out sometime in May, but yeah, very, very big deal. But to go back to the other, so we're looking for an edge. And so we don't know why some things work, we just know it works. And I started getting notes from therapists around the world. For example, therapists are taught that they should have a neutral spine. You should have a neutral spine. I was getting people from around the world, they were writing me, but athletically, I'm sorry, I'll be direct, but neutral spine athletically is the biggest load of horse shit I've ever heard in my life. It, you can't run with neutral spine, you can't throw with neutral spine, you can't

• 1:17:38Speaker 04

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

• 1:18:19Speaker 04

  And these therapists around the world started taking our really gentle introductory work and they trained it on themselves first. And like, you know, just real similar to what you said, Tim, you know, I feel better than I have in years, coach. I feel better in years. And this is completely different from what I was taught in school.

• 1:18:36Tim Ferriss?

  Maybe we could use an example that we've discussed before, which was a new movement for me, which is Jefferson curl.

• 1:18:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, they're having some fun with that. So we look at Jefferson curl right now. So it wasn't that many years ago that if you squat it below parallel, it was heresy. It was heresy. If you went below parallel, the knees couldn't possibly adapt to it. You're just going to blow your knees, your kneecaps were going to just pop off the front, right? It's going to be shrapnel, knee shrapnel. But everybody accepts now that, you know what? There is nothing wrong with the body being exposed to its natural range of motion. Now, do you have to build it up gradually? Yes, obviously you do. But Jefferson curl falls into that. So, gosh, how do we explain Jefferson curl?

• 1:19:20Tim Ferriss?

  Let me give it a, I can give it a shot.

• 1:19:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, you'll be better at it.

• 1:19:23Tim Ferriss?

  This would be a good, this would be a good exam review for me, anyway. So Jefferson curl is a gradually rounded, stiff-legged deadlift. That's the simplest way to visualize it. So if you're looking at

• 1:19:38Tim Ferriss?

  an athlete from the side doing a Jefferson curl, they will most likely be standing on a box, holding on to an Olympic barbell right in front of their hip slash legs. So it's just like the very top of a deadlift position. But when they start the descent and it's elevated so that when you have plates on and whatnot, there's room for it. But when they come down, they're going to tuck their chin and then vertebra by vertebra, round their back, down.

• 1:20:07Tim Ferriss?

  All the way into the bottom position where the objective would be, or one of the objectives would be to get basically your wrists to the front of your toes, or at least-

• 1:20:16Speaker 04

  In a perfect world, if you're advanced enough.

• 1:20:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, in a perfect world. And of course, doing this very gradually with supervised attention from somebody who knows what they're doing, and then reversing that, and again, going from this vertebra by vertebra rounding up until you end up in that top position, and then repeating. Is that a fair description?

• 1:20:38Speaker 04

  Fair description. Yeah, the easy is just think of it as a string of pearls, and we're just curling one pearl at a time. We've been having some fun with that one. We have done Jefferson curls, I don't know, 12, 15 years now. Expected standard is body weight for us.

• 1:20:53Tim Ferriss?

  Note to people listening, do not try this with body weight right out of the gate.

• 1:20:57Speaker 04

  No, don't, don't. So, for example, one of our senior students in Australia, in his training, physical therapist, has his own clinic, doing really well. He tried it with just the empty bar, you know, the 20 kilo bar at first. Trashed him. He dropped all the way down to, I think, a kilo or two, right, which is completely fine. And we'll talk about why in just a sec. And then he built up, and last time I checked with Mark over the course of, I don't know, I'm forgetting, there's too many students, but around 12 to 18 months, he built up to either three-quarter body weight, or maybe up to full body weight now. And back feels better than it ever has. But the key there is people got to understand is that this was a gradual process over 12 to 18 months. It wasn't just go, we've got

• 1:21:41Speaker 04

  a very good, I'll throw Quinn out, I'm gonna butcher Quinn's last name. Quinn's a PhD in physical therapy. Quinn Hehnott does some really good work.

• 1:21:51Tim Ferriss?

  How do you spell his last name?

• 1:21:53Speaker 04

  Oh, you had to ask me that.

• 1:21:55Tim Ferriss?

  We can get it for the show, no?

• 1:21:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, we'll get it for the show. We chat a lot on Facebook and that. Quinn likes to stir the pot, if you will, you know, stir up some shit. He's experimented with Jefferson Crowe himself for, I think, going on about three or four years now, and feels wonderful. He'll toss it out. And so one of the things that'll always become obvious, you know, the McGill experiments, where they would take connective tissue from a pig cadaver, and put it under such and such amount of strain, and if we put it in this position with this much load, it snaps. Okay, and everyone runs around and it's the sky is falling, the sky is falling. Oh my God, oh my God, don't bend your spine, stay neutral. What everyone kind of missed, the big elephant in the room was the pig was fucking dead.

• 1:22:40Speaker 04

  The tissue was dead, it can't adapt, it's dead, it's no longer living. And it wasn't exposed to very gradual loads so that there could be progressive adaptation, which is what our bodies are really good at. They kind of overlooked all that. So if I take this completely unprepared tissue and I do this to it, it'll break. So some very interesting discussions right now and obviously everyone's fine, you know, we've, we've got athletes doing great, adults who are doing wonderful and the physical therapist will come around simply because it's healthy. Now they've got to understand and other people who are listening should understand also is that our weighted mobility work needs to be approached with a different mentality, a different level of intensity than conditioning work.

• 1:23:25Speaker 04

  Because connective tissue has one tenth the metabolic rate of muscular tissue. It heals slower, it adapts slower. So you have to kind of come to the table with a very patient attitude or, or as I, I consider myself, like I'm, I'm extremely impatient naturally. But I've learned in order to get what I want and to go where I want to go, I've had to learn to be patiently impatient. If I give in to the urge, then I get hurt, athletes get hurt, we fall apart and we, you know, nationals or Olympic trials are every four years, nationals are once a year and you don't get another nationals, you don't get another Olympic trials. If you blow it, you've got to be on point that day. So it teaches us and our, our environment was actually a blessing because it's very

• 1:24:09Speaker 04

  much practical, it's very much results oriented, there's no room for opinion. I think, I feel, I prefer, it works, it doesn't work, it produces results, it doesn't produce results. You are the best in the country? You aren't the best in the country. I mean, it's very clear, it's very clear and it can't be argued with. And now that was actually something when we segued into kind of the fitness world, if you will, where you come out of national team and then everyone knows who the studs are. In the fitness world, though, everyone's proclaiming they're the stud. Everyone's proclaiming they're the national champion. There's nothing to support it. There's no results. There's no great athletes. There's no great abilities that have been generated.

• 1:24:53Speaker 04

  There's just the marketing. And that, that was hard to wrap my head around because a national team that doesn't exist, you can't go to the Olympics and the guy who talks the loudest gets the medal. I have the loudest voice, I'm champion.

• 1:25:04Tim Ferriss?

  I think that's national politics right now. Oh, wait, no, never mind. Different podcast.

• 1:25:08Speaker 04

  I did want to ask you how your visit to the White House, but I figure we'll save that one.

• 1:25:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, we'll save that for another time.

• 1:25:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, Tim went to the White House last week, guys, so I'll take his brain for you later.

• 1:25:17Tim Ferriss?

  So I, I interrupted, but yeah, you get to the fitness world. And another one of the differences that you pointed out for me, which I really liked, was that in the fitness world, it's exercise and diet. Whereas in your world, it's always been eat and train.

• 1:25:34Speaker 04

  It's eat and train. Yeah, eat and train. What the people are trying to do, and, and I'll throw a little, a little blurb in here. We, we have an outstanding nutrition program. The guy who, who wrote it, former SEAL Team Six, when he started, but it's back in the day, he was like 140, 145. And then Jeff got all the way up to 220, just shy of 225. Lauer muscle and his waist was the same size as when he was thin. He looked like two Vikings, two shoulders on top of his body. He came walking out, I was like, what the fuck? It'd been a couple of years. What the hell did you do? It's these basic nutritional concepts that we teach.

• 1:26:16Speaker 04

  But what we try to do with adults is they're trying to stay ahead of a bad diet through exercise. They're trying to outrun a bad diet. And it can't be done. It can't be done. And then what happens is if they somehow find this crazy combination of massive amounts of cardio, and they can kind of keep their weight in check a little bit, and then they stop that cardio, they immediately start gaining. Weight gain, weight loss, all of that should be separate from your conditioning. You know, you, you've got to get your nutrition dialed in. If your nutrition's dialed in, your body's going to find its natural, healthy weight that it's going to operate at. Now, if you're, if you want to be the giant muscle guy, and that's not your phenotype, which is your body type, you know what? Tough shit, deal with it.

• 1:27:01Speaker 04

  You know, it's, it's not going to change. You're not going to change your phenotype. You're not going to change your body's genetic expression. Okay, that being said, you can maximize what your potential is. Well, we hammer through to our students as you're not responsible for the hand of cards you were dealt. You're responsible for maxing out what you were given. Now, so who knows what your strengths will be. Maybe you'll be more endurance. Maybe you're going to carry easy muscle mass. Maybe you're a max strength guy. Maybe you're very skill oriented. It doesn't matter. Maybe you're very explosive. But whatever it is, you know, make the most of it.

• 1:27:35Tim Ferriss?

  So on that point, and then I want to come back to, I want to ask you about, I think it's, I wrote this down during our assessment, Tony Faye, quote, no routines, end quote. That's all I wrote down. So that's a cue for a story, I believe that you told me that we'll come back to. Does that make any sense? Or is that just like a cryptic 3am note that I wrote to myself? I don't know. But the

• 1:27:55Speaker 04

  You gotta stay away from the wine, dude.

• 1:27:57Tim Ferriss?

  Never, never. In vino veritas. We'll get back to that. But

• 1:28:00Speaker 04

  Oh, I, I, I kind of know what it is.

• 1:28:03Tim Ferriss?

  I think I can actually queue it up.

• 1:28:04Speaker 04

  That the basics?

• 1:28:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Well, we're going to come back to that in one second. The question I want to ask first is one that came up a lot from listeners of this podcast, which was, and I'm going to create sort of a composite of these questions. But like if someone is 35 years old, let's just say, former athlete, does basic gym work, diet is okay, not terrible. They feel reasonably athletic, but they're not competing in anything, certainly. Have never done any gymnastics. What would good goals be for such a person? And what would bad goals be maybe at the same time?

• 1:28:40Speaker 04

  Well, that without question, bad goal would be for them to jump right into kind of full body weight, straight arm strength. For example, a back lever, which doesn't require a ton of strength, but they love to do it because it looks so cool. It's kind of like their first thing they can do that, you know, wow, look at me. The problem is, is that it puts them in Extreme load while in shoulder extension.

• 1:29:06Tim Ferriss?

  So let me, can I paint a picture for people? So back lever, just to create the image. And Coach, correct me if I'm wrong. Imagine you're laying on your stomach on the floor. Arms by your sides. And then you turn your hands palm down so that your thumbs are pointing out away from your body. And then you lift your arms off the ground as high as possible with your arms straight. And then place a bar in your hands and then lift your body off the ground.

• 1:29:34Speaker 04

  Off the ground and kind of hold yourself there. Sure. That'll work. Body would be horizontal.

• 1:29:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 1:29:39Speaker 04

  And what they don't realize is that when the shoulders are in shoulder extension like that, is that the biceps are under maximum stretch. So it's not, it's not a problem to do with being strong enough. The bicep is too loaded and they're going to tear a bicep. For a young adult, not a problem at all. And we're lucky, you know, we, we have a lot of people who use our material. But some of our material, you know, Coach, you're, you're too conservative. Coach, it's a new world. Coach, we don't have time. I had someone who was 21 or 23 once. Coach, I don't have time to take my time. I'm already 23. Okay. All right. I think you're misreading this. But they want to jump right into their strength training and they do well, but they don't do the mobility work. So it wasn't last year, I think it was the year before.

• 1:30:23Speaker 04

  I think maybe the street workout community, five of their top guys around the world snapped biceps. These are crazy strong guys, right? I mean, we see them, these guys are beasts. They're doing one arm chins, they're doing this and that. They all snapped them on back lever stuff. Cause their, the mobility wasn't in line. Now, we all know when you're young, you can get away with a lot of stupid shit. Cause the body heals so fast. Luckily, right? Or I, I certainly wouldn't have survived being 21 if it wasn't that the case. But as an adult, the structure is mature now. And I think maybe a better way to look at it is people think I'm getting older. Legaments are breaking down, tendons are breaking down, joints are getting brittle.

• 1:31:06Speaker 04

  And actually, that's not the case because if we go back in time when you were a little guy, when I was a little guy, when all listeners were a little guy, we ran around like madmen. Right? It wasn't, oh, today I'm gonna ride my bike three miles. It was, sun was up, go jump on my bike and I'm gone all day. And I'm running, I'm jumping, I'm climbing, and we're just, we're just being crazy little guys. So we had this huge matrix of activity that the body is used to. Then we hit high school, and for most people, that's our first exposure to structured athletic training. Okay, and the body does well with it. Now, the mistake is thinking that the body did well solely because of that structured athletic training.

• 1:31:47Speaker 04

  What they're overlooking is all that activity, that matrix of activity that occurred for those years prior to that. Then if they're a high enough level athlete, structured training might continue into college. Graduate, time to get a job. All right, I'm still, you know, I'm young, right? Hormones are pumping, I'm gonna go to work and then I'm gonna go play basketball with the guys in the unions. I'm gonna hit the gym, this and that. That goes good for a couple of years, right? I'm getting by, having fun weekends, weekends are full. Then you meet the cutie, right? You meet the love of your life, you get married. Suddenly, I can't go play basketball every night now. Okay, so we do this and that, and little at a time, our levels of physical activity outside of conditioning are dropping down, and they're dropping down a lot.

• 1:32:32Speaker 04

  Then kids come, right? Well, there's another huge chunk of time gone. Then before you know it, you're 30, you're 35. You haven't been doing, hitting the gym very often. There's certainly not a time for just playful activity or doing sports or this or that on a regular basis for most people, right? And they spend most of the time hunched over that desk. Now, the body wants to be healthy. It wants to be healthy. That's your, your prime example. We get, we feed it the right movements in the right dosages, and it blooms, it blossoms. It's like weeding and watering a garden, right? The body wants to be healthy, but we have to do it in the right dosage. And so, for example, those street worker guys, they hurt themselves because it was the wrong dosage. They wanted to go too hard, too soon, without the mobility.

• 1:33:17Speaker 04

  So for an adult to come back around and answering that question a long way, 35 year old, very first thing we gotta do, we gotta fix joints. We've got to repair joints. We've got to get that range of motion back.

• 1:33:29Tim Ferriss?

  If you were to look at all of the adults that you've dealt with, let's just say 35 year olds. If you had to pick, and of course this does not cover all the bases, but if you had to pick, say, three to five movements or exercises or stretches for addressing the most common deficiencies, like getting those joints back into play, what would some of your selections be?

• 1:33:51Speaker 04

  So just for joint, joint, I think we'd put Jefferson curl at top of the list. Cause remember we have, we have multiple sections of the spine, right? We've got the cervical, thoracic and lumbar. That's going to come through also into glutes. That's going to go down into our hamstrings. That's going to hit our calves. That's going to hit our Achilles as well. So for, for one, that's a lot of bang for your buck for one exercise. Even if that was all you did, right? And you just did Jefferson curl. A lot of aches and pains are going to go away because of that. Next one was tough. It's always, it's always hard to boil it down, boil it down. We took care of pike. We've got to get extension. We've got to get some thoracic extension. I'd throw elevated bridge in there if arm strength was sufficient to handle it.

• 1:34:36Speaker 04

  If not, we can scale it down to some weighted work with some bars or some, some barbells. Either some dowel with a plate. We've got to get shoulder extension in there. Cause what happens a lot, a lot of the conditioning we're exposed to is all front delt heavy.

• 1:34:52Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:34:53Speaker 04

  Right. It's all, it's all anterior delt. And pecs get tight, the anterior delts are getting tight. And we start pulling our own shoulders forward. We create our own impingement. It doesn't matter, you know, so I'll do more exercises. I'll do more exercises. Well, no, you're, you're just making it worse. What the problem is, is there's not balance in the shoulder joint. There's no retraction and it's easy to tell. What does their posture look like? What do we see with everyone now? They've got that, what do they even have a term now? Texting neck? Kind of that turtle forward, distended forward.

• 1:35:23Tim Ferriss?

  It's like the Wally powered down look.

• 1:35:25Speaker 04

  Yeah. And you know, the scary thing there, and again, we, we have some PTs who use our stuff around the world with a lot of success. And they're the ones who come in and educate us for, we'll say, you know, we've noticed this and they, they tell us, they teach us, well, to the limit we can, because we're not professionals. But to the limits we can, they start teaching us the mechanics of what is really going on. So we have a very good student. Now Wesley Tan runs one of our affiliates. He's a full-time osteopath in the UK. Runs another one of our GB affiliates, Forma GST. And Wesley's the one who taught me that there's a point coach where if you abuse the body, it's not going to come back. And so, for example,

• 1:36:10Speaker 04

  you see some older adults who are extremely hunched forward, neck distended forward, chin up because they're trying to see where they're going. And it's not that they have bad posture and they could fix it. It's that they can't fix it. Cause the vertebrae are rectangle. And if you spend, after spending years of hunched forward like that, it compresses the front edges of that rectangle till it becomes a trapezoid. And that doesn't come back. Once, once that happens, it's done, it's over, it's done. Same thing happens with the muscle bellies. So people will get frozen shoulder or intingements in this. That is, if you're not using the muscle belly, the body doesn't want to support it because muscle tissue is expensive.

• 1:36:52Speaker 04

  And by expensive, the body looks at it, it's expensive to feed, it's expensive to maintain. For example, your body isn't a painting. You can't get to a certain degree of muscle mass, mobility, athletic ability, endurance, whatever you want to say. And then just stop and have it continue to exist like a painting you did. It has to be maintained. Cause if you're not using it, it costs too much resources for the body to continue to keep it. So it's going to start breaking it down. And that's why you get a few days, right? And then you start losing strength and you start losing mobility, you start losing wind. Easiest physical attribute to build? Endurance. Simple, super simple. Endurance is what?

• 1:37:35Speaker 04

  Endurance is simply strength repeated over and over at a lower load. No big deal. That's a six to an eight week process. Simple, no problems at all. Mobility, gonna take some time. What's the easiest one to fix? Muscular strength. No problem at all. So for, it's super important then that we, we use that muscle mass. Cause if it's not being used, you're not only gonna lose the size of the muscle mass, the body's gonna start doing deposits of collagen on it. And it's gonna start shrinking that muscle belly. On the traps, for example, and going back to those older adults we discussed. It's gonna shrink until a lot of it is connective tissue on the edges. Now, what people need to realize, and they don't, is that when they see an adult who's hurting, right?

• 1:38:20Speaker 04

  They're older, they're shuffling, they can't pick their knees up, their hips are frozen, they're hunched over, their neck's displaced. They weren't that way when they were younger. This is all the result of inactivity and poor progressions in their exercises. And it didn't have to be. And then they need to take the next step of connecting is that if it happened to that guy or that woman, it can sure as hell happen to me also if I go down the same road that they went down.

• 1:38:50Tim Ferriss?

  Returning to the shoulder extension, cause I noticed in our assessment that I had terrible shoulder extension and I had kind of accepted it and written it off with stupid reasons like, well, you know, I've done too much deadlifting, I had too much huge slabs of muscle on my back, I can't do shoulder extensions. It's like total horseshit. I mean, especially-

• 1:39:08Speaker 04

  I did notice mus- those huge massive slabs of muscle.

• 1:39:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, the, the imaginary latz syndrome that I have. And I mean, that was just blown to smithereens when I met, let me make sure I get his name correct, is Paul Watson, is that right?

• 1:39:22Speaker 04

  Oh yeah, Big Paul.

• 1:39:23Tim Ferriss?

  In New York City, who's gigantic and extremely flexible. So as soon as I hung out with him, I was like, okay.

• 1:39:29Speaker 04

  You know, let people know Paul is, what was he, six feet, two thirty?

• 1:39:33Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, and just, uh, he's about forty, I wanna say, and just probably walks around at six percent body fat and can do a flat, like chest to ground pancake, no problem, can do dislocates with a weighted dowel or barbell, no problem with all different types of grips, which I can't do at all, even though I'm making progress. The shoulder extension, what is your preferred way to work on shoulder extension? Is it the sitting down, arms behind you, scooting the hips forward? Is there something else you would add to that mix?

• 1:40:02Speaker 04

  Well, we, we have to sneak up on that one a little bit. So sometimes we can't even work shoulder extension at first if the elbows are deconditioned. So if brachialis just inside the elbow is weak, if the insertion of the bicep tendon is weak, then when the arm is extended, as they stretch, there might be some discomfort. So if that's the case, we have to give that time to adapt. So you notice that's one of the questions I ask you, how's your brachialis feel? How's your bicep feel? How's your elbow feel? Because we never push through pain. I mean, you can, you can, but have you noticed that the guys who push through pain, they've got a shelf life of somewhere between two and four years?

• 1:40:46Speaker 04

  And then the body is so beat up and so painful and so chronically injured that it's just easier to be a fat slob sitting on the couch and have at least my pain drop than to try to continue pushing through and being a stud. It's so common and it's also unnecessary. For example, and I don't get this one, I don't get this one a lot. I'll bring it because there's a lot of people and don't get me wrong, I really like weightlifting. I think the Olympic lifting is sweet. There's a lot going for it. I think the way that it is approached here in the States is not as efficient as it's approached in China, for example, or in Russia. So, for example, in both of them, before there's any weight added at all, they build

• 1:41:30Speaker 04

  complete mobility throughout the body. They can straddle their legs, chest on the floor, sit with legs together, pike, they've got bridge, they have all these basic mobility.

• 1:41:39Tim Ferriss?

  Incredible ankle flexibility and mobility. We talked about this, is it related to?

• 1:41:44Speaker 04

  And especially, exactly. You watch Cloakoff.

• 1:41:48Tim Ferriss?

  People should watch this guy. Check out some videos.

• 1:41:51Speaker 04

  Oh my God. He is such a beast. But what they also need to do is not just watch the weight he's putting up, right? They need to watch his warm-up in the training hall and look at how amazingly flexible and mobile he is. Now, what's important to understand is at a world-class level, right? At a world-class level, resources are limited. Energy you have for training is limited, the amount of time you have for training is limited, the amount of time you have for recovery is limited, right? You have to maximize these things because you're going, it's one thing to be the best stud in the town, it's another thing to be best stud in the state, another one in region, another one in the country.

• 1:42:30Speaker 04

  Completely different animal to be the best in the entire world, to be the best at what you do out of billions of people. We're talking livers of difference between the very top guys. So with all those restrictions and all those parameters in place, if the best in the world are stretching their ass off in order to get stronger, why aren't you?

• 1:42:55Tim Ferriss?

  Agreed.

• 1:42:55Speaker 04

  Not you personally.

• 1:42:57Tim Ferriss?

  Put me on the spot, coach. No.

• 1:42:59Speaker 04

  No, you as in all of us, as in all of us, right? And what will happen is people just kind of get blinders on. They want to watch technical. They want to watch progressions. What do you do for this and that? And then they'll blow off the mobility work that they do early, not realizing that the mobility work was the gold nugget they were looking for. They just didn't brush the dirt off in order to see that it was gold underneath. They just thought, ah, it's just another rock. Who cares? No, it was the gold. That was the sweet and they missed it.

• 1:43:28Tim Ferriss?

  So if we're looking at, again, this 35 year old former athlete, maybe never was super competitive, but has kept in decent shape, maybe does some form of exercise two or three times a week. In terms of a understanding that the mobility and working with J curl, elevated bridge, shoulder extension, et cetera, is going to be, those are going to be ingredients in the recipe in their progression to gymnast of some type.

• 1:43:53Speaker 04

  Not even gymnast. I would say.

• 1:43:56Tim Ferriss?

  Functional human being.

• 1:43:57Speaker 04

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

• 1:44:33Tim Ferriss?

  Correction.

• 1:44:34Speaker 04

  You know, we're athletes. Functional human being covers it all.

• 1:44:37Tim Ferriss?

  So, so let me, let me just jump to the punchline question, which is let's, so we look at if I wanted to give someone a stretch goal to inspire them to train consistently, right? So the mobility might not be enough, but if I wanted to give them a light at the end of the tunnel. So I'm like, I know this shoulder extension stuff is going to be very unpleasant, maybe not super exciting, but this is the objective. This is what you might be able to do in three, six, nine, 12 months from now. The back lever we've talked about is not necessarily a good goal because you might think you have the strength and perhaps you do, but you don't.

• 1:45:12Speaker 04

  They'll definitely have the strength, almost without question.

• 1:45:14Tim Ferriss?

  Right, but they don't have the mobility. So, you know,

• 1:45:16Speaker 04

  They don't have the mobility.

• 1:45:17Tim Ferriss?

  Snap, snap goes the bicep.

• 1:45:18Speaker 04

  Yep, there's a nasty surprise waiting in that box.

• 1:45:21Tim Ferriss?

  What would be a good gymnastic strength training goal to have or goals? Just as context for people who are wondering, after trying to do my best to survey the landscape and figure out what might not be the stupidest goals. I wanted to, you know, I'm not saying this is the best goals, but I decided, okay, well, press strict press handstand, which we can define in a second, seems like a good one. And it just seems like a sweet thing to be able to do. And then front lever and then

• 1:45:51Speaker 04

  Lever, straddle plunge.

• 1:45:52Tim Ferriss?

  And then straddle plunge, exactly. So we can talk about what each of those are, but would the press handstand, for instance, be something that incorporates the strength, the mobility and all these pieces? If you had to pick one.

• 1:46:03Speaker 04

  You had to pick one, that would be the one.

• 1:46:05Tim Ferriss?

  That'd be the one.

• 1:46:06Speaker 04

  Would be the one, because it's going to have all strength, all mobility, balance, agility, everything rolled into one movement.

• 1:46:14Tim Ferriss?

  Do you want to take a stab at what does a perfect press handstand look like in your mind?

• 1:46:19Speaker 04

  Press handstand, so I'm just trying to keep it simple, right? Bend over, hands on the ground by your toes. And that can be, put your palms on the floor so they're just in front of your toes, shoulder width.

• 1:46:30Tim Ferriss?

  Legs straight.

• 1:46:31Speaker 04

  Leg straight. Okay, now if they need it to bend, we could, but we're talking about perfect world, right? And then, hands on the floor, shoulders directly over the hands. And then, no jumping, using just the middle back, just the traps. Cause everyone thinks traps, traps, traps, and they think traps just for shrugging. Well, your traps are a huge muscle, they're a huge muscle, and they don't just lie on the top of your shoulders, they're in the middle of your back and down towards your lower back as well. They're a giant muscle and they're capable of a huge amount of power. And when you fix those, right, a lot of shoulder pain goes away, a lot of lower back pain goes away. But, go back to our other, hands on the floor, shoulders over the hands, using that middle back,

• 1:47:15Speaker 04

  those traps, pull the hips up on top of the shoulder, maintain that flat back position. Then, we continue on with lower back, finishing the legs up to the handstand.

• 1:47:25Tim Ferriss?

  So a couple of things that make this particularly challenging. So one, obviously you need to have the flexibility in the hamstrings and everywhere else.

• 1:47:34Speaker 04

  Ability.

• 1:47:34Tim Ferriss?

  Have the mobility. You have to have the compression strength, like we were talking about, doing those murderous, embarrassing pike pulses, which look like they should be easy and they are not. Bringing your legs basically to your chest in that last like 10 to 12 inch range, really challenging. And then, I think where you see a lot of people online do this incorrectly, at least from the standpoint of having the objective of gymnastic strength training, right? Cause there are all sorts of ways you can cheat with this stuff to make it biomechanically easier. But if we're trying to do it strictly.

• 1:48:09Speaker 04

  And why, why do it, maybe this is a nice thing to throw in, cause people say, well, it's just a matter, it's personal taste, coach. It's personal taste. You do it this way because you prefer this form. No, we do it a particular way because this is what builds the most strength that's transferable to other activities. For example, this'll continue, so who have I pissed off so far today? Pissed off CrossFitters?

• 1:48:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:48:34Speaker 04

  I'm gonna piss off yoga right now. So I once had, and I like yoga, don't get me wrong, but their approach to handstand is flawed. They want to go bone on bone. So they want to have their shoulders depressed. So they're bone on bone. They want to have pipe shoulders.

• 1:48:51Tim Ferriss?

  So by both.

• 1:48:52Speaker 04

  Alright, so shoulders, shoulders can elevate. So if I'm, if I'm standing upright and I elevate my shoulders, that would be like me shrugging my shoulders to my ear. And then doing the opposite is the other direction. Well, when we do a handstand, and if I describe it this way, it's gonna make sense, right? I want muscle and connective tissue to be doing the work. I don't want bone grinding on bone. That's not a recipe for longevity. Not gonna work. But the easy one is, is they'll say, well, there's, there's a yoga handstand and there's a gymnastics handstand. And my answer to that is, well, you're almost right. There's a gymnastics handstand and there's a fucked up gymnastics handstand. Those are the only two there are. Here's how we evaluate it. A gymnastics handstand, right?

• 1:49:34Speaker 04

  Done with nice flat back, nice head, all being a smart ass aside, right? We're gonna look at it just from a purely practical viewpoint. Which one leads somewhere? So if I do a yoga type handstand with that arch and the flexed shoulders, I'm not going any farther than that. I can work on duration. I can do some other things, but I'm not going any further. I do a gymnastics handstand where it's flat. Now I have nice range of motion in the shoulders. I have strength through the middle back, through the traps, right? I've got good core strength. I've got good compression strength. Now I can move on to good press handstand work. Why? Well, we wanna get stronger. That in turn allows me to go on if I'm in the mood and I wanna do more, I'm going to more advanced one arm handstand work,

• 1:50:17Speaker 04

  pirouetting work, all, all those things are out results of a proper, nice, straight line handstand that you can't do with the flawed approach. It's not aesthetics. It's being practical, cuz we, we don't do anything in gymnastics, right? That's just purely aesthetics. Why, why do we do things a certain way? It lets us generate more power. Why do we want more power? Lets us get more air. Lets us do more flips. Lets us do more twists. Lets us do. Harder things on rings, which means more points, which means more gold medals.

• 1:50:50Tim Ferriss?

  And let me throw out a couple of observations and you can correct me if this is wrong, but like one of them, an example of something that people might think is aesthetics, there is an aesthetic appeal, but it's a side effect and not the reasoning behind it would be a strong point in the toes, right? A strong point on the legs. So you see a lot of people doing handstands and I was guilty of this, certainly. And they have kind of what I heard what one acrobat called tofu feet. They're not fully dorsiflexed, like they're not pulling the toes back to the knees, which I think looks terrible, also pretty common in yoga, but they don't have that and they don't have a strong point. And so they're, at the very least, their quads and their adductors aren't really fully engaged.

• 1:51:32Speaker 04

  They're loose.

• 1:51:32Tim Ferriss?

  They're loose. And so they're, they're leaking energy in all sorts of directions.

• 1:51:36Speaker 04

  I like, I like that leaking energy. That's a very good description.

• 1:51:40Tim Ferriss?

  And it makes, I think I probably stole it from Pavel Tsatsoulin, but the.

• 1:51:44Speaker 04

  Pavel's a good buddy. Pavel's a good friend of mine. I like Pavel.

• 1:51:47Tim Ferriss?

  Pavel's, Pavel's great. And the, what is the consequence? The consequence, there are consequences, one of which is you're wasting energy. So you're not going to be able to train as efficiently. Number two is you're not going to develop the proper balance and alignment because you're going to be flopping all over the place and having to correct more so than you should. So that just that pointing has a huge impact on your ability to train the handstands, like a really strong point. And the other point I wanted to make is because I've, of course, in the attempt to try to work on this in the past, which failed, and I've made a ton of progress in the last few months, but when doing it solo, I would watch videos online and of course, not all videos are created equal. And you would see.

• 1:52:29Speaker 04

  And preach the choir on that.

• 1:52:31Tim Ferriss?

  And you would, and you would see people doing a press handstand, but they would planch really hard, right? So you would, in other words, you'd see people, they put their hands flat on the ground in front of their toes. And then they shoot their head really far forward, so their shoulders travel. If you were to drop a plumb line, like a string with a weight on the end from their shoulders, it would hit the floor, say like eight inches in front of their hands.

• 1:52:54Speaker 04

  Six, eight inches in front, sure.

• 1:52:55Tim Ferriss?

  Exactly. And then they go up into the handstand and they have this arch in the back and maybe their feet are pointing straight up. And what does that look like? It looks a lot like what was the gold standard in sort of Muscle Beach, Venice, or Santa Monica, like nineteen, circa nineteen sixties.

• 1:53:11Speaker 04

  Nineteen forty, nineteen fifties.

• 1:53:13Tim Ferriss?

  Nineteen forties, nineteen fifties. But that's going to place a lot more structural strain on the spine. So then if the, what does the proper version look like? I mean, roughly, right? Your ears are roughly in between your shoulder blades.

• 1:53:26Speaker 04

  In between your arms.

• 1:53:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, in between your arms. Fully shoulders extended up, or not extended, what am I looking for here?

• 1:53:33Speaker 04

  Pressing, pressing down through the ground and keeping the hand, the shoulders directly on top of the hands.

• 1:53:39Tim Ferriss?

  For people who want to just do a little experiment, obviously do it safely, but I was blown away the first time that someone showed this to me. If you do a normal, say, kick up to handstand on the wall, just the way that everybody does it, you're kind of flipping up and you end up looking away from the wall. There are a million ways to do it. Let's say you do that and then instead of doing it the way you've always done it, before you put your hands on the ground, you start with your arms overhead in the position that you want to assume on the ground and shrug your shoulders up as high as possible, trying to get your deltoids to the size of your ears. Maintain that position and then go up and the stability is just a world of difference. I mean, it's

• 1:54:15Speaker 04

  It's night and day.

• 1:54:16Tim Ferriss?

  It's a completely different movement. All right, I have to ask this because a million people asked, since we're on a roll here. We've already checked off yoga.

• 1:54:25Speaker 04

  That's true. And I have to come back, guys, I like everything else about yoga except your handstand. So only a small amount of hate mail for the handstand one.

• 1:54:32Tim Ferriss?

  Some of the coaches, and doesn't have to be in gymnastics, but it certainly could be, some of the coaches who have impressed you the most. I took down in between like my bouts of hands shaking and like accidentally getting chalk in my mouth, doing the assessment and like when I could bend my arms and do something, I took these cryptic notes. I wrote down one name, which was Alexander, world champion, male and female. Does that ring any bells?

• 1:55:00Speaker 04

  You know, I, I've been extremely, extremely fortunate in my career. I have just a multitude of friends who are World and Olympic champions, world and Olympic team members, world and Olympic coaches. And for a long time, you know, I just kind of, because if that's your environment, day in, day out, it just kind of becomes your norm, right? And then after a while, you kind of stop and think like, one day I was, I was at a competition and I was visiting with some friends of mine and I came back and my oldest daughter was maybe around 12 at the time. She was like, oh my God, you know who you were talking to dad? And I said, well, yes, sweetie, I know they're my friends. She says, that was the Olympic champion and that was the world champion? I said, yeah, I know babe, I know.

• 1:55:44Speaker 04

  She's just like, oh my good God. Well, Dmitry Bilozerchev is a good friend of mine and Dmitry won Worlds in 83 at 16 years old. 16 years old, just unbelievable. He won again in 87. What a lot of people don't know is in between there, Dmitry, obviously Russian, Dmitry had a car accident and broke his left lower leg between the knee and the ankle in 42 places. Oh. 42 places. So basically, you know, it's powder. They put him in, he's unconscious, he's on the table and he's, he's covered up and they're getting ready to remove his lower leg. They're gonna, you know, taking it off.

• 1:56:26Speaker 04

  And the surgeon pulls the towel down, the sheet down, because he's prepped for surgery. I mean, he's out and he sees it's Dmitry. Now, this is Russia, right? In the early 80s, so you didn't know this, uh, it's not warm friendly Russia. The doctor immediately like, holy shit, I am not cutting this leg off because the surgeon who takes Dmitry Bilozerchev's leg off is probably going to lose his hands shortly thereafter also. You're right. You know, national hero. So they save his leg and Dmitry comes back from it and wins Worlds in 87.

• 1:57:00Speaker 04

  Goes eighty-eight Olympics, does great medal, gold medals. Well, Dmitry was lucky enough, we're at different training camps than that. Dmitry was my roommate. And, you know, Russians are Russians, right? It takes a long time for them to warm up to you. So it took, I don't know how many years, but we, we started getting along real well after some years. He starts sharing some stuff, you know, I'm like, you know, Dmitry, because his leg is trashed. His leg is trashed at the Olympics. I said, Dmitry, you know, how? How the hell, dude? He's like, yeah. Hold it up for a few seconds. I, I can do anything for a few seconds. I said, I don't know, dude. Well, so it's just great, right? So he's, you know, a legend in gymnastics. We get together with a room full of world and Olympic champions who are Russian. They will all defer to Dmitry.

• 1:57:44Speaker 04

  He's, he's that big a legend. And this isn't a room full of massive egos. Yeah, there's, there's no shortage of confidence here. And if Dmitry's in the room, they treat Dmitry awesome. It's, it's a very, very cool thing to see. Well, we go forward. We had a, a world champion from the Russian on the women's side who, uh, won Worlds. And Dmitry's coach, Alexander, was responsible for training both of them. So Alexander's the only one in history who produced a male world champion and a female world champion. He's the only one. And Alexander, right now, is down coaching the Brazilian team. What is Alexander's, is that his first or last name? I always screw up all the Russian pronunciations.

• 1:58:26Speaker 04

  All my Russian friends are gonna laugh because they're totally used to me butchering this. But it's like Alexander, Alexandrov or, or something. Got one of those. Alexandernov. If I'm with my Russian friends, I just say Alexander and everybody knows who I mean. So I don't have to embarrass myself. What do you think allowed him, made him? Makes him him? Yeah, exactly. What makes him different? Uh, what makes him him is the ability. So it starts with.

• 1:58:53Speaker 04

  Depth of knowledge, to have enough depth of knowledge that you can look at an athlete and plan what you need to be doing four years from now, eight years from now, and then reverse engineer all of it to today. All the training cycles, the strength, the deloads, it was from Dmitri. That I for so back in eighty-three, Dmitri was the only gymnast, I think today, probably one of the only ones who every fourth week was a deload week. Why? To give the body a chance to recover. Now, there's a lot of people who talk deload, but way back then, right? The training, if you visit with Dmitri, right? It's always, Chris, it's mathematics, it's all mathematics we do. To them, you take these correct pieces, which would be like doing the correct numbers,

• 1:59:37Speaker 04

  that creates your equation. If you put the equation together correctly and then you solve it, there's your answer. And your answer is the physical preparation at the end in a successful competition. So Alexander is great, great at knowing, we're going to just be consistent over this training block. So, you know, an Olympic cycle is four years long. So we're getting ready to finish this Olympics, right? And then the next cycle starts. So it could take, for example, to get someone to seventy-five, eighty percent of their genetic capacity with a good coach, a good world-class coach, going to take three to four years. It's going to take three to four years, just to let the body grow, adapt.

• 2:00:21Tim Ferriss?

  Do you think that's also true for thirty, like, training an adult?

• 2:00:26Speaker 04

  I do.

• 2:00:27Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, great.

• 2:00:27Speaker 04

  All right. Now, that's a healthy adult. So if they're severely compromised, so, you know, to get through our whole, our whole curriculum should take three to four years. If they're severely compromised and we have to do damage repair, we've got to heal some injuries, we've got some chronic things, because what's a chronic injury? A chronic injury is simply an injury that you kept abusing until it became semi-permanent. That's all chronic injury is. It means you slammed your hand in the door and it hurt. Your response to slamming your hand in the door to hurting was to keep slamming your hand in the fucking door. You kept slamming it in the door and you say, God, my hand really hurts. What should I do? What should I do? I said, well, quit slamming your hand in the damn door and it will get better.

• 2:01:11Speaker 04

  But people, they don't think that way. They're just like, well, I, but I really, really like doing this. And we get people coming to us really beat up because we're taught, no pain, no gain. Well, we flip that around. We say no brain, no gain. We're not talking about the pain of fatigue. The easy way to know the difference between fatigue and injury is simply the sharpness of the pain. So, for example, and it's some experience also, if you're feeling pain, right, and maybe it's from a core workout and you stop, you're doing hollow body rocks, whatever, it doesn't matter what you're doing, sit-ups, you stop. If it's fatigue, it's immediately gonna start to lessen. As soon as you stop, the pain starts going away. If it's an injury and you stop, it's immediately gonna begin

• 2:01:55Speaker 04

  increasing. That's your oh shit moment. That's, ah, I screwed myself up, right? And so, you kinda have to ride that. We want to work to where the body is working, but we don't want to work so hard. It's like, for a long time, it was a big thing for people doing kipping pull-ups to take pictures of their hands being raw and bloody from their ribs. They were looking at it as a badge of honor, you know, that I worked so hard. And in the short term, for that moment, yeah, they worked really hard. Now, I looked at it differently. I looked at it as like, you stupid shit. What are you gonna do tomorrow now?

• 2:02:31Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 2:02:32Speaker 04

  There's no amount of work you can do today that could offset the amount of progress you could have made throughout a properly structured week. It can't be done.

• 2:02:41Tim Ferriss?

  You see that, you see that with kettlebells a lot, too. I remember, I remember when I was really deep in kettlebell training, it was, yeah, you take yourself out for god knows how long, you rip all your calluses off.

• 2:02:51Speaker 04

  But they mean well. They mean well. We tend to use two terms with our athletes. We have immature athletes and mature athletes. And it's not an age deal, it's an attitude deal. So, an immature athlete is someone who wants what they want right now. Okay? A mature athlete is someone who's willing to do what needs to be done now to get rewarded for it later. Delayed gratification. And it's the mature athlete that in the long run always comes out on top. They're always the ones with the greater longevity and the greater success. The other ones, the immature ones, they're really talented. They may stay ahead for a while, but eventually you're going to get so dinged and broken and beat up that they have to step aside.

• 2:03:36Speaker 04

  And the mature guy, the mature athlete or woman, right? They're, they're just doing their thing day in, day out. It's like writing a book that has 365 pages in it. If I ask you tomorrow, Tim, go home tonight and write me a book with 365 pages. You're like, Chris, you've lost your fucking mind. But if I say, Tim, I want you to write me a page, a single page every day. In a year, we've got a book with 365 pages. And if you picture that, that thickness of a novel, that's a lot of pages there. But if I look at that thickness of a single page, it's so thin that it seems negligible. It doesn't even matter. It's like, why did I bother? Well, it's, it's the consistency that adds up over time.

• 2:04:19Speaker 04

  That's where you see, you see these great athletes. Got to understand, they see, you see a world-class athlete that did not start training yesterday. This is a multi-year process.

• 2:04:29Tim Ferriss?

  Well, also I think that there's a behavioral modification and a component of this, which, you know, if you wanted to dig in the research is, is supported at this point, which is doing each day less than you feel maximally capable of. It's a fantastic sort of positive reinforcer. And this applies in sales. This is what IBM did way back in the day when their sales force was slaughtering the competition. They had the lowest quotas in the industry because they wanted their salespeople to be unintimidated to pick up the phone. So we could substitute intimidated to pick up the phone with intimidated to go to the gym or start a session. You could also apply it to writing.

• 2:05:08Speaker 04

  Leave, leave a little in the bank, right?

• 2:05:10Tim Ferriss?

  Leave a little in the bank. I remember there were two examples offhand as it applies to writing. A friend of mine. Was very, very consistent, prolific writer. And he said, my key is every day I write less than I feel capable of. And you know, a guideline that I was given was two crappy pages per day. That's all you have to do. Two crappy pages. And sometimes you overshoot that and you have a great workout and you're feeling, as you put it, froggy, right? You're feeling fantastic and you just blow through and set a bunch of PRs, but you didn't go into the workout with the pressure of having to achieve PRs in every exercise. And you know, Hemley Way, maybe not the best life model, but was prolific writer.

• 2:05:47Speaker 04

  Still a stud.

• 2:05:48Tim Ferriss?

  And he would end mid-sentence. He would end still feeling like he had more to say in a specific paragraph or sentence so that he had a place to pick up the next day. So on the point of consistency, and actually, I want you to finish your last thought because I totally hijacked the conversation, but you said it takes three to-

• 2:06:03Speaker 04

  What's up with that, dude? You hijacked my thoughts.

• 2:06:05Tim Ferriss?

  So three, three to four, three to four years to get them to what percentage of their genetic?

• 2:06:11Speaker 04

  This is ballpark, 75 to 80. This is just an example to people because the body will not let you run at 100%. Won't do it. Won't do it. There's not enough optimal surplus that we mentioned earlier. Three to four years to get to 75, 80%. It will take me another three to four years, another three to four years to get to about 90%. Another three to four years. And then after that, it will take me another three to four years to get to about 95%. And that's me riding herd on them. That's my standards, right? Because remember, it's easier for me to maintain that immaculate standard because I'm not

• 2:06:53Speaker 04

  the one feeling the fatigue right now. It's very difficult for a world-class athlete to train themselves. And it doesn't do a world-class coach any good to have all that knowledge in his head. It takes a partnership, right? It takes both of them working together to create this great athletic animal. But the interesting thing is that another three to four years, you get to 95%. And as soon as they ease up, the body drops back down to that 75, 80. That's where it likes. Now, to build back up won't take nearly as long as to build it in the first place, because the structures are already in place, nervous systems are already developed, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. But that's where the body's comfortable.

• 2:07:31Speaker 04

  So as far as adults are concerned, does a 35 year old need to be able to produce at 90%? No, they don't. Do they need it 95%? No, they're not full-time professional athletes. They don't have time for that. Can they produce at 75, 80%? Yes, they can. And the interesting thing is, is will that put you on the Olympic team? No, absolutely, absolutely not. Are you going to be close to it? No. But will it put you being better than 99 out of 100 people around you? Absolutely. Absolutely, it will put you there. And if we put a percentage on that, that means that just by being consistent,

• 2:08:14Speaker 04

  putting some years, consistent years of training, and that puts you in the top 1% of the human population in terms of physical ability. That is not a bad consolation prize.

• 2:08:25Tim Ferriss?

  No, it's not. And I want to underscore the consistency point because I've always been an intensity guy, right? I mean, for the most part, because that's my default mode. And it served me well.

• 2:08:36Speaker 04

  And everybody's, right?

• 2:08:37Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it served me well, but there's a point where the sword cuts both ways. You sent me an email recently. I'm going to replace the name, just unless we decide to.

• 2:08:47Speaker 04

  I was gonna say, or maybe take out the profanity just in case.

• 2:08:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I'll take out the F bombs. Dear you lazy bastard. No, that's not how it starts. Because I want to talk about older students who have picked up gymnastics. And so there are a lot of people who are rightly, I think, or naturally skeptical of the ability of say a 35, 38, 40 plus year old to acquire the skills that are associated with people who start when they're five, six, seven years old. So I'm going to replace the name with Frank. Okay, so I was having a hell of a lot of trouble with tuck hops. And to just explain that, I fully plan for everyone listening to put a lot of video examples in the show notes. You'll have visual references for a lot of this, but tuck hops, it's a great exercise.

• 2:09:33Tim Ferriss?

  There are different ways to practice this, but a tuck handstand is instead of having your body ramrod straight from your hands all the way to your pointed toes at the very top, you're basically bringing your knees to your chest or rib cage while you're in the handstand position with your feet still pointed, but your heels kind of touching your ass. Is that a fair description?

• 2:09:54Speaker 04

  I agree with that.

• 2:09:56Tim Ferriss?

  And I was having a lot of trouble with range of motion. I just couldn't get low enough. And so Coach sent me an email, which was, you know, Frank is one of my senior students. Here's a video of him working his tuck handstand compression. While it's not exactly the same exercise, this does provide a nice visual example. Now, the part that stands out for me is what follows the video. Cause I watched the video and I was like, okay, that's pretty solid. And you said, you know, he started roughly two years ago, out of shape, weak and rather pudgy on his first workout. I believe that he failed three times 12 seconds bent hollow body hold.

• 2:10:29Speaker 04

  And there are people on wheelchairs that are stronger than that.

• 2:10:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. And I'm probably going to get the, not going to do this exercise justice, but I mean, a bent hollow body hold is effectively like, imagine if you're in a crunch position on the floor, right? And then you put your arms.

• 2:10:47Speaker 04

  Just kind of pick your feet up like you were going to do a sit up, except don't sit up, shoulders up a little off the ground, feet off a little ground, and then just try to rock back and forth.

• 2:10:56Tim Ferriss?

  That's it. So he failed that, couldn't do three sets of that times 12 seconds.

• 2:10:59Speaker 04

  Couldn't do it. Not a chance.

• 2:11:00Tim Ferriss?

  Fast forward two years and he's a beast. Now, there were two, there were two points here that really left a mark on me. So the first was he's very consistent. Okay, we've talked about that. Here's the part that I really liked. So he never rushes through exercise and every time he gets stuck on a progression and is not able to break through that particular plateau, he simply drops all the way back to the first progression and begins working his way up. So I want to try to illustrate this because this is a really, because most people, myself included, will just bang their heads against a wall with the plateau movement. Let's take the press handstand, which we've been talking about as a great kind of bang for the buck objective, because it incorporates so many different elements and attributes that you need to develop.

• 2:11:40Tim Ferriss?

  What would a series of progressions, like four or five progressions for that look like? And does it literally mean that if he couldn't get through movement five, that he would drop all the way back to number one? Or would he go back to number two or number three?

• 2:11:57Speaker 04

  He'd go right back to number one.

• 2:11:59Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 2:12:00Speaker 04

  Now, he might go to, he might not start with the very week one programming of, you know, three by one rep. He might drop back to week 11, where we provide the programming where it's five by five, and you demonstrate mastery, then next workout bump. But basically, what he's doing is if he failed on that exercise, that means there was a chink in the arm or somewhere. There was a hole in the preparation. There was some deficit that had been overlooked, or some part of the body that had not yet super compensated. So basically, we want people to go through when they're in training to just be super simplistic. We want their training to go through a period of overload,

• 2:12:43Speaker 04

  where whatever they're doing is kicking their ass. Okay, it's hard, it's intense. And then without changing reps or sets, right? We want the body then to go into a period of load, where that same amount of work, that same load, same exercise, same reps, same sets, feels moderately difficult. It's feeling easier because the body's gotten stronger. And then where people always cut it short, where they undermine themselves here, is they don't go into underload. So to be super simplistic, underload is where, damn, I'm just not feel like I'm working very hard. You're moving the same weight, you're doing the same reps, you're doing the same sets, right? But you're just, you're just cutting it short. What people tend to do is they want to ride that razor's edge.

• 2:13:28Speaker 04

  I did this much today, I'm going to do more next week. That typical five pounds on the bar. Okay, well, that's great. You know, if that was the case, I remember my first weighted pull-up workout, I was excited. I was excited way back when I was a teenager. I came home, I did my five pounds, I pulled on my calendar, did five pounds. I'm going to do a pound every week. I said, holy shit, I'm going to be pulling 1,500 pounds in a year, man. I'm world champion, I'm world champion in the making. Linear doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way. So what happens is that you hit that point of where you're maxed out currently. And then you gotta step off and we gotta give the body a chance to accommodate. So for example, you mentioned Rob Wolf. Rob is a good buddy. Rob's super sharp. For those of you who don't know, he's a

• 2:14:12Speaker 04

  nutrition guru. Check out his stuff.

• 2:14:14Tim Ferriss?

  R O B B for people.

• 2:14:15Speaker 04

  R O B B. Yeah, he's got, he's got two Bs there. Well, Rob is a high intensity guy like you, Tim. And so I shared with him the year Alan won national. So a national champ, imagine you've defeated the entire country. There's one champion and you're it. Everyone you kick their ass. Unbelievable feeling, extremely awesome. Well, that year I didn't change anything on Alan's conditioning the entire year. Not a damn thing. I didn't change an exercise. I didn't change a rep. I didn't change a set. Not for that entire year.

• 2:14:53Tim Ferriss?

  So you mean that there are, for the progressive resistance purists out there, there might be another way.

• 2:15:01Speaker 04

  But remember, he wasn't a beginner at this point. Now, because a beginner, right? It wouldn't do any good if I can do a wall push up inclined on the wall. I mean, Alan was strong. He was already doing hollow back presses, you know, rope climbs were for maintenance of healthy elbows, yada, yada, yada. But for that year, I didn't change anything. All that changed was workout that took an hour got to the point where it was taken 40 to 45 minutes. At which point do your stretch and get out because the less time you're in the gym, the better. Okay. Because it's less wear and tear on the body. Think of it, when I hear when you mentioned, you know, people who love to be high intensity. Okay, it's cool, but the analogy that comes to mind is someone who wants to be high intensity all the time.

• 2:15:44Speaker 04

  It's like having a new set of tires. Every time you come up to a stop sign, you don't gradually break, you slam those brakes hard, you skid, do a stop. Every single stop sign, how long is that pair of tires gonna last? It's gonna wear out pretty quick and now the body's not like tires. It can rebuild itself as long as you don't put it too deep into a hole or physically break the structure, damage the structure beyond repair. As long as you show some degree of care, you rebuild yourself. But if you keep getting to that stop every single day, matter of time is not if, it's guaranteed.

• 2:16:20Tim Ferriss?

  So let's throw out a couple of, I'll use another automotive metaphor. Let's switch gears and I will ask just a couple of questions that I think people would love to hear answers to. The first is someone listens to this, they're extremely excited to do gymnastic strength training. And maybe they go out and they're like sampling different things from all sorts of different places. And you know, of course, I have no business, I should say with full disclosure, I have no business association. I'm not getting any kind of affiliate, anything from you. I just am a real fan of how you train. So I think people should check out your training programs. But what exercises should people not attempt or just remove from consideration for the first,

• 2:17:03Tim Ferriss?

  say, six months of gymnastic strength training?

• 2:17:07Speaker 04

  Probably I would say muscle ups. The issue becomes there's nothing wrong with the pull, there's nothing wrong with the dip. The shoulders will adapt relatively quickly. You know, they'll get up on rings at first and they're shaking. And that's simply because the stabilizers aren't used to the load. That'll adapt within, you know, two weeks, four weeks, they'll be fine. The issue they run into is because their shoulder extension is weak. They can't get the elbow behind the torso. So instead of doing a dip with body weight, now they're trying to do a tricep extension with body weight. Completely different animal. Their elbows can't go, their elbows are trapped at their side. And now their hands are in front of them and they're just trying to press themselves up. Of course, they're just trash and their elbows are not some people. Okay, we do see it.

• 2:17:52Speaker 04

  Some people have incredible joints that you can just pound and pound and pound and pound and pound. Nothing happens to them. Run them over with a car, right? All you're gonna do is hurt your car. Everyone assumes they're that guy, they're that woman. The reality is, you're not, guys. You are not that person. If you were that person, I would see you at training camps right now, or you would be a celebrated professional level athlete. So accept the fact that you're human and those are not your joints. You can't take that approach and have longevity. It's not gonna happen.

• 2:18:23Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so muscle ups go out.

• 2:18:25Speaker 04

  Muscle ups go out. Now, how do they get around the muscle up? How do they get, because their elbows hurt? They can't do a slow. We need to build strength. We gotta do it slow. How do they get around? They do the kipping muscle up. Okay, well, that gets me on top of the rings. But where I get the benefit of muscle ups is through that transition as I'm going between the pull up through my chest up above. And that's where cross is. That's where plunge is. That's where Maltese is. That's where all advanced ring strength is. It's that strength. When you see a gymnast, right? When you see him this summer at the Olympics, right? And we're, just as an aside, guys, we've got some podcasts coming out for Gymnastic Body, sorry, Tim, competing with you here.

• 2:19:05Tim Ferriss?

  That's all right.

• 2:19:06Speaker 04

  And we're gonna talk some training, right? With some of our Olympic guys. And when you see them, you are, you're gonna see this massive musculature, and it didn't come from pushups and it didn't come from dips. It came from that advanced ring strength they do. So if you're doing a kipping muscle up and you're going from below the rings to on top of the rings and it's gone, you just skipped the most beneficial part of the muscle up. Gone, you wasted it.

• 2:19:30Tim Ferriss?

  Let me ask a related question, because of course, every four years, I watch gymnastics, I love watching gymnastics, as do a lot of people. And they go, holy shit, if I can get arms that look like that by hanging from a bar for an hour a day, I need to start hanging from a bar. How much of, I know we talked about the rings. How much of the musculature in the upper arms, biceps specifically, comes from straight arm work versus some form of bent arm work?

• 2:19:56Speaker 04

  Excellent question. So the majority of the massive biceps they see is gonna come from the straight arm work. So for example, when the guys would, at that level of training, at that level of strength, rope climbs, for example, my guys had to do a triple on a seven meter rope. All rope climbs are done with no legs. Okay, in GST, we do ropes without legs. We get some people say, oh, the rope is used for transportation. As soon as they take out the escalators in a mall and they put ropes in in place of it, or they take the elevators out and they put ropes, I'll buy that argument that we use a rope for transportation. Until that happens, a rope is used for getting freaking strong.

• 2:20:39Speaker 04

  Right, that's the point of having a rope. So they would, in five minutes, they would do a triple on a seven meter rope, get in the back of the line, do a double on a seven meter, get back in the line, and do another, and that'd be about five minutes worth of work. Okay, now, for them, what we did notice, and a lot of people miss this, we're going to do two things here at once. So for the maximal strength component of it, it's the straight arm work, Maltese work in particular, or it just blows the body off.

• 2:21:05Tim Ferriss?

  And people listening, don't just go into your garage and try a Maltese on your rings.

• 2:21:11Speaker 04

  You can, you can totally, because I don't think Maltese will hurt you. Maltese won't hurt you, but your landing on this concrete, on your face underneath the rings, is probably going to hurt. Maltese won't, it's the sudden stop at the end. That will be uncomfortable. Now, what we found out with the guys, though, is, you know, we did over the years, the weight vests, the way the heavy weighted rope climbs, pull ups, nothing put better mass on a bicep secondary from the ring strength than high volume rope climbs. Nothing, nothing blew them up. Now, the key, though, is, for everybody listening, if you go and you jump right into ropes right now, and you haven't built a foundation of rows, pull ups, multi-plane pulling, then get to rope climbing, right?

• 2:21:54Speaker 04

  You're going to give yourself a raging case of elbow tendonitis.

• 2:21:58Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, your elbows are gonna just, yeah, disintegrate, yep.

• 2:22:03Speaker 04

  Like anything else, you gotta pay your dues. But if you go through the proper steps and you're prepared to do rope climbs, there is nothing better, because the bicep is an endurance muscle. That's its job. Now, it can do this, but its primary function is not to... How much can I do that heaviest load for one rep? It's primary function is go out and kill something, pick it up and carry it a long ass way back home. That's its primary job. That's its primary job. So it just blossoms from high volume work. Now, the key is, is that it's got to be high volume with a reasonably high load, which on the rope climbs is body weight. But we've got to build to that.

• 2:22:43Tim Ferriss?

  Two things that I'll throw out there just because people might find it interesting. So the first is you can build extremely muscular biceps. This is not gymnastics related, but with purely straight arm, heavy pulling in the deadlift combined with, let's just, let's just say you had one day of heavy pulling. And by heavy, I mean two to three reps, like to the knees, kind of like the Barry Ross protocol in the four hour body.

• 2:23:07Speaker 04

  Sure. Barry Ross system.

• 2:23:08Tim Ferriss?

  No eccentrics, you know, drop it. And then let's just say you do that on Mondays and then on Fridays or Thursdays, whatever it might be, you do high rep kettlebell swings, two armed kettlebell swings. You can get really, really muscular arms without doing any bent work whatsoever. Also, when we're talking about-

• 2:23:25Speaker 04

  I'm easy enough to switch that high rep kettlebell work to throw rope climb on Friday. If you're advanced enough.

• 2:23:32Tim Ferriss?

  If your elbows are bulletproof enough, which mine are not, as an example for folks. Like I've done plenty of rowing, but here's the difference though. When I have a parallel grip, if you're like, I can bull fuck that. I can do bent rows with a barbell with 225 pounds and whatever. And you think that you're the king of pulling. If you don't do a lot of parallel grip work or fat bar work, and then you go to a thick rope, you're in for a surprise.

• 2:23:58Speaker 04

  Maybe we should touch base on the difference real quick between the various grips?

• 2:24:03Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, please.

• 2:24:04Speaker 04

  Okay, so guys, in terms of GST specific strength, if you're doing just pull up work, your parallel grip is by far going to have the greatest return on investment. Simply because that parallel grip hits the brachialis so hard down in the elbow. The reason we need that is when you climb a rope, you're going to have more of a parallel grip. You do that parallel grip pull up, obviously you're developing that. When we're on the rings, we're on top of the rings, right? Cause we always, everything is aimed for eventually getting onto the rings to build strength. So when you're on the rings, we need the grip turned out past parallel.

• 2:24:44Speaker 04

  Now, back in the day, Greg Glassman, Greg is the, you know, he's a super bright guy, founder of CrossFit, but he just didn't understand why we would turn the rings past parallel. He, he thought it was just aesthetics, coach, it's just aesthetics. Well, the problem is if I'm on the rings and I do a dip, I do a muscle up, I do whatever, and I straighten my arms and I don't turn the rings past parallel.

• 2:25:08Tim Ferriss?

  Now, Coach, I apologize for interrupting, just for people to visualize this. So let's just say you're up on rings and you're doing dips and you're in between the straps. What, and correct me if I'm wrong here, Coach, but when you get to the top, that means

• 2:25:22Speaker 04

  Top of the rep, arms are straight.

• 2:25:23Tim Ferriss?

  Top of the rep and your arms are straight, that the rings themselves-

• 2:25:27Speaker 04

  Gotta turn the thumbs out slightly.

• 2:25:29Tim Ferriss?

  That's right. So instead of having the rings parallel, pointing straight ahead-

• 2:25:33Speaker 04

  Or turned in, which is what most people-

• 2:25:34Tim Ferriss?

  Or turned in, they would be at say 10 PM and 2 PM or something like that.

• 2:25:40Speaker 04

  Exactly. And it will vary, as, as long as they're out. The reason is, is what's the weak link in straight arm strength is the elbow. The weak link is the elbow. And what a lot of people will do is we, we've had people who were taught, well, elbow pain is just part of doing ring strength. No, it's not. Elbow pain is an indicator that your ring strength is effed up and you need to do better programming. And it hurt for a reason.

• 2:26:02Tim Ferriss?

  I took you off track there, just because I wanted people to visualize the proper thing. So you were saying to Greg that when you get to the top, you know, the issue is it's not just aesthetics. When you get to the top-

• 2:26:10Speaker 04

  It's not aesthetic. You've got to turn past parallel so that the brachialis is activated. Right? There's a reason that after all these years of CrossFit, being on rings and doing thousands upon thousands of kipping pull-ups and dips and all this stuff, that there are no iron crosses. Unless they were previous gymnasts. There's no homegrown CrossFitter who has an iron cross. Homegrown CrossFitter who has plans or a malt. Because right from the beginning on those very basic movements, they didn't turn past parallel. They didn't turn the rings out. The brachialis wasn't trained. The brachialis is what supports the elbow when it's straight. So if it never got trained, they can never move forward into the money making exercises.

• 2:26:54Speaker 04

  So that's why in those parallel, those pull ups, if we use a parallel grip, and it's easy enough to do some, just do a set, do a nice parallel grip workout, and then compare the soreness that you feel on the inside of the elbow from fatigue compared to regular chin ups and regular pull ups. It's night and day. Then, then we would do chins and then pull ups.

• 2:27:14Tim Ferriss?

  So the other exercises to remove, if any, so we have muscle ups, back lever.

• 2:27:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, muscle up, back lever.

• 2:27:22Tim Ferriss?

  And you would add to that list?

• 2:27:24Speaker 04

  You know, yeah. This one is a little unfortunate, and I don't know that it's so much of a removing as a...

• 2:27:33Tim Ferriss?

  Deprioritizing?

• 2:27:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, a cautionary tale. It takes time to rebuild connective tissue, and it's connective tissue through the ligaments and the joints that generate power through the body when they're doing plyometric work. There was a rash of Achilles ruptures when there was a couplet done of, so they were doing deads, I believe, with 225 pounds, and then that was coupled with box jumps. And they were doing that for rounds. There's not a problem with either one of those in isolation. The problem came when it was in a competitive environment with most of the adults, right, were in their, their later twenties and in their thirties, you know, the typical people who are working out. And because it's a race, the box jumps turned into

• 2:28:19Speaker 04

  jumping down also, which turned into rebounding a plyometric off the floor. Because I gotta get these done, right? I'm in a race. So they had pre-fatigued the Achilles with the deadlift, and then went into the plyometric of the box jump. Nothing wrong with either one of them, but in combination, took some people, I think there were like nine ruptures that year. Which is, you know, one, okay, it happens, right? Ivan Kov had it had his Achilles. He was one of the the leading guys we were looking to from Russia. Ivan Ivan Kov, former world champ. He was the top guy that was favored to win the gold at the 96 games. His Achilles popped walking across the parking lot. Now, is it because walking across the parking lot is a dangerous thing and we should all avoid parking lots?

• 2:29:04Speaker 04

  No, it just happened to be the last straw and it had been damaged prior to that. Which, a long story short, you went back to the front split series. That is the very reason that there is that high rep calf work there to promote Achilles health. Because connective tissue, the tendons in that do not have their own blood supply. They get fed, they heal, they strengthen through the muscles moving around them and gravity. That's what flushes the area. So if we only do very high, high intensity, low rep work, there's not enough blood flow for them to be healthy. This isn't mine. Rum, a friend of the Bulgarian Olympic coach for the 70s and 80s is a good friend of mine. A genius, genius at programming.

• 2:29:46Speaker 04

  Rumman makes me look like a tottering idiot who should be sat in a corner and no one talk to me.

• 2:29:50Tim Ferriss?

  What's his name?

• 2:29:51Speaker 04

  I can never pronounce Rumman's last name. You guys can look him up. Bulgarian Olympic coach for the women 70s and 80s, Rumman. I want to say our bastardized American spelling is R U M I N or N A N. Sadly, Rumman had a really heavy accent. So a lot of the American coaches, you know, they didn't want to take the time to talk to him. But, you know, I was a linguist in the military way back when, so accents not as good as you, Tim. But accents don't bother me. And he was older, gentlemen. I would keep this guy up late so many days in a row. He'd be, Chris, I gotta go get some, say, huh? It's okay, just one more question. Just just one more question, Rumman. It's one more. So our knee series that we do came from Rumman. The one that, you know.

• 2:30:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that I've been doing with the skiers.

• 2:30:35Speaker 04

  Directly from Rumman.

• 2:30:36Tim Ferriss?

  Inside squats.

• 2:30:37Speaker 04

  Yeah. He saw Alan when he was eight and Alan was incredibly powerful at eight years old. Just just unreal. And he was getting too powerful for his frame at that age, you know? About eight, we're starting to hit a preliminary growth spurt. And Rumman gave me that knee series. And it was about a week. Week and a half, you know, his knees weren't hurting. They were starting to get slightly uncomfortable. Rumen showed us that. Boom, knee issue is gone. Never again, nothing with knees, ever.

• 2:31:04Tim Ferriss?

  Wow. We could talk for hours and hours more, but I want to be respectful of your time and we can always do a round two sometime if you have the the willingness and if the audience wants more, but I do have a couple of questions before I get into some of my usual rapid fire that I'd love to ask. Do you still have some time to chat?

• 2:31:22Speaker 04

  You've opened a can of worms. I'll talk training all night.

• 2:31:24Tim Ferriss?

  All right, here we, here we go then. The next question is from one of my listeners and it's quite simply, how do you mentally prep your athletes for big competition? When you're down to that, you go to the nationals or any competition, but specifically big competitions. How do you, and by prep, I mean mentally prep, the day of, is there anything in particular that you do?

• 2:31:48Speaker 04

  It starts with repetition. So we, we talked a little bit about training. So in, in a nutshell, what will come back around will fill this out. So in the preparation prior, successful repetitions, it takes a certain number of repetitions to lead to competence. And it's competence that leads to confidence and that's what leads to a successful competition. So as Americans, we tend to be in a rush, be in a hurry. We don't want to take a lot of reps. We want to get something. We do it correct a few times and then we want to bump on. Completely different from the Chinese approach, completely different from the Russian approach where they'll literally do

• 2:32:31Speaker 04

  hundreds of repetitions before they move on to the next drill. And then they're not upset about it because they understand it's a process. As Americans, we're always looking, now it's, it's both a good thing and it's a curse. One, it's a good thing because it forces us to be so creative. We're so hard charging. We get so many things done. Physically, sometimes it kind of works against us because we don't give the body and the nervous system a chance to stabilize. So if you want to be confident at a competition, you have to pay your dues and prep. Example, and that's mentally and physically. For example, 72 Olympics. Okay, and these are, I was talking about this with Dmitry Belozarcha, my friend, world Olympic champ.

• 2:33:14Speaker 04

  So in 72 Olympics, Olga Korbit was, by all accounts, going to crush everyone at the Games. She was gonna crush everyone. In training, as they went back, the Russians went back, and they reviewed all her training. She had over a 98% hit rate on her routines. That meant she was almost perfect, almost perfect. When she went to the Games, she had a major meltdown. Now, the question, of course, raises, how was it possible for someone who was this perfect for this long in training, to go to the competition and just fall apart? As they dug into it, they found out the error was not in physical preparation. The error was in mental preparation.

• 2:33:58Speaker 04

  So as Olga was cranking at home, she was the one who decided when to go. Coaches waited on her, judges waited on her. Everything was structured on her. She was very comfortable. Okay, she didn't start till she was ready. Equipment's she's ready for, lighting she's ready for, mags familiar, everything is good. When you get to the Worlds and you get to the Olympics, judges don't give a fuck if you're ready or not. When they raise that flag, yeah, it's brutal. In fact, to give everyone a little taste, the warm-up gym is not there. The warm-up gym might be 10 minutes away. Or it might be a 10-minute, a 5-minute walk down this concrete hallway. So you go and you warm up, you walk down this hallway, right, and then your ass waits there.

• 2:34:43Speaker 04

  And then the flag goes up, and you gotta go to 100% within 30 seconds. You got 30 seconds to be on the equipment. Massive hit. Yeah, massive head game. So they went back and they found out that Olga's problem was that everything had gone her way. She controlled too many variables. Too many variables, and it was, they were too easy. They were too accommodating. And so what they did is the Russians changed their training just to screw with people. So if I'm coaching someone, right, and it's gonna, there's gonna be a mental component, I'm gonna fuck with them. Right, I'm gonna tell them, and not, not in a mean way, but, all right, you're up. And then walk away, leave them waiting, you know, let them, let them get antsy. Make them go when they're not ready, make them do a cold set.

• 2:35:25Speaker 04

  Okay, don't, don't let any and everything you can have a crowd of people around them trying to mess with them. Any and everything, and I will also say it's much harder for women than it is for guys. Simply because women are more caring and nurturing than guys. A guy goes out to compete and he's worried about one thing, he's worried about kicking ass. Okay, the girl goes out there and she's worried about kicking ass also, but she's also worried about not wanting to let anybody down. Are they going to be disappointed with me? Are they going to like me? She has this whole range of other emotional burdens that a guy doesn't give a shit about. They just don't care. I've seen girls who are just amazing in training and get out there. And it's just because they have this other load that they place on themselves that guys don't have to deal with.

• 2:36:10Speaker 04

  And the way you handle that in training is we just have to get more reps in. I got to have more reps and do everything you can to put them in a situation to where. For example, 2004, I was doing some of the prep, I was doing some of the floor, the tramp. And helping with vault and doing the physical preparation for a girl we had trying out for the Olympics. She did not make it, did not make it, had to be top six, she was ninth. Okay, and Carly, fantastic girl, great girl. Their approach though for mental training, I thought was flawed. They brought someone in and you know, I won't say names, I'll just, I'll just say that I disagreed and it was, it was a very, they were trying to be really, really positive.

• 2:36:51Speaker 04

  So you know, 30,000 square foot gym, big giant yes signs everywhere, yes, you can, yes, it'll be great, yes, it'll be wonderful. And the reality is it's not going to be wonderful. It's gonna be stressful, it's gonna suck. When you are in a competition at that level, the pressure is crushing. It's a physical pressure that you feel on you and you still have to produce performance at a world-class level. And the only way to handle that is we have to try to replicate that in training. Right? So that the pressure's not going away, the error that was done with Carly was trying to downplay the pressure. I would say do the exact opposite, do the opposite, you should go to the training, to the competition.

• 2:37:32Speaker 04

  And hopefully, competition is less pressure than what you go through in training. Now, that's not going to be true at Olympics and such, but at most things, it should be the case, should be the case. So mentally.

• 2:37:46Speaker 04

  Now, if you're scared, oh, let's, let's say, if you're feeling unconfident, if you're feeling threatened, uneasy, your preparation was flawed.

• 2:37:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it brings up an anecdote that I heard from Paul Lavesque, better known as Triple H, the professional wrestler, who's also an incredible business executive for WWE, but he visited Floyd Mayweather. And he visited Floyd maybe an hour before a huge title fight for a championship belt or to retain his belt. And at one point, Paul said, you know, I'm gonna leave, I don't want to interrupt your prep. And he goes, why would you interrupt my prep? He goes, if I'm not ready now, nothing I do between in the next 60 minutes is gonna make me ready.

• 2:38:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, I love that attitude.

• 2:38:29Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, feel free to hang out. He was just walking, watching basketball or something. And it also, you brought up this SEAL Team, six members and so on earlier. I mean, that's, I think, a great example of a parallel track, right? In the sense that they very much want to sweat more, in some cases bleed more in training so that they can avoid dying in real battles. So the simulations are extremely brutal and intended to be sort of along the lines of, I'm not really up on my ancient name pronunciation, but I think it's Archilocus, who said, we do not rise to the level of our hopes, we fall to the level of our training. So making the conditions equivalent.

• 2:39:09Speaker 04

  My buddy would tell, they're so well-trained, no stress. Now, how in the world you can be in 145 gunfights and not feel stressed when you're heading out to another one? You just, yeah, fall asleep on the helicopter, get out, do my thing and get back on. Seriously? He's like, oh, yeah, I mean, gosh, just, just another day in the office. Holy moly.

• 2:39:30Tim Ferriss?

  So on the day of, assuming you've done the requisite preparation, you've conditioned them to perform well under stressful circumstances.

• 2:39:39Speaker 04

  Changed nothing.

• 2:39:40Tim Ferriss?

  Changed nothing.

• 2:39:41Speaker 04

  Changed nothing. Where people fail, this is an important lesson, not just in competing, but in everything. So a lot of people psych themselves out of doing as well as they could have by prematurely comparing themselves to the people around them. Instead of just go out, take care of your business, do your best and see where it falls. If you're going up against the best who's ever been born, you're not going to beat them. There's not going to be a miracle. The sky's not going to open. God's not going to reach down and bless you with extra athletic ability. You know, it's, it's, it's not going to happen. So you just ignore that. You know, you go out and you just stay in your own head, do your thing.

• 2:40:22Speaker 04

  Now psychologically, people handle it differently. Some people, we had the same chemistry on Olympic teams. Some people like to be left alone. You know, let, let me go do my thing, you know, and they'll come together for the team, but then when they're prepping for their set, you know, they gotta go off on theirself. There's other guys where they feed off that interaction, right? They want people coming around and getting them pumped up. Then there's all in between. None of them are right and none of them are wrong. It just is what it is. And it's important to just deal with who you are. Same in training. There are some people who thrive on multiple training per day, right? And they, they just blossom. They do awesome. There's other people who have to train just a few times a week. Doesn't matter. There's been Olympic champions

• 2:41:06Speaker 04

  who trained both ways. It just depends on what your body does best with.

• 2:41:11Tim Ferriss?

  I'm very curious to hear the answer to this. This was from a, I think it was a, it might've been a mother. I think it was a father who said, what questions would Coach Sommer ask a gymnastic coach at a nearby facility before sending his own five to 10 year old off to train with them?

• 2:41:28Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I went through that. So I didn't, I didn't coach my daughter. I didn't coach my daughter. I wanted to be dad. And I didn't get involved. Were there things I would have done very differently? Yes. But her happiness in the process was more important to me than her success. And she was state champion, but that was more important to me than stepping in and making sure everything was world-class level. I didn't want to go there. First thing I would do if I'm reviewing someone, because everyone, have you noticed that the bell curve is reality, right? The bell curve shows that there, there's a huge majority of people who are average. There's a few who are at the top and there are a few who are at the bottom. But if you talk to someone, you've never met anyone who says, yeah, I'm in the middle of the bell curve.

• 2:42:12Speaker 04

  Every fucker you talk to is exceptional. Every single person, right? Every person is another millionaire in the making. They're another, they're gonna win The Voice. They got Academy Award, it's coming. Nobody says, yeah, I'm average. And it's the same thing with gyms. So first thing I would do is look at competitive record. How have they done and at what level have they been successful? So are they successful at a local level, at a state level? How have they done in terms of regionals? How have they done in terms of nationals? Are they on national team? How consistently have they been on national teams a year in, year out? Was it a one-time deal? After I look at that, the very next thing I'm gonna look at, and I'm gonna look at injury rates. How healthy and successful are these athletes? How would you find that data?

• 2:42:57Tim Ferriss?

  Would you just ask them point blank?

• 2:42:59Speaker 04

  If they're a world-class coach, they're always gonna be straight with you. The only people in my experience who talk shit are the wannabes.

• 2:43:08Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's consistent in everything that I've experienced.

• 2:43:11Speaker 04

  In everything. I, I had, so 2003. Uh, yeah, it's 2003. I'm at a training camp and Paul Hom has just won the world championships. He's just won Worlds. And Alan is a little guy. We're, we're at a training camp and Paul's coach Stacy Maloney is there and we're, we're at a technical meeting. And it's on roundoffs, on roundoffs of all things. And so Stacy comes and he sits down next to me. Says, Chris, what, what do you think about this? Now in my head, I'm thinking, who gives a fuck what I think about this? You just won world championships. I wanna know what you think about this. But he asked my opinion. I don't say, I'm not gonna be rude, Stacy, but in my head, I'm thinking that. So we talk about it for a little bit and then Stacy gets up and he goes around the room,

• 2:43:55Speaker 04

  visiting with other coaches that he respects and he wants their opinion. And then he, he makes his own opinion. That, apparently, he had just won Worlds. It would've been so easy for him to be kind of aloof and snooty and arrogant. You know, I'm this and that. But the point is that that's the reason that Stacy won Worlds. That he was a coach of that caliber, cuz he was always open to learning more. He never said, I know everything. Right? And like you said, I've never met an exception. It's the ones who aren't at a high level who think, you know, I know everything, there's nothing left to be learned. And it's just not the case. So I, I would, I would check that. Check around, you know, talk to people. Watch the athletes in training.

• 2:44:36Speaker 04

  You know, go and watch some workouts. How does the coach handle it? Is there a lot of tears? If it's a guy and there's tears in the workout, he's got a broken leg.

• 2:44:44Tim Ferriss?

  Really?

• 2:44:45Speaker 04

  And girls, you know, girls are girls. I live in a, I've got two daughters, a wife. Even my dog is female. There's tears here constantly. This is part of being female. So if it's an occasional tear, no big deal, but if there's a lot of crying all the time, there's a problem. I'd move down the road, but if they're happy. Now, doesn't healthy doesn't mean a free for all. Healthy and happy doesn't mean indulging. You know, there should be structure. There should be accountability, but it should be pleasant. You know, kids or any athlete, adults as well, will either live up to the standard you set, or they will live down to the standard you set. Like just kind of go ahead and try to get a feel, you know, is this a place where you are? Is the competition record is good?

• 2:45:27Speaker 04

  Is this an environment that I'm content with my child being in? You know, if you get a good feeling, okay.

• 2:45:34Tim Ferriss?

  As an adult, if you were assessing a gymnastics coach for yourself, and you could observe a workout, let's just say you could only watch the warm up.

• 2:45:44Speaker 04

  Excellent.

• 2:45:44Tim Ferriss?

  What would you look for? To be there or not be there, or what would the characteristics be?

• 2:45:51Speaker 04

  Do they take the time to warm up the joints? Or do they jump right into work? Do they actually take time to mobilize? Are they doing stall bar work? Are they doing Jefferson curl work? Are they loosening up their wrists and their knees and their ankles? You know, they loosening their back before they get going? Are they doing some type of pre-strength? Are they doing lower level strength elements to get the muscles warm and firing before jumping into the hard work? You can tell a lot from how a program warms up.

• 2:46:23Tim Ferriss?

  No, that's what I was asking and.

• 2:46:25Speaker 04

  Great question.

• 2:46:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, there's, I mean, there's a movement that also, from an evolutionary standpoint, makes a lot of sense. Just like we were talking about the biceps and high capacity for volume, the QL walks, which you introduced me to, which if you really want to have people laugh at you, this is a great move to do, although you had mentioned, and this doesn't surprise me at all, that you've seen high level powerlifters using, doing this.

• 2:46:48Speaker 04

  That's where, that's where I got it from.

• 2:46:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, holding on to kettlebells, kind of with a goblet squat type of grip. So what this looks like, folks, we've already talked about this seated pike position. So you're sitting on your ass, legs together, legs straight. So basically keeping your legs completely straight, if there are other elements, please let me know, coach, technical points, but basically you're like walking your ass cheeks.

• 2:47:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, one cheek at a time, doing a speed walking, sitting down.

• 2:47:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's actually, that's a great description. That's exactly what it looks like. And QL refers to the.

• 2:47:19Speaker 04

  I always screw it up, yeah, quadratus lumborum.

• 2:47:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, quadratus lumborum, which is sort of like the grand central of all sorts of muscles and fascia in the back. And it's incredible how much that loosens up my entire lower back and hips, doing this very, very simple QL walk.

• 2:47:36Speaker 04

  I'll pick up, gosh, sometimes three, four inches.

• 2:47:39Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:47:39Speaker 04

  Just from loosening up from those first, yeah.

• 2:47:42Tim Ferriss?

  How long should a proper gymnastics warmup take? And one more, which is warming up the joints, are there any specific movements that hit the shoulders from any angle or perspective? They would indicate a better warmup for gymnastics strength training than others.

• 2:48:02Speaker 04

  It would depend on duration, duration of the workout. So if you're in there for an hour.

• 2:48:08Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:08Speaker 04

  I'll preface it, say you're in for an hour. I would say probably 10 to 15 minutes is reasonable. Now, at the same time, if I have significant mobility deficits, and perhaps the majority of the workout needs to be mobility work, it could kind of shift possibly as high as a half hour if I have a multi-hour training coming up. It's complicated enough, and we've tried this over the years. There are enough things to address that should be addressed on a semi-regular basis that you can't really get everything into a single warmup. You're probably going to have two or three variations. You know, if you're doing advanced work, you're probably going to have two or three variations

• 2:48:53Speaker 04

  in order to get to everything, like for example. Ring strength before a good hard ring strength, it's very nice to do Theraband series for the shoulders. Different shapes and pulls and circles and all these things with Theraband are really great for warming up the interior of the shoulder. On other days, do I need to do that as much for shoulder? No, it might be more weighted shoulder work is appropriate for other days. Is it necessary to do all of them at the same time? Most of the time, no. We have one senior student, really, really good. Matt started training with me in his late 40s. He's now 52, beast. Press handstands, planges, uh, front levers. I had 52 ridiculous shape.

• 2:49:38Speaker 04

  And um, he went through a period where just for shoulders to feel better, he did every shoulder prep. We had all our integrated mobility. Our courses are set up very unusually where for our introductory courses, adult students come in, alternate an exercise with an integrated mobility, because we want them 50 50. So we found if I, if I told people how important stretching was, they always blow me off. But if I required it, do a set before your next set, you have to do this stretch. Then back and forth, and we just had great results. So Matt's is a crazy maniac, still, still skateboard, still water skis. Does his GST and uh, shoulder would get a little finicky. So he just did extra mobility and it just fixed his shoulder right up.

• 2:50:23Tim Ferriss?

  I was introduced to an exercise by a master's CrossFit competitor, actually, that really helped with shoulder, I would say warm up more than mobility, but for pressing exercises, even in GST, including any type of hand balancing or handstand work, which you have to have a decent amount of grip strength for this, but I was very skeptical of this, even as someone who's done a lot with kettlebells. I've never been a huge fan of the bottoms up work with kettlebells, meaning

• 2:50:55Speaker 04

  Ah, yeah, it's got to flip dub, gripping it by the handle, the bell on top.

• 2:50:59Tim Ferriss?

  Exactly. But I was like, you know what, screw it. I'll try it with a lightweight. And I started with, say, whatever it is, might be like 15, 16 pounds, and I've increased that. I use 35s now, but a little bit of chalk goes a long way here, but you, you would uh, basically swing it up to a clean and then press it overhead and then you just do rotations. So I'm doing like side to side rotations and it's incredible how

• 2:51:23Tim Ferriss?

  Well, that activates the smaller musculature.

• 2:51:26Speaker 04

  The shoulders are wonderful, isn't it?

• 2:51:28Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, it's great.

• 2:51:30Speaker 04

  We didn't do them with kettlebells. We'll do them with light dumbbells. So basically, guys, what Tim's is trying is just to take a dumbbell, push it up overhead, turn the thumbs externally, rotate it just a bit, and then just do outward circles. Keep a flat back, shoulders open, no arching, do them for time, one to two minutes. You know, just good gracious, wonderful warm up. And then, you know, something we didn't address, and I'll throw it in just real, real, real quick. I know, I know we're running out of time. But some people who are experiencing shoulder issues in terms of mobility, it doesn't have anything to do with the shoulder or necessarily the bicep, but sometimes it's because the lats are so strong and tight. And so.

• 2:52:10Tim Ferriss?

  It's an issue that I have. Absolutely.

• 2:52:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. A lot of, and because a lot of the lifters too, because those, those lats are working. You guys are moving some serious weight and those lats are of course working. And if there's not corresponding mobility going with it, it's really easy for those lats to kind of get chronically contracted, lose their mobility. So a lot of times you get in there and just stretch the heck out of that lat, automatically get relief on the shoulders.

• 2:52:34Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, Coach, I am going to do a couple of rapid fire, then a couple of closing questions. And then maybe, I mean, you and I are talking quite a bit these days, so we'll consider doing a follow up. And I definitely want to share sort of the results of our experiment with people also. So we'll certainly be in constant contact. But the first rapid fire question is, and the answer doesn't have to be short, but it certainly can be, when you think of the word successful, who is the first person who comes to mind for you and why?

• 2:53:00Speaker 04

  Well, it's not Obama. It's not Obama, this all the people off out there. You know, someone I have admired for years and years is Tony Robbins. He would be very high on my list. I tend to be very eclectic. I'm not trapped just in athletics. But what I found in terms of business, arts, politics, it's all the same. When, when people get to that level of success, they, they all have the same attitudes. They bring the same tools and attitudes to the table. And I found it surprising that I could sit down with you, Tim, and visit. I can sit down with special operators and visit. I can sit down with, you know, world-class ballerinas and dance and artists and that.

• 2:53:45Speaker 04

  I just did this weekend with a world-class artist. And we all, you would think there's no common ground there. But there is common ground because what's required to head chief success in all of those requires the same skills. You gotta be consistent. You gotta master the basics. You gotta be patient. You gotta constantly reinvent yourself. Look for a flaw, a hole in the preparation. Fix it, move forward.

• 2:54:08Tim Ferriss?

  You also be very observant. And I think part of training yourself to be observant is

• 2:54:14Speaker 04

  I like that.

• 2:54:15Tim Ferriss?

  Asking questions, right? So I think that's why.

• 2:54:17Speaker 04

  And being willing to hear the answer.

• 2:54:19Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely. That's why you take a bunch of people who are the best at what they do and you put them in the room. Generally speaking, they're gonna get along just fine.

• 2:54:26Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 2:54:28Tim Ferriss?

  Now, why Tony Robbins? I mean, I'm a huge fan of Tony Robbins. He's been on the podcast and I have tremendous amount of respect for him. But I wanted to just hear your reasons.

• 2:54:36Speaker 04

  I like that. I firmly believe, especially in the US, I firmly believe that if someone isn't as successful in any arena, you toss it out, whether it's professionally, personally in your life, financially, if you're not as successful as you would like to be or making progress towards that, it's our own fault. We have so many opportunities here that so much wealth of knowledge that a lot of times, so for example, when GB got started, and there were two years, a year and a half, two years in the beginning, where I was doing 18-hour days and didn't make a nickel, nothing. And everyone around me was like, what are you doing? Well, you know, I've got plans for this.

• 2:55:21Speaker 04

  And we talked about it a little bit and they're like, well, you know, if you need some extra money, you could go get a job. Think about how much further ahead you'd be right now. But you have to have that vision. Once you have the vision, you've got to be able to put practical steps to it. And then everyone's good at that. I outlines, the people outline stuff all the time, but then can you stick with it? Because, you know, when you run your business, Tim, when I run my business, there's no one telling us what to do. We're the ones to monitor ourselves. This needs to be done. I'm gonna get it done. And it's kind of that difference between. Letting someone else being in control of your life and you choosing to be in control of your own life. I know some people are gonna get upset, you know, I'm a single mom, it's this, it's that, I can't do everything I want to do. And I get that, I get that.

• 2:56:04Speaker 04

  I've been there, I've gone through that. I'm certainly not saying there are, there are quick fixes, because these fixes can take years. But I think if someone's willing to put the time in, that there's so much opportunity and they're willing to do that for years, it's kind of a big giant blank check. A lot can change. You really have a lot of control. And so that, that was a message that, you know, and I didn't say it nearly as well as Tony Robbins does. And I am gonna twist your arm so I get an introduction someday to Tony. That's high on my list.

• 2:56:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, well, I threw a little jam session for the people who are on the podcast. So both of you will be invited.

• 2:56:39Speaker 04

  Totally awesome. So looking forward to that. But you know, way back when, poor as could be, hadn't made national team coach yet, was just getting started in my coaching career. Everything that could go wrong, went wrong. And here's this guy saying, you know what, just think clear, plan ahead and be willing to work. That resonated with me. You know, it's like, God, I just had this discussion with someone this morning. You're young, it's so challenging, it's so difficult to be patient. Or you're 35 and you're starting to get back in shape again. And the hardest thing they need to do is they've, they've got to, especially if they were a good athlete previously, you've got to set that attitude of having been a stud before aside. Because that body you have right now is not that stud's

• 2:57:22Speaker 04

  body that you had previously. It could be again, but it took time to build it the first time. It's gonna take time to rebuild it this time. Or personally in your life, if things aren't where you want it to be, gonna take time to build it there.

• 2:57:36Tim Ferriss?

  I had this Olympic weightlifting coach, I think you guys would hit it off famously, especially if, if you were both a couple of drinks in. But

• 2:57:44Speaker 04

  Dangerous.

• 2:57:45Tim Ferriss?

  Very, very similar approaches. He said, you have a Ferrari engine and a Toyota Corolla chassis.

• 2:57:53Speaker 04

  That's, I love that.

• 2:57:54Tim Ferriss?

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

• 2:58:12Speaker 04

  Being subtle.

• 2:58:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, being very subtle. What book or books have you given the most to other people as gifts?

• 2:58:20Speaker 04

  Ooh, it's not so much as I'm a big fan of Robert Heinlein.

• 2:58:25Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:58:26Speaker 04

  Science fiction.

• 2:58:27Tim Ferriss?

  Stranger in a strange land.

• 2:58:29Speaker 04

  And just, just all of them. I come back to those over and over again. The, uh, the theme of self reliance. You know, as I came from a really, really humble, modest family background. And so I think that instills a hunger and a work ethic. It's a little bit kind of embarrassing. Actually, it's a little bit of a Charles Dickens theme there. You know, frustration thing, things weren't where we wanted him to be or where I wanted him to be. And then how big a price, how hard are you willing to work in order to change it? One I'm enjoying right now, and I'm just getting into it, is The Obstacle is the Way.

• 2:59:04Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. By Ryan Holiday, a very close friend of mine.

• 2:59:07Speaker 04

  You're killing me, dude. You're killing me. I'm just gonna hang out in your living room so I can meet all these people.

• 2:59:13Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, you and Ryan would hit it off. Oh, yeah. That's a great book. I actually, this is a really small world. So I actually produced the audiobook for that.

• 2:59:21Speaker 04

  You're kidding me?

• 2:59:24Tim Ferriss?

  And, you know, when you were talking about preparing your athletes for the stress as opposed to painting it over with yes, you can and positive psychology and really kind of sowing the seeds of their own destruction by doing so. I was thinking about Stoic philosophy. So it doesn't surprise me that you're reading The Obstacle is the Way, which has become an extremely popular book among professional sports teams and coaches. I mean, the Patriots, Seahawks, they've, they've all read this.

• 2:59:50Speaker 04

  Someone else that caught my eye who had read it and that led me to it was Schwarzenegger.

• 2:59:55Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

• 2:59:56Speaker 04

  Gosh, I mean, comes to the States with no money in his pocket and then becomes world champion in athletics, becomes a millionaire in business, becomes a movie star and becomes a governor, success in four different arenas in life.

• 3:00:12Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:00:13Speaker 04

  Good Lord. So he said he liked that book. I was like, well, good enough for me.

• 3:00:16Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Arnold's, uh, he's an impressive unit. So two things, I know we're bouncing around here, but the two things that also astonished me when I interviewed him for the broadcast was number one, I didn't realize in doing the research, until I did the research, that he became a millionaire before he ever had his first starring role in real estate.

• 3:00:34Speaker 04

  Yes, absolutely.

• 3:00:36Tim Ferriss?

  And that gave him the ability to only audition, not out of financial necessity, but for the roles that he wanted. So you could say no. And that his highest grossing film of all time for him personally was Twins because no one wanted to make it. And so he took a cut on the upfront payment for the salary per se in exchange for backend points that were abnormally large for the film industry at that point. Yeah. Fascinating guy.

• 3:01:01Speaker 04

  Love that.

• 3:01:02Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have any particular morning rituals? What is the first 16 minutes of your day?

• 3:01:06Speaker 04

  The morning rituals I'm supposed to do?

• 3:01:09Tim Ferriss?

  No, the ones you actually have or don't have.

• 3:01:11Speaker 04

  I tend to find, as I've gotten older, because I'm in my 50s now, early 50s, as I've gotten older, I find that my, by far, my most productive times are early morning. That's when I'm sharpest, I'm clearest. I'll tend to get up, you know, pretty early before everybody else in the household is up and I'll get.

• 3:01:31Tim Ferriss?

  When do you get up?

• 3:01:34Speaker 04

  It varies. I'll get up somewhere usually between four and five. You know, it gives me a chance, my girls get up in a few hours. It gives me a chance for that two, three hours of just clear thought. Maybe it's working on a project. Maybe it's a new manuscript. Maybe it's just, you know, I indulge some reading. The house is quiet. I do my best if after that, girls head to school and then I get my workout in. If I'm consistent with that, then my rest of my day is usually pretty golden.

• 3:01:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you've already, you've already won. I remember somebody said to me, if you win the morning, you've won the day. Still working on it. That's a work in progress, but I definitely agree with that. Do you drink coffee? Do you eat breakfast? Do you drink coffee?

• 3:02:11Speaker 04

  I went for years and, you know, you're always told, I'm not a coffee drinker. I'm one of those few, I think, who it just tastes like cough medicine to me. It's not me being virtuous. It's just me despising the taste. And it's funny because my wife is a big coffee drinker. She loves it. So she's got her gourmet grinder and all this stuff. But for me, no, no way. You know, I found as I got older, that I do best if I don't do breakfast. I do best as, I used to be heavy, heavy protein. And then after I got over 50, if I cut, and this is me personally, would it work for younger athletes who are training? I doubt it. It's bigger engine, need more fuel. But for me, older, it's slowing down. I find

• 3:02:53Speaker 04

  that not doing breakfast. Reasonable lunch. My protein sizes are so much smaller now. Mostly veggies. Have a good, healthy starch. Usually it's rice or potatoes. Reasonable little protein there, some padded lunch. Wait, do the same at dinner. You know, and I'm, I'm done. I'm good. I'm, I'm, I was amazed how much I was overeating just from habit.

• 3:03:15Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. Eating by the clock. I mean, I've noticed the same thing for myself and I've been amazed how many people I've interviewed for this podcast who are the best at what they do, who do not eat breakfast.

• 3:03:27Speaker 04

  You're kidding. Really? Not that I was alone in the

• 3:03:29Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, Pavel, you know, his answer was coffee. Dim. I keep it simple, you know? And then Wim Hof, same story. You look at former general Stan McChrystal, same story, and it just goes on and on and on. I'd say a good third of the men specifically, not sure if the female body responds as well to it, although I'm sure there are intermittent fasting people out there who would say that women respond in the same way, but very high percentage, I'd say maybe a third of the men I've had on the podcast do not eat breakfast. Now, specifically, these are men probably over the age of 45. So I don't know. I would imagine their diet has probably changed over time.

• 3:04:06Tim Ferriss?

  And interestingly enough, if you do dig into the literature, there is, or if I wanted to be a nerd, there are data to suggest that as we get older, it is possible that we absorb protein more effectively when we have larger doses of protein less frequently. So having them

• 3:04:27Speaker 04

  See, that is interesting. That is, that is very interesting because I find myself every once in a while getting a big steak.

• 3:04:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 3:04:34Speaker 04

  You know, once a week, once every two weeks, I'll go and I'll just get this massive thing of protein and then I'm good for a while. I'm just very modest.

• 3:04:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. So this like bolus of protein for like older women, I think this, I saw one particular study could have been an observational, and I, no, I doubt it if they're trying to standardize the protein amount, but it was some large amount. It was like 70, 80 grams of protein in a single feeding was absorbed better than that same amount split over several meals in the day. Really fascinating stuff. What would you put on a billboard? If you could put a billboard anywhere?

• 3:05:06Speaker 04

  What would it say? Just what's on, just what's on top of my mind right now.

• 3:05:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 3:05:10Speaker 04

  What's what? Top of the head doesn't have, we're not looking for universal truth, but just what's, uh, I would say probiotic.

• 3:05:17Tim Ferriss?

  Probiotic.

• 3:05:19Speaker 04

  Probiotic, we went, I don't know if it was a history of I had to cut them out, you know, too much margaritas, you know, it's kind of funny, you know, as you get older, it starts creeping in more and more and more. But I went through a phase where it didn't matter what I ate, didn't matter what I ate, if I ate fat, if I ate low fat, if I ate veg, if I ate high protein, terrible digestion, just terrible digestion. And I happened to come across something that said, if you have da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, might be a probiotic issue. And so through a good buddy, I had a laboratory grade, these particular ones were from Klaire Labs, you kind of need a prescription for them, but they're a laboratory grade probiotic.

• 3:05:57Tim Ferriss?

  How do you spell Klaire?

• 3:05:57Speaker 04

  I want to say it was K-L-A-I-R-E.

• 3:06:01Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 3:06:02Speaker 04

  You know, I'm not paid by them guys and they're a son of a bitch to track down because you need a prescription for them.

• 3:06:07Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 3:06:07Speaker 04

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

• 3:06:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I bet. I mean, I'm currently taking VSL3 and a few other probiotics, but one of the points you made that I think is really worth underscoring is the vegetable matter and prebiotics. So providing the food that creates the environment in which bacteria that you want to grow can grow effectively, whether that's through foods where I think, you know, one of the ways I had this biologist tell me at one point, he said, I think slow carb is going to be vindicated because, you know, the beans and lentils and so on are vilified by paleo, but they provide the perfect vehicle for a prebiotic environment that can foster the development of and growth of these various bacteria in the gut.

• 3:07:28Tim Ferriss?

  And if not that, you know, if you're, if you are a paleo purist, you can also consume something like FOS, you know, fructooligosaccharides or inulin or any of these other things, but. Wow, I had no idea that you had that experience.

• 3:07:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was shocking. Prior to that, I would have said number one supplement was a mouse of high vitamin D drops.

• 3:07:46Tim Ferriss?

  How much were you consuming? Just out of curiosity. And of course, the amount you would take depends on what your levels.

• 3:07:51Speaker 04

  It depended. Yeah, just a little background there. So I was at our winter nationals seven years ago. Just kind of the environment, you know, national team, kids everywhere, middle of the winter. It's always in a February. And I would just get sick really bad, kind of bronchitis like sickness, once or twice a year for, gosh, decades. And at one of these, I was I was half dead. My assistant coach is trying to run my athletes. He's doing his best, but it's not going real well. I'm trying to coach hanging over a railing. And I'm visiting with Rob Wolf later that night. And I'm just like, you know, this, this is ridiculous. And Rob's the one who tagged us. The coach, you know, it's always in the middle of the

• 3:08:32Speaker 04

  winter. Try some vitamin D. I started the liquid vitamin D. If we don't count food poisoning in Hong Kong, I've not been sick since. And that's quite a swing, you know, once or twice, pretty serious per year or two, nothing for seven. And the only thing that changed in that time was the vitamin D. So I, I mean, I'm pretty, pretty practical. If that was the one variable I changed, and that was the result, well, boom, that's the doorstep I butted at.

• 3:08:56Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have a particular brand that you use for that?

• 3:08:58Speaker 04

  I want to say I've looked at it so many years, I just kind of pick it up off the shelf. And I want to say it was Biotest, perhaps. I can't swear about other ones. I just know I've always used that particular one. I've done, gosh, all kinds of different protocols from one or two drops a day. It's like a runny Elmer's glue for those who haven't had it. Yeah, it's the taste isn't, you know, anything to get upset. My daughters, when they were young, disagreed. It's not bad at all. We've done daily, a few drops, all the way up to once or twice a week with eight to 10 drops, you know, and just mix it up. It just seems like, you know, as long as you're consistent, it almost doesn't matter.

• 3:09:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, so I'm guessing each of those drops is probably an IU, one international.

• 3:09:47Speaker 04

  Ah, gosh, it seems like, man, I'm tied to a computer right now. I'd go grab it for you. It seemed like the dosage is surprisingly high in each drop. And, you know, I'm a big fan, especially as you get older. You've got to go get blood work. Anything else is guessing.

• 3:10:03Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you need to get blood work, period. I mean, if you get your car checked out more often than you get your blood work done, then you need to rearrange your priorities. So, last question, and this is where I'd like you to certainly, among other things, point people to where they can learn more about you and Gymnastic Bodies, but what ask or request would you have for my audience, for the people listening?

• 3:10:23Speaker 04

  Oh, okay. Very good. Actually, I love that question. I would like them to consider two things. I would like them to consider, where's the fire? Where's the fire? Where's the rush? Where's the rush? Why are they trying to accomplish everything, their current goals, yesterday? Why not slow down a little bit? Not saying not to work hard, but why don't we just slow down a little bit, little more reasonable pace, some more consistency? That would be number one ask. And then, second one is, mobility, whether it's my material, whether it's just the stuff that Tim posts for you, whether it's someone else's material, you know, it's fine with me, guys, but we've got to get those bodies moving. We've got to get natural range of motion back

• 3:11:06Speaker 04

  again. That alone, if we did the hierarchy, what will increase quality of life the fastest for them is going to be mobility first, then core, then, you know, your more conventional strength, your arms, your shoulders, yada, yada, yada.

• 3:11:20Tim Ferriss?

  And where can people find you online, on social media, etc.? What would you recommend as a next step for somebody who's never done gymnastics, anything, who wants to dip their toe in the water?

• 3:11:32Speaker 04

  First thing, go to gymnasticbodies.com. We have a special landing page for your listeners, Tim, with a nice discount for them. We have a nice introductory program, that's just Gymnastic Bodies, G Y M N A S T I C B O D I E S dot com slash Tim. We got a nice discount there for you for a nice intro program. It's about a 24-day program, general introduction to kind of the language we speak, get started on some mobility, some great follow-along videos for them, you know, kind of hold their hand, make sure they get started off on the right foot.

• 3:12:08Tim Ferriss?

  It's been a tremendous learning experience for me so far, and it's only been... I mean, really, a handful of weeks that we've been digging into this deeply, although we had some prep time and talking about it prior to that. And definitely, guys, if you are like, ah, I'm so busy, I'm doing this, that, and the other thing, take a look at the program, but at the very least, follow Gymnastic Bodies on Instagram. And every time you see a video from a student who seems to throw one of your excuses out the window, like, take a second. Admire what someone has done from scratch, like Matt, who you mentioned, who started in his late 40s.

• 3:12:45Speaker 04

  Ah, do it.

• 3:12:46Tim Ferriss?

  Because, like, one by one, if you just watch that Instagram account for a week, you will run out of excuses very, very quickly. What about elsewhere on social media? Is there anywhere else people can say hi to you?

• 3:12:57Speaker 04

  Our Facebook page is gymnasticbodies.com. A little more proper there. My personal page, Christopher Sommer, S-O-M-M-E-R. A little more no rules there. And I'm not insane, but my interests are wide-ranging, so if you come to my page, you're taking your chances, what I'm gonna torture you with that day. It might be conditioning, or it might be, you know what, I think such, such is kick ass, and I like it, so you're gonna like it, too.

• 3:13:24Tim Ferriss?

  And you do throw up some ridiculous, in the best way possible, videos of just monsters doing some absurd, absurd stuff. I mean, who's the gent you sent me? You encouraged me to check this out, this guy who was going from, you were trying to explain the, let me get this right, I wanna say plate planches that I was doing a while back, which are kinda like a front raise, holding onto a plate with the shoulders super, super protracted, and the massive posterior pelvic tilt.

• 3:13:52Speaker 04

  Oh, I sent you that clip of the world champ on rings.

• 3:13:56Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I think you said, you sent me one of Van Gelder on rings, then you sent me one of this guy on parallel bars going from-

• 3:14:02Speaker 04

  Van Gelder again.

• 3:14:03Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, going from the handstand to the straight body planch, just, oh my god.

• 3:14:09Speaker 04

  Full body weight instead of, we do it with 10 or 25 pounds, he was doing it with full body weight.

• 3:14:13Tim Ferriss?

  Oh my god. How do you spell Van Gelder?

• 3:14:17Speaker 04

  So it's Yuri. Van Gelder, I think he's from Netherlands if I'm remembering right, former world champ, V A N space G E L D E R.

• 3:14:27Tim Ferriss?

  Just a monster. Oh my God.

• 3:14:29Speaker 04

  Oh, such, so just crazy strong.

• 3:14:32Tim Ferriss?

  And not, I mean, doesn't look like a small guy either. I mean,

• 3:14:36Speaker 04

  No, he's a big boy. He's, he's got like two people's back. He has got a wide back.

• 3:14:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. So people should check that out and I'll link to everything in the show notes. Well, Coach, thank you so much for the time. I know it's precious and I think people will get a real kick out of this and we crammed a lot into the talk.

• 3:14:53Speaker 04

  We did talk a lot. It was good.

• 3:14:55Tim Ferriss?

  So I look forward to chatting again soon, which I'm sure we'll do. And to everybody listening, you can find all of the links to everything that I can track down, that my team can track down, related to all the topics we covered, links to Coach everywhere, gymnastic bodies everywhere in the show notes. That'll just be at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast, all spelled out, fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. And as always, and until next time, thank you for listening.

• 3:15:25Tim Ferriss?

  Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange

• 3:16:09Tim Ferriss?

  esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog/friday, type that into your browser, tim.blog/friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening.

• 3:16:34Tim Ferriss?

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• 3:17:17Tim Ferriss?

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• 3:18:02Tim Ferriss?

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• 3:18:43Tim Ferriss?

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• 3:19:25Tim Ferriss?

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• 3:20:06Tim Ferriss?

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• 3:20:48Tim Ferriss?

  So, go to helixsleep.com/tim to check it out. That's helixsleep.com/tim. With Helix, better sleep starts now.