#158: The Secrets of Gymnastic Strength Training

If you loved the Pavel http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/01/15/pavel-tsatsouline/, Poliquin http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/07/21/charles-poliquin/, or Dom D'Agostino http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/11/03/dominic-dagostino/ episodes, you'll love this one. My guest this episode isChristopher Sommer (GymnasticBodies on Instagram http://instagram.com/GymnasticBodies/Facebook https://www.facebook.com/GymnasticBodies/), former US national team gymnastics coach. He is also the founder of GymnasticBodies http://www.gymnasticbodies.com/, a training system that I'm currently testing (and have no affiliation with). As a world-renowned Olympic coach, Sommer is known for building his students into some of the strongest, most powerful athletes in the world. During his extensive 40-year coaching career, Coach Sommer took meticulous notes on his training techniques—his wins and failures—so that he could translate the best elements into a superior exercise system for both high-level and beginner athletes. His four decades of careful observation led to the birth of Gymnastics Strength Training™ (or GST). In this episode, we cover A TON, including: The 3-5 exercises everyone should be doing (you've never heard of some of them) His opinions of kipping exercises, such as the kipping pull-ups common in CrossFit What bodyweight goals non-gymnasts should target Which exercises to remove from the gym entirely, at least in the first 6-12 months of training How to optimize biceps strength and mass with straight-arm work And much, much more... I also asked Coach Sommer to gather some interesting stuff (samples, videos, etc.) at gymnasticbodies.com/tim http://www.gymnasticbodies.com/tim, so take a gander. I don't get any compensation for any of it; I just want people to consider more bodyweight training. I've found it revelatory and mind-expanding. Enjoy! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This episode is brought to you by Headspace https://www.headspace.com/tim, the world's most popular meditation app (more than 4,000,000 users). It's used in more than 150 countries, and many of my closest friends swear by it. Try Headspace's free Take10 program https://www.headspace.com/tim — 10 minutes of guided meditation a day for 10 days. It's like a warm bath for your mind. Meditation doesn't need to be complicated or expensive, and it's had a huge impact on my life. Try Headspace for free https://www.headspace.com/tim for a few days and see what I mean. This episode is also brought to you by Exo Protein https://www.exoprotein.com/tim. These guys are making protein bars using cricket protein powder. Before you look disgusted, I bet they taste better than any protein bar you've ever had before! With recipes that were developed by a three-Michelin-star chef, the bars are paleo-friendly, with no gluten, no grains, no soy, no dairy, and they won't spike your glycemic response. In fact, they're less processed than any other protein bars you'll be able to find. Exo Protein https://www.exoprotein.com/tim is offering a deep discount to Tim Ferriss Show listeners — if you go to ExoProtein.com/Tim https://www.exoprotein.com/tim, you can try a sampler pack with all of the most popular flavors for less than $10. This is a startup with limited inventory that sells out all the time, so act fast https://www.exoprotein.com/tim!

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I answer your personal question?

• 0:08Tim Ferriss?

  No, what is the appropriate time?

• 0:12Speaker 00

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

• 0:23Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Headspace. More than 80% of the people I have interviewed, world-class performers across the military, entertainment, sports, and beyond, all have some type of meditative practice. I tried for years and years and failed miserably. The key is making it simple, and you can dramatically improve your life in just 10 minutes a day, and technology can help you. This change comes through guided meditation, and Headspace is by far the most popular app for this purpose. More than 4 million users, it's meditation made simple. So what I recommend is that you take this practice, meditation, which is rooted in thousands of years of tradition, supported by thousands of scientific studies, and try

• 1:06Tim Ferriss?

  it for 10 minutes a day for 10 days. That's all you need to do. You could also check out the founder, Andy Puddicombe's TED Talk, which has more than 5.5 million views. His last name is P U D D I C O M B E, if you want to look that up. But otherwise, download the free Headspace app, I have it on my phone, and begin their Take 10 program. For 10 days of guided meditation, completely free, 10 minutes a day, that's all it takes. You should give it a shot. Headspace.com/Tim. Just go to Headspace.com/Tim.

• 1:41Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by ExoProtein. It's one of the startups that I work with. I love what they do. These guys are making protein bars using cricket protein powder. And before you screw your face up and look disgusted, I bet they taste better than any protein bar you've ever had before. I devour these bars after lifting sessions. I take them with me on the road. The recipes were developed by a three-michelin-starred chef, former head of R&D at The Fat Duck, which was ranked the number-one restaurant in the world during his tenure. The bars are paleo-friendly. No gluten, no grains, no soy, no dairy, et cetera. They are high in protein and flavor and extremely unique. And they do not pop your glycemic response up oddly enough. And you can look that up online to see some stories on that.

• 2:25Tim Ferriss?

  Ferenstein, that's the journalist who looked at it. On top of all that, they are less processed than nearly all protein bars you'll be able to find. This is your chance to see what the hype is about. The founders were just on the Forbes 30 under 30 list and they are offering a deep discount to Tim Ferriss Show listeners. If you go to exoprotein.com/tim, that's E-X-O, protein.com/tim today, you can try a sampler pack with all of their most popular flavors for less than 10 bucks. That's exoprotein.com/tim and I would recommend doing it relatively fast. And that's not a BS scarcity thing. They're a startup with limited inventory and they sell out all the time. That is what happened last time I mentioned them. So, check it out. Exoprotein.com/tim.

• 3:09Tim Ferriss?

  Hello ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show where each episode it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers, to tease out the lessons, routines, habits, breakfasts, favorite books, et cetera, that you can use and borrow from world-class performers, whether they are military strategists, chess prodigies, athletes, actors, politicians, or anything and everything in between. In this episode, we have a very exciting guest with whom I've been spending a ton of time, Christopher Sommer. Christopher Sommer, you can find him on Instagram and Facebook. I highly recommend checking it out. Gymnastic Bodies is the account name.

• 3:53Tim Ferriss?

  Is the former US national team gymnastics coach. He's also the founder of GymnasticBodies.com, a training system that I am currently testing the hell out of. And I have no affiliation with it in so much as I get no kind of affiliate, anything, payout, whatever. I'm just fascinated by bodyweight training and reached out to Coach Sommer to try to finally practice gymnastics as a 38-year-old. And I've learned a lot. We've been ...around with things for about six weeks now as of this recording and we're doing a 90 day custom test, so I hope to have some very interesting before and afters for you guys. So we will be doing a round two follow-up. As a world-renowned Olympic coach, Sommer is known for building his students into some

• 4:37Tim Ferriss?

  of the strongest, most powerful athletes in the world and you gotta check out his Facebook page. He features a lot of these athletes. It is bonkers. During his extensive 40-year coaching career, Coach Sommer took meticulous notes on his training techniques, his wins, failures, and so on, so that he could translate the best elements into a superior exercise system for both high-level and beginner athletes. His four decades of careful observation led to the birth of Gymnastics Strength Training. Let's try that again. Gymnastics Strength Training, not vocal strength training, because I'm failing in that department, otherwise known as GST. In this episode, we cover a ton of stuff and I think it's going to light up the internets

• 5:18Tim Ferriss?

  because everybody has a strong opinion these days, but Coach Sommer is very well-qualified to have the opinions that he holds. We talk about the biggest mistakes of self-taught handstands, why recreational athletes who try gymnastics get injured most commonly. We talk about the three to five exercises everyone should be doing. Chances are, you've never heard of some of them. We talk about mental prep for athletes who are going into big competition. The questions you should ask a coach before sending your kid to gymnastics. We get into what is wrong with yoga handstands, the questions or opinions that he might pose or have related to kipping pull-ups in CrossFit and elsewhere.

• 6:00Tim Ferriss?

  And I ask that question because a mutual friend said, "If you want him to lose his shit, ask about kipping." We have the determination of GST, this Gymnastics Strength Training, goals. If you could only pick one, what would it be and why? Who are the best coaches he's met? What characterizes them? It just goes on and on and on. I mean, if you want to build, say, mass in the biceps, how you can utilize straight armwork, and why you must turn your hands out.

• 6:28Tim Ferriss?

  Past parallel, well, when training the rings, why is that important? How does it affect muscular development and strength development? Why do you need to fix the lats to fix the shoulders? But it goes on and on and on. This is a very in-depth conversation. We get into the weeds and I would just say be patient. There are a lot of gems here. And similar to the Dominic De Agostino episode on ketosis and the end of cancer and so on and so forth, we really get into some nitty gritty detail. And that is why many people listen to this podcast. So just bear with me. If you're like, what the hell are these guys talking about? Give it 30 seconds. Chances are that we'll zoom back up to 30,000 feet or change topics.

• 7:08Tim Ferriss?

  So stick with it and please enjoy this very wide ranging, intense conversation with Coach Christopher Summer. Coach, welcome to the show.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  Thanks, Jen.

• 7:22Tim 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, first of all.

• 7:47Speaker 02

  My pleasure. Looking forward to it.

• 7:49Tim Ferriss?

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

• 8:00Speaker 02

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

• 8:22Tim Ferriss?

  And one, one example of what not to do perhaps, or how gymnastic 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. I guess a pike handstand press or holding that position and the example and I 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?

• 8:56Speaker 02

  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.

• 9:35Tim Ferriss?

  And for people who, 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.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  And forward.

• 9:58Tim Ferriss?

  Bending forward towards your toes. And so if you were, imagine you're sitting down with your legs out in front of you at just 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.

• 10:15Speaker 02

  Exactly what we're talking about. And 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, I want to do that. And they're going to jump right up. You know, 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, then we

• 10:58Speaker 02

  learn addition, 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.

• 11:08Tim Ferriss?

  And 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 I'm not particularly well-known for in terms of patience and pacing.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  I've noticed that.

• 11:26Tim Ferriss?

  But the, the, many of the guys who say do outdoor bar workouts, some of which are very, 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.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Side to side pull-up.

• 11:47Tim 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 mean, 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.

• 12:30Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, it's, as someone who has done a lot of pulling from the floor, for instance, who has, you know, 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, it was, it was completely flabbergassing. What other, what other muscles or movements do you find normals just cannot perform, even if they view themselves as athletic?

• 12:56Speaker 02

  For the, 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.

• 13:14Tim 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.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  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 an 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, right? 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 chin,

• 14:13Speaker 02

  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, they'll spend all this time working technique and doing rep and doing rep. And what they're doing is they're treating the symptom and not actually the problem.

• 14:30Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I was, 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, why did it take me so long to do this? And I was in Venice, I'm going to give these folks a shout-out. There is a CrossFit gym there named Paradiso CrossFit, and I just 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.

• 15:11Tim Ferriss?

  He was the only person doing a body weight only workout. And he suggested that I follow gymnastic bodies on Instagram. And so I 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,

• 15:54Tim Ferriss?

  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. And it's, I have to say, I feel better than I've felt,

• 16:09Tim Ferriss?

  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.

• 16:19Speaker 02

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

• 16:21Tim Ferriss?

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

• 16:39Speaker 02

  Well, they won't like the answer. And this is a little bit of national team coach attitude coming out. People tend to want what they want, when they want it. And that's fine if I'm looking for mediocre to average results. If I'm looking to really do best effort, then 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.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  Their scaps don't move. Their scapula have no motion. They can't protract. They can't retract. Their spine is locked in just a flat or 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 is, "Well, these are extreme ranges of motion. These are artificial ranges of motion." And actually, these are your natural range of motion. The problem is, they quit using it, and so it just atrophied. So, we're not doing anything special. We're just, we have to recreate that natural range of motion first.

• 18:07Speaker 02

  This, we've been doing, gosh, I don't know now, maybe since 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. And if we do, even, even 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.

• 18:39Tim 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

• 18:46Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 18:47Tim Ferriss?

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

• 19:11Speaker 02

  So, what people, they're gonna, most people, I mean, they think of abs, they think lower ab, they think upper abs. They're not gonna think about obliques at all, and they're not gonna think transverse abdominis at all. So, lower abs are easy, upper ab easy, obliques, okay, 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, you know, for example, ab rollers were, we don't use them in our program, but just as an example, ab rollers were getting a bad knock that if you do an ab roller, you're gonna hurt your lower back. Well...

• 19:57Speaker 02

  Yes and no. You'll hurt your back if you're doing it wrong. If you are 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.

• 20:28Tim 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.

• 20:41Speaker 02

  It should just be a mantra.

• 20:42Tim 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.

• 21:20Speaker 02

  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.

• 21:29Tim Ferriss?

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

• 21:38Speaker 02

  Yes, you are.

• 21:38Tim 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.

• 21:47Speaker 02

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

• 21:56Tim 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?

• 22:19Speaker 02

  Most bang for the buck. Okay, well, let's see, so what, we went over with you, we checked hanging leg lift. So, hanging leg lift automatically is gonna tell me, um, dynamic range of motion.

• 22:32Tim Ferriss?

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

• 22:36Speaker 02

  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, and that's been one of our best-selling products.

• 23:03Tim Ferriss?

  That's what I'm doing this evening.

• 23:05Speaker 02

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

• 23:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, what, 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,

• 23:28Tim Ferriss?

  I was extremely surprised and found it quite hilarious how bad my bridge was, I mean, terrible, uh, in the assessment, but-

• 23:38Speaker 02

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

• 23:44Tim Ferriss?

  Medium, it was like a D+, it was like on the verge of passing. 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 bend-

• 23:59Speaker 02

  Which is a huge issue.

• 24:01Tim Ferriss?

  Yep, so what is a good bridge?

• 24:02Speaker 02

  Little background?

• 24:03Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 24:05Speaker 02

  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.

• 24:25Speaker 02

  Okay, 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 got to do something to make up the deficit. The problem is, when they do all that weight training, 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 on they're like, you know,

• 25:08Speaker 02

  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, 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 bridges are dangerous. No, the bridges aren't dangerous. Doing them half-assed and wrong without vetting your sources of information is dangerous.

• 25:49Tim Ferriss?

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

• 26:00Speaker 02

  Sure. We were worried about that, I remember. We're like, hmm, I wonder how to work through this.

• 26:05Tim Ferriss?

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

• 26:17Speaker 02

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

• 26:21Tim Ferriss?

  I'll point them to a bunch of resources in the show notes, but the, 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?

• 26:38Speaker 02

  Elevating the feet, yep. And elevating them as high as necessary.

• 26:43Speaker 02

  Uh, some, some people are so tight that they basically start in a handstand. And it, it is what it is, right? The, the main thing that we try to always hammer with students is they're always in a hurry. Like, I've got to get it right now. Even, even our conversation, you remember way back when, started that way. And I was like, dude, this, 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.

• 27:08Tim Ferriss?

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

• 27:13Speaker 02

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

• 27:16Tim Ferriss?

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

• 27:20Speaker 02

  I've corrupted you. All your great podcasts and I've corrupted you.

• 27:25Tim Ferriss?

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

• 27:30Speaker 02

  Feet elevated, feet elevated to the point where they're not feeling stress on the lower back.

• 27:38Speaker 02

  Then now it'll depend on pressing strength also. So if they're, if they're very weak in the shoulders, then they're gonna have to start from the handstand and work their way down. But we'll assume they've got feet elevated. Hmm, 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.

• 28:03Tim Ferriss?

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

• 28:05Speaker 02

  Could be wide. Yeah. Cause gosh, I had one special forces guy that came to me years ago. Uh, tough, tough guy, first name Mark. And, uh, he had gained 80 pounds of muscle. 80 pounds of muscle. Oh yeah. He was just like, holy moly. And he, he was, he just a beast. But, uh, he had completely effed himself up because all he did was gain strength without mobility. And athletically, if I'm not more, unless, unless my sport is just purely lifting, unless I'm a power lifter, unless I'm an Olympic lifter, okay, then, 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.

• 28:50Speaker 02

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

• 29:18Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 29:19Speaker 02

  You, you think your shoulders are tight, Paul Mark, and he was like, Coach, what, what can you do for me? For once, I was at a loss for words, which is rare for me. I was like, you know, I, I, I think you're screwed, dude. I don't think I can fix this one.

• 29:34Tim Ferriss?

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

• 29:38Speaker 02

  Well, he couldn't even, that's, this was hanging on a bar. We, we couldn't even get in a bridge. It was, it was impossible. Uh, what we would do with someone like that and Mark, so you're, you're more, so guys, just, just to give the audience some, some feedback, I, I went into Tim's assessment expecting medium, medium, and Tim, Tim was much more mobile, uh, much more athletic, much more well-prepared than I had anticipated. So we, I had spent a lot of time putting a, a custom program together for Tim that because he did so well in his assessment, I had to throw the whole damn thing away and start over from scratch. Cause basically you, you, he was too, he was too advanced

• 30:21Speaker 02

  for what we had assumed he was coming to the table with. Uh, someone who is crazy compromised, uh, we're gonna have to sneak up on it. We're gonna, 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 gotta break the scaps, so there's some motion there. We have to do all of that. And it's, it's not high-intensity work, but it's gotta be done. And as you heard Tim say, the body thrives on it. It's, it's like a tonic for the body. The body feels so much better because it's what the body's supposed to do. And it's, it's, it's not, what's the word I want? It's not, a lot of people don't care for it because

• 31:06Speaker 02

  it's not the high-intensity sexy work, but it's that fundamental work that makes the high-intensity sexy work possible later.

• 31:16Tim Ferriss?

  Well, not only possible, but safer, uh, which-

• 31:19Speaker 02

  That's, that's a good point, because we had, I think one of the questions that people asked, you know, I, I date, uh- I think one of the, Tim asked for questions on Twitter and, um, 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, my answer to that is simple. They weren't my athlete. They weren't my athlete. Uh, we don't train through pain. Uh, as a national team coach for a long time, uh, physical preparation was always our number one priority. We built the physical structure first. Cause if you think about it, it's kind of silly. We, and we see this a lot with people who are getting into weightlifting, they're CrossFitters,

• 32:03Speaker 02

  they're Olympic lifting and they're, they're enthusiastic, they're excited and they want to get that weight on the bar. And they're, 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, you hear someone, oh, I changed my shoe and I blew my knee. Seriously? Your knee is that tight that because your heel, if your new shoe is a fraction of an inch higher or a slightly different angle that your knee blew? Whereas in, in our training program, we call everything, you need an optimal surplus. You need an optimal surplus range of mobility, range of motion. You need an optimal surplus of strength. You need an optimal surplus of stability. You need what you need to perform

• 32:45Speaker 02

  and a little extra for when things go south. Not if things go south, when things go south. And if you're just riding the edge of what you're capable of, it's, and they hope, oh, nothing will go wrong. I hope nothing will go wrong. No, it is gonna go wrong. It's absolutely gonna go wrong. And so you, 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, nothing's injured. Moving on, next turn.

• 33:11Tim 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, uh, I felt it in my bicep. Like I felt an extreme stretch in my bicep. 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, uh, perhaps, uh, very similar where you would hold on to say a bar or rings in this case. And I'm just, I'm going to simplify this of course, but tucking up, going back in between the rings and then hanging down, um, with my, with as little of a

• 33:48Tim Ferriss?

  Pike at the hips as possible.

• 33:50Speaker 02

  Nice flat back, nice straight hips.

• 33:52Tim 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?

• 34:14Speaker 02

  What I'm looking for?

• 34:15Tim Ferriss?

  Well, the middle of, 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. Yeah. So why is that?

• 34:29Speaker 02

  Real quick. So most people, I'm going to sneak around to it. So most people, when they, when they do their training, they, meaning well, meaning well. And I'm not, 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 F-ing mistakes that they make. We just survived my stupidity and learned how to do better.

• 34:54Tim Ferriss?

  The story, story of my life.

• 34:56Speaker 02

  So I think the story of all of our lives, right? I used to tell my athletes, there, there are stupid gymnasts and there are old gymnasts, but there are no old stupid gymnasts because they're all dead.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  But most people, most beginners, that 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, from end to end, all, 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, and you know, I'm, I'm not a big 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,

• 35:52Speaker 02

  well-structured hours under their belt. So, you know, it has nothing to do with it.

• 35:56Tim Ferriss?

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

• 35:58Speaker 02

  Oh, particularly if there's joints. You know, if it's a muscle belly, if we're, like you said, if we're doing core, you know, 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, and 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, 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,

• 36:43Speaker 02

  that's where they get into trouble. So, when they come to us, the first thing we like is for them to spend, and it's, is it going to be boring? It is. You know, 200, 210 days, we're talking six, seven months of dial it back, guys. Dial it back.

• 36:59Tim Ferriss?

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

• 37:16Speaker 02

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

• 37:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 37:20Speaker 02

  But what happens is some of them, we, we run into this, maybe you have also, is we, we get some people who are addicted to the rush. They're, they're addicted to the adrenaline rush, they're addicted to laying there in a pile of sweat. Uh, 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. You know, 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.

• 38:00Speaker 02

  And so it's only in beginners that we see that they think somehow they can cheat time. And it can't be done. I mean, connective tissue is gonna take 200 to 210 days. There's no supplement. You can't paint yourself blue. You can't dance under the moon. 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. It's like your elbow is a good example. Years ago, pushing too hard. Now that 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.

• 38:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, for sure. And just a couple of notes and then I'm gonna swing back to the diagnostics, you know, how people can assess. But another conversation that, you know, topic that came up, I think I'm sure I brought it up in, at dinner once, was the use of anabolic 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.

• 39:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, it'd come completely with backfire, huge backfire. Because we, like, a lot of our power come where we like to get, where students make 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.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  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. We have to do, as a young athlete, 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, right? Sitting at a desk, day in, day out. As they get a little older, kids get bigger, levels of activities drop, drop, drop, drop, drop, and they're compromised. So we have to build these things in a different order. We have to first go rebuild mobility, then we have to rebuild core.

• 40:28Speaker 02

  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. And 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, 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.

• 41:11Speaker 02

  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 at 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?

• 41:26Tim Ferriss?

  Well, that's, 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, we can show some of this to people in the show notes.

• 41:38Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 41:39Tim Ferriss?

  Even in the span of three or four weeks, I've seen a huge difference in knee stability improvement because I haven't ever done, I haven't ever performed these types of targeted movements before. And coming back to the diagnostics, we talked about the bridge, we talked about the hanging leg lifts. What?

• 42:01Tim Ferriss?

  Are there any other movements?

• 42:03Speaker 02

  Shoulder, shoulder extension will be huge.

• 42:06Tim Ferriss?

  So shoulder extension would be sitting on the floor.

• 42:10Speaker 02

  Sitting on the floor. Mm hmm. Yeah, sitting in that pike that you described earlier. Uh, 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. And so that's immediately, just that one movement right there is going to let us see. It's 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.

• 42:46Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, the brachialis.

• 42:47Speaker 02

  Yes, your favorite.

• 42:48Tim Ferriss?

  My good, my good, my good friend, the brachialis. The, and also just the, and this relates to kind of daily living. A lot of people who have back pain, uh, myself included quite a few years ago. If you're wondering if you have a tight pec minor, you can just Google pec minor and figure out where it is. But basically think right under the clavicle. Get a lacrosse ball and, uh, you know, go on the wall and try to roll out your pec minor with a lacrosse ball. And if it's, if you have back pain, you don't always fix that back pain by just focusing on the location of that pain.

• 43:19Speaker 02

  Oh, that's a good point.

• 43:20Tim Ferriss?

  And you start addressing the pec minor and a lot of that stuff just allevia, is, is alleviated. Uh, and I wanted to throw one thing out there just for people who might be interested. That, and, and that is, I think part of the reason I seemed or was better prepared for the assessment 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.

• 43:52Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 43:52Tim Ferriss?

  And did that for just maybe, uh, two times per week, uh, 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, uh, as I did. So I was in, 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 extremely strong, extremely fast. I mean, he's, 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. 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.

• 44:37Tim Ferriss?

  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, 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 I don't know, three to four inches, maybe if you can manage that and just do, try to do 30 of those. And my, my buddy could not lift his heels off the ground and just fell

• 45:22Tim Ferriss?

  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, right? So their, 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, which just, 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

• 46:03Tim Ferriss?

  muscle. If you're trying to think of what they might look like is it wraps around the abdomen. So if you, if you cough a lot or laugh a lot and get really, really sore, it's very frequently often, or it's engaging that transverse. But

• 46:20Tim Ferriss?

  Let me ask you, so you mentioned CrossFit, you mentioned a couple of things, you know, drenched in sweat, doing the snow, not snow angels, but sweat angels. What are your feelings about kipping movements, like kipping pull-ups?

• 46:35Speaker 02

  Ah, you had to open that can of worms.

• 46:39Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 46:42Tim 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 him.

• 46:49Speaker 02

  So we, we started, I was the original gymnastics guy for CrossFit way back in the early 2000s and ended up leaving. I was, 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, you know, to do GST right, like anything, you know, a dichotomy that, 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, they're

• 47:32Speaker 02

  just methodical. And they don't bring, and I shouldn't say just, just CrossFitters, but then they, other people, they don't bring that same degree of attention to detail to their body weight work. So one, one is supposed to be meticulous, and one is somehow just supposed to be thrown together, and yet they expect the same quality results. So if we, if we look back, oh, back in the day, CrossFit, you know, their lifting was, 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, they don't match a national team, they, they don't match

• 48:14Speaker 02

  a state level athlete, who, let alone a national level, let alone an international level. They're, they're not even in the same ballpark. And part of the issue is because...

• 48:27Speaker 02

  The kipping pull-ups 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 and 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. 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. So they weren't strong enough to do a regular pull-up.

• 49:12Speaker 02

  So now we're going to drop them on connective tissue with multiples 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 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, cross the board, 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 what, guys?

• 49:54Speaker 02

  We got to start getting some basic strength built first, some basic mobility. And then at that time, kipping pull-ups, yeah, 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.

• 50:15Tim Ferriss?

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

• 50:21Speaker 02

  We would never, you know, we started working with adults. So our first, we do seminars all around the world, you know, we spend, 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 I tried to do my entry level plyometric work on some floorwork 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.

• 51:02Speaker 02

  No way. Their tissues couldn't take it. They hadn't, 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. And I was, oh my, it was an hour and a half, Tim. It was an hour and a half. There were bodies lying everywhere. It was like I was in Vietnam or filming a war movie. And I turned, 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.

• 51:46Tim Ferriss?

  Now, in fairness, this stuff is really, you would, you would look at it and just like my friend who's like, what is this Jane Fonda bullshit? And I'm like, hey, man, why don't you try this for 10 minutes? 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, so very hamstring focused. There's one that is bridge focused and another that is middle split, adductor and middle split focused.

• 52:22Speaker 02

  Inside of the thigh.

• 52:23Tim 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's absolutely the, uh, the front split workout. A shit ton for me, a shit ton of, of calf raises with like different-

• 52:51Speaker 02

  I remember you moaning about that.

• 52:52Tim 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. Hour long stretch sequence. Uh, but, and I know we're bouncing all over the place because I want to give people kind of a buffet sampling of, 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 that a lot of the hamstring flexibility issues or limitations that people perceive are at least in part due to lower leg.

• 53:32Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 53:33Tim Ferriss?

  Issues, uh, including the Achilles.

• 53:35Speaker 02

  Huge amount of them.

• 53:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, including the Achilles. So you, you, in this, in this particular progression in the beginning, you're hitting, you're stretching the, 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, um, there's a, an athlete who's been on the podcast, Amelia Boone, one of the most successful, uh, obstacle course racers in the world and, and she's basically pointing 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.

• 54:16Speaker 02

  Cause it's, it's all connected. You know, we, we found by accident. So we never intended this and it, we just, we're very methodical. So part, part of what maybe helps people to understand the, 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. Right? 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.

• 55:01Speaker 02

  And then the second caveat that goes with that is that-

• 55:08Speaker 02

  We, we have to, so where I have, I have to describe it correctly. All right, we're trying to find a way to make the best better. Cause these, 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, and learning new things, then you can't get a leg up on your competitors. The, the way knowledge, now if we go, we have PhDs who come through in this and that, and we, we always give them major shit, major shit.

• 55:53Speaker 02

  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, 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.

• 56:22Tim Ferriss?

  What is Alan's last name?

• 56:23Speaker 02

  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.

• 56:37Tim Ferriss?

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

• 56:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was just, uh, this, oh goodness, the weekend of the 15th. So I think we're scheduled here to come out sometime in May, but yeah, very, very big deal. But, uh, you know, to, to go back to the other, so we're looking for, 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, cause they're, 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 and 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's, you can't run with neutral spine,

• 57:22Speaker 02

  you can't throw with neutral spine, you can't climb with neutral spine, I can't swim, I, 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 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 has a variation off that. We can add rotation with some throws and some this and that, but that's, that's all there is. So, we spend a lot of time building power for

• 58:04Speaker 02

  that. 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.

• 58:22Tim Ferriss?

  Well, let's, I'm sorry to interrupt, but maybe, maybe we could use an example that we've discussed before, which was a new movement for me, which is Jefferson curl.

• 58:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're, 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, you were, it was heresy. It was heresy. If you went, if you went below parallel, the knees, the knees couldn't possibly adapt to it. You're just going to blow your knees, your, your kneecaps were going to just pop off the front, right? It's going to be shrapnel, knee shrapnel. And now, yeah, 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?

• 59:14Tim Ferriss?

  You want me to give it a, I can give it a shot?

• 59:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, you'll be better at it.

• 59:17Tim 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 An athlete from the side doing a Jefferson curl, they will, they will most likely be standing on a box, uh, holding on to an Olympic barbell right in front of their, uh, hip slash legs. So it's just like the, 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, when they come down, they're going to tuck their chin and then vertebra by vertebra,

• 1:00:01Tim Ferriss?

  round their back down 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.

• 1:00:12Speaker 02

  Or at least- In a, in a perfect world, if you're advanced enough.

• 1:00:15Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:00:37Speaker 02

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

• 1:00:55Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:00:59Speaker 02

  No, don't, don't. So for example, one, one of our senior students in, um, in Australia, uh, in his training, physical therapist, has his own clinic, doing really well. And, um, he tried it with just the, 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, 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, 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, uh, 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.

• 1:01:44Speaker 02

  It wasn't just go. Now we, we get, we've got, uh- 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 and uh

• 1:02:00Tim Ferriss?

  How do you spell his last name?

• 1:02:01Speaker 02

  Oh, you had to ask me that.

• 1:02:03Tim Ferriss?

  We can get it for the show, Ned.

• 1:02:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, we'll get it for the show. We chat a lot on Facebook and that and uh Quinn likes to stir the pot, if you will, you know, stir up some shit. And he's experimented with Jefferson Curl himself for, I think going on about three or four years now. Now, and feels wonderful and he'll toss it out. And so one of the things that'll always be come up is, you know, the McGill experiments where they would take uh 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.

• 1:02:49Speaker 02

  What everyone kind of missed, the big elephant in the room was the pig was fucking dead. 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. So 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

• 1:03:29Speaker 02

  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. Because connective tissue has one tenth the metabolic rate of muscular tissue. So it heals slower, it adapts slower. So you have to kind of come to the table with a very Patient attitude, or as I consider myself, like 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.

• 1:04:13Speaker 02

  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 environment was actually a blessing, because it's very much practical, it's very much results oriented. There's no room for opinion. I think, I feel, I prefer. It's, 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 that was actually something when we segued into kind of the fitness world, if you will,

• 1:04:54Speaker 02

  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. And there's, there's nothing to support it. There's no results, there's, there's no great athletes, there's no great abilities that have been generated, there's just the marketing. And that, that was hard to wrap my head around, because a national team, that doesn't exist. And you can't go to the Olympics and the guy who talks the loudest gets the medal. You know, I have the loudest voice, I'm champion.

• 1:05:25Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:05:29Speaker 02

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

• 1:05:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, we'll save that for another time.

• 1:05:36Speaker 02

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

• 1:05:43Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:06:01Speaker 02

  Eat and train, yeah. Eat and train. Cause if, what the people are trying to do, and we, we, and I'll throw a little, a little blurb in here, 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. Solid muscle and his waist was the same size as when he was thin. He looked like two Vikings, two, 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?

• 1:06:45Speaker 02

  And it's these, it's these basic nutritional concepts that we teach. But what we try to do with the, with adults is they're trying to, 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, 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, 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.

• 1:07:27Speaker 02

  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? It's tough shit, deal with it. You know, 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, right, you can maximize what you, what your potential is. Well, we hammer through to our students is 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.

• 1:08:12Speaker 02

  But whatever it is, you know, make the most of it.

• 1:08:15Tim Ferriss?

  So, so on that point, uh, and then I want to come back to, uh, 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 3:00 AM note that I wrote to myself? I don't know. But, uh, the-

• 1:08:37Speaker 02

  You gotta stay away from the wine, dude.

• 1:08:40Tim Ferriss?

  Never, never. Uh, invino veritas. We'll get back to that. But the, uh-

• 1:08:45Speaker 02

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

• 1:08:49Tim Ferriss?

  I think, I, I, I think I can actually queue it up.

• 1:08:51Speaker 02

  Is that the basics?

• 1:08:52Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, 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, a composite of these questions. But like if, if someone is 35 years old, let's just say, former athlete, does basic gym work? Diet is okay, not terrible. Uh, they feel reasonably athletic, but they're not competing in anything, certainly. Have never done any gymnastics. What would, what would good goals be for such a person? And what would bad goals be, maybe, at the same time?

• 1:09:32Speaker 02

  Well, that, without question, bad goal would be for them to jump right into, uh, kind of full body weight, uh, 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.

• 1:09:59Tim Ferriss?

  So let me, can I paint a picture for people?

• 1:10:01Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:10:02Tim Ferriss?

  So, so back lever, just to, 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.

• 1:10:29Speaker 02

  Off the ground and kind of hold yourself there.

• 1:10:31Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 1:10:31Speaker 02

  That'll work. Body, body would be horizontal.

• 1:10:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 1:10:34Speaker 02

  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, is too loaded and they're going to tear a bicep. So we, for a young adult, not, not a problem at all. And we went through, you know, we, we get some, and we're lucky, you know, we, we have a lot of people who use our material. But some of our, some of our material, you know, Coach, you're, you're too conservative. Coach, it's, it's a new world. Coach, we don't have time. I, I had someone who was 21 or 23 once, Coach, I don't have time to take my time. I'm already 23. And I was like, okay, all right. I, I think you're misreading this.

• 1:11:18Speaker 02

  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, I think maybe the street workout community, five of their top guys around the world snapped biceps. And 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. And they, they all snapped them on back lever stuff. Cause they're, the mobility wasn't, 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. You know, luckily, right? Or I, I certainly wouldn't have survived being 21 if it wasn't that the case. But as an adult, right? The structure is mature now.

• 1:12:02Speaker 02

  And I think, I think maybe a better way to look at it is people think I'm getting older, ligaments are breaking down, tendons are breaking down, joints are getting brittle. 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." Then we had, 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?

• 1:12:46Speaker 02

  And the body does well with it. Now, the mistake is thinking that the body did well solely because of that structured athletic training. 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.

• 1:13:29Speaker 02

  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. 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 no 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. And... Now, the body wants to be healthy. It wants to be healthy. That's your prime example. We feed it the right movements and the right dosages and it blooms, it blossoms.

• 1:14:13Speaker 02

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

• 1:14:41Tim Ferriss?

  If you were to look at all of the adults that you've dealt with, let's just say thirty-five-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 you, what would some of your selections be?

• 1:15:06Speaker 02

  So just for joint, joint, I think we'd put Jefferson curl at top of the list. Because Jefferson curl is gonna let us, it's gonna, because remember, we have multiple sections of the spine, right? We've got the cervical, thoracic, and lumbar. That's gonna come through also into glutes. That's gonna go down into our hamstrings. That's gonna hit our calves. It's gonna hit our Achilles as well. So 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 gonna go away because of that. Next one, was tough. It's always, it's always hard to boil it down, boil it down.

• 1:15:48Speaker 02

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

• 1:16:16Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:16:16Speaker 02

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

• 1:16:47Tim Ferriss?

  Is that just a...

• 1:16:48Speaker 02

  Kind of that turtle forward, distended forward.

• 1:16:51Tim Ferriss?

  It's like the Wally powered down look, I guess?

• 1:16:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, you know, the scary thing there, and again, we have some PTs who use our stuff around the world, a lot of success, and they're the ones who come in and then educate us for, we'll say, you know, we've noticed this, and they can, they tell us, they teach us, well, to the limit we can, right, 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, 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, you know, there's a point coach where if you abuse the body,

• 1:17:36Speaker 02

  it's not going to come back. And so, for example, 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 because the vertebrae are a 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.

• 1:18:05Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:18:06Speaker 02

  And that doesn't come back. Once that happens, it's done. It's over. It's done. Same thing happens with the muscle bellies. So people who get frozen shoulder or impingements and this, that is, if you're not using the muscle belly, the body doesn't want to support it because muscle tissue is expensive. And by expensive, the body looks at it, it's expensive to feed, it's expensive to maintain. So you can't, 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, right? It has to be maintained because if you're not using it, it costs too much

• 1:18:50Speaker 02

  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, you start losing mobility, you start losing wind. Easiest physical attribute to build, endurance. Simple, super simple. Endurance is what? 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, it's going to take some time. What's the easiest one to fix? Muscular strength. Okay? No problem at all. So it's super important then that we use that muscle

• 1:19:32Speaker 02

  mass because if it's not being used, you're not only going to lose the size of the muscle mass, the body's going to start doing deposits of collagen on it, and it's going to start shrinking that muscle belly. On the traps, for example, going back to those older adults we discussed. And it's going to 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? 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,

• 1:20:15Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:20:29Tim Ferriss?

  So returning to the shoulder extension, because 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 in my back. I can't do shoulder extension. Just like total horseshit. I mean, especially-

• 1:20:48Speaker 02

  I did notice those huge massive slabs of muscle.

• 1:20:52Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, the imaginary lat 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?

• 1:21:03Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Big Paul.

• 1:21:03Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:21:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, they'll let people know Paul is always six feet, 230.

• 1:21:15Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, and just, and he's about 40, I want to say, and just probably walks around at 6% body fat and can do, can do a flat, like chest to ground pancake, no problem, can do dislocates with a weighted dowel or a 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? What is, is it the sitting down, arms behind you scooting the hips forward? Is there something else you would add to that mix?

• 1:21:49Speaker 02

  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 know, 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 that's, have you noticed that the guys who push through pain?

• 1:22:30Speaker 02

  Right, they've got a shelf life of somewhere between two and four years. 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. Right, 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

• 1:23:12Speaker 02

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

• 1:23:33Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:23:37Speaker 02

  Huge ankle, and especially, exactly, you watch Cloak Off.

• 1:23:41Tim Ferriss?

  People should watch this guy, check out some videos.

• 1:23:45Speaker 02

  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 that 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. Completely different animal to be the best in the entire world.

• 1:24:28Speaker 02

  To be the best at what you do out of billions of people. We're talking slivers 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 strong, why aren't you?

• 1:24:49Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, agreed.

• 1:24:50Speaker 02

  And not you, not you personally.

• 1:24:52Tim Ferriss?

  Damn, put me on the spot, coach. No.

• 1:24:55Speaker 02

  No, you, as in all of us, as in all of us, right? And what'll happen is they, 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.

• 1:25:24Tim Ferriss?

  So if we're looking at, again, this, 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. What would be?

• 1:25:52Speaker 02

  Not, not, not even gymnast. I, I would say.

• 1:25:56Tim Ferriss?

  Functional human being.

• 1:25:57Speaker 02

  Functional human being, right? Cause if you don't, yeah, cause I'm, we, we, we don't train. I like to, you know, point out people, we don't train gymnasts. We do gymnastic strength training, right? But there, 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 plans 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're, we got a uniform waiting here for you. We're departing for Rio in July, man. Be ready. Pack your bag. It's not going to happen, guys. So.

• 1:26:37Tim Ferriss?

  Correction, right. Functional human being.

• 1:26:39Speaker 02

  Functional human being covers it all.

• 1:26:41Tim Ferriss?

  So, so let me, let me just jump to the, uh, the punchline question, which is, what, let's, so we look at a, if, 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, 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 why, this is what you might be able to do in three, six, nine, 12 months from now. Right? The, the back lever we've talked about is not necessarily a good goal because.

• 1:27:18Tim Ferriss?

  You might think you have the strength and perhaps you do, but you don't.

• 1:27:21Speaker 02

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

• 1:27:23Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:27:28Speaker 02

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

• 1:27:31Tim Ferriss?

  What would be a good gymnastic strength training goal to have or goals like and as just as context for people who are wondering, you know, the 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.

• 1:28:03Speaker 02

  Lever, straddle planch.

• 1:28:05Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:28:18Speaker 02

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

• 1:28:20Tim Ferriss?

  That'd be the one. Okay. So let's.

• 1:28:21Speaker 02

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

• 1:28:30Tim Ferriss?

  How, do you want to take a stab at, at describing what that looks, what is it, what is a, what is a perfect press handstand look like in your mind?

• 1:28:38Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:28:50Tim Ferriss?

  Legs straight.

• 1:28:51Speaker 02

  Legs straight. Okay. Now, if they needed to bend, we could, but we're talking about perfect world, right? And then, so 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, anything traps just for shrugging. Well, your traps are huge muscle. They're 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 to go back to our other hands on the floor, shoulders over the hands,

• 1:29:34Speaker 02

  using that middle back, 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.

• 1:29:46Tim Ferriss?

  And 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.

• 1:29:56Speaker 02

  Have the mobility.

• 1:29:57Tim 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.

• 1:30:18Tim Ferriss?

  And then the, I think where you see a lot of people online do this incorrectly, at least from the standpoint of having the objective of gymnastics strength training, right? Because 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.

• 1:30:35Speaker 02

  And why, why do it? Maybe this is a nice thing to throw in because 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, I'll continue. So who have I pissed off so far today? I pissed off CrossFitters. I don't know. I'm gonna piss off yoga. 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.

• 1:31:17Speaker 02

  So they're bone on bone. They want to have pike shoulders. Alright, so 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.

• 1:31:31Speaker 02

  And then doing the opposite is the other direction. Well, when we do a handstand, it's, and if I describe it this way, it's going to 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. It's not gonna work. Okay? But the easy one is, is they'll say, "Well, 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. And here's how we evaluate it. A gymnastics handstand, right? Done with nice flat back, nice... And all being a smart ass aside, right? We're gonna look at it just from a purely practical viewpoint.

• 1:32:16Speaker 02

  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. If 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 can go into more advanced one-arm handstand work, pirouetting work. All those things are out results of a proper,

• 1:33:00Speaker 02

  nice, straight-line handstand that you can't do with the flawed approach. It's not aesthetics. It's being practical. Because we don't do anything in gymnastics, right? That's just purely aesthetics. Why do we do things a certain way? It lets us generate more power. Why do we want more power? It lets us get more air, it lets us do more flips, it lets us do more twists, it lets us do harder things on rings, which means more points, which means more gold medals.

• 1:33:27Tim 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, and 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. See, very good. 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 like, 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

• 1:34:08Tim Ferriss?

  a strong point. And so they're, they're, they're, at the very least, their quads and their adductors aren't really fully engaged. They're loose. They're loose, and so they're, they're, they're leaking energy in all sorts of directions. I like that leaking energy. Yeah. That's a very good description. And it makes, I think I probably stole it from Pavel Tsatsoulin, but the, yeah. Pavel's a good buddy. Pavel's a good friend of mine. I like Pavel. Pavel's, Pavel's great. And the, and they're all, and when, 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 have the, you're not going to develop the proper balance and alignment because you're going to be

• 1:34:49Tim Ferriss?

  flopping all over the place and having to correct more so than you should. And so that, just that pointing has a huge impact on your ability to train the handstands, like a really strong point. And the, 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. Preach to the choir on that one. And you would, and you would see people doing a press handstand, but they would. 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

• 1:35:33Tim Ferriss?

  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.

• 1:35:46Speaker 02

  Six, eight inches in front, sure.

• 1:35:48Tim 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 sixty.

• 1:36:04Speaker 02

  Nineteen forty, nineteen fifties.

• 1:36:06Tim Ferriss?

  That's right, 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, your, your ears are roughly in between your shoulder blades, your-

• 1:36:20Speaker 02

  In between your arms.

• 1:36:21Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:36:29Speaker 02

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

• 1:36:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, and what, and for, for people who want to just do a little experiment, obviously do it, do it safely, but I was blown away the first time that someone showed this to me. If, if you do a normal, say, kick up to handstand on the wall, just the way that everybody does it, right? So you're, you're, 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, you, 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 sides of your ears. Maintain that position and then go up and the stability is just a world of difference. I mean, it's-

• 1:37:15Speaker 02

  Night and day.

• 1:37:16Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:37:27Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:37:38Tim Ferriss?

  And some of the coaches, and doesn't have to be in gymnastics, but some of the, but it certainly could be, some of the coaches who have impressed you the most. And 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?

• 1:38:09Speaker 02

  So, you know, 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, my oldest daughter was maybe around 12 at the time. And she was like, oh my God, do you know, you know who you were talking to dad?

• 1:38:51Speaker 02

  And I said, well, yeah, sweetie, I know they're my friends. She says, that, that was the Olympic champion and that was the world champion. I said, yeah, I know babe, I know. And she's just like, oh my good God. Well, Dmitry Belozhchev is a good friend of mine and Dmitry is one Worlds in 83 at 16 years old. 16 years old. Just unbelievable. Then he won again in 87. What, 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.

• 1:39:35Speaker 02

  42 places. So basically, you know, that's powder. It's powder. And he's, you know, 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, his lower leg. They're gonna, you know, they're taking it off. And the surgeon.

• 1:39:53Speaker 02

  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 know, it's not warm friendly Russia. And the doctor, he, the doctor immediately like, holy shit, I am not cutting this leg off, because the surgeon who takes Dmitry Belozhchev's leg off is probably gonna lose his hands shortly thereafter also.

• 1:40:17Tim Ferriss?

  You're right.

• 1:40:18Speaker 02

  You know, national hero. So, they, they save his leg, and Dmitry comes back from it, and wins Worlds in 87. Goes 88 Olympics, does great medal, gold medals. Well, Dmitry was, I was lucky enough, we're at different training camps than that, Dmitry was my roommate. And, you know, Russians are Russians, right? It takes, 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, and he started sharing some stuff, you know, I'm like, you know, Dmitry, because his leg is trashed. His leg is trashed, he had 88 Olympics. And I said, Dmitry, you know, how, how the hell, dude? He says, ah, hold on to us for a few seconds. I, I can do anything for a few seconds.

• 1:41:01Speaker 02

  I said, ah, I don't know, dude. Well, so, it's just great, right? So, he's, you know, a legend in gymnastics, if we get together with a room full of world and Olympic champions who are Russian, they will all defer to Dmitry, he's, he's that big a legend. And this isn't a room full of massive egos. Okay, these, these, 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, oh, gosh, I'm gonna forget my name.

• 1:41:34Tim Ferriss?

  Is it, not Alexander?

• 1:41:37Speaker 02

  Well, Alexander, the reason, dog, my Alzheimer's, my Alzheimer's is kicking up. Anyway, we had a, a world champion from the Russian on the women's side, who 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.

• 1:42:09Tim Ferriss?

  What is Alexander's, is that his first or last name?

• 1:42:12Speaker 02

  It's like, I always screw up all the Russian pronunciations. All my Russian friends are gonna laugh because they're totally used to me butchering this. But it's like Alexander, Alexandrino or something.

• 1:42:21Tim Ferriss?

  Got one of those. Alexandrino.

• 1:42:24Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:42:28Tim Ferriss?

  What, what makes him, what do you think allowed him, made him?

• 1:42:34Speaker 02

  Makes him him?

• 1:42:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, exactly. What makes him different?

• 1:42:37Speaker 02

  What makes him him is the ability, so it starts with 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, so back in 83, 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,

• 1:43:18Speaker 02

  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, 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 gonna 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...

• 1:44:02Speaker 02

  Seventy-five, eighty percent of their genetic capacity with a good, with a good coach, a good world-class coach is going to take three to four years. It's going to take three to four years just to let the body grow, adapt.

• 1:44:16Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:44:21Speaker 02

  I do.

• 1:44:21Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, great.

• 1:44:23Speaker 02

  I do. Uh, now, that's a healthy adult. That's a healthy adult. So if they're severely compromised, and 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. Okay? And your, your response to slamming your hand in the door to hurting was to keep slamming your hand in the fucking door.

• 1:45:03Speaker 02

  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. But people, they don't, they don't realize, 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. Now, 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. So if you, if you're feeling, 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

• 1:45:48Speaker 02

  it's fatigue, it's immediately going to start to lessen. Soon, as soon as you stop, the pain starts going away. If it's an injury and you stop, it's immediately going to continue, begin increasing. That's your oh shit moment.

• 1:46:03Speaker 02

  That's, "Oh, I screwed myself up." Right, and so, you kind of 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. And 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, yes. 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?"

• 1:46:40Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:46:41Speaker 02

  Because 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.

• 1:46:50Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:47:03Speaker 02

  But they mean well. They mean well. We tend to use two terms with our athletes. We have immature athletes and mature athletes. And definition, 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, if they're really talented, they may stay ahead for a while,

• 1:47:46Speaker 02

  but eventually, you're gonna get so dinged and broken and beat up that they have to step aside. And the mature guy, the mature athlete or woman, right? They're just doing their thing, day in, day out. It's like, uh, 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."

• 1:48:17Speaker 02

  In a year, we've got a book with 365 pages. And if you picture that, that thickness of a novel, it'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, that it doesn't even matter. It's like, why did I bother? Well, it's the consistency that adds up over time. 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.

• 1:48:47Tim 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 resource and into the research is supported at this point, which is doing each day less than you feel maximally capable of is, it's a fantastic sort of positive reinforcer. And this applies, 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.

• 1:49:31Speaker 02

  Leave a little in the bank, right?

• 1:49:33Tim Ferriss?

  Leave a little in the bank. I remember there were two examples offhand as it applies to writing. A friend of mine, who's 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. You're feeling fantastic and you just blow through it 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 Hemingway, not, maybe not the great, the best life model, but was prolific writer.

• 1:50:12Speaker 02

  Still a stud, yeah.

• 1:50:14Tim Ferriss?

  And he would, 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.

• 1:50:22Speaker 02

  I love that.

• 1:50:24Tim Ferriss?

  And 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-

• 1:50:31Speaker 02

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

• 1:50:33Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:50:40Speaker 02

  And this is ballpark, seventy-five to eighty. And this is just an example to people because the body, the body will not let you run at a hundred percent. 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 seventy-five, eighty percent. It will take me another three to four years, another three to four years to get to about ninety percent. Another three to four years. And then after that, it will take me another three to four years to get to about ninety-five percent. 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

• 1:51:23Speaker 02

  because I'm not the one feeling the fatigue right now. Okay, it's much easier. It's very difficult for a world-class athlete to train themselves, right? And it doesn't do a good, 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. So, but the interesting thing is that another three to four years to get to ninety-five percent, and as soon as they ease up, the body drops back down to that seventy-five, eighty. That's where it likes. Now, to build back up won't take nearly as long as to build it in the first place. Okay, 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.

• 1:52:07Speaker 02

  So as far as adults are concerned, okay? Are they, does a thirty-five-year-old need to be able to produce at ninety percent? No, they don't. Do they need it ninety-five percent? No, they're not full-time professional athletes. They don't, they don't have time for that. Can they produce at seventy-five, eighty percent? 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 is it, will it put you being better than ninety-nine out of a hundred 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,

• 1:52:52Speaker 02

  putting some years, consistent years of training, and that puts you in the top one percent of the human population in terms of physical ability.

• 1:53:01Tim Ferriss?

  That is not a bad consolation prize. 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 easy, that's my default mode. And, you know, it's served me well. And everybody's, right? Yeah, it's served me well. But there's a, there's a point where, you know, the, the sword cuts both ways. And you sent me an email recently. I'm going to replace the name, just unless we decide to. I was gonna say, or maybe take out the profanity, just in case. Yeah, I'll take out the F-bombs. Dear you lazy bastard. No, that's not how it starts. So this, this, I just want to, because I want to talk about older students who have picked up gymnastics. And Okay.

• 1:53:46Tim Ferriss?

  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, and 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. There are different ways to practice this. But a tuck handstand is instead of having your body rimrod straight from your, your hands all the way to your

• 1:54:27Tim Ferriss?

  pointed toes at the very top, you're, 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, fair description? I agree with that. 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. Because I watched the video and I was like, okay, that's, that's, that's pretty solid. And you said, you know, he started roughly

• 1:55:10Tim Ferriss?

  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. And

• 1:55:21Speaker 02

  There are people in wheelchairs that are stronger than that.

• 1:55:23Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:55:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, just kind of pick your feet up like you were gonna 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.

• 1:55:50Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:55:53Speaker 02

  Couldn't do it. Not a chance.

• 1:55:55Tim Ferriss?

  Fast forward two years and he's a beast. Now, there were two points. There are two points here that really

• 1:56:02Tim Ferriss?

  left a mark on me. So the first was, he's very consistent. Okay, we've talked about that. But 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 with the plateau movement, right? So let's, let's take the tuck, I'm not, sorry, not the tuck, but 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 you need to develop. What would

• 1:56:45Tim Ferriss?

  a series of progressions, like four or five progressions for that look like? And does it literally mean that if, if, 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?

• 1:57:01Speaker 02

  He'd go right back to number one. Now, he might, he might go to, he might not start with the very week one programming of, you know, three by one rep. He might, he might drop back to week 11, you know, where it's where we provide the programming where it's five by five and just demonstrate mastery. Then next workout bump. But basically what, what he's doing is if he failed on that exercise, that means there was a chink in the armor somewhere. There was a hole in the preparation. There was some deficit or super, had a deficit that had been overlooked or some part of the body that had not yet super compensated.

• 1:57:46Speaker 02

  So by stepping off, so we basically we want, 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 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. So it's, it's feeling easier because the body's gotten stronger. And then where people always cut it short, where they, where they undermine themselves here is they don't go into underload. So to be super simplistic,

• 1:58:31Speaker 02

  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, what people tend to do is they want to ride that razor's edge. I did this much today, I'm going to do this much, I'm going to do more next week. That typical five pounds on the bar. Okay, well, that's, 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.

• 1:59:10Tim Ferriss?

  [laughing]

• 1:59:11Speaker 02

  Well, linear doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way. So what happens is that you hit, 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, you mentioned Rob Wolf. Rob is a good buddy. Rob's super sharp. For those of you who don't know, he's a nutrition guru. Check out his stuff.

• 1:59:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, R O B B for people.

• 1:59:35Speaker 02

  R O B B. Yeah, he's got, he's got two Bs there. Well, you know, Rob, Rob is a high intensity guy like you, Tim. And so I shared with him the year Alan won national, so national champ. Imagine you've defeated the entire country, right? There, there's one champion and you're it. Everyone, you kick their ass. Unbelievable feeling. Extreme, extremely awesome. Well, that year.

• 2:00:03Speaker 02

  I didn't change anything on Alan's conditioning the entire year. Not, 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.

• 2:00:17Tim Ferriss?

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

• 2:00:26Speaker 02

  Well, but remember, he wasn't a beginning, he wasn't a beginner at this point.

• 2:00:31Tim Ferriss?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:00:32Speaker 02

  You know, because a beginner, right, it, it wouldn't do any good if I can do a, 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 forty to forty-five minutes, at which point do your stretching get out, because the less time you're in the gym, the better. Okay, because it's, it's less wear and tear on the body. Think, think of it, you know, when, when I hear, when you mention, you know, people who love to be high intensity, okay, it's cool, but the, the analogy that comes to mind is someone who wants to be

• 2:01:13Speaker 02

  high intensity all the time, it's like having a new set of tires, and every time you come up to a stop sign, you don't gradually brake, you slam those brakes hard, you skid, do a stop. Every single stop sign. How long's that pair of tires gonna last? It's not, it's gonna wear out pretty quick, and the body, 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. So, you know, as long, as long as you show some degree of care, you rebuild yourself, but if you keep skidding to that stop every single day, right, matter of time, matter of time, it's not if, it's, it's guaranteed.

• 2:01:56Tim Ferriss?

  So let's, let's, 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.

• 2:02:22Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:02:23Tim Ferriss?

  And, you know, of course, I, I have no, 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, I'm a real fan of how you train. So I think people should check out.

• 2:02:35Speaker 02

  I appreciate that.

• 2:02:36Tim Ferriss?

  Your, your, your training programs, but what exercises should people not attempt or just remove from consideration for the first, say, six months of gymnastic strength training?

• 2:02:49Speaker 02

  Probably, ooh, such a good question. I, I would say muscle ups. I would say muscle ups. The issue becomes, there's nothing wrong with the pull, there's nothing wrong with the dip, the, 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. But 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, completely different animal.

• 2:03:32Speaker 02

  That's, you know, they're kind of have, 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. Now, some people, okay, we do see it, 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.

• 2:03:56Speaker 02

  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. And so you, you can't take that approach and have longevity. It's not gonna happen.

• 2:04:18Tim Ferriss?

  So, okay, so muscle ups go out.

• 2:04:21Speaker 02

  Muscle ups go out. Now, how, 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, right? How, 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, 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, it's that strength. When you, when you see a gymnast, right, when you see him this summer at the Olympics, right, and we're, we, just as an aside, guys, we've got, we've got some podcasts coming out, Four Gymnastic Body, sorry, Tim, competing with you here.

• 2:05:03Tim Ferriss?

  That's alright.

• 2:05:04Speaker 02

  And, and we're, we're gonna talk some training, right, with, with some of the Olympic guys. And when, when you see them, right, you are, you're gonna see this massive musculature, and it didn't come from push-ups, and it didn't come from dips. It, 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. It's gone, you wasted it.

• 2:05:30Tim Ferriss?

  Let me ask you 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, now, 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?

• 2:05:58Speaker 02

  Excellent, excellent question. So, the majority of the massive biceps they see is gonna come from the straight arm work. We use, so for example, when the guys would, at that level of training, at that level of strength, rope climbs, for example, so my guys had to do a triple on a seven meter rope. So that's with no, all rope climbs are done with no legs. Okay. And 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

• 2:06:40Speaker 02

  transportation. Until that happens, a rope is used for getting fricking strong. Right? That's the point of having a rope. So they would, 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, right? Just blows the body up. And people listening, don't just go into your garage and try a Maltese on your rings. You can, you can totally, because I don't think Maltese will hurt you. The Maltese

• 2:07:25Speaker 02

  won't hurt you, but you're 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. But now, what we found out with the guys, though, is, you know, we did over the years, the weight vests, the weights, the heavy, 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, 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, and then get to rope climbing,

• 2:08:08Speaker 02

  right? You're going to give yourself a raging case of elbow tendonitis. Yeah, your elbows are gonna just, yeah, disintegrate. Yep. So, 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, there is nothing better, because the bicep is an endurance muscle. That's its job, right? It's job isn't to how much now it can do this, but its primary function is not to how much can I do the heaviest load for one rep? Its 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.

• 2:08:52Speaker 02

  Now, the key is, is that it's got to be high volume with reasonably high load, which on the rope climbs is body weight. But we've got to build to that.

• 2:09:02Tim Ferriss?

  So two, 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, 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.

• 2:09:28Speaker 02

  Sure. I like Barry Ross's stuff.

• 2:09:29Tim 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.

• 2:09:45Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 2:09:46Tim Ferriss?

  And also, when we're talking about-

• 2:09:49Speaker 02

  And easy enough to switch that high rep kettlebell work to throw rope climb on Friday, if you're advanced enough.

• 2:09:56Tim Ferriss?

  If your elbows are bulletproof enough, which mine are not, as, as an example for folks, like I've done plenty of rowing, but my, when I have, here's the difference though. When I have a parallel grip, right? So if you all, if you're like, I can pull, 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.

• 2:10:24Speaker 02

  Maybe you're surprised. Maybe we should touch base on the difference real quick between the various grips?

• 2:10:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, please.

• 2:10:33Speaker 02

  Okay, so guys, in terms of GST specific strength, if you're doing just pull-up work, your parallel grip is by far, 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? Because 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.

• 2:11:15Speaker 02

  Now, back in the day, Greg Glassman and I, 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 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.

• 2:11:38Tim Ferriss?

  Now, Coach, I apologize for interrupting, just for people to visualize this. So let's just say you're on dips, you're in between the straps, you're do, I'm sorry, 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

• 2:11:56Speaker 02

  Top of the rep, arms are straight.

• 2:11:57Tim Ferriss?

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

• 2:12:02Speaker 02

  Turn the thumbs out slightly.

• 2:12:04Tim Ferriss?

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

• 2:12:08Speaker 02

  Or turned in, which is what most people do.

• 2:12:10Tim Ferriss?

  Or turned in, they would be at, say, 10:00 PM and 2:00 PM or something like that.

• 2:12:15Speaker 02

  Exactly. And it will vary, as long as they're out. Now, the reason is, is all strength, 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'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. It hurts for a reason.

• 2:12:39Tim Ferriss?

  And 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.

• 2:12:48Speaker 02

  It's not aesthetics. 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 a previous gymnast. Alright, there's no homegrown CrossFitter who has an iron cross. There's no homegrown CrossFitter who has a plunge 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.

• 2:13:33Speaker 02

  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. Right, do a nice parallel grip workout and then compare the soreness that you feel on the inside of the elbow from fatigue, right? Compared to regular chin-ups and regular pull-ups. It's night and day. Then we would do chins and then pull-ups.

• 2:13:57Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 2:13:58Speaker 02

  But.

• 2:13:59Tim Ferriss?

  So the, the, um,

• 2:14:03Tim Ferriss?

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

• 2:14:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, muscle-up, back lever.

• 2:14:09Tim Ferriss?

  And you would add to that list?

• 2:14:12Speaker 02

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

• 2:14:23Tim Ferriss?

  Deprioritizing?

• 2:14:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, a cautionary tale. So, it takes, it takes time to rebuild connective tissue and it's connective tissue, right? Through, through the ligaments and the joints that generate power through the body when they're doing plyometric work. So, there, 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.

• 2:14:56Speaker 02

  And they were doing that for rounds. Okay, and there's, 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 their thirties, you know, the, the typical people who are working out. And because it's a race, the box jumps turned into 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 out. I think that there were like nine ruptures that year. Oof.

• 2:15:39Speaker 02

  Which is, you know, one, okay, it happens, right? Ivankov had it, had his Achilles. He was one of the, the leading guys we were looking to from Russia. Ivan Ivankov, former world champ, who, uh, he was, 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? 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 there is connective tissue can, the tendons in that do not have their own blood supply.

• 2:16:24Speaker 02

  Okay, so they, they get fed, they heal, they strengthen through the muscles moving around them in 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. And this, this isn't mine. Room, a friend, a Bulgarian Olympic coach for the seventies and eighties is a good friend of mine, a genius, genius at programming. Roomin makes me look like a tottering idiot who should be sat in a corner and no one talked to me. What's his name? I can never pronounce Rummen's last name. You guys can look him up. Bulgarian Olympic coach for the women, 70s and 80s. Uh, Rummen. I want to say our bastardized American spelling

• 2:17:06Speaker 02

  is uh, R-U-M-I-N or M-A-N. Sadly, Rummen 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 accent's not as good as you, Tim. But accents don't bother me. So, I would, I would just pin, and he was older gentleman. I would keep this guy up late so many days in a row. He'd be, "Chris, I gotta go get some sleep." "That's okay. Just one more question. Just, just one more question, Rummen. Just one more." So, our knee series that we do came from Rummen. Uh, the one that,

• 2:17:40Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, no kidding. Yeah, that I've been doing with the skiers.

• 2:17:43Speaker 02

  That's directly from Rummen.

• 2:17:44Tim Ferriss?

  Inside squats.

• 2:17:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. He, he saw Alan when he was eight, and Alan was incredibly powerful at eight years old. Just, just unreal. And, uh, he was getting too powerful for his frame at that age, you know? About eight, we're starting to hit a, a preliminary growth spurt. And, uh, Rummen 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. Rummen showed us that. Boom. Knee issue's gone. Never, never again, nothing with knees, ever.

• 2:18:14Tim Ferriss?

  Wow. So, I have, uh, we, we could talk for hours and hours more. Uh, but I, I want to be respectful of your time, and we can always do a round two sometime if, uh, you have the, the, uh, the willingness and, uh, if the audience wants, 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, do you still have some time to chat?

• 2:18:36Speaker 02

  Uh, I, I'm, you, you've opened a can of worms. I'll talk training all night.

• 2:18:41Tim Ferriss?

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

• 2:19:09Speaker 02

  It's, it's, it's very, it's a very different, um, it kinda, so...

• 2:19:16Speaker 02

  It starts with repetition. So we talked a little bit about training. So in a nutshell, and we'll come back around and we'll fill this out. So in the preparation prior, right? Successful repetitions, right? 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, right? 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,

• 2:20:01Speaker 02

  where they'll literally do 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 tend to, we're always looking. Now, 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 in 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

• 2:20:46Speaker 02

  Olympic Champ. So in 72 Olympics, Olga Korbit was, by all accounts, going to crush everyone at the Games. She was going to crush everyone. In training, as they went back and 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 is 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

• 2:21:31Speaker 02

  was in mental preparation. So as Olga was cranking at home, she was the one who decided when to go.

• 2:21:40Speaker 02

  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, she's equipments, she's ready for, lighting, she's ready for, matting's 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, it's brutal. In fact, to give everyone a little taste, okay, the warm-up gym is not there. The warm-up gym might be 10 minutes away, or it might be a 10-minute walk, 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

• 2:22:19Speaker 02

  waits there. 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 head, 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 alright, you're up, and then walk away. Yeah. Leave them waiting. You know, let them, let them get antsy. Make them go when they're

• 2:23:01Speaker 02

  not ready. Make them do a cold set. Okay, don't, don't let, any, any and everything you can, have a crowd of people around them trying to mess with them. Any and everything. And I, and I will also say, it's, 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 gonna be disappointed with me? Are they gonna 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.

• 2:23:46Speaker 02

  And it's just because they have this other load that they place on themselves that guys don't have to deal with. And the way you handle that in training is we just have to get more reps in. You gotta 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 and 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. She did not make it. You had to be top six. She was ninth. Okay? And Carly, fantastic girl, great girl. They, their approach though, for mental training, I thought was flawed. They brought someone in and, you know, I won't say names.

• 2:24:29Speaker 02

  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. 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 gonna 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.

• 2:25:13Speaker 02

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

• 2:25:31Speaker 02

  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.

• 2:25:41Tim Ferriss?

  Well, that's, 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, let me get this right, why am I blanking on his name, I've caught whatever you, you, you were, you were dealing with earlier, not Roy Jones, very famous boxer, Floyd Mayweather, that's it. 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, I'm gonna leave, I don't want to interrupt your prep. And he goes, why would you interrupt my, interrupt my prep?

• 2:26:26Tim Ferriss?

  He goes, if I'm not ready now, nothing I do between, in the next 60 minutes is gonna make me ready.

• 2:26:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I love that attitude.

• 2:26:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, feel free to hang out, he was walking, watching basketball or something. And it also, you brought up the, 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, and I'm, I'm not, 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."

• 2:27:16Speaker 02

  Ah, perfect.

• 2:27:17Tim Ferriss?

  So making the conditions equivalent.

• 2:27:19Speaker 02

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

• 2:27:43Tim Ferriss?

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

• 2:27:55Tim Ferriss?

  Any type of

• 2:27:56Speaker 02

  Change, change, change nothing.

• 2:27:57Tim Ferriss?

  Change nothing.

• 2:27:59Speaker 02

  Change nothing. Where, where people fail. Good. So, this, this is, then this is, 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. Right? If, if you're going up against the best who's ever been born, right? You're not, you're not gonna beat them. There's not gonna be a miracle. The sky's not gonna open. God's not gonna reach down and bless you with extra athletic ability. You know, it's, it's, it's not gonna happen. So, you just, you just ignore that.

• 2:28:42Speaker 02

  You know, you go out and you just stay in your own head, do your thing. Now psychologically, people handle it differently. Some people, right? We have, we have the same, the same chemistry on Olympic teams. Some people like to be left alone. You know, let, let me go do my thing. You know, 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, they want people coming around and getting them pumped up. And 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, same in training, right? There are some people who thrive on multiple training per day, right? And they, they just blossom. They do awesome.

• 2:29:26Speaker 02

  There's other people who have to train just a few times a week. It doesn't, it doesn't matter. There's been Olympic champions who trained both ways. It just depends on what your body does best with.

• 2:29:38Tim Ferriss?

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

• 2:30:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I, 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, uh...

• 2:30:10Speaker 02

  You know, 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 love. I didn't want to go there. First thing I would do if I'm reviewing someone, because everyone, have you noticed that if we look, the bell curve is reality, right? The bell curve shows that there is 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." Every fucker you talk to is exceptional. Every single person, right? Every person is another millionaire in the making.

• 2:30:55Speaker 02

  They're another, they're going to 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 a 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, year in, year out? Was it a one-time deal? After I look at that, the very next thing I'm going to look at, I'm going to look at injury rates. You know, how healthy and successful are these athletes?

• 2:31:34Tim Ferriss?

  How would you find that data or would you just ask them point-blank?

• 2:31:37Speaker 02

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

• 2:31:49Tim Ferriss?

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

• 2:31:52Speaker 02

  In everything. I had, so 2003, 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 at a training camp and Paul's coach, Stacy Maloney, is there and we're at a technical meeting. And it's on roundoffs, it's on roundoffs of all things. And so Stacy comes and he sits down next to me. Says, "Chris, 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 want to 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

• 2:32:37Speaker 02

  visiting with other coaches that he respected 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, the point is that that's the reason that Casey, that Stacy won Worlds. That he was a coach of that caliber because 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, 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.

• 2:33:19Speaker 02

  You know, go, go and watch some workouts. How does the coach handle it? Is there a lot of tears? You know, if it's, if it's, if it's a guy and there's tears in the workout, he's got a broken leg. Right? The first, and girls, girls, you know, girls are girls. I, I live in a, I've got two daughters, a wife, even my dog is female. There's, there's tears here constantly. It's, it's just 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, I'd move down the road. But if, if they're happy, now doesn't...

• 2:33:53Speaker 02

  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, 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. So I can just kind of go in and try to, try to get a feel, you know, is, is this a place where you want, is the competition record is good? Is this an environment that I'm content with my child being in? You know, if you get a good feeling, okay.

• 2:34:25Tim Ferriss?

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

• 2:34:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, excellent.

• 2:34:38Tim Ferriss?

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

• 2:34:45Speaker 02

  Do they, do they take the time to warm up the joints? Or do they jump right into work? You know, do they actually take time to mobilize? Are they doing stall bar work? Are they doing Jefferson curl work? Are they, are they loosening up their wrists and their knees and their ankles? Are 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? A lot, you can tell a lot from how a program warms up.

• 2:35:19Tim Ferriss?

  No, that's why I was asking and I remember.

• 2:35:21Speaker 02

  Great question.

• 2:35:21Tim 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, 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, this is a, this is a great move to do. Although you had mentioned, and this doesn't surprise me at all, that's, that you've, you've seen high level powerlifters using, doing this.

• 2:35:48Speaker 02

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

• 2:35:49Tim 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, 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, if there are other elements, please let me know, coach, technical points. But basically, you're like walking your ass cheeks.

• 2:36:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, one cheek at a time.

• 2:36:13Tim Ferriss?

  Back and, back and forth.

• 2:36:15Speaker 02

  You look like a retard doing a speed walking, sitting down.

• 2:36:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, that's actually, that's a great description. That's exactly what it looks like. And you, QL relates, or I'd say refers to the.

• 2:36:28Speaker 02

  I always screw it up, yeah, quadratus lumborum.

• 2:36:31Tim 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, but.

• 2:36:47Speaker 02

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

• 2:36:51Tim Ferriss?

  Oh yeah.

• 2:36:52Speaker 02

  Just, just from loosening up from those first, yeah.

• 2:36:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:54Speaker 02

  On the bike.

• 2:36:55Tim Ferriss?

  And the, you know, I, how long should a proper gymnastics warm-up take?

• 2:37:03Speaker 02

  Ooh.

• 2:37:03Tim Ferriss?

  And, and one more, which is warming up the joints, are there any specific movements that, that hit the shoulders from any angle or, or perspective that would see, that would indicate a better warm-up for gymnastics strength training than others?

• 2:37:20Speaker 02

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

• 2:37:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:28Speaker 02

  I'll, 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, then perhaps the majority of the workout needs to be mobility work. So it, it could kind of shift, possibly as high as a half hour if I have a multi-hour training coming up. It's, it's complicated enough, and we've, we've tried this over the years. There, there are enough things to address that, that should be addressed on a semi-regular basis that you can't really get everything into a single warm-up. So you're probably going to have two or three variations.

• 2:38:13Speaker 02

  You know, if you're doing advanced work, you're probably going to have two or three variations 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. You know, different, 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. Uh, we have one senior student, really, really good. Um, Matt started training with me in his late 40s.

• 2:38:54Speaker 02

  Uh, he's now 52, beast, press handstands, planges, uh, front levers, uh, at 52, ridiculous shape. And 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, uh, the students, the adult students come in, alternate an exercise with an integrated mobility. Cause we want them 50 50. So we found if I, if I told people how important stretching was, they always blew me off. But if I required it, do a set before your next set, you have to do this stretch, then back and forth.

• 2:39:34Speaker 02

  And we just had great results. So Matt's is a crazy maniac, still, still skateboard, still water skis, does all those as GST and shoulder would get a little finicky. So he just did extra mobility and it just fixed his shoulder right up.

• 2:39:51Tim Ferriss?

  I was introduced to a, 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, I was very skeptical, skeptical of this, even as someone who's done a lot with kettlebells. I, I've never been a huge fan of the bottoms up work with kettlebells, meaning.

• 2:40:25Speaker 02

  Ah, yeah, it's got it flipped up. You're gripping it by the handle, the bell on top.

• 2:40:29Tim Ferriss?

  Exactly. But this, I, 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 if I've, I've increased that, I'd use 35s now. But a little bit of chalk goes a long way here, but you, you would, you'd 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 well that activates the smaller musculature.

• 2:40:59Speaker 02

  The shoulders are wonderful, isn't it?

• 2:41:01Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, it's great.

• 2:41:02Speaker 02

  We didn't do it with kettlebells. We'll do them with, uh, light dumbbells. So basically guys, what, what Tim's is driving is just take, take a dumbbell, push it up overhead, turn, turn the thumbs externally, rotate it just a bit, and then just do outward circles. And, uh, keep a flat back, shoulders open, no arching and, uh, do them for time, one to two minutes.

• 2:41:26Speaker 02

  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 has nothing to do with the shoulder or necessarily the bicep. But sometimes it's because the lats are so strong and tight.

• 2:41:47Tim Ferriss?

  That's an issue that I have. Absolutely.

• 2:41:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. A lot of, and because, and a lot of the lifters too. Because those, those lats are working hard. You guys are moving some serious weight and those lats are of course working. And if there's not a corresponding mobility going with it, it's real easy for those lats to kind of get chronically contracted and 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.

• 2:42:12Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, Coach, I, 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, we'll consider doing a follow up. And I definitely want to share the, sort of the results of our experiment with people also. So we'll certainly be in constant contact. But the, 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?

• 2:42:45Speaker 02

  Wow. Good question. Well, it's not Obama. It's not Obama. Piss all the people off out there.

• 2:42:56Speaker 02

  You know, someone I have admired for years and years is Tony Robbins. So he, he would be very high on my list. I tend to be very eclectic. I'm not, not trapped just in athletics. What I found in terms of business, arts.

• 2:43:18Speaker 02

  Politics, it's all the same. When people get to that level of success, they all have the same attitudes. They bring the same tools and attitudes to the table. And I've found it surprising that I can sit down, I can sit down with you, Tim, and visit. I can sit down with special operators and visit. And I can sit down with, you know, world-class ballerinas and dance and artists and that. I just did this weekend visit 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.

• 2:44:00Speaker 02

  You gotta constantly reinvent yourself. Look for a flaw, a hole in the preparation. Fix it, move forward.

• 2:44:07Tim Ferriss?

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

• 2:44:13Speaker 02

  I like that.

• 2:44:14Tim Ferriss?

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

• 2:44:16Speaker 02

  And being willing to hear the answer.

• 2:44:19Tim 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.

• 2:44:25Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 2:44:27Tim 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 want to just hear your reasons.

• 2:44:38Speaker 02

  I like, I like that. I firmly believe, especially in the US, I firmly believe that if, 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, we have so many opportunities here that, gosh, so, so much wealth of knowledge that a lot of times, so for example, when GB got started, okay, there were

• 2:45:14Speaker 02

  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? So, well, you know, I've got plans for this. 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 kind of, you have to have that vision, right? And then you, 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? Right? Because when you, you know, when you run your business, Tim, when I run my business, there's no one telling us what to do.

• 2:45:55Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 2:45:55Speaker 02

  We're the ones to monitor ourselves. This needs to be done. I'm going to 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. Now, and I, this, I know some people are going to get upset, you know, coach, you know, I'm a single mom, this is sad. I can't, I can't do everything I want to do. And I get that. I get that. I've been there. I've gone through that. And I'm not, 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. Right? That, you know, it's kind of a big giant blank check. A lot can change.

• 2:46:37Speaker 02

  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 going to twist your arms. I get an introduction someday to Tony. That's high on my list.

• 2:46:50Tim Ferriss?

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

• 2:46:57Speaker 02

  Totally awesome. So looking forward to that. But you know, way back when, you know, poor as could be, hadn't been, hadn't made national team coach yet, was just getting started in my coaching career. Everything that could go wrong, went wrong. And here here's this guy saying, you know what, just think clear, plan ahead and be willing to work. And that, that resonated with me. That resonated with me. And, you know, it's like...

• 2:47:27Speaker 02

  God, I just had this discussion with someone this morning. You know, 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 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 body that you had previously. It could be again, but it took time to build it the first time. It's going to take time to rebuild it this time. Or personally in your life, if things aren't where you want them to be, it's going to take time to build it there.

• 2:48:07Tim Ferriss?

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

• 2:48:17Speaker 02

  It's dangerous.

• 2:48:19Tim Ferriss?

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

• 2:48:30Speaker 02

  That's what I love that.

• 2:48:31Tim 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.

• 2:48:53Speaker 02

  Being subtle.

• 2:48:54Tim Ferriss?

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

• 2:49:01Speaker 02

  Ooh, I like that one now. You know, it's not so much as I'm a big fan of Robert Heinlein.

• 2:49:11Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:49:12Speaker 02

  Science fiction.

• 2:49:13Tim Ferriss?

  Stranger in a Strange Land.

• 2:49:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, just, just all of them. I come back to those over and over again. The, the theme of self reliance. You know, because 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 a, kind of embarrassing, actually. It's a little bit of a Charles Dickens theme there, you know, it's frustration, think things weren't where we wanted them to be or where I wanted them to be. And then, you know, 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.

• 2:49:52Tim Ferriss?

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

• 2:49:55Speaker 02

  You're killing me, dude.

• 2:49:58Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:49:58Speaker 02

  I'm just gonna hang out in your living room so I can meet all these people.

• 2:50:01Tim Ferriss?

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

• 2:50:10Speaker 02

  Are you kidding me?

• 2:50:12Tim Ferriss?

  And, you know, when you were talking about preparing your athletes for the stress as opposed to paint, you know, 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 this extremely popular book among professional sports teams and coaches. I mean, the Patriots, Seahawks, they've, they've all read this.

• 2:50:41Speaker 02

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

• 2:50:46Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah.

• 2:50:48Speaker 02

  Gosh, I mean, comes, comes to the States with no money in his pocket and then, 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.

• 2:51:05Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:51:06Speaker 02

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

• 2:51:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Arnold's a, he's an impressive unit. So two things that I know we're bouncing around here, but two things that also astonished me when, when I interviewed him for the podcast 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, in real estate.

• 2:51:31Speaker 02

  Yes, absolutely.

• 2:51:32Tim Ferriss?

  And that gave him the ability to only audition, not out of financial necessity, but for the roles that he wanted. So he 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 to, in exchange for backend points that were abnormally large for the film, for the film industry at that point. Yeah. Fascinating guy.

• 2:52:01Speaker 02

  Love that.

• 2:52:03Tim Ferriss?

  Let's see, what, uh, do you have any particular morning rituals? What is the first six to nine?

• 2:52:10Speaker 02

  The morning rituals I'm supposed to do?

• 2:52:13Tim Ferriss?

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

• 2:52:16Speaker 02

  I, 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. So I'll tend to get up, you know, pretty early before everybody else in the household is up. And I'll get.

• 2:52:38Tim Ferriss?

  When do you get up?

• 2:52:40Speaker 02

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

• 2:53:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you've already, you've already won. I remember somebody said to me, if you win the, 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. Uh, do you drink coffee? Do you eat breakfast? Do you drink coffee?

• 2:53:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, that's, 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. And so it's, it's not, it's not me being virtuous. It's just me, me despising the taste. So my, my wife, 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. And, but for me, no, no way. Uh, what was the second question, Tim?

• 2:53:53Tim Ferriss?

  Breakfast. Do you drink breakfast or drink breakfast? Do you eat breakfast?

• 2:53:57Speaker 02

  You know, I, I found as I got older that, uh, I, I do best if I don't do breakfast. I do best as, uh, I used to be heavy, heavy protein. And then, uh, 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 that, uh, not doing breakfast, uh, reasonable lunch. My, 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 fat at lunch. Weight, do the same at dinner. You know, and I'm, I'm done, I'm good.

• 2:54:39Speaker 02

  I'm, I was amazed how much I was overeating just from habit.

• 2:54:44Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Eating by the clock. I mean, I've noticed the same thing for myself. And I mean, it's 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.

• 2:54:58Speaker 02

  You're kidding, really? Not that I was alone in the

• 2:55:00Tim 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 Stan, the general Stan or 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, who would say that, 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

• 2:55:41Tim Ferriss?

  over time. 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

• 2:56:04Speaker 02

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

• 2:56:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 2:56:12Speaker 02

  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, then I'm good for a while. I'm just very modest.

• 2:56:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. So this like bolus of protein for like older women, I think this, I saw one particular study, it could have been an observational, and now 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?

• 2:56:46Speaker 02

  What's on, just what's on top of my mind right now?

• 2:56:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:56:50Speaker 02

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

• 2:56:57Tim Ferriss?

  Probiotic.

• 2:56:59Speaker 02

  Probiotic. We went, uh, I don't know if it was a history of, uh, I had to cut them out, you know, too much margaritas. Uh, you know, and 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, through a good buddy, I had a laboratory grade. Uh, these particular ones were from Claire Labs. You kind of need a prescription for them, but they're a laboratory grade probiotic.

• 2:57:40Tim Ferriss?

  You spell Claire?

• 2:57:41Speaker 02

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

• 2:57:45Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 2:57:46Speaker 02

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

• 2:58:30Speaker 02

  difference. I, I bet simply because of that, I dropped eight pounds.

• 2:58:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I bet. I mean, uh, I am 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. Uh, so providing the food that creates the environment in which

• 2:58:53Tim Ferriss?

  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, they provide the perfect vehicle for a prebiotic environment that can foster the development of and growth of these various bacteria in the gut. 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.

• 2:59:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was, it was shocking. Prior to that, I would have said number one supplement was like emulsified vitamin D drops.

• 2:59:44Tim Ferriss?

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

• 2:59:49Speaker 02

  It depended. Yeah, just, just a little background there. So I was at our winter nationals seven years ago and 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 and my assistant coach is trying to run my athletes. He's doing his best, but it's not going real well. I'm, I'm hanging under, 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 and coached, you know, it's, it's always in the middle of the winter.

• 3:00:34Speaker 02

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

• 3:01:05Tim Ferriss?

  What, do you have a particular brand that you use for that?

• 3:01:07Speaker 02

  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?

• 3:01:16Tim Ferriss?

  Mm hmm. Got it.

• 3:01:18Speaker 02

  And so I can't, 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, 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 at all. My daughters, when they were young disagreed. They said, oh, what's worse than, well, it's, 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.

• 3:01:58Tim Ferriss?

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

• 3:02:03Speaker 02

  Ah, gosh, it seems like, and I'm tied to the 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. And anything else is guessing.

• 3:02:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you need to get blood work, period. I mean, if you get your, 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, 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, what ask or request would you have for my audience, for the people listening?

• 3:02:49Speaker 02

  I'm not understanding the question.

• 3:02:50Tim Ferriss?

  So the question, they're actually kind of two separate things. So one is outside of gymnastics, gymnastic bodies and the work that you're up to and pointing people to that. Do you have any ask or request for the people listening? I mean, there are going to be hundreds of thousands at the very least in the first week, maybe millions of people listening to this. What would you like them to think on, do, or consider?

• 3:03:12Speaker 02

  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? 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? So 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, it's fine with me, guys, but we've, we've got to get those bodies moving.

• 3:03:56Speaker 02

  We've got to get natural range of motion back again. That, 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.

• 3:04:14Tim Ferriss?

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

• 3:04:27Speaker 02

  Uh, first thing, go to gymnasticbodies.com. Uh, now we are, we are putting, uh, we have a special landing page for your, for your listeners, Tim, with a nice discount for them. But we, we have a nice introductory program. Uh, that's just gymnasticbodies, G Y M N A S T I C B O D I E S dot com slash Tim. And we got, we got a nice discount there for you for a nice intro program. Uh, it's about a 24 day program. Uh, gentle 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.

• 3:05:08Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's, it's been a tremendous learning experience for me so far and it's, 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, you know, 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. And just admire what someone has done from scratch, like Matt, who you mentioned, who started in his late 40s.

• 3:05:51Speaker 02

  Awesome.

• 3:05:52Tim Ferriss?

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

• 3:06:06Speaker 02

  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. So, 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.

• 3:06:36Tim 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 was 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.

• 3:07:07Speaker 02

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

• 3:07:10Tim Ferriss?

  It was, it might have been, I think you said you sent me of one of Van Gelder on rings, then you sent me one of this guy on parallel bars going from

• 3:07:19Speaker 02

  That was Van Gelder again.

• 3:07:20Tim Ferriss?

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

• 3:07:27Speaker 02

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

• 3:07:32Tim Ferriss?

  Oh my god. How do you, how do you, uh, spell Van Gelder?

• 3:07:35Speaker 02

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

• 3:07:47Tim Ferriss?

  Just a monster. Oh my god.

• 3:07:48Speaker 02

  Oh, such, so, just crazy strong.

• 3:07:52Tim Ferriss?

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

• 3:07:56Speaker 02

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

• 3:08:01Tim Ferriss?

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

• 3:08:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, we did talk a lot. It was good.

• 3:08:16Tim Ferriss?

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

• 3:08:53Tim Ferriss?

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

• 3:09:36Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Exo Protein. It's one of the startups that I work with. I love what they do. These guys are making protein bars using cricket protein powder. And before you screw your face up and look disgusted, I bet they taste better than any protein bar you've ever had before. I devour these bars after lifting sessions. I take them with me on the road. The recipes were developed by a three Michelin starred chef, former head of R and D at The

• 3:10:20Tim Ferriss?

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• 3:11:02Tim Ferriss?

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• 3:11:27Tim Ferriss?

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• 3:12:11Tim Ferriss?

  it for 10 minutes a day for 10 days. That's all you need to do. You could also check out the founder, Andy Puddicombe's TED Talk, which has more than 5.5 million views. His last name is P U D D I C O M B E, if you want to look that up. But otherwise, download the free Headspace app, I have it on my phone, and begin their Take 10 program. For 10 days of guided meditation, completely free, 10 minutes a day, that's all it takes, you should give it a shot. Headspace.com/Tim. Just go to Headspace.com/Tim. And until next time, thank you for listening.