#865: The Most Incredible Transformation I’ve Ever Seen — Jerzy Gregorek on Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Coaching, and the Power of Micro-Progressions

Jerzy Gregorek (@TheHappyBody https://x.com/TheHappyBody) is a 4x World Weightlifting Champion, co-founder of UCLA’s weightlifting team, and co-creator, with his wife Aniela, of the Happy Body https://thehappybody.com/ program. You can watch the documentary Prisoner No More, directed by Jeff Wolfe and produced by WolfePrideProductions.com http://WolfePrideProductions.com, for free here: tim.blog/hardchoices http://tim.blog/hardchoices. To fill out the form on Cerebral Palsy Research Project, visit tim.blog/cp http://tim.blog/cp. This episode is brought to you by: Matic https://maticrobots.com/Tim the intelligent robot vacuum and mop that navigates obstacles and needs no babysitting: MaticRobots.com/Tim https://maticrobots.com/TimOur Place’s Titanium Always Pan® Pro https://fromourplace.com/tim using nonstick technology that’s coating-free and made without PFAS, otherwise known as “forever chemicals”: FromOurPlace.com/Tim https://fromourplace.com/timTimestamps [00:00:00] Start.[00:01:29] The transformation I’ve been chasing for a decade.[00:02:39] When an unstoppable coach meets an immovable cerebral palsy diagnosis.[00:04:35] Three pounds to 170: the bench press that woke a brain up.[00:07:17] Navigating autism and building the basics of communication that sustain higher education.[00:10:41] Treadmills exhaust, athletes progress: why physical therapy stalled where coaching took off.[00:19:00] Lethargy, sleeping in the car, and the quiet power of resting energy.[00:20:22] The 16-inch box that opened the bathroom door — and everything after.[00:24:26] Micro-progressions, certificates, ceremonies, and writing history onto a blank brain.[00:29:16] Parental dedication and appreciation.[00:31:54] The adulthood gambit: quit piano, quit training — if you can stick an 18-inch jump.[00:35:14] License plates as the gateway drug from counting to math five hours a day.[00:40:04] Jerzy’s coaching style doesn’t court approval.[00:42:42] Genghis Khan vs. Admiral Yi Sun-Sin vs. Jerzy vs. Tae Jin.[00:46:35] In search of the science behind such transformations: 25 patients, five years, and a method built to be replicated (interested researchers, visit tim.blog/cp https://tim.blog/cp).[01:05:39] Hard choices, easy life — and the call to find your starting point.* For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show https://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show https://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsors https://tim.blog/podcast-sponsors Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts https://tim.blog/transcripts. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books https://tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss https://twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss https://instagram.com/timferriss/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferriss http://linkedin.com/in/timferriss See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. And I'm going to keep my intro very, very short. There are a few things you're going to want to pay attention to. This blew my mind. I think it will also blow your mind. Two things. tim.blog/hardchoices. That is the video mini-documentary of Prison No More. This is about the transformation that you're about to learn about. You gotta watch it. It's very short and it almost defies, or seems to defy, explanation, but there is a method to it. tim.blog/hardchoices. That's link number one. The second is, if you're interested in supporting or being a part of the cerebral palsy research,

• 0:45Tim Ferriss?

  go to tim.blog/cp and fill out the Google form. So, two more times, the mini-doc, tim.blog/hardchoices. Definitely check it out. And after the episode, if you're interested in the cerebral palsy research, supporting it, being a part of it in any way, tim.blog/cp. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question?

• 1:12Jerzy Gregorek?

  No, it would seem inappropriate to ask.

• 1:15Speaker 02

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

• 1:28Tim Ferriss?

  Jersey, nice to see you, as always.

• 1:30Jerzy Gregorek?

  Pleasure.

• 1:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I always love spending time with you. And I have wanted to have this conversation for, doing the math, more than 10 years, because you told me of this transformation that we're going to be discussing in detail a long time ago. And...

• 1:51Tim Ferriss?

  It blew my mind to the extent that you may not remember this. I wanted to try to figure out a way to hire a long form journalist to write I remember that. An entire long form magazine piece on this. And it turned out that a much better format is film. And certainly in this conversation, we'll talk about it, but not to bury the lead. For people who don't have any context, Jersey and I have known each other quite a long time. And Jersey's appeared on the podcast before alongside Naval Ravikant, who also has worked with Jersey. And Jersey's a four time world weightlifting champion, co-founder of UCLA's weightlifting team, co-creator with his wife, Aniela, the lovely Aniela of the Happy Body Program. There's a lot more to his story.

• 2:36Tim Ferriss?

  We get into it in depth in the first conversation. This time around, we're going to talk about a very, very specific transformation that people might not associate with weightlifting when they envision lifting weights in the gym. And that is just how far reaching coaching transformation can be. And I'm going to read a definition first of cerebral palsy, CP. This is from the AI answer on Google, but you'll see some version of this in most places. So cerebral palsy is a group of permanent disorders affecting movement, posture, and muscle tone caused by abnormal brain development or damage to the developing brain, usually before birth, sometimes it's during birth.

• 3:21Tim Ferriss?

  It is the most common motor disability in children resulting in non progressive limitations. I'm just highlighting a few words here. Permanent, non progressive limitations, meaning the brain injury does not change over time on muscle coordination and balance. Now, I'm going to compare that with a lead into the doc, which I'm making available for free on YouTube, which is called Prisoner No More. We'll have more to say about that. It is quite short, easy to watch, about 30 minutes to my memory. And

• 3:57Tim Ferriss?

  Here's the description. What happens when a doctor's prognosis becomes a life sentence and one person refuses to serve it? Prisoner No More follows Ta Jin Park, and I recognize that is not probably the perfect pronunciation for Korean, but Ta Jin Park, a young man diagnosed with cerebral palsy, who dismantled every physical limitation medical science predicted for him. Through elite athletic training under Olympic strength coach Jersey Gregorek, and an uncompromising commitment to identity transformation, Ta Jin's story redefines what the human body and mind are capable of. And that's directed by Jeff Wolfe, and we will come back to that as well. But let's hop into an actual conversation here and begin with Jersey.

• 4:42Tim Ferriss?

  If you wouldn't mind, just some before and afters. And then we'll go into the entire chronology of it and everything else. But maybe we could just touch on a few, like bench press, what he could do before, Ta Jin, and what he could do after. Math, language, where would you like to start?

• 5:02Jerzy Gregorek?

  Well, let's start from bench press, I guess.

• 5:04Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 5:06Jerzy Gregorek?

  So the first day, I loaded the bar 15 pounds, and he couldn't lift. He couldn't take it off the rack.

• 5:13Tim Ferriss?

  Right, he couldn't unrack it.

• 5:14Jerzy Gregorek?

  Just only 15 pounds. So I have this wooden bar, Olympic wooden bar, that I used to coach children. Four-year-olds, five. I remember my daughter was doing snatches when she was three years old. It's three pounds. But I put the three pounds on, and he lifted three pounds. So I thought, okay, could lift three. So let's see if he can lift eight. So I added five pounds, and he did. It surprised me. The difference.

• 5:55Jerzy Gregorek?

  And then I loaded another five one, it was 13, and he did. Came back to 15 pounds. He barely lifted, but he did. So that gave me the insight right away that he is going to progress fast. So I asked for his father to come to the gym. And I told him, you have to be here and you have to watch every session with him. Because something is going to happen here. I already get that feelings that something good is going to happen.

• 6:34Tim Ferriss?

  So I don't want to spoil the story. We're going to get into micro progressions and certainly the importance of the bench press, which you identified really early on. What did he get to as his sort of maximum working weight in the bench press?

• 6:47Jerzy Gregorek?

  He got to 170.

• 6:49Tim Ferriss?

  What body weight?

• 6:51Jerzy Gregorek?

  I think around 140. So he passed his body weight. He became stronger than his father and his father couldn't believe it. As the father was watching it for years. And he said, at one point, he said, I'm really getting what the micro progression is. It's amazing thing. So it was really something.

• 7:17Tim Ferriss?

  So another layer to this story that makes it all the more amazing and inspirational and mind boggling is that Tajin also is autistic, if I'm correct, right?

• 7:29Jerzy Gregorek?

  Right.

• 7:30Tim Ferriss?

  So while you're helping him to build confidence and competence physically, you're also working on a lot of other things. And I'm sure we'll get into many of them. But could you just tell us a bit more about his conversational ability before and after?

• 7:47Jerzy Gregorek?

  What the father told me that he was conversation only with Tajin was time to go to bed or time to eat. And there were some probably more because he could count to one to 10.

• 8:04Jerzy Gregorek?

  But he wouldn't know what is three minus two. So the math, what I noticed that he needs to work on the math because I asked him to do five squats and he did six or four, sometimes five. I said to Chen, I wanted five. And so that was five and it was six, right? So he was missing. And that gave me the idea that he needs to work on his math. So I started asking him simple questions. What is three plus two? Three plus five? And up to 10, he was okay.

• 8:44Jerzy Gregorek?

  But after 10, didn't know what is the five plus seven. The subtraction, didn't know at all. So that was the beginning of the math. When he came to English and any conversation, he couldn't have any conversation. So the father, after about probably a year, he said, we had the first conversation.

• 9:14Tim Ferriss?

  After a year of training?

• 9:16Jerzy Gregorek?

  Yes, we actually talk about something. I thought that was amazing, yeah.

• 9:22Tim Ferriss?

  How long did you train with Tijin?

• 9:26Jerzy Gregorek?

  Almost five years.

• 9:27Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so at the end of five years with math, where was he at the end of five years?

• 9:35Jerzy Gregorek?

  Well, he is in community college. He passed 57 units. So he is waiting for another three units to finish 60 and go to San Jose State. So you can, you can imagine what his math is and English. He writes essays and it's just...

• 9:55Tim Ferriss?

  It's just, let that sink in, people. It is so wild and you'll see this in the video. So to not just converse about concrete objects, the mug in front of us or...

• 10:08Tim Ferriss?

  Something to the left of us, the dog on the floor, but you had him memorize poetry so you could discuss things like emotional tone, metaphor, getting into much more complicated terrain. And honestly, the more I learn about this and the more I revisit it, because this is not the first time we've talked about this. And I just rewatched the documentary earlier today, which I did the voiceover for, and I got really emotional watching it, to be honest. So I want to talk about the how to, because there's so many, so many pieces to this.

• 10:47Tim Ferriss?

  Maybe what we should talk about is why previous approaches hadn't worked, right? How are people with cerebral palsy generally treated by society? Why do they have these deficiencies? The lazy explanation is, well, they have this brain damage or abnormal brain development, and that's that. It's a sentence. And then Tajin had worked with physical therapists before meeting you. It's like, why didn't he make progress? I mean, those are two different questions, but I'll let you start with maybe how you view the environment and society as implicated in the development for people with cerebral palsy. And this applies to many other places, by the way.

• 11:31Tim Ferriss?

  It's not limited to cerebral palsy. But for instance, we were talking about the community college and Tajin, when he decided to go back to school, which didn't start with college, of course. And there were a lot of pressures to put him into a special program. And you were like, no, no special program. Like, he has to be around normal kids. So I'm leading into it a little bit, but would you like to say a bit more about that?

• 11:53Jerzy Gregorek?

  Well, you know, I come from Olympic weightlifting, as you know, so athletics, focused always on progress and reaching records, breaking records. And that's what athletes are about. But when you think about physical therapists, chiropractors, doctors, we call them really in weightlifting, recoverers. So helping us to recover acupuncture, massage, and all of this is when we do the training, we need recovery. So the recovery is that system that helps us to recover the body for the next day

• 12:36Jerzy Gregorek?

  and do the next day something a little bit more than before. And that create the progress. When physical therapies approach, let's say, somebody that is after surgery or has problems, the mission is to return the person to where the person was before. And the same with doctors, make them healthy again. But with Tajan, that's not the case. Because, or cerebral palsy people, because they are already dead and they cannot return anywhere. So they have to progress the same way as athletes. Forward more.

• 13:21Jerzy Gregorek?

  You know, either stronger, faster, what is five plus seven, or write a line, memorize the poem. And, you know, belief system that you talked before a little bit then, triggers here too. Because he hated the son, the son. And he hated police and he hated mother, he hated father. And that came out during our process of coaching. So that I had to address to. So the philosophy was also the part of it. It was poetry, philosophy, Rossmaff, and it was English. But coming back to what you said

• 14:06Jerzy Gregorek?

  about the whole community that works with cerebral palsy, I think that they, the focus is not athletic focus. The focus is to comfort them. So not really improve them. Not to improve them so they are improving. Just to comfort them so they have the safety life and they're okay, I guess. That's probably the difference here.

• 14:38Tim Ferriss?

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• 15:22Tim Ferriss?

  It vacuums, mops, docks itself, and doesn't strangle itself on charging cables or get wedged under your couch." It's pretty amazing, and people with kids and dogs have been telling me all about it. I put out a note on social asking how people liked it, if they liked it, and the response was kind of mind-blowing, not only because the comments were overwhelmingly, exuberantly positive, but my phone blew up. I got texts from nearly a dozen friends telling me how much they love their Matic. So that was a first. So to quote another media outlet, The Verge writes, "This Wally-like bot fixes the stuff every other robot vacuum gets wrong." And there are tons of people involved with this who I respect a lot. We've got Silicon Valley legend Naval Ravikant and Shopify CEO Toby Lutke. They love theirs.

• 16:06Tim Ferriss?

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• 16:30Tim Ferriss?

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• 17:15Tim Ferriss?

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• 17:47Tim Ferriss?

  And just to reiterate something for people who are listening, right? We're talking about, in some respects, two things that will get intermingled as we talk, which does not mean that we're equating them. But you have, on one hand, sort of the mood affect and some of the communication challenges and other components of autism spectrum disorder. Then you have the motor challenges and much more, of course, related to cerebral palsy. We're talking about both. And let's revisit the prior physical therapist, right? Because I believe, based on some of the notes that you sent to me... That his approach was to put Tajin on a treadmill. Is that right?

• 18:31Tim Ferriss?

  Where you just, there was, in other words, it was

• 18:33Jerzy Gregorek?

  And he hated.

• 18:34Tim Ferriss?

  He threw him into a plan, but it wasn't a progression. I don't know if that's fair to say. I mean, maybe, maybe there was some minimal progression to it.

• 18:43Jerzy Gregorek?

  Yeah, maybe some progression of a treadmill. But treadmill after a while, it's exhaustion, tiredness, and the brain actually becomes depleted. Instead of getting the power, getting the strength, getting more energy. We're talking about resting energy. And when that resting energy can be improved, that resting energy can keep the person awake. He was very lethargic at the beginning.

• 19:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, he would sleep in the car. He would sleep whenever he had opportunities.

• 19:16Jerzy Gregorek?

  Never, never was awakened in the car. When he was in the room, he would usually sleep because he was not engaged with people. So he was sleeping.

• 19:28Tim Ferriss?

  And so the bench press seems like it was one of the kind of key components to increasing resting energy.

• 19:36Jerzy Gregorek?

  Yes, bench press, a squats, back squat. Back squat and then eventually the back squat was a big challenge because he couldn't sit down. He was very stiff. Because he was stiff, he would fall on daily basis. He was bruised all over the body. And he walked awkwardly. Usually father held his hand and when they were walking and he was just walking very to the left, to the back awkwardly. That created a challenge. The challenge for the squatting was that he was not able to squat down. He was able to bend.

• 20:22Tim Ferriss?

  Right, which is why his parents also took him to the bathroom.

• 20:24Jerzy Gregorek?

  So he was looking, yeah, he was looking for the box or the chair. You remember the box that I use. So he was not able to sit on a 20-inch box because he was bending forward and looking for the box. So that was about, I guess, at the beginning, about twenty inch, twenty, three inches. When it came to sixteen inches, I noticed that he is nicely squatting down and also was able to turn. At the beginning, he was not able to turn. So when I noticed that, I told the dad, he's ready to go to the restroom on his own and ready for the other things in the restroom.

• 21:08Jerzy Gregorek?

  And that was the beginning of the first really independence for Tajan. He was able to dress himself. The other thing was to tie the shoelaces. So at certain point, I saw that he has this shoes and his shoelaces were untied. And the father ran to tie his shoes. I said, no, no, no, he can do that. And he's okay. So father sat, we were outside of, near our lounges in our house. And so he bent and he tried to tie. And the father was looking piercing, you know.

• 21:51Jerzy Gregorek?

  I said, relax, like, he's going to be care. And I created this atmosphere facilitated for Tajan so he could relax and he could actually make it happen. It was about twenty minutes before he actually made it, but it was a torture for the father. I started really seeing how the parents are with him. That I had to teach the father, the father and the mother to be patient, to wait until he does something, not to do for him. So that was also element that was needed to be fixed.

• 22:28Tim Ferriss?

  It's also, you know, looking at it with a very, through a very sympathetic lens, I can understand how all three of them have been struggling and working hard to do the best they can over.

• 22:45Tim Ferriss?

  How old was Tijin when you, when you met him?

• 22:48Jerzy Gregorek?

  Twenty-five.

• 22:48Tim Ferriss?

  Twenty-five.

• 22:49Jerzy Gregorek?

  They were intense.

• 22:50Tim Ferriss?

  So twenty-five years, right, of conditioning and habits? So it takes time for everybody involved to change those habits.

• 22:58Jerzy Gregorek?

  They were ticking bomb. They were so intense with him and he was so, I would say, so fast to respond. And his also walk was that way. He tried to walk fast because he believed then walking fast, he will be normal. But I slowed down everything. I taught him how to walk and it was a torture for him, but you know, said heel and toe and heel. After about two, three years, he started walking normally, heel and toe. And I know I have videos, I sent you videos of it.

• 23:41Jerzy Gregorek?

  It was just amazing to watch that Jan to walk with soft arms because his arms were really up

• 23:49Tim Ferriss?

  Contracted.

• 23:50Jerzy Gregorek?

  And really contracted, yeah.

• 23:51Tim Ferriss?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:52Jerzy Gregorek?

  And control, extremely control. And then everything started being more soft and relaxed. And, and he started walking like, you know, like a normal person, what the father wanted. Came to my, one of my birthdays and it was just amazing to see him after about four years. People were just, you know, puzzled and I was, you know, I was just like, is it the same person really? What happened to Tijin? It was just like amazing.

• 24:25Tim Ferriss?

  So I'd love to highlight a few of the ingredients that were critical for the recipe that led to that. Because a friend of mine, I'll name him because it's funny, he'll get a good laugh out of it. I remember I introduced my friend Mike to you and Mike has very, is a multitude of issues with his hips. He has one titanium hip. And I remember I introduced the two of you, he came over and you guys trained, you laid out a program for him. And he was unable to squat properly to a certain depth. So you meet people where they are, right? Everybody can improve, but it's about knowing the starting point. You're famous for saying this. And so you gave him a certain depth. And I remember

• 25:07Tim Ferriss?

  he did that for maybe a week. And then he was feeling good. So we decided to do it in a five inches deeper or something like that. And he came back and met with you and your response was you are wasting both of our time because the micro progressions are a key component to progressing without injury. And also, I know that you feel like the no pain, no gain approach to training is a myth, right? Or that belief undergirding training. So I want to mention just a few other things. And they're, of course, all in line with your most famous mantra of hard choices, easy life, easy choices, hard life. Hard

• 25:48Tim Ferriss?

  doesn't necessarily mean painful, right? But it does mean hard or difficult. But I want to mention a few of them here because it's so comprehensive. We'll come back to this, but a car spotting, right? So Tajin was so lethargic, as we already noted, that he was typically sleeping. But after six months or so, you asked his father if he noticed anything new. And he remarked that Tajin had noticed a car on the way over. So you started to give him assignments to remember the cars that he spotted, the color, the make, whether the driver was male or female. And you got an inkling of his potential for math, because he started memorizing the license plates, which is just incredible.

• 26:31Tim Ferriss?

  Then negativity, right? This sort of negative affect, you already mentioned him hating the sun, hating the police, hating this, that, or the other thing, at certain points, hating the workout, which maybe we'll come back to because the I thought it was very clever how you responded to that with, well, once you're an adult, you can decide if you want to quit the training and you had.

• 26:54Jerzy Gregorek?

  And that was a trick.

• 26:55Tim Ferriss?

  And you, yeah, it was a trick.

• 26:56Jerzy Gregorek?

  It worked.

• 26:57Tim Ferriss?

  And you had hurdles for hitting that. You also gave him assignments, though, to come back to the negativity, having dialogues and asking him questions to see the world more objectively. So assignments to have him write in English and explain why the sun and the police might be important for our existence. The use of celebrations, so I might ask you about this. But having certain milestones for him where you would give him a certificate. And then I think it was later on, going to restaurants with his family and giving it to him in front of him. But also because his life, I suppose, seemed so perhaps to him uneventful up to that point, like nothing was happening. Maybe you could speak a little bit to that and then I'll jump into some of these others.

• 27:40Jerzy Gregorek?

  Well, you know, his brain was virgin. So nothing was there. So he didn't have history. So he couldn't really talk about whatever he was doing. He was not doing anything. So I

• 27:57Tim Ferriss?

  Right, there's no content.

• 27:58Jerzy Gregorek?

  I wanted to create, you know, history in his mind. Create something, memory about something. One of the things was to give him certificates for the breaking records. So whenever he broke the record, then we printed diploma. And I asked father to set up a dinner celebration. And every time the record was broken in the squat or bench press, we went for a dinner. During this dinner, we gave him diploma and some other people came. And it was this celebration. And the gen was started liking this, was like a star.

• 28:42Jerzy Gregorek?

  And after about a year, I saw him, he started talking about this celebration. He talked about muff, he talked about poems. And so all of it started becoming his memory, his history. And it was very important. And he also started liking breaking records. He got crazy on jumping up the box. But that came because, you know, he wanted to be an adult, so.

• 29:15Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so we're gonna, we're gonna get to the

• 29:17Jerzy Gregorek?

  Right.

• 29:18Tim Ferriss?

  The adulthood that might come up immediately. I also just want to give credit where credit is due to the parents. And I don't know to what extent it's both parents or the father, but driving twice a week. How long was the commute each way?

• 29:33Jerzy Gregorek?

  So they were coming twice a week, about one hour and a half driving one way. So they had to have at least four hours to come. Father was devoted, very kind, devoted, and stoic. You know, he was there all the time. And you couldn't really see any irritation in him at all. Loved his son, that was very clear. So he was coming every time. When he couldn't come, his mother brought him in. But it was for them four hours drive.

• 30:17Jerzy Gregorek?

  And I discussed that with Tijen. And I told Tijen how devoted was his father. Eventually, when we started having conversation, philosophical conversation, appreciative conversation, I tried to pass on him the appreciation of his father, enlarge the imagination about his father. If the father was not committed to that for five years, to bring his son twice a week, and every time spend four hours, and the money,

• 30:58Jerzy Gregorek?

  then I told Tijen, "You wouldn't be who you are today. He helped you to become what you are." Tijen, you know, was interesting. He was just sometimes look, and you could see that he was thinking about something. Sometimes he liked the most joy that I saw in him.

• 33:38Jerzy Gregorek?

  Wow, it's the same energy like in me when I wanted to go to Olympics. Like I would run to the forest in a 2:00 AM, whatever was needed to do, I would do. And I would do with lots of energy and this is commitment. And so he was committed, wanted to jump. But I knew that six inches, it will take two years. Because my progression is there, he was not going to do it easily. But, you know, we were on and we were on and on. And then he came to, I think about like 17 something inches. He was so excited.

• 34:20Jerzy Gregorek?

  But then we ended up with some problems and he had to heal his back because it's not so simple to just jump on 18. It's such a, it was a huge challenge for me.

• 34:33Tim Ferriss?

  When people watch the documentary and I would have mentioned this in the introduction, but I made a short link, doesn't sound short, but easy to remember link that'll point you straight to it on YouTube. If you just go to tim.blog/hardchoices. If you go to tim.blog/hardchoices, it'll take you straight to the doc. But when you watch the doc and you look at Tijin's before, what is motion, motor control, walking looked like before? And imagine him jumping onto a 17 inch box. It is unimaginable when you look at the starting point. Really just incredible.

• 35:14Tim Ferriss?

  Now, I want to hear you explain another development that I think is just so compelling and that is related to math. So he starts memorizing license plate numbers. You're also working with him on repetitions and building up some of that arithmetic muscle. How did he go from that to doing math five to six hours a day? And having that fire lit with him?

• 35:44Jerzy Gregorek?

  Well, it was progressive.

• 35:46Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it was progressive, but that's why I'm asking, how did he get there?

• 35:49Jerzy Gregorek?

  So first I started really working on the counting. So he had to count from until 20 or 30.

• 35:59Tim Ferriss?

  I just want to pause to just let people have that sink in for a second. Math, five to six hours a day, which again, we're going to talk about the journey.

• 36:07Jerzy Gregorek?

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:07Tim Ferriss?

  Like, most people on 20 cups of coffee a day could not do five to six hours of math a day.

• 36:13Jerzy Gregorek?

  I asked him about the counting. First was the counting, that he couldn't count to 20. So I said, okay, let's count to 15. Can you count to 15? So we counted to 15. When he got to 15, I said, you go home and you start learning to count to 20. So he came back and I tested him. Did you count to 20? Yeah, so, okay, count. So he counted. So then I add the addition. How much is 5 plus 7? He wouldn't know. So homework, going homework. You learn how much is 5 by 6, 7, 8, 9, all the calculation up to 20 for the adding.

• 36:58Jerzy Gregorek?

  Then subtraction, division, multiplication, all of it until, you know, the number 10 or 20. Then counting to 30, 40, 50, 100. And when we got there, I told that he needs a tutor. We need a tutor, math tutor, and English tutor. He needs both. So they hired people to help. So I was testing, of course, but he had his tutors. So I think that it was an amazing addition to work on his brain.

• 37:41Jerzy Gregorek?

  And I noticed the same story with other civil policy people that have difficulties with math. Some of them that I saw that I had good English, but math looks like difficulties. So eventually, when he progressed with energy, with bench press, came to the certain point within a year that he could press about 100 pounds.

• 38:12Jerzy Gregorek?

  And that gave him enough energy that he could go to his computer and spend hours on the computer to study his elementary school. He started actually elementary school. And you know, because he was not in elementary school, so he was 25 years old when he said, so he joined this program, elementary school program. And he started, you know, working through it on his own. And after two years, he passed the whole elementary school.

• 38:54Jerzy Gregorek?

  Then he started high school and other two years and he passed. Normal high school, I know, like a normal, the same program as other people do. And father said, Tashen is like on fire. He's like, it's 2:00 AM and he's still on his computer. And he started like 8:00 PM and at 2:00 AM, he's on his computer and he doesn't want to stop. Or something in him awakened and powerful. And at the same time, he started noticing that who he was as a person, that actually

• 39:38Jerzy Gregorek?

  he was a person and he was cerebral palsy. And that generated a lot of negativity in him, a lot of resentment to his father and mother. And then he started really talking that he hates his mother and then he hated everything.

• 40:00Tim Ferriss?

  That was before.

• 40:01Jerzy Gregorek?

  Yeah.

• 40:02Tim Ferriss?

  Before, yeah. What did you notice in, and just to flash forward, right? I mean, he's, his father's reported that he's living in independent existence, taking care of his own needs, planning his own days, orders Uber, rides to get to his classes, manages his own paperwork. So that's the after. What did you notice in terms of, how did you cultivate this? If you did, I don't know if you did this deliberately or if it was a byproduct of everything else, but emotional range or facial expressions, did any of those, did any of that change over the course of the training?

• 40:37Jerzy Gregorek?

  Emotionally, he was.

• 40:40Jerzy Gregorek?

  Blank the same for a long time.

• 40:44Tim Ferriss?

  You mean in whatever circumstances?

• 40:45Jerzy Gregorek?

  Yeah, but at certain point he started being negative and expressing his negativity. And then he made these moves and couldn't see where he was. I was looking for where he was. But I addressed negativity as something that needed to be fixed. So whenever he said that he hated something, I challenge it. Challenge it in a way, why is it good? Right? Well, he was negative, but and then why police is good? Why the son is good? Why the father is good? Why the mother is good?

• 41:27Jerzy Gregorek?

  So expanding and expanding imagination for him to facilitate this. So he could find in his mind actually acceptance that actually is a good thing. There's a huge shift in his psyche, believing and liking people. He never liked me. I was just like, I don't like you. And he says, I don't like you.

• 41:54Tim Ferriss?

  How long did he say that for?

• 41:56Jerzy Gregorek?

  All the time. He has never liked me.

• 42:00Tim Ferriss?

  So he'll celebrate and give you a high five for your training, but still.

• 42:05Jerzy Gregorek?

  I don't know even today if he likes me, probably not.

• 42:11Jerzy Gregorek?

  You know, I created a lot of hard choices for him. So he will, you know, eventually he will, he will come to this point that he may be like, what have you done? Maybe, but not really me.

• 42:29Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, wow. That's kind of amazing. Well, you know what? As long as you don't care about the credit, you're doing good work.

• 42:36Jerzy Gregorek?

  Not really. I was not, you know, there to shine.

• 42:39Tim Ferriss?

  Of course, of course. Could you talk about helping him or asking him to identify heroes a bit? That also stuck out to me. Could you provide a little bit of context to people on that piece of the puzzle?

• 42:52Jerzy Gregorek?

  Yeah, he was already in elementary school. And he was writing an essay about a hero.

• 43:02Tim Ferriss?

  That was an assignment.

• 43:04Jerzy Gregorek?

  Yes, and he wrote it.

• 43:05Tim Ferriss?

  But from school, not from you?

• 43:07Jerzy Gregorek?

  Yeah, yeah, from school. Because he already had a tutor, English tutor. So he was always proud that when he did something, he was bringing something and, and reading me. He read it. So he wrote about Genghis Khan. And I said, okay, so is Genghis Khan a hero? Yeah. Okay, so I said, well, why he is a hero? Oh, he talked a little bit, and I said, so who is a hero?

• 43:40Jerzy Gregorek?

  Well, that created a philosophical approach. So we ended up that the hero is really risking their own life for others, to save others. But that's not Genghis Khan. So Genghis Khan was not that. He was a conqueror, but he was not a hero.

• 43:59Jerzy Gregorek?

  And then, at the same time, I watched this movie about admiral, actually Korean admiral. About three hundred Japanese ships were coming to Korea to, you know, conquer them. And he, with one ship and twelve, and he stood up to them. And actually, the twelve ships, you know, the, the people didn't want to fight, wanted to surrender. He said, no, and he fought, and he fought. And these other twelve ships, you know, joined him eventually. And the whole armada, Japanese armada, turned back. And I said, that is your hero. And I, and I said, that is your hero from Korea.

• 44:43Jerzy Gregorek?

  And you are going to rewrite this essay. But it's too late. I said, it's not too late. You're going to go to your teacher. You tell the teacher why Genghis Khan was not a hero, and you want to rewrite the essay. Okay. I said, okay, you go and do it. And he did. And he rewrote the essay. The teacher agreed.

• 45:10Tim Ferriss?

  I can see why he might not like you.

• 45:13Jerzy Gregorek?

  Yeah.

• 45:14Tim Ferriss?

  It's pretty fair.

• 45:16Jerzy Gregorek?

  It was very quick, you know. You know, think about, I, I was coaching him.

• 45:20Tim Ferriss?

  I understand the purpose.

• 45:21Jerzy Gregorek?

  He was jumping, he was lifting. And at the same time, we did poetry, math, English, right, all of it together.

• 45:30Jerzy Gregorek?

  And it was quack.

• 45:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, hard teachers.

• 45:33Jerzy Gregorek?

  Why he wouldn't like me, I don't know. Yeah, well, there's, there are many reasons. But you know, uh, one day he was, he wanted to step on a six inch box. I remember.

• 45:46Jerzy Gregorek?

  And he tries to step and he would not.

• 45:49Tim Ferriss?

  And this is the one foot up.

• 45:51Jerzy Gregorek?

  Just stepping one foot and like on the stair, right? It was like, yeah, it was, I don't know. And I like, I couldn't make it. So I grabbed his shirt and pulled him.

• 46:03Tim Ferriss?

  I've seen the video.

• 46:04Jerzy Gregorek?

  In and on, in and on. And after about two times, I left him and he was jumping on this box like one of the other stepping, one, one, one, and so fast. It's amazing what the brain is. Get a little bit help and suddenly the door opens up and it's the progression is huge and fast. It's amazing. I tell you what I, uh, what I was watching, what I learned during this process. Wow.

• 46:33Tim Ferriss?

  Even to this day, I know that modern science has come to a greater appreciation of brain plasticity and the malleability and adaptability. And of course, just as the, let's call it broadly speaking, this is simplification, but the control center for the entire body, right? The brain's job is to keep the body alive. So they're, they're dance partners. There is just so much room for improvement. And a lot of the science that I've supported has been related to this, but it, this was the first time I'd ever seen such an amazing transformation in someone with cerebral palsy. That was so clearly and well documented also.

• 47:16Tim Ferriss?

  And I want to talk about next steps in a little bit to try to expand this into a study. But before we get there, can you speak to training logic? So I think that was after about two years of already training with him, but working on his thought process using poetry. Why did you do that?

• 47:38Jerzy Gregorek?

  He couldn't really read the lines of poetry and understand the feelings, emotions behind. Then I started really doing the math and seeing whether he can think logically. So I tested him if A is B and B is C. So is A is also C and playing these games. And slowly, he started not only being logical in asking him about writing something about what is logic and give me the example.

• 48:22Jerzy Gregorek?

  So he was, he would bring me. Was there logic or not? So we tested that. And then added the math. But the most difficult for him was to read the line of poetry and know the metaphor. Not really what really happened, but what was the meaning of the line?

• 48:41Tim Ferriss?

  Behind the words, not just the words.

• 48:43Jerzy Gregorek?

  Yeah, and every line. So when I asked him to recite, to remember and recite a poem, he would recite the poem. And then we analyzed the poem, every line of the line after line. And what was, what is the meaning? What is the feeling of the line? And that was an amazing possibility for him to learn the language and the feeling, feelings behind the language, the emotions. At the beginning, he didn't have any clue about the feelings, what the actually written words express when it comes to feelings.

• 49:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, when I think about your entire coaching experience with Tijenam, struck by...

• 49:32Tim Ferriss?

  How many different levers you were able to help him pull? But one that sort of meta lesson that pops out to me, and I'd love for you to correct this if I'm not thinking about it the right way, is that he didn't respond to people in conversation, didn't have much of a response, in part, and I'm projecting here, because he didn't have the belief that he could. He had no history to support the belief that he could. And then with physical movement, similar, and you gave the example, I mean, this is a very fast example, but of grabbing the shirt and kind of forcing him to do it. And then within a few repetitions, you let go and he's doing it on his own. And of course, there's the progression over time.

• 50:16Tim Ferriss?

  But even with the poetry and how you gave him assignments to practice public speaking, without that, he wouldn't have had the confidence to then speak, say, in the, within the more complicated context of school with classmates and things like that. I have to imagine, but you know, I sometimes have listeners or readers ask me, what can I read to develop more confidence? And I'm like, well, you can try to read to develop more confidence, but really, you're not going to fool yourself. You need to do things to develop the history of doing things so that you have confidence. Does that resonate? Or would you add or reframe that somehow?

• 50:57Jerzy Gregorek?

  You know, yeah, of course, you know, what you say, it's a certain perspective. But I would like to tell you about my perspective.

• 51:07Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's what I'm asking.

• 51:09Jerzy Gregorek?

  You know, I saw the mind, the brain as something that needs to find the way forward and find the way around those patches that.

• 51:22Jerzy Gregorek?

  With that. And I saw it everywhere. I saw it in math. When you cannot know what is two plus two that is for. You struggle. You know, for me, the child struggles to find out what is two plus two. Eventually, the child knows. So there are certain connections already. And then two plus three and so on. Okay. So development of math is so crucial here, very important. That when I am not there, he can practice actually the math. And by practicing the math, we overcome this many steps.

• 52:06Jerzy Gregorek?

  The steps of progression, the micro progression. And also that challenge has this plasticity of the brain. That that plasticity, you know, like I thought, okay, I make him strong doesn't mean that something else is going to happen. Or maybe I will not make him strong because the math is not developed. So I saw the connection between the squad, the bench, the numbers, the words, and beliefs and philosophy. I saw connections everywhere. And I created the challenges, the hard choices every time.

• 52:48Jerzy Gregorek?

  Everywhere, for me, you know, bench pressing, going from hundred pounds to one oh two, was not different than to know what is fifteen plus seventeen. It is, if I know what is fifteen plus seventeen, is another thing that when it happens, something happened in the brain that was not there before. And I started facilitating all this development of the brain.

• 53:26Jerzy Gregorek?

  That would be challenged, developed from different perspectives. And I think that eventually the research needs to be done. I tried to understand what I've done because I've never really worked with a person like that. Right? So I tried to understand too, what happened there? How did it happen? And whether there is possibility even to replicate this? And help, you know, so many people. But I know Tajin's progress is amazing, crazy, amazing, magical. And if that could be replicable, wow, we could help a lot of people.

• 54:10Tim Ferriss?

  Well, let's talk about it because before we start recording, I was trying to get an idea of the rough number of cerebral palsy diagnoses in the US. And you're based in Northern California. So I wanted to get an idea in California. These are real back of the napkin, rough internet responses. But it seems like, let's call it roughly 1 million diagnoses in the US, potentially. And then that could be occurrence and not diagnoses, but somewhere between 100 and 120,000 in California alone. So this is a non-trivial condition. It's very prevalent. And if you could develop a method, right, through doing research, develop a method that you mentioned

• 54:55Tim Ferriss?

  could be replicated, could be taught to physical therapists, then this could have tremendous impact on a wide scale. And maybe we could talk about what some of your thoughts are. And I'm going to create a web form for people who want to potentially indicate interest in certain facets of this. But what might the program look like? How many patients would you have? What would it look like in practice to do a research project to determine if you can formulate a method that would be replicable? Or a template, maybe, with a little bit of tweaking here and there that physical therapists could use or others?

• 55:34Jerzy Gregorek?

  Meantime, I had some experience with other cerebral palsy people. And, you know, my approach is one that I believe that

• 55:46Jerzy Gregorek?

  Everybody can improve. So it really doesn't matter for me if it's cerebral palsy or not. If it's chronic fatigue, it can happen. If it's fibromyalgia, the progress can happen. So with cerebral palsy, when we think about cerebral palsy, people, they have different conditions, different beginnings. The most important is to find where is the beginning, where to start. The major thing, because usually I think that we want too much, it's not going to happen. So we need to find this very tiny thing.

• 56:29Jerzy Gregorek?

  You remember Jewel in Hawaii, you helped me to go and coach her. She was eighteen at that time and she couldn't control her head and arms and legs. So her mother would hold her and I would try to find out where is the beginning with her. And she has, you know, hands like this and was moving and I found out that, I pointed to one place, I took a ball very close to her, like about inch from her, you know, arm and then fingers and asked her to touch it.

• 57:12Jerzy Gregorek?

  And she struggled, struggled, and we found a way where actually she could touch it. And then she was so happy when she touched. Oh, I have to send you these videos. It's just, you know, it's just you can't cry, you know, when you can see things like this. And her joy when she was doing it. So also the math. I found out that her mind was very good with stories. She could talk about some things and she loved the stories, to listen to stories. But her math was not really different than the tens. It was like she could only count from one to ten and then adding, you know, two plus

• 57:57Jerzy Gregorek?

  five she would, and then we would start with that. So I see the math is major part of that method.

• 58:07Jerzy Gregorek?

  The physical is of course the beginning. The beginning is how strong they are and how flexible they are. Flexibility is the main point here because the awkwardness comes from both. One thing that the brain, the mind cannot control those places, but those places also, the parts of the body became that way. So that's why awkwardness is coming in. So the physical and the physical improvement of the physical becomes challenging because they can injure themselves, they can be in pain. And they have to, those two who will facilitate their work need to know

• 58:49Jerzy Gregorek?

  how to start, how to use the micro progression, how to write everything down. Like Tagen knew all his numbers. He knew how to measure the time of five or 10 jumps. And he would write all the jumps and brought to me to the gym. What he did, his homework was numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers. Not only the numbers of counting, but also the numbers of measure.

• 59:18Tim Ferriss?

  So just to hop in for a second. I would love to help. Of course, that's part of the reason we're doing this conversation is to help facilitate trying to create some type of template that can be applied to a lot of people with cerebral palsy. So the short link, not to bury the lead. The short link will just be tim.blog/cp. And we'll have a web form for people who may want to help from an academic perspective, ideally in Northern California, somewhere within near driving distance, since you would want to be there. I think the thought is maybe twice a week with these different folks, something like that.

• 59:56Jerzy Gregorek?

  Yeah, I see that about maybe five cerebral palsy people. And meeting them twice a week, let's say Tuesday and Friday.

• 1:00:08Jerzy Gregorek?

  And for one year, and then add another five, so now it's ten, another five, and do it for five years. Record everything, see how it works, bring therapists or others that could actually watch, observe, and learn. And I believe that this replicability is possible. We need to test it. We need to explore whether, how is it really possible? What can we actually do when we have this 25 people?

• 1:00:53Jerzy Gregorek?

  It could be that it was because I was there, but I don't want to say that it was because of me everything happened. It could be that a perfect storm happened. I was a math teacher. I'm a poet. I'm a weightlifter. So all of it

• 1:01:13Jerzy Gregorek?

  happened that I was this one person facilitating that. But when we do research, we don't have to have one person. We can have, you know, math people, English, and, you know, philosophers. And we can have trainers. We can create a center. And in that center, we can think about how we can progress, how we can improve, and document everything in details the same way as I was doing. Micro progression is an amazing power.

• 1:01:54Tim Ferriss?

  It strikes me also that with the right people involved and with the right consistency, and I mean, you might need a faculty member to agree to spearhead it, and then there would be fundraising, which is pretty straightforward to figure out, and then they would have... Post docs or people underneath them would help with recruitment, although I don't think that'll be a problem after this podcast, patient recruitment and then making the trains run on time. But I could see a path, as I'm sure you've thought about this much more than I have, but where you could end up with something like a core curriculum of principles that you're teaching and maybe you're recording video modules to explain these things to practitioners where it's like

• 1:02:38Tim Ferriss?

  micro progressions, finding a place to start. What are different ways to find a place to start? And then perhaps there are certain things that won't apply to everyone. So for instance, we didn't talk about, we don't have to spend a lot of time on it, but Ta Jin was kind of crumpled to the right side, right? So you had a ball hanging from the ceiling that you would have him reach up to touch to, to help correct that. So there might be core curriculum and principles and then sort of ancillary principles and techniques that can be applied on a case by case basis. But then you end up with this core curriculum that people can learn remotely or something like that. I mean, it's, it's really exciting to think about.

• 1:03:17Jerzy Gregorek?

  I think that at this point, I see that we can assess these people from five perspectives, I think, the, the physical perspective, you know, where they are physically and where is the flexibility? Where is the strength? Math perspective, language perspective, philosophy perspective, beliefs perspective, where they are. So easily we can take the psychology and then psychologists and develop certain ways of assessing them, where are beliefs, right? In math is very clear, right? In the language, you know, probably English teachers and they will create

• 1:04:00Jerzy Gregorek?

  very quickly curriculum to find out where is the level of that. And then once we have the assess, okay, we have a physical problem that is 80%, math is only, you know, 3% is not, you know, the person is really good at math in English as well. But we can have also that math is not there at all and walking is good. So there are all possibilities how we can assess from this five perspective, these people, but we need also. Explore and experience them. You're not only one person, Tajan, because it's just only one person.

• 1:04:45Jerzy Gregorek?

  Now, we need to see, can we actually do with five? Can we actually deliver what we delivered?

• 1:04:53Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, this is the scientific method, right? And you have such a fantastic starting point. It's an N of one, although you've worked with more than one person with cerebral palsy at this point. But let me just give the URL again. So for people who might be interested, this is if you are at Stanford, or UCSF, or San Jose State, or someplace that might be able to help with this type of research. If you are in a financial position and would like to support this type of research, go to tim.blog/cp, or if you have other resources you want to bring to bear on this in some way, tim.blog, the letters CP standing for cerebral palsy, so tim.blog/cp, and just fill out the web form. I'm incredibly excited about this.

• 1:05:38Tim Ferriss?

  We covered a lot in our first conversation, and we've covered a lot in this conversation. Is there anything else that you'd like to mention or cover that we haven't gotten to already today?

• 1:05:51Jerzy Gregorek?

  What a question. Well, yeah, we covered a lot, but I think one of the most important things is that people can get help. And if we have the right approach, we can facilitate, create it. And of course, they change. We didn't change them. So we have to remember that we are facilitators. We are not really cultures that created the powerful human being, that actually powerful human being created themselves.

• 1:06:28Jerzy Gregorek?

  We have to create a place where it's athletically aligned with athleticism and not care only. We know, I see that as soon as we care or we exercise without mission or purpose or goals, then we can exercise for 10 years and never change. So I saw these people, thousands of these people. It doesn't apply only to cerebral palsy because it applies to the worse. But with cerebral palsy, it's very interesting because they have this situation in their mind, in their brain, that actually we could work with.

• 1:07:13Jerzy Gregorek?

  These are the patches in the brain that we can create the peripheral nervous system that actually goes around. We can create that mind, that plasticity of the mind we can create. I have a strong feeling that this is possible. I always believe that it can be done. I just created challenges, constant challenges with the jan that could deliver the results, the change, the why I want it. It has to be always the "where are you going?" Right? With it. So for me, he had to walk straight. He had to walk soft.

• 1:07:56Jerzy Gregorek?

  And for me, I would not sleep until I would get it. So we need devoted people. We need people that are devoted to this, to these people, to help them. Not just physical therapists that want us to make money and go home. This is a huge challenge. These people, extremely challenging, and we need to also challenge them. And by creating this challenge, we can get amazing thing, actually. So it is not something that somebody has cancer and it will get worse. That's not the situation he has. It's a very unique situation with cerebral palsy people, that we have the situation that somebody is

• 1:08:41Jerzy Gregorek?

  and somebody doesn't change for worse. Somebody is like that. Can change for worse too because life happens. But because people are like that...

• 1:08:54Jerzy Gregorek?

  We have very clear slate to begin with. We are not dealing with ill people, sick people. We're just dealing with people who mechanically, something happened to their brain. And that can create for us a really great beginning. And it could be that with almost any cyber policy, something like this return to... I wouldn't say they cannot return, because many of them, they are just that way. So they cannot return anywhere, but they can improve

• 1:09:37Jerzy Gregorek?

  and become like Ta Jin become Ta Jin, that is going to college from the person that was only waiting for food and sleep and couldn't go to toilet and was lethargic all the time. The life was like that for him, and that life would be like that. Right? If nothing happened, what actually we did? He would be that person. And the parents, he is the parents. The parents, I saw happy parents. But after three, four years, they actually, they were like a ticking bomb, you said,

• 1:10:19Jerzy Gregorek?

  about intensity between these three people, right? But about three, four years, I saw them happy first time.

• 1:10:31Jerzy Gregorek?

  Happy.

• 1:10:33Jerzy Gregorek?

  And that is enough, you know, to fight for, right? To give everything, whatever you have, to create the happiness in these three people who were worrying all the time, what will happen if they die? What will happen if something happened? Now they don't have to worry anymore. Ta Jin is, you know, completely independent. He is in college, for Christ's sake. Just imagine that. And a lot of that, I believe, 100%, that can happen with everyone.

• 1:11:14Tim Ferriss?

  The Happy Body, micro progressions, I mean, your philosophies, and philosophy might scare people off. Your principles can be applied to so many different things that you and Anyala have developed over the years. Really want to make this research project happen. So folks, if you're interested in any way, helping with that in whatever capacity, you go to tim.blog/cp. And then also want to mention, just like the way that you and Anyala coach can be applied, most certainly to many different conditions, many different circumstances, all circumstances in some sense. I want to give a shout out to Jeff Wolf, the director of Prisoner No More. I always ask everybody, and before I talk to them or do anything with them, what would

• 1:11:58Tim Ferriss?

  make it truly a home run? And he just mentioned the bigger opportunity is to position Prisoner No More, not just as a standalone short, but as a proof of concept for a larger series. The vision is a slate under the same umbrella. So you could have Prisoner No More for Alcohol, and Prisoner No More for Fill-in-the-Blank, right? Which I think is also very exciting. So I really, really hope people, you gotta watch it. You gotta see what we're talking about visually. It'll just, a lot of you are gonna cry, I'm gonna tell you in advance, but it's good cry. So check it out, tim.blog/hardchoices, in honor of Hard Choices. Hard Choices, Easy Life, Easy Choices, Hard Life. Yeah. So tim.blog/hardchoices, check it out.

• 1:12:43Tim Ferriss?

  You can find The Happy Body and more on Jersey and Anyala's training at thehappybody.com. And I'll link to everything in the show notes, as usual, at tim.blog/podcast. So if you're like, that's a lot to remember, don't worry about it. Just go to tim.blog/podcast and search Jersey, not spelled like New Jersey, but spelled J-E-R-Z-Y. And trust me, there's only one Jersey on my website. It's Jersey Gregorek. Jersey, thank you so much for the time. It's always great to see you. Thank you, Tim. Everybody, thanks for listening. We'll grab a bite to eat tonight with the whole gang. And everybody who has tuned in, as always, I appreciate you.

• 1:13:26Tim Ferriss?

  Till next time, be just a bit kinder than is necessary to others and to yourself. But not just comfort, don't just make yourself feel better. Don't just eat that cheeseburger and watch reality TV on Netflix. Challenge yourself, wherever you happen to be, you can make progress. You can make amazing progress. You just need to find the right starting point. And for that reason, check out the haveyoubody.com. Listen to my first conversation with Jersey on the podcast as well. Until next time, thanks for tuning in. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend?

• 1:14:11Tim Ferriss?

  Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered, or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you.

• 1:14:49Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:15:09Tim Ferriss?

  So Our Place reached out to me as a potential sponsor and the first thing I did was look at the reviews of their products and said, "Send me one." And that is the Titanium Always Pan Pro. And the claim is that it's the first nonstick pan with zero coating. So that means zero forever chemicals and durability that'll last forever. I was very skeptical, I was very busy, so I said, "You know what? I want to test this thing quickly." I'm going to test it with two things. I'm going to test it with scrambled eggs in the morning and then I'm going to test it with a steak sear. And it worked perfectly in both cases and the design is really clever. It does combine the best qualities of stainless steel, cast iron, and nonstick into one product.

• 1:15:54Tim Ferriss?

  And now Our Place is expanding this first of its kind technology to their Titanium Pro cookware sets, which are made in limited quantities. So if you're looking for non-toxic, long-lasting pots and pans that outperform everything else in your kitchen, just head to fromourplace.com/tim and use code TIM for 10% off of your order. You can enjoy a 100-day risk-free trial, free shipping, and free returns. Check it out. Fromourplace.com/tim. Readers of The Four Hour Workweek know that I love automation. I do not like decision fatigue, I don't like doing things repeatedly. Anywhere I can set it and forget it is a win and gives me more time for the things I enjoy doing.

• 1:16:37Tim Ferriss?

  That is why I'm such a fan of today's sponsor, Matic, as in automatic, M-A-T-I-C. As their tagline goes, "The world's most advanced floor cleaner." Frankly, it does a lot more than that and they've got a lot of cool things coming, but it's the closest thing to a house that cleans itself. To quote Wired Magazine, "This is the best robot vacuum we've tested and it scored a rare 10 out of 10." Matic learns your home and runs quietly in the background. It's very, very quiet. I've been testing it myself. It vacuums, mops, docks itself and doesn't strangle itself on charging cables or get wedged under your couch. It's pretty amazing. And people with kids and dogs have been telling me all about it. I put out a note on social asking how people liked it, if they liked it.

• 1:17:21Tim Ferriss?

  And the response was kind of mind blowing. Not only because the comments were overwhelmingly, exuberantly positive, but my phone blew up. I got texts from nearly a dozen friends telling me how much they love their Matic. So that was a first. So to quote another media outlet, The Verge writes, "This Wally-like bot fixes the stuff every other robot vacuum gets wrong." And there are tons of people involved with this who I respect a lot. We've got Silicon Valley legend Naval Ravikant and Shopify CEO Toby Lutke. They love theirs. And as I mentioned, they're investors and my friend Kevin Rose has been raving all about it. The list goes on and on. So check it out. See what all the buzz is about. Go to Maticrobots.com/Tim. That's M-A-T-I-C robots.com.

• 1:18:05Tim Ferriss?

  Maticrobots.com/Tim today and experience the closest thing to a house that cleans itself. New customers get free bags for a year. One more time, Maticrobots.com/Tim.