52__transcript.txt

- Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,
where we discuss science,
and science based tools for everyday life.
I'm Andrew Huberman,
and I'm a professor of
neurobiology and ophthalmology
at Stanford School of Medicine.
Today, my guest is Jeff Cavaliere.
Jeff Cavaliere holds a Master
of Science in Physical Therapy
and is a certified strength
and conditioning specialist.
He did his training at the
University of Connecticut Storrs,
one of the top five programs in the world
in physical therapy and sports medicine.
I discovered Jeff
Cavaliere over 10 years ago
from his online content.
His online content
includes information about
how to train for strength,
how to train for hypertrophy,
which is muscle growth,
how to train for endurance,
as well as how to rehabilitate injuries
to avoid muscular imbalances,
nutrition and supplementation.
I've always found his content
to be incredibly science
based, incredibly clear,
sometimes surprising, and
always incredibly actionable.
It is therefore not surprising
that he has one of the
largest online platforms
for fitness, nutrition, supplementation,
and injury rehabilitation.
Jeff has also worked
with an enormous number
of professional athletes
and has served as head physical therapist
and assistant strength
coach for the New York Mets.
Again, the content that Jeff
Cavaliere has posted online
has been so immensely
useful to me over the years,
that I was absolutely thrilled
to get the chance to sit down with him
and ask him about
everything from how to train
in terms of how to split up the body parts
that you train across the week,
how to integrate strength
training and endurance training,
when to stretch, how to stretch.
Indeed, we talked about nutrition,
we talk a bit about supplementation.
We talk about how to really
avoid creating imbalances
in muscle and in neural
control over muscle.
This is one thing that's
really wonderful about Jeff is
he really has an
understanding of not just how
muscles and bones, and tendons
and ligaments work together,
but how the nervous system
interfaces with those.
We talked about the
mental side of training,
including when to bring
specific concentration
to the muscles that you're training,
and when to think more about
how to move weights through space
and think more about
the movements overall.
I'm certain that you'll find
the conversation that we held
to be immensely useful and informative
for your fitness practices
and also for how you mentally
approach fitness in general,
and how to set up a
lifelong fitness practice,
one that will give you the
strength that you desire,
one that will give you
the aesthetic results
that you desire.
One that will set you up for endurance
and cardiovascular health,
basically an overall fitness program.
I really feel this is
where Jeff Cavaliere shines
above and beyond so many of the other PTs
and fitness so-called
influencers that are out there.
Again, everything is grounded in science,
everything is clear, and
everything is actionable.
And while we do cover an
enormous amount of information
during today's episode,
if you want to dive even
deeper into that information,
you can go to athleanx.com,
where you'll find some of Jeff's programs.
You can also find him
at Athlean-X on YouTube.
There you'll find videos for instance,
like the, how to repair or
heal from lower back pain.
Something that I actually
followed directly
long before I ever met Jeff,
has over 32 million views,
and that is not by accident, it's because
the protocols there again are
surprising and actionable.
They relieved my back pain
very quickly without surgery.
So I'm immensely grateful
for that content.
And it extends into everything from again,
hypertrophy, endurance and
strength training and so on.
Again, it's athleanx.com as the website,
Athlean-X on YouTube, and
also @athleanx on Instagram.
The Huberman Lab Podcast
is proud to announce that
we've partnered with
Momentous Supplements.
We've done that for several reasons.
First of all,
the quality of their
supplements is exceedingly high.
Second of all,
we wanted to have a location
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all of the supplements discussed
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in one easy to find place.
You can now find that place
at livemomentous.com/huberman.
In addition, Momentous
Supplements ship internationally,
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So that's terrific whether
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Right now, not all of the supplements
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Lab Podcast are listed,
but that catalog of
supplements is being expanded
very rapidly,
and a good number of them
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some of the more prominent
ones for sleep and focus
and other aspects of
mental and physical health
are already there.
Again, you can find them at
livemomentus.com/huberman.
Before we begin,
I'd like to emphasize that
this podcast is separate
from my teaching and
research roles at Stanford.
It is however, part of
my desire and effort
to bring zero cost to consumer
information about science
and science related tools
to the general public.
In keeping with that theme,
I'd like to thank the
sponsors of today's podcast.
Our first sponsor is Athletic
Greens, now called AG1.
I started taking AG1 way back in 2012.
So I'm delighted that they're
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The reason that I started taking AG1,
and the reason I still
take AG1 twice a day,
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As I mentioned earlier, it
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The gut microbiome are trillions
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That is, our gut and our brain
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And now for my discussion
with Jeff Cavaliere.
Jeff, such a pleasure
for me to have you here.
- I'm glad to be here, it's amazing.
- I'm a longtime consumer of your content.
I've learned a tremendous
amount about fitness,
both in the weight room and cardio,
nutrition things that I've
applied for over a decade.
So for me, this is
particularly meaningful.
And my goal here is really
to ask a bunch of questions
to which I'm interested in the answers,
but also for which I know
the audience is really curious about.
So one of your mantras is,
"If you want to look like an
athlete, train like an athlete"
and I think that's something
really special that sets aside
what you do from what a lot of other
very well qualified people do.
And in terms of the use
of weights and resistance,
whether or not it's body
weight or weights in the gym,
or pulleys versus cardio,
in terms of overall health
aesthetics and athleticism,
is there a way that you could point to
the idea that maybe people should be doing
50% resistance training and 50% cardio,
maybe it's 70/30, maybe it's 30/70.
And here I'm talking
about the typical person
who would like to maintain, or maybe even
add some muscle mass,
probably in particular
areas for most people,
as opposed to just overall mass.
Although we'll talk about that later,
and people who want to maintain
a relatively low body fat percentage
and be in good cardiovascular health.
What's the sort of
contour of a basic program
that anybody could think
about as a starting place?
- I think it's like a 60/40 split,
which would be leaning towards
weight training, strength
and then the conditioning
aspect be about 40%.
So if you look at it over a
course of a training week,
I mean, five days in a
gym would be a great task.
And obviously not in the gym,
it could be done at home.
But three days strength training,
Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
Conditioning, Tuesday,
Thursday, you know, two days.
It's a pretty easy roundabout
way to split that up,
of course, depending upon training goals.
And as you said, the
aesthetic goals like that
will shift dramatically.
But if you want to see
the benefits of both,
that's probably the effect
of dose for strength training
and the effect of dose for conditioning
at the bare minimum level.
Again, being a much better
performer conditioning wise,
you're going to want to do more than that.
- And in terms of the
duration of those workouts,
what's your suggestion?
I've been weight training
for about 30 years,
running for about 30 years,
and mainly for health.
And have found that if
I work hard in the gym
or at resistance training for
more than 60 minutes or so,
it's very hard for me to
recover, I start getting cold,
I start getting weaker
from workout to workout,
but amazingly, at least to me,
if I keep those workouts to
about 10 minutes of warmup
and 55 minutes or so of really hard work
for resistance training,
and I keep the cardiovascular work
to about 30 or 45 minutes, I feel great.
And I seem to make some progress,
at least someplace in the
workout from workout to workout.
- Yeah, I mean, those are good numbers,
'cause those are kind of
numbers that we usually preach.
We try to keep our workouts to
an hour or less if possible.
Now, depending upon the
split that you're following,
if you're on a total body split,
there's just going to be
more that has to be done
in a given amount of time.
And again if you're training
primarily for strength,
that could prolong the workout,
'cause of the longer rest
time is in between sets.
But in general, when you're
not focused on that one aspect,
but the overall health picture,
then you can get the job
done in under an hour.
And again, I always say, on top of
"If you want to look like an
athlete train, like an athlete,"
is, "You could either train
longer or you could train hard,
but you can't do both."
And I really believe
that the focus for me,
I have a busy life,
I have a lot of other things
that I do believe it or not.
And it's like, I want to go
hard and I want to go get out.
And I find that my body
also responds to that,
and I think a lot of guys'
body respond to that.
And particularly as
you start to get older,
I think it's the length of the workout
that actually causes more problems
than the intensity of what you're doing.
Particularly if you're warmed
up properly like you said.
I've found personally that my warmup
has had to become more of an
integral part of my workout
than it ever has before.
I could get in the gym when I was 20,
and I'm going right over, I'm
doing the one set, two sets,
I'm ready to go.
You know, and I never do
another workout warmup set
for any of the other exercise
I do the rest of the day.
That's not true anymore.
And I found that as long as I'm willing
to sort of give myself a
little bit of a warmup,
the intensity is not what bothers me.
I'm very much in control
of the weights that I use
and it doesn't bother me.
But if I start to go pretty long,
I start to feel achy or
I start to have problems.
So again, depending upon age,
that also plays a factor in the length.
But again, I think everybody can achieve,
on a standard program,
can achieve the results that
they want within an hour.
- In terms of splits,
you mentioned splits.
And so for those who aren't
familiar with this term splits,
it's really which body
parts are you training on?
Which days?
Seems like almost
everybody follows a weekly
workout schedule.
Although the body of course
doesn't care about the week.
There's no reason thing
that once every seven days
or twice every seven days
makes sense physiologically,
it's just the body doesn't work that.
But, that's the way life is structured.
I've seen you discuss three days a week,
whole body workouts.
I've heard of splits
like a pushing one day,
pulling another day, legs
another day, a day off, repeat.
I mean, there's so many
variations on this.
What are some general themes
that we can throw out there?
And in order to avoid the
huge matrix of possibilities,
you have some wonderful
content that points those.
And we will cap-
In our caption show notes,
we'll link out to some of those
that different ways to design splits.
But in terms of giving people a logic
of how to think about
splitting up body parts,
what's governing the split?
What are the rules and the
logic that dictate a split?
- For me, the first rule
is will you stick to it?
Like if you, 'cause there are split,
I don't particularly
like full body splits.
And I was actually talking to Jesse
about that the other day like,
I don't necessarily like to
have to train everything.
Now of course the volumes will
come down per muscle group.
But if you don't like to do that,
and you actually don't look
forward to your workout
because you're dreading
having to do everything
and feeling maybe too fatigued
by the time your workout's over,
or the fact that those generally
do take a little bit longer
and don't fit into your schedule.
I don't care how effective the split is,
a split not done is not effective.
So you need to find one that fits.
So maybe you go into
an alternative option,
like a push-pull-legs, like you mentioned.
And that could be done either
one cycle through the week,
on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday split,
or it could be twice in a week.
So you're actually training six times,
where you repeat it,
pull-push-legs, pull-push-legs,
or however you want to do it
with either a day off in
between the three days,
or at the end of the six days.
And again, that actually
impacts your schedule.
I've broken that down before where it's,
if you put it in between the three days,
it's good because you're giving
yourself an extra rest day
in between, but it starts
to shift that day off
every week as we wrap around.
So for those guys that we're choosing
that seven day schedule out
of convenience in our heads,
it starts to mess with that off day.
So others like to just
keep it predictably,
let's say on a Sunday, and
train six days in a row.
But that's a better way
to maybe group similar
muscle actions together, which I think,
I definitely prefer that,
because if I'm going to be
training pulling movements,
at least there there's
a synergy between them.
And I feel like I'm looking
to achieve one goal that day.
And then, I mean, quite honestly,
you can go back to the bro-split days,
and those still work effectively.
There's a reason why
they worked in the past.
I think that science shows
that there's smarter ways
to do them these days.
Like you can come back
and hit a related muscle,
so you could do, let's
say biceps on one day
and then come back two
days later and do back,
realizing again, synergy
between the exercises there,
your biceps are going to
get re-stimulated again.
So you could figure out
ways to make that work,
but the thing that I
think is effective there,
is that tends to be one of the ones
that people like the most.
Because they can go in, they
get their pump, they feel good.
It's pretty solely focused
on one muscle group.
- Is that the definition of a bro-split?
One...
- One muscle group a day?
- Yeah, I see, so it's
very much geared towards
strength and aesthetics
really maximizing...
- Probably more aesthetics
than strength, yeah.
You're just...
- Hence the bro, the bro name.
- But again, like, you know,
in here I am a science guy
and I could appreciate the
benefits of a bro-split.
Especially 'cause again, like to what end?
Who's goal are we trying to achieve here?
Those are ours.
Like if I'm applying my
standards and my goals
or even like athletic ideals,
but they just want to get in shape,
then it's perfectly fine to do
a bro split in that instance,
if you're sticking to it again
and you're seeing the results
that you want to see from it.
But they're able to really
keep their focus on one muscle,
they get to focus on.
Look, a lot of times people struggle with
the way of an exercise feels
until their second or third set.
Like they don't have that
proper percept of ability
to kind of lock in on an exercise.
So spending a few, not only
sets in the same exercise,
but then doing another exercise
for the same muscle group
helps them to dial in a little bit better
and get more out of their training.
- Yeah, that raised a really interesting,
I think important question.
Early on when I started
resistance training,
which was when I was 16 in high school,
I got in touch with and I was
learning from Mike Menzer.
- Me too, that's crazy.
- And Mike was very helpful.
Very, very helpful.
We got to be friendly...
- So, I just read his book,
I didn't get a chance to be
him, so I'm jealous, right?
- Well, back then no internet,
I paid by Western Union type
thing to send him some money
- From the back of the magazine.
- And then he got on the phone with me
and my mother at the time was like,
why is this grown man calling the house?
And he gave me a very
straightforward split,
which was shoulders, arms one day,
he had me taking two days
off and then training legs
and then two days off and then
chest and back, et cetera.
- And that's a variation
of a bro-split too.
Where you're sort of
breaking them down that way,
chest them back or chest
them bis, you know?
- And it worked very well for me,
I probably would've,
because of my age I think,
and because I was untrained,
I think, largely untrained,
I think it would've grown
on many different programs,
but it worked very well for me.
I eventually just made that
in every other day thing.
Shoulders and arms day
off, legs day or two off,
'cause if you hit legs
right, at least for me,
I'm not training the next day.
And then I'm not doing
much of anything athletic
the next day, and chest,
back and repeat and so on.
And the reason I found that helpful
is I almost always
recovered between workouts.
The six day a week
program of push-pull-legs,
push-pull-legs, to me seems excruciating
from two standpoints.
One is, at least with
my recovery abilities,
or lack of recovery abilities,
I can't imagine coming back feeling fresh.
And the other one is,
if I'm in the gym more
than four days a week,
I really start to fatigue it
about the whole psychological
experience of it.
Whereas if I'm in there
three or four days a week.
In other words, if I put a day
off in between each workout,
I really want to be there.
And I get in there with a lot of fire.
And I'm also doing other
things on the off days.
So I think that, I love that you mentioned
the split that you'll stick to.
And that you can bring the intensity to,
because I think that
that's really important.
I sometimes hear about two a day training.
I've done two a day training
twice in my lifetime,
both times I got sick two days later.
That's correlation, not causation.
But is there ever an
instance where two a day
weight training makes sense
for the non-drug assisted,
typical recovery ability person?
- Actually, I think it makes
sense in some scenarios,
but it doesn't make sense practically
for a lot of people's schedules.
So like if you could break down,
let's say you were going to do even
some version of a total body session,
or maybe like you're going to
do an upper lower split, right?
You could do an upper workout
and do the anterior chain
or the pushing portion
of that in one session
and then come back and do
the pulling session later on
at night, if you had the opportunity to.
The thing that you benefit from there
is the freshness of focus.
Again, like something
in my head is sacrificed
by the time you get
towards the latter half
of whatever workout you're in.
To the same point you made before like,
when you start to approach
that 50 minutes an hour mark,
you are either losing
focus, you're losing energy,
you're losing contract viability,
you're losing something.
And if you're relegating whatever it is,
the pulling portion of that
to the end of that workout,
something suffers so that,
and if they realize that's happening,
then maybe you switch them up
the next time you do the workout
where the pulling portion of
the upper workout goes first,
and then the pushing goes later,
so you're at least not
just continuing that cycle,
but at the same time,
if you were able to kind of split them up,
you get a chance to kind of take a break,
you could have that
freshness of focus again,
and you could actually
get a better effort in,
'cause again, I think
effort drives the results.
So if the effort is not compromised,
then you should be able to do that.
But systemically is that a problem?
And I think that it is a
problem for a lot of people.
It's just hard to,
it's hard to rev the engine
up a lot of times in the day.
You warm that thing up once,
it's like that car in the
winter, you get it going once,
you're lucky, okay,
now you got to drive
it the rest of the day.
But you put it in the garage
and try to start it the
next day, it's a problem.
So, you know, young people
can get away with it
a lot more than older people could.
- Well, I've never had a
strong recovery quotient,
but if I stick to this
one day off in between,
every once in a while, two
days in a row training,
maybe because I have to travel
and I want to make sure
I get all the workouts
and kind of thing, I seem to be okay.
I like your example of warming up the car,
spoken like a true east coaster,
or those of us are on the west coast,
I took a moment there,
but we folks from the East
Coast and the Midwest, get it,
and certainly from Europe.
In terms of the mixing up
of cardiovascular training
and resistance training,
same day, different day,
which one should come first,
which one should come second?
If one main goals, again,
everyone listening has
different goals are,
most people would like to either maintain
or gain some muscle.
I don't know many people
that want to lose muscle.
To maintain or gains some muscle,
usually in specific
locations on their body,
most people would like to be
a bit leaner or a lot leaner.
There are a few people out there that are
either naturally lean or don't want,
or actually just want to gain weight.
But assuming that people
want to get leaner,
put on some muscle, maintain muscle,
and want to have a healthy
heart and a healthy brain,
which basically requires a
healthy cardiovascular system,
how would you incorporate
cardiovascular work
into the overall weekly regimen?
- So again, I think that the bare minimum
is probably twice a week
in terms of cardiovascular.
If you want to have some semblance
of cardiovascular conditioning.
But I think most people
who actually need it more
or want to pursue it more than that
are going to need more time to do that.
So at some point it can't just
be relegated to a day off,
or a day off from the
weight training workouts.
So at some point it has
to occur on the same day.
And in that case, I just like to put it,
if that is, you're not your primary goal,
but you're looking more for
the, just the overall picture,
the aesthetics you mentioned,
putting muscle on in certain areas,
then I would put it at
the end of the workout.
'Cause you don't want
it in any way compromise
the weight training work out.
And as we've sort of referenced
a couple times already,
the intensity of those
workouts is important.
And we know there's a strength component
to those workouts also that is going to
be a helpful stimulus for growth.
So the conditioning, the cardio,
that stuff done prior to any training,
strength training, workout,
is likely going to impair your ability
to perform at your best.
So unless it's just done
for a quick little warmup
in the beginning,
but then it's not sustained
long enough really to be
a benefit for cardiovascular conditioning.
So I just like to put that at the end,
realizing that even if
my effort level is lower,
my output is lower,
if it's still placing a
demand on my cardiac output
to get that conditioning
effect because I'm fatigued,
it still has a demand
on my cardiac output,
so it's still achieving its goal,
but it didn't interfere with my main goal
of being able to increase
my performance in the gym.
- Got it.
And in terms of the form
of cardiovascular training,
I've seen you do a number of,
I have to say very impressive
high intensity interval type work.
So burpee type work,
or pushups with crunches mixed into them,
anyway, people can see your videos,
I didn't describe those in the best way,
but rather than on the treadmill
or out jogging for 30-45 minutes,
is that because you
prefer higher intensity,
higher heart rate type training,
or is it because you
live in cold Connecticut,
and you don't want to be
out jogging on the roads
in the middle of the winter?
- I think all the above,
I mean, those are factors
from a personal level,
but I think that if you are-
If we could blend function
across these realms
and not have such a delineation between,
this is my way training,
and this is my conditioning,
but figure out a way
to blend them together,
I always think that you've got
a better opportunity to get
that more well rounded result.
And I like to kind of mix up
that straight conditioning work
and also some of the footwork drills.
We have some high expectations for guys
that come into our programs,
like to just do some footwork drills.
- Like ladders.
- Like ladders,
or line drills or something.
And you know what happens?
People become intrigued and interested.
Like I never, I haven't
tried this since high school.
And they become interested
in just the challenge of it,
and then as we become almost
distracted by the challenge,
we're now like finding
ourselves conditioning.
And I always think
that's an important part,
that sometimes you got to draw people in
to show them what they
might be interested in.
And from the output or the effect of it,
I just think that when
you're able to blend some,
still maintain some of
that strength training
into the exercise, as you mentioned,
let's say I'm doing some kind
of a push up or a burpee,
there is an anaerobic component to that
that is going to be helpful,
that then rather than just
walking or just jogging.
Not to say that that
isn't an effective means
for strict cardiac conditioning,
it's one of the ways that
we've had for centuries,
how to do it.
But I just think that if we can blend it,
then it becomes maybe a
little bit more interesting
and you get some of
those crossover benefits,
and it doesn't become so segmented
in terms of what we're trying to do.
- I love the idea of bringing
some mental challenge
and some desire to improve
a skill while conditioning.
That's not something that
I've thought of before,
and it's simply 'cause I've overlooked it,
but it makes sense because, my
sister who's reasonably fit,
although I'm always trying
to get her to do a bit more,
she always asks me, what should I take?
And I'm a, I don't
believe her in supplements
are for certain people
in certain instances,
but I keep telling her, you know, it's,
the behaviors are going to end,
nutrition are going to
have the greatest outsize
positive effect.
And she loves things like
dance classes and things,
or kickboxing, these
kinds of things which,
so it makes sense that
if you can hook somebody
on the conditioning
aspect or the skill aspect
and kind of trick them
into doing more cardio,
so to speak that's terrific.
Also the neuroscientist
in me just has to say,
forgive me, that anytime you're engaging
the two sets of motor neurons,
the ones in your brain,
the upper motor neurons and
the ones in your spinal cord,
anytime you're engaging
those upper motor neurons,
which are for deliberate
well controlled action,
you're doing a great thing for your brain
in terms of brain longevity.
So, now I need to incorporate
some actual skills
into my training.
Going back to weight training a bit,
one of the most important
things I learned from you,
so over the years was that,
when training to increase
muscle size, to really think,
not so much about moving weights,
but more about challenging muscles.
- Yeah.
- I also heard this from
my friend, Ben Pakulski,
who's a very well accomplished,
He was a bodybuilder,
now he's into other aspects
of fitness, teaches fitness,
but don't move weights challenge muscles,
unless you're trying to power lift
or something of that sort, which
I'm not, immensely helpful.
But the other thing that
I learned from you that,
combined with that was this idea that
certain muscles will grow
better and get stronger
much more easily, maybe
even will recover better
because of our ability to
contract them really hard.
And this what I call the Cavaliere test,
which is at least if I could paraphrase,
so for instance, if I can, it's
always the bicep, isn't it?
Let's use the calf or the bicep.
If you can flex your
bicep to the point where
it hurts a little bit,
like it almost feels
like a cramp or a cramp,
where you can flex your
calf to the point where
it really cramps up a little bit,
almost feels like it's nodding up,
that's a pretty good indication
that you're going to be able to
stimulate that muscle well under load
if you're doing the movement properly.
And that's the feeling to
actually aim for each repetition,
maybe even throughout the repetition.
For me, this completely
transformed my results.
And this was, I think
maybe five/six years ago
that I first heard this from you,
body parts that for me, lagged behind,
that I thought maybe genetically
weren't going to work for me,
immediately just started growing, right?
And I was getting stronger and stronger,
and I thought this is
really something so much so
that I've dedicated a
portion of my research
along with, in collaboration
with another group
to try and understand
what's happening in these upper
motor neurons in the brain
that can engage the muscles even more.
And that it's not just
about progressive overload
or putting a pump into the muscle.
That it's really this
mind muscle connection
is a real thing when it
comes to predicting results
and that you can get better at it.
So forgive me if we're paraphrasing
your incredible content around this,
it made a tremendous difference for me
and a number of other people
that have passed that along to.
But what can you, first of all,
how did you arrive at that?
Because we hear about the
mind-muscle connection,
but I really heard it first from you.
How did you arrive at
this kind of cramp test,
the Cavaliere test as I'll call it?
It's always weird when people name things
after themselves in science,
but other scientists can name things.
So there is now officially
the Cavaliere test,
is whether or not you can cramp the muscle
in the absence of load, just flexing it
to the point where it hurts a little bit.
That would be a good indication
that you could grow that muscle well.
How did you come up with this?
- I mean, honestly, it's
something that made sense to me,
because during my workouts,
even as a young kid
just starting out, I always wanted to know
what is it working?
A lot of people ask that
question more so than you think,
like, what is this supposed to work?
And a lot, I don't know
if you've ever noticed,
but like when people ask that question,
if they're being trained by a trainer,
and the trainer's saying,
well, just do this,
do this exercise and they'll
show you how to do it.
But then they'll say, but
what is it supposed to work?
Where am I supposed to feel this, right?
People, did they just
inherently ask that question?
A lot of people will.
I was one of those that did
that, and I asked that question.
Not because I knew what I was doing,
but just because I don't know,
I wanted to know what was
supposed to be doing the work.
Once you do that, and you
start to seek that out,
and say, okay, well,
the bicep is what's supposed
to be doing the work,
then I want to make sure
the bicep's doing the work.
So then I would just sort of
really like tweak the movement
to make it do more work or
feel more uncomfortable,
or get it stronger contraction,
knowing if that's supposed to do the job,
it wasn't until PT
school that I'm learning,
oh, well, the flexion of the elbow
is the brachial and the bias
and the bias' responsible for supination.
You started to, I learned
other components of it,
but all I wanted to know was
to bring my arm up in a curl,
what is supposed to do the job?
So I would seek out ways
to make that happen better.
And when I was able to do that,
I could feel the stronger contraction.
And I just, I don't know what it, I just,
I was no visionary, I just felt like
I knew that that was
going to be better for me
if the muscle I was trying to grow
was being stressed more effectively.
So when I was attempting to do this
across different exercises,
I would notice that
what I could do potentially
on a curl where my arm is up,
where you asking me to flex
my bicep that position,
I couldn't do if I was
doing a concentration curl,
or I couldn't carry over to a cable curl,
and that shouldn't really change,
'cause the function is
still largely the same,
there's still elbow flexion,
there's still supination,
why am I not able to do it there?
And that's when it sort of
clued into me that like,
your mind-muscle connection on
not just your mind with one muscle,
but on every exercise matters,
and it varies from exercise to exercise.
And even if you don't gain
muscle size from doing that,
although I think it's very hard not to,
especially if you're
not used to doing that,
there's a term I like to call muscularity,
which is a difference, right?
It's the level of sort of
resting tone in the muscle.
That improves dramatically.
If you can learn how to just start to
engage that muscle better,
the muscularity, the
resting tone of that muscle
is harder, it's more at
attention, it's more alive.
And it's all driven from
being able to connect better
neurologically with the muscle
that you're trying to train.
I've talked about a lot in efficiency
is really what you're
trying to seek in movements
when you're trying to create hypertrophy.
When strength is your goal,
efficiency of the movement
is what you're looking for.
You're looking to have
muscles tied together
and work well efficiently,
the chest, the shoulders, the triceps,
to get a bar off of your
chest or in a bench press.
You're not looking to
make it a very inefficient
leverages for your chest,
to try to grow your
chest in a bench press,
you're trying to let the
whole package come together
for a greater output.
But when you're trying to go
and create muscle hypertrophy
or even this muscularity
that I talk about,
you need to seek ways to make
it feel more uncomfortable.
If you don't feel the discomfort,
then you're doing something wrong.
And I struggle to this day
on certain muscle groups
to still do that, even knowing
what I'm trying to work
and knowing what the goal of
everything I'm preaching here.
It's very difficult for some muscles
and for certain people to
do this on certain muscles.
But as you mentioned, practice does help.
And the more you become consistent
and deliberate with what
you're trying to do,
the more of a result you actually get.
- It's couple of really
couple of points I'd like
to delve into further.
First of all, my hunch was always that
the muscle groups that grew most easily
and that I could contract
hardest without any-
The first time I did the
Cavaliere test, got 10 out 10.
If we give it a 10 out of 10 scale.
It could just like cinch,
isolate those muscles,
cinch them, grow them easily.
I mean, there's certain body parts,
I don't want to say which ones,
'cause it doesn't really
matter, that I always felt like
if I just did pushups, they would grow,
and these muscles are far
away from any of the muscles
that are supposed to
be involved in pushups,
even though I like to think
I'm doing pushups correctly.
You'll tell me if I'm not.
But some of that I think is genetic,
and some of that has to do
with the sports that I played
when I was younger.
So I swam, I played soccer, I skateboard.
And then later I boxed.
And so the muscles
involved in those sports
were always very easy to engage
later when I went into the gym.
So I guess perhaps a call to parents,
having kids do a lot of dynamic activity,
seems like it might be a good idea.
The other thing is this
issue of muscularity.
I am so glad you brought that up.
There are, I have to imagine
a large number of listeners
who don't want to get bigger.
They don't want to take
up a larger clothing size.
They don't want to take up more space.
In fact, some of them would
like to take up less space,
but they want that quality
that you're describing,
which is that, oftentimes
you hear it more in the,
here I'm stereotyping a
bit, but with kindness.
You hear from women who
haven't weight trained,
they say, I don't want to get big, often.
Sometimes they do,
but most women that
I've helped weight train
or talked to about weight train say,
I don't want to get big,
I want to get toned.
And I think what they're referring to
is this quality of muscularity.
- A hundred percent,
- This idea that at resting
or at close to rest, or
anytime someone reaches out
and grabs a glass,
that the muscles almost look
like they're kind of twitching
underneath the skin.
And yet it's Saran wrap skin
anatomy chart type skin.
So this thing of
muscularity, or resting tone,
has a physiological basis,
I think it's how readily the nerves
are communicating with the muscles.
And you're saying that by
learning to engage the muscles
more actively, the resting tone
or muscularity can improve.
Have you seen that both in men and women?
- Yeah, oh yeah.
- And do you think this is
something that takes upkeep,
maintenance, or that once
you develop that in a muscle,
you can just kind of let it coast.
- I think like everything
at key, it requires upkeep,
you know, user lose it,
I do believe firmly,
but like I think that the
development of the connections
is going to be harder than the
maintenance of the connection.
As I said, I still struggle
to this day for myself with
unnamed muscle groups, they also,-
But there's just certain areas
that are harder for your
brain for whatever reason
to just develop that connection
at that type of level
to create that extra strong contraction.
But I think that with
proper dedication and focus,
and then I'll go right out and say,
calves is one of the areas that
I don't necessarily have
a great connection with,
and I also obviously must not care so much
'cause I don't put in the time and effort
to create that connection as I could.
So I think what might happen is,
you know yeah, there
could be a struggle there,
but then with struggle comes disinterest,
'cause you're like, well
screw it, I'm a calf knot
and I'm not going to do anything about it.
So I think if you put
the required effort in,
and the time and repetitions
that you will develop that,
and once you do develop it,
it's going to stick around
a lot longer than it would
had you not invested
any time into it at all,
not requiring as much of that.
But I mean, I don't
know, like you mentioned,
now when you train, it's like,
you're just, this is just
part of how you train now,
like you're going hard,
you're trying to really
forcefully contract.
You're not just moving the weight,
I say from point A to point B,
but you're like trying
to contract the weight
through that range.
That is a mindset that I try to put into
what everything I'm doing,
unless of course I'm focused
on a strength exercise
where I'm just trying
to lift a greater amount
and use all the muscles together.
But when the goal is
inefficiency for hypertrophy,
I am really trying to
create that contraction,
and it's just part of my training.
So I guess that for consistency's sake,
as long as I'm training is happening.
If I get away from training
that it's not happening at all,
but you know, even there,
I probably another embarrassing
admission probably,
will mindfully do it throughout the day,
even with no weight in my
hand, in certain muscle groups,
whether it be my abs or my arm
or my shoulders or something,
I'm doing something just to
sort of engage the muscles.
And I do think that some of
that sort of inane practice
actually helps by the time
you go back into the gym.
You just kind of keep
that connection going.
- Well, it certainly obeys all
the rules of neuroplasticity.
You know the fire together
wired together mantra,
which is the words of my
colleague, Carla Shatz,
hold true for all aspects
of neural function,
including nerve to muscle.
So these flexing throughout the day
or the deliberate isolation
of contracting a muscle
throughout the day is without question
engaging neuroplasticity.
And if you were to do
fewer those repetitions,
you're going to get less engagement
of the nerve to muscle connection.
I can say this with a smile
and with confidence because,
one of the first things all
neuroscience students learn
is about the neuromuscular junction,
'cause it's a really
simple example of where
the more times the nerve fires
and gets the muscle to contract,
the stronger that connection get,
receptors are brought
there, et cetera, et cetera,
there's a whole bunch of
mechanisms for a topic
of another podcast.
But basically that
practice throughout the day
makes total sense and works.
- Yeah, and there's no, believe me,
there's no science behind that
in terms of the application of it.
You do it when,
you catch yourself doing
it from time to time.
But it is definitely
something that's easily done
discreetly and you wind up doing.
I actually, I think in a recent
video when I did talk about
growing your arms by just
improving the connection.
Not that that connection
itself is applying any load
or resistance that's significant
to create overload for growth,
but it's the development
of that connection
that I then take back with me into the gym
at a more effective level
that takes every exercise I do there
and makes it more effective.
- That's like sharpening
the blade, so to speak.
Yeah, certainly obeys the laws
of nerve to muscle physiology.
Wanted to just touch
on a couple of things.
If the goal is to challenge muscles,
and one is dividing their
body into, let's say,
a three or four day a week
split or so, or maybe up to six,
how do you know when a muscle is ready
to be challenged again?
Again, I've heard, okay, every 48 hours is
protein synthesis increases
and then we'll get into this
and then it drops off.
But frankly, if I train my legs hard,
I can get stronger from
workout to workout,
or at least better in some
way, workout to workout,
leg workout to leg workout,
training them once every
five to eight days.
If I train them more often, I get worse.
So whatever that 48 hour
to 72 hour thing is,
somehow my legs don't obey that,
or maybe something else is wrong with me,
but I'm sure there are many
things else wrong with me,
but how do you assess
recovery at the local level,
meaning at the level of the muscles,
so we'll talk about soreness,
and getting better, stronger,
more repetitions, et cetera?
And then at the systemic level,
the level of the nervous system.
And I'd love for you to
tell us about the tool that,
again, I learned from you,
which is actually using a physical scale,
because it turns out that,
will let you tell what the tool is,
but that tool is also actively being used
for assessing cognitive decline,
and cognitive maintenance,
and cognitive function
in people with Alzheimer's and dementia.
- That makes total sense.
Makes total sense.
So regarding the first
part of the question,
how would you kind of dictate
when a muscle's recovered?
So I do think that what you're
experiencing is totally real,
that different muscles
recover at different rates.
And I've always been so
fascinated by this concept.
I've talked about internally
with my team, but like,
I feel like what we really need
the holy grail to training,
is going to be when we're
able to crack the code
on an individual basis,
when a muscle is recovered,
and that is going to dictate
its training schedule.
And the fact that you might have a bicep
that could be trained
via a pulling workout,
a regular bicep dedicated workout,
forget to split at the moment.
You may have a bicep
that's able to be trained,
that can be trained again the next day.
And then the next day,
and then maybe you need
a day off after that.
But like, that can vary from
person to person for sure,
and it can vary from muscle
to muscle in that person
over the course of time as you mentioned,
'cause the systemic
recovery is going to impact
all those muscles anyway,
but let's say you're
systemically recovering,
every muscle itself is going
to have a recovery rate.
And I think what's fascinating is that,
when you talked about before
we like to train in this week,
or we have, like the way
our mind looks at training,
well, if that was the
case with the biceps,
that bicep is a slave to the
rest of your training split.
Where it's like, well, why
does it have to be also
at the end of every
eighth day or whatever,
when it might respond better to something
much more frequently?
And your legs are also
being thrown into that mix.
There's a Mike Menzer
concept where he's like,
train one set and be done for 14 days.
I mean, there's such variability
between muscle groups
and you're linking them all together.
I think that coming back
and using muscle soreness
as a guideline for that, is
one of the only tools we have
in terms of the local level.
You know we don't really
have, being able to measure,
let's say CPK levels inside
of a muscle would be amazing,
at a local level to see how
recovered that muscle is,
but that becomes fairly invasive,
at least to my knowledge,
it becomes fairly invasive.
So what are our tools?
I mean, I think that at the basic level,
that's the one that most
people can relate to
and easily identify, and
then use that as a guideline.
And if you're training
when you're really sore,
it's probably not a great idea.
And it's probably a good indication
that that muscle's not recovered,
but at least hearing what
you and I are saying here
might be a comfort to the person to say,
yeah, it is possible
that it's not recovered.
Just because 48 hours
is the recommendation.
And just because research points
to muscle protein synthesis
needing a restimulation, well, maybe not,
maybe you're not necessarily there yet.
For that muscle that you're not there yet.
So it's all really interesting stuff,
but as far as the systemic recovery,
I think there's a lot of
ways people talk about
resting heart rate
measured in the morning,
all different kinds of core temperature
and things like that
that might become altered
in a state of non recovery.
But grip strength is very
much tied to performance
and recovery.
And when I was at the Mets,
we used to actually take
grip strength measurements
as a baseline in spring
training all the time.
Now, obviously as a baseball player,
you're gripping a bat, you're pitcher,
you're gripping a ball like-
Having good grip strength is important,
so if you've noticed somebody
had a very weak grip,
it's just a good focal point
of a specialized training
component for the...
- Would you use this
every day with those guys?
- No, we would do, in spring training,
we do sort of a baseline
entry level measurement.
And then we would measure
it throughout the season,
maybe once every two weeks or three weeks.
And the idea there was
to manage the recover,
measure the recovery.
But I just gave it away, to
determine overall recovery,
your grip strength is
pretty highly correlated.
So we have found that
with one of those scales,
those old fashioned bathroom scales
at like the bathroom and
beyond, or whatever you can get,
which by the way, almost impossible,
I believe Jesse and I were
searching for the last scale
to put in that video.
And we almost couldn't find one,
'cause everything is like
digital and everything.
I'm looking at the old
fashioned dial controls.
- It's like old Macintosh computers.
There's a huge market
for them and old phones.
Kids keep your phones now.
In 30 years, the lame phone now
will be worth a lot of money.
- It'll be worth a lot.
So, I wound up finding
one, and it's a great tool
for just squeezing the
scale with your hands
and seeing what type of
output you could get.
And I think we all can relate to this
when you just visualize,
imagine the last time you
were sick, or that when you,
or just try this, the next time
you wake up in the morning,
when you first wake up in the
morning, you're still groggy.
Try to squeeze your hand,
try to make a fist as hard as you can.
You're going to sit
there angry at your fist
because it won't contract
as hard as you know it can.
You don't have the ability
to just create the output.
And that is because in that
state, you're still sleepy,
you're still fatigued,
you're not even awake
the whole level at this point.
Well, that is still an actual
phenomenon that happens that,
a lack of recovery, or
lack of wakefulness,
or whatever you want to say
is going to lead to a
decreased output there.
So when you start to measure
that on a daily basis,
you can get a pretty good
sense of where you're at.
And I think when people
start to see a drop off
of 10% or so, or even
greater of their grip output,
you really should skip the gym that day.
Because I don't think there's
much you're going to do there
that's going to be that beneficial,
even if it is the day to train
legs or whatever day it is.
- I love this tool, it's
simple, it's low cost,
if you can find such a scale.
I guess you could also find
one of those grippers that,
and you could do this in a
very non quantitative way,
but better would be a scale
where you could actually measure
how hard you can squeeze this
thing at a given time of day.
It draws to mind, just a
little neuroscience factor,
in the world of circadian neurobiology,
one of the consistent findings is that
in the middle of your nighttime,
they'll wake people up and
they'll say, do this test.
In the laboratory they
use a different apparatus,
but it's essentially the same thing.
And in the middle of the night
grip strength is very, very low.
And mid-morning, grip strength is high,
and as the body temperature
goes up into the afternoon,
grip strength goes higher
and higher and higher,
and then it drops off.
There's this circadian
rhythm and grip temperature.
So you probably want to do this
at more or less the same time each day
if you're going to use it.
But it I think it's
brilliant in its simplicity
and it's directness to
these upper motor neurons,
'cause that's really what
it's assessing your ability.
Again, it's about the ability
to contract the muscles hard.
If you can't do that,
you're not going to get
an effective workout.
- Yeah, and they also, I mean,
there certainly are more
sophisticated tools too.
As PT, we have hand grip dynamometers,
we can measure one side at a time too.
I'm not really, I'm getting
a little bit blinded
by the fact that both hands
are squeezing into that scale
and I don't get really
a left right comparison.
But even at that level,
that could give you a
little bit more detail,
but that comes with a cost,
those are pretty expensive devices.
But if it's, listen,
if you were an athlete,
the $200, $300 it cost
to have one of those
would be well worth the added investment.
- And I'm sure some of our
listeners will want one too,
'cause there are a lot
of tech geeks out there,
not tech industry geeks, but
people who like tech gear.
What's it called again?
- It's a hand grip dynamometer.
- Hand grip dynamometer.
- Dynamometer.
Said by Jeff with a
great East Coast accent,
and by me in a terrible
botched at West Coast version.
Thank you, well, I'll put
that in the show notes also.
Now I think recovery is key,
we always hear about sleep.
You grow when you sleep and
incidentally your brain,
you stimulate learning when
you're awake obviously,
but the reordering of neural
connections happens in sleep.
This is why sleep is
the way to get smarter,
provided you're also
doing the learning part.
The sleep's the way to get stronger
provided you're also
doing the training part.
You've had some really,
you've put out interesting
content over the years
in terms of even sleep position.
One of the major changes that
I made to my sleep behavior
is to not have the sheets
tucked in at the end of the bed.
And I'll tell you,
this had a profound
impact on several things.
First of all,
my feet have always been
the bane of my existence,
broke them a bunch skateboarding.
And I noticed when I'd
run, I'd get shin splints.
And then I started to
notice that my feet sort of,
you're the PT, they were kind of floppy,
as if I was pointing my toes
slightly all the time at rest.
And I realized that based on
listening to you previously,
that my sheets were wrapped
tight, not hotel tight.
- Right.
- What their thing in the hotels.
And I started releasing the
sheets at the end of the bed,
and I also started doing
some tibialis work.
Front of Shin's work
essentially, changed everything.
My back pain from running
my shin splints disappeared,
my posture improved,
although my audience will tell me
that it still needs improvement.
They're always five or 10 people that-
I've actually had chairs
sent to our mailing address.
Very nice chairs, right?
So I'm trying there.
But this is fascinating, right?
The position that one sleeps in,
I fortunately have never
had any shoulder issues
knock on wood, but maybe you could just
talk to us a little bit about
sleep and sleep position
for sake of waking position and movement.
'Cause this, I think is a very unique
and very powerful way
to think about sleep.
This podcast has done
a lot of episodes about
keeping the room cool,
getting sunlight in your eyes, et cetera,
how to get into sleep.
But you've talked about physically,
what positions might
be better to sleep in.
So please, please enrich us.
- I mean, first of all,
some people's opinions of
that type of content is that,
you sleep in the position
that's most comfortable
so you ensure that you're sleeping.
Oh great, I understand
that we all want to sleep,
that's the goal when we
put our head on the pillow,
is to actually fall asleep
and wake up in the morning
and not know what the hell
happened, unless you had a dream.
But you know beyond that,
there are certainly physical
components to sleep.
That is why a lot of times
people will wake up and say like
that you can incur pretty
serious injuries in sleep.
People will wake up and
have like a shoulder
that did not bother them at all,
be humming the next day
or even for weeks after,
because of the one sleep
position they put themselves in,
in a prolonged way.
And they happened to have a deep sleep,
even through the discomfort.
That can do actually some damage.
So it's understandable
that the body can incur
some strain and stress if you're
sleeping in the wrong way.
One of the things I say
right off the bat is,
sleeping on your stomach
just doesn't really have many benefits.
You're putting yourself
into a position that is,
depending upon the
orientation of your mattress
or how many pillows you're using,
but you're basically
putting yourselves into
excessive extension of the lumbar spine,
which for most people, isn't very good,
if you're a disc patient, I
guess that might be helpful,
for relocating the disc.
But I mean, for the most part,
your hands are then
usually not at your sides,
but they're up under your arms,
so you've got them into
sort of internal rotation up
over elevation in your head.
It's just not a great position.
You also have to crank your
neck for one side or the other
in order to breathe, or you're
going to your face down,
straight into the pillow.
So I would skip that one.
And there's some people that
are total belly sleepers.
And I would just say, listen,
I don't think that is the most helpful,
long term way for you to sleep.
Try to adopt a different position.
Sleeping on your side oftentimes is,
is also brought along with that,
the legs knees coming
up towards the chest,
prolonged hip flexion.
Listen, we're doing enough
of that during the day.
- What we're doing right now.
- We don't need to do another 10 hours
or eight hours or something
at night like that.
And it just is reinforcing,
and as we said too,
let's say you trained that day,
you're just reinforcing
muscle shortening overnight.
Where the body is healing
and trying to create
some changes in your body.
One of the reasons why
I recommend stretching
or static stretching
prior to going to bed,
a lot of people don't really
want to do it at that point,
'cause it could take 10
minutes, 5-10 minutes,
depending upon how many
muscles you have to stretch.
But it's good to sort of try to establish
just longer length temporarily
prior to going into a state where
you're going to be not moving
and recovering and creating
new changes in the muscle.
So, that kind of, I don't
say it doesn't rule out
the side sleeper.
The side sleeper could
be very, very helpful
for somebody that has
apnea or other conditions.
So again, it's not an
all or nothing approach,
but it's something that you
need to pay attention to.
When you are on your back,
like you were talking about
and your feet are wedged
underneath a tight sheets
at the end of the bed.
And most of us, unless we
consciously are pulling them up,
don't prefer our beds to
have really loose sheets
at the end of the bed.
- It's hard to make
the bed in the morning.
- So it's like you you're going
to want to have them tight.
Well, I'm saying as you experienced,
you're going to have these
prolonged plant reflection,
that's going to likely lead
to shorter calves over time
because you're lacking all that length
for that long period of
time that you could have
if you just loosened up the sheets
and allowed your feet to
just hang out where they are.
Now, the resting position of the ankle
is not endorse reflection,
it's going to be still
in some plain reflection,
but not being driven down
and pulled down into that position.
And I think what happens
actually is people who get
uncomfortable that way,
even in their sleep
will shift away from that
by turning either onto
their side of their stomach.
So there's definitely an
impact of the body position
and sleep in figuring out the best way
that you can still sleep of
course, and get your rest,
but have a mindful eye towards
what it's doing to your body
and choose the one that's
least abrasive to your body
is the way you should go.
- That's terrific, and again,
it's really helped me and
I'm a big believer based on good science
out of Stanford and elsewhere that
as much as we can be
nasal breathers in sleep,
we probably should be.
I don't know if you've
done any content yet about
taping the mouth shut
with some medical tape,
but you know the benefits
of nasal breathing in sleep
are pretty tremendous,
but it takes a little bit of
training for people to do,
and the training is very simple.
It's a little piece of medical tape.
So again, a topic for another time.
I'm glad you mentioned stretching,
I was going to ask about
stretching a little bit later,
but let's talk about stretching.
When's the best time to stretch
for particular types of results?
And maybe you could define
some of the different types of stretching.
So you just mentioned a little bit of,
what you call it, light stretching or?
I'm completely naive here on stretching.
So let me just say, I
can think of stretching
where I hold the stretch and
really try and "lengthen"
in air quotes folks, I don't
want the PTs jumping all over.
I don't know what it is,
but nutrition and the
PTs online are really,
they've got pitchforks in both hands.
Academics...
- That's a recent evolution, I think.
And not the nutrition as much,
but the PTs have become a
little bit angry these days.
- I see, well, I always say
with feelings of powerlessness
comes aggression.
Remember that folks.
So in any case, they're
stretching where I'm
trying to consciously
"lengthen," again in air quotes,
the muscle I'm not yanking on the limb
or bobbing up and down.
Maybe you could define the
different types of stretching
for people, maybe give
us some rough guidelines
about what or not to do if cold or warm,
before training, after
training, et cetera.
- So, yeah, there's obviously
there's a lot of different
types of stretching
that could get even to P and F stretching
and things that are a
little bit more niche.
But in general, the two
basic forms of stretching
are active stretching
and passive stretching,
and your dynamic work.
And your passive stretching is done
with the goal of trying
to create an increase
in the flexibility of the muscle.
So whether you're actually
increasing the length
of that muscle, more
so what you're doing is
increasing the- or decreasing
the resistance of that muscle
to want to stay at a certain
level of flexibility.
So when we can sort of take the breaks off
and allow that muscle to
allow us more range of motion,
we're inherently increasing flexibility
without necessarily having
to increase the length
of that muscle.
That is usually done at a time
far away from your workout,
because they have shown where
this type of stretching
done prior to an activity,
and it could be like a
structured activity like lifting,
or it could be a little
bit less structured,
like competing in a sport
in a spontaneous type way,
that there is a period of
recalibration that is needed
after doing this,
because you're disrupting the
length tension relationship
of the muscle that causes
you to not necessarily
be able to rely on these,
I've talked about before,
stored motor engrams in
your mind in terms of,
this is the pattern for how
I swing a golf club, say.
And now introducing a
little bit of flexibility,
or added flexibility, or range,
because of the stretching I did before,
it takes maybe a whole or two
or three to match up again.
Oh, this is what he's trying to do,
that golf swinging thing
that I remembered again,
like it's not remembering
that every component,
like I have to bend my
right wrist back 10 degrees,
and then I have to bend my
elbow and I have to break,
like your body stores these
patterns for motor efficiency.
And when I have to start
matching up that stored pattern
with what's feeling new
because of the increased range,
I can impair performance.
And again, it could happen
even in a gym workout
where you're talking about your first,
second set, third set,
where maybe the
repercussions aren't as big,
'cause I'll just do a few extra sets.
But in performance, if you screw
up your first three rounds,
you're playing on a PJ tour and you shoot
your six over after three, you're done.
So I think it matters there.
As far as the dynamic, so we
relegate that as I mentioned,
sort of towards the end of the day
when it's not going to impact performance,
but even maybe have the
additional benefit of creating
the feeling of length or
the increase or decrease
in resistance to this length
at a time when I know
my body is going to try
to tend to heal and heal shorter,
never longer, but heal shorter.
So if I can introduce a little
bit of that extra length
or decreased resistance to that length,
it's a better time to do it.
So I think it promotes a better recovery.
If I want to...
- Sorry to interrupt, but so
stretching later in the day,
because I'm intrigued by
this concept of heal shorter.
So part of the healing
and recovery process
means the shortening of the muscles.
This is the tensing up in sleep.
- Yes, yeah.
- Could you elaborate
just a bit on that and then
sorry to break your flow,
but then to continue...
- No, just basically,
what's been shown is that,
when the repair process,
muscular repair from,
let's say strength
training during the day,
the repair process usually
results in a muscle
that is slightly shorter rather
than increased in length.
It's just, muscles prefer to sort of
ratchet their way down
into that contraction,
and then maintain that more comfortable
length tension relationship.
So when you're sleeping,
it tends to air on the side of shorter
rather than longer, when ideally
we don't really want that.
We want to maintain as much of that length
because with more length, we
actually have more leverage.
That muscle has more leverage to contract.
If it was all the way contracted,
you really can't obviously
we know generate much force
in a muscle that's already
maximally contracted.
So I think we want to do something
that we, whatever we can,
whatever little weapons
we have in our arsenal
that could allow us to
do this prior to sleep.
And again, it's just making
it a conscious choice
to do it at a time of the day
that makes a little bit more sense.
Dynamic stretching is really
not done for that purpose
of trying to create any
type of feeling of act
or increasing the potential length
as you said of the muscle,
but more so the readiness
of the muscle to perform.
And increasing exploring the
ends of that range of motion
in a more dynamic way so
you're not hanging out there
in disrupting that length
tension relationship
but just sort of touching
the ends of those barriers
so that when you feel movement
again, it feels looser,
it feels more ready.
And obviously at the same
time warming up blood flow,
all the benefits we get from
just warming up in general.
So like that's the series
you've probably seen a
bunch of times but like
leg swings and butt kicks
and lunge, walking lunges
and all types of-
- Toe touches.
- Toe touches, all those kind of drills,
those active stretching drills
or lunging with rotations
for the upper body
to try to get some of the
thoracic spine involved too.
Those are the drills that
people will do prior to training
that are both excitatory
in terms of just the nervous system
but also helpful for just
the general warm up the body
'cause the blood flow.
But from a muscle readiness standpoint
not impairing the performance
while at the same time
exploring the increased ranges
'cause as you know the
first toe touch you do
is not as high as the
last toe touch you do.
- For me it doesn't even include the toe.
- The shin touch.
- The touch attempt.
- So like those are going to improve
with each subsequent rep
and I think that's what people actually,
when you can see those,
those actual changes from
rep one to rep seven,
you just feel ready,
you feel more alert and
ready to go in your workout.
So the dynamic type of stretching
and I mentioned earlier on
what I've had to do to sort
of increase my warm up focus.
I think that's more of what
I try to do these days.
I try to be a little bit
more alert to the fact that,
my body's not ready.
When I was working with
Antonio Brown I remember like
he would spend 20 minutes, 30
minutes on all dynamic work.
And I've never seen
anybody spend that long
on their dynamic work.
But like he said, he just
didn't feel right and ready
to go unless he did a lot of that.
And I mean his dynamic stretching routine
would be a workout for most everybody.
And it's crazy how much he did.
- These pro athletes are amazing.
And you've had the great
fortune of working with
and improving their abilities.
But I can only imagine
'cause I also imagine he is
pretty strong in the gym also.
- I mean, it always amazes me
the guys that make it to that level
no matter what sport they do.
They're so gifted in everything.
Like David Wright used to
make me laugh all the time
with the Mets because no matter what I,
Ping pong, like anything
because of his hand-eye coordination.
Like anything great at.
Jump rope.
I remember he hadn't
done a lot of jump rope
and I think jump rope's
one of the best things
you could do from a
conditioning standpoint.
It's actually fairly
interesting, it's not just,
it's not too harsh on the joints
even though it's a ballistic
move and he wasn't-
I have to admit, if he listens to this,
he's going to want to kill me,
but I was better at him at jump roping.
One of the only things I could do.
And then I gave him about five days
and he completely blew me out of the water
to the point where I could
never keep up with him anymore.
He made it look effortless.
It's like that's where the
athlete in someone comes out.
No matter what they pick
up, they're good at it.
And I think that when you
see guys like this in the gym
like their strength levels
tend to be pretty damn good
and their abilities, their
coordination, their everything
just tends to sort of
be good at that level.
And it sort of amazes me.
Why those guys can go pick up
a golf club and go shoot 72
and having never really played.
They're just naturally
good at whatever they do.
- Yeah, I have a couple,
I'm smiling 'cause I have a
couple really close friends
who did a number of years
some several decades in the SEAL teams.
And I don't know that their
skill level at everything
is so high as you're
describing for athletes
but their level of
competitiveness is beyond.
I ocean swam with one,
there's no chance that I'm
going to right out swim Pat
ever, ever.
He actually goes back and forth sometimes
just to check up on
me, which I appreciate.
Thank you Pat.
I haven't drowned yet.
But in addition to that,
we could play horseshoes
and it's like this switch
that just flips on,
like he's going to murder me.
Of course he's a very nice guy, right?
In general, they tend to be very nice.
But the level of competitiveness
is kind of unreal.
They're selected for it.
- They're trying to beat themselves
they're not even trying to beat you.
- That's right, I'm not
even in the competition.
- You're not even there.
- Yeah, exactly.
Thank you.
Now I won't feel so bad or worse.
It's true, it's a remarkable thing.
I'm glad you mentioned jump roping.
I used to skip rope for warmup for boxing,
like three minute rounds
or something like that.
But I'm glad you brought it up because
skipping rope is something that
obviously has a cardiovascular component,
there's the conditioning
component, there's timing
and it is kind of interesting, right?
It's frustrating when you don't get it
especially when it whips you on the air
if you're using a proper rope.
I'm just curious if you
could just give us a quick
skipping rope 101.
Do you like to see people
jumping with both feet and toes?
We'll link to a video if
there was one and I missed it.
Do you like to see
people doing high knees?
Do you like people
basically like shuffling?
You want to see people doing double Dutch?
What do you want to see
people doing over time?
- All of the above maybe
not the double Dutch,
but all of the above.
I mean, I think that's the
cool thing about it, right?
Like once we sort of master
the skill 'cause for all of us,
that first jump with the
two feet going together
is a challenge.
'Cause you just got to time that rope,
you got to time your jump
and then we get bored as
we often do as humans,
we get bored with what we can do
and we want to take on new challenges
so then it becomes one leg at a time
or then it becomes side
to side hops, right?
All of those things are
beneficial I believe
neurologically to enhancing the ability
to do the skill as a whole
but also just because
I'm such a believer in
training in all three planes.
So like just doing straight up and down
versus now I can do frontal
plane side to side motion
and then I can even do small little twists
or core screws you call them.
It requires a different,
you would know more better than I do
that it requires different
neurological patterns
to be able to coordinate
that because you're changing
the orientation of your body in space.
So it's not just them
changing the exercise
but I'm changing how my body
interprets that exercise
because what's happening
to my body in space.
So I love whatever people wind up doing,
but I am amazed there are people,
I just started following
this young woman on Instagram
who is like, I'll give her a plug out,
I think it's like @anna.skips or something
and she is ridiculous.
Like I watch her and I'm like mesmerized
at what she can do with the rope.
It's like is an extremely
athletic endeavor
believe when it gets to be at that level
and the speed and the precision and the-
I think one of the goals that
you want to be able to have is
to where you're feeling
as if you're almost
effortlessly dancing without a rope.
Like where you're just
bouncing off of the ball
of your foot.
And it's an important skill to learn too
whether you go back to run
or even even jog, right?
Just like more casual running,
learning how to land is so important.
One of the drills that
people should try is like,
try to jump on your heels.
So just stand up, pull your
toes off the ground, right?
And just jump from your
heels and land on your heels.
You'll feel it in your jaw.
You'll literally feel your jaw rattle
when you land on your heels.
There is no shock absorption capabilities
through your heels.
Meantime, a lot of people
land on their heels a lot
when they run and you're just,
your body's not built to absorb the forces
like the ball of your foot could.
It's really built as a spring.
And the foot is a, to me
as a physical therapist,
the foot has always been
one of the most amazing,
you talk about having
bad feet I have flat feet
it looks like I got flippers
if I took my shoes off.
Like I'm wearing scuba fins.
There is no-
There is no adaptability of
that foot to the surface.
When it's completely caved
and flattened like that,
the job of the foot is to be a adaptable.
Well, maybe there is some adaptability
because it's so floppy, but
at the same time at some point
that critical junction when
you're going to then step through
and you need to be able to push off
the foot has to actually
changes in the midfoot itself
to become a rigid lever
is what they call it.
You're going from a mobile
adapter to a rigid lever.
That rigid lever literally
locks up the metatarsal joint
to become solid
so that you can push
off of it with leverage.
If you lack that capability,
all those stresses that are
supposed to be born by the foot,
go up into the ankle, into
the knee, into the hip,
into the low back.
So learning how to land and
start to train your body
to experience ground
reaction forces the right way
is so critical to all other function
and all other disability
of the kinetic chain
and jumping rope is like
one of the best ways
to learn how to do that.
- Great.
I own a jump rope I love
doing it in the morning
while I get sunlight in my eyes.
It's actually a protocol I
picked up from Tim Ferris
who mentioned 'cause
listeners in my podcast know
I'm like a broken record with
get sunlight in your eyes
even through cloud cover it's
just sets your sleep rhythms
and your waking rhythms
of yada yada on and on.
But sometimes it'd be
kind of boring for people
and I want to get them off their phone.
So jumping rope is also
just a great way to wake up.
So jumping rope can be the cardio workout,
the 15, 30 minutes.
- Definitely.
And there's sort of that hybrid
that we were talking about before of like,
you're not necessarily
dropping down to the ground
and doing burpees,
but I just look at it as
a more athletic endeavor
because of the coordination involved
than just simply walking or jogging.
- Yeah, and it's not much
of equipment requirement.
Very minimal cost.
You could even use a rope
or something if you...
- We even instruct people
they could use no rope
and just pretend and just
move the arms, right?
- Truly zero cost.
- You're never going to
hit the rope which is good
but at the same time,
So you're never going to know
if you're doing it wrong,
but at least you can move through that
and get the same benefits
through the feet.
- I love it, I love it.
I told myself before
sitting down with you today
that I wasn't going to
focus on specific exercises
because there's such a
wealth of incredible content
that you put out there
that people could just put
into YouTube or elsewhere
and arrive at the proper
way to do a chin or a dip,
for whatever purpose.
But there's one exercise
and one particular motion
that I'd like to discuss for a moment
because I believe that
learning about this
cautionary note from you
is one of the reasons
that I've maintained steady
training for 30 years
with no major injury knock on wood
and that's the upright row.
One thing that whether
you weight train or not.
- Do we censor this podcast?
I mean censoring, do we
beep this out or not?
- I do.
Do you get beef about this?
- No.
You know what, we always get beef
in any social media platform
where we're put out.
But like, no, I guess
some, I get some from it,
but I'm fully prepared to defend myself.
- But here's the reason
for asking about this.
I never really cared much for upright rows
it's not an exercise I tend to do.
But one thing that's apparent
in all my colleagues,
in every child I see, in
every adult I see is that
almost everybody is in
inward rotation now.
So folks think if you stay,
I think I learned this from you also,
if you stand up straight
and then you just point your thumbs out,
like a thumbs up but your hands are down
you're pointing your thumbs straight out,
ideally they would go straight out.
Most people the thumbs
are going to be pointing
toward one another
because most people are starting
to look somewhere between
a non human primate and a melted candle.
Bent at the hips, et cetera,
from too much sitting,
we're all sitting, we're
in an inward rotation,
but I learned from you
that the upright row
compromises some important
aspects of our shoulder mechanics
and could be actually sort
of a dangerous movement
in some ways.
I'm sure there's a safe
way for people to do it.
But so I've always made it a point now
on the basis of this advice
to A, not do upright rows,
but I wasn't doing them before
but to really strive for external rotation
on things like bench dips, on
a number of different things.
Whenever I can I try and
go into external rotation
provided that without looking
like an idiot walking around
with my palms facing outward.
Please tell us about
internal external rotation.
The upright row is one aspect of that,
but why this is so important
not just for weight training,
but as in terms of posture and mechanics
and not looking like a melted candle
or partially melted candle.
- I actually love it.
I'm happy to talk about it
cause I love the shoulder
as a joint.
I think PTs tend to fall
in love with certain areas
and the shoulder is one
of the cool areas for me,
it's like the foot is but like,
the shoulder has the most
mobility in the body of any joint,
but it's also got the
least stability, right?
There's always that trade off
of mobility and stability.
So your stability comes
from certain muscle groups
and 101 is that the only muscle group
that actually externally
rotates the shoulder
is going to be the rotator cuff, okay.
And unless you are devoted to training
through external rotation
and exercises that
are going to externally
rotate the shoulder,
you're not training that function.
And it's so easy for us in everyday life
especially those that aren't training
to not ever really undergo
any of those stresses
that could be beneficial to counteracting
what happens freely and naturally,
which is internal rotation.
So when you think about
the imbalance created
just by nature and how we live our lives,
internal rotation far, far, far
outweighs external rotation.
So you need to address it.
And the reason why you need
to address it is because
you need to normalize those
biomechanics to the shoulder
if you want their long term health.
And one of the functions of the shoulder
is to raise our arm up over our head.
And if we do that from an
internally rotated position,
we're going to have a higher likelihood
of creating stress inside that joint.
Funny thing is I talked
about before my PT brethren
who can be somewhat angry these days,
I don't know what
happened, but fairly angry.
They want to discredit the
existence of something like
shoulder impingement,
which I don't know how,
I mean, certain studies,
look, we both all read studies
and studies will say one thing one day
and potentially conflict entirely
in a different direction.
Some studies will point
to the non-existence
of a shoulder impingement.
Meanwhile, we have thankfully
digital motion x-rays
that will literally show the
impingement occur in real time,
in real function.
And that's one of the limitations
I'm off on a tangent here,
but like those types of x-rays
or that type of fluoroscopy
that we have nowadays,
like gives us such insight
that we never had before
'cause we're taking static x-rays
of someone laying down on a table.
Well, I want to see what happens
when you actually raise my arm
up over my head in function
and the tools now exist to do that.
We see the problems occurring because
in order to get normal mechanics
and free up the joint maximally inside
you need to externally rotate
as you raise the arm up.
So if your muscles aren't firing
and they're not necessarily as strong
as the internal rotation
bias that pulls them in,
you're asking for trouble
every time you do that.
Well, this exercise is literally
putting you in elevation
and internal rotation.
And if you were to walk into
a PT office and someone said,
"I think he's got impingement,
will you diagnose him?"
There's a test called
a Hawkins Kennedy Test.
And I would put you in the position
I know we're not visible at
this point through the podcast,
but I'll put you in this position here
where I have your arm elevated
and your hand pretty much under your chin
pushing downward on that
to create that internal shoulder rotation.
Pretty much the exact
position that we're in
when we're holding a
bar in an upright row.
Some will say, well, just don't go so high
going up to the level of the chest,
but you're still in this
internally rotated position.
The thing that I think
frustrates me the most
about the exercise is
that I have an alternative
and the alternative does the same thing
in terms of helping the muscles grow
by simply fixing the
biomechanics of the exercise
by just allowing the hands
to go higher than the elbows.
So instead of the elbows
being higher than the hand
which drives you into internal rotation,
if the elbow is lower than the hand,
the hand being higher here,
I'm in external rotation.
And I could do something
called a high pull
and still get the same
abduction of the arm
and still get the same
benefits of the shoulders,
the delts and the traps
without having to undergo
any of the stresses
that would come from
the somewhat awkward
movement of an upright row.
- And for those listening,
we'll put a link to a short
clip of what this looks like.
But basically what Jeff is doing
and tell me if I'm describing
this incorrectly or correctly.
Jeff is taking your two thumbs
and pointing behind you,
so elbows up kind of near the chin
and pointing behind you
like, oh, headed that way.
Like somebody directing the
airplane, like come back,
come back and back.
I forget what they call that.
I think it's called semaphorin,
is the action of like where
they direct the planes
or something the flags or whatever.
Someone will, of course tell
me I'm wrong about that too,
which is why I say these things
because I like being told
what the correct answer is.
In any case, so this
replaces the upright row
and probably does a number
of other important things as well.
- Well, again, listen, without
naming names or programs
or anything like that.
When I got involved in, when
I got involved in Athlean-X,
when I first my online presence,
there was a very, very,
very popular program
that was out there that I just
for fun I wanted a as a PT,
is the nerdy things we do,
but I wanted to evaluate
the workout structure.
And I went and I looked at every rep
over the course of a week.
And there was something
like 890 repetitions
or something done
and zero of them were
dedicated external rotation
in the shoulder.
So if you think about it, I mean,
again, it was a very popular program
that was done by a lot of people.
There was no focus at all,
no dedicated focus towards creating
a balance to an action
that is so predominant.
And remember, it's not just
because we sit with bad posture,
but the fact that our chest
can internally rotate,
our latch can internally rotate,
there's like muscle, other
big muscles that participate
in things that we do every day
that will further internally
rotate the shoulder.
The only weapons we have
for external rotation
are those little rotator cuff muscles
and three of them actually
three of the four.
And the job is to sort of
actively and consciously train them
through really the
boring exercises, right?
Like you've seen them with the band,
you anchor a band to a pole,
you stand with the band
in the opposite hand.
So if it's anchored to
the pole on my left side
I've got the band on my right side
and you see people where they
kind of rotate their hand
towards the back.
Again, kind of what you were saying
but at a lower elevation
taking the back of my hand
and trying to point it
to somebody behind me.
Well, that is one of the
ways to train the muscle.
It's just a one function of the shoulder,
external rotation of the
shoulder and you need to do it.
And again, it's not that
if somebody was doing more
external rotation work
could they absorb the upright row better?
Probably, because as
they elevated the arm,
they probably have a little
bit more of a contribution
from the rotator cuff to
what one of the functions is
to centralize the head
of the humorous inside
of the glenoid, the capsule.
So as it rises up, it stays central
as opposed to migrating up
because the deltoid likes to pull up.
So if the rotator cuff has
some ability to counteract
the upward pull of a del
then it can maintain a
more healthy relationship
with overhead movement.
So just realizing that that function
is only gained through
doing these exercises,
we would probably
dedicate more time there,
the upright row might be
better absorbed by that person
'cause they have a
little bit more strength.
But again, why?
Because if you have an exercise
that does the same thing
for what you're trying to do muscularly,
to build the muscles that it affects,
why wouldn't you just do
it where you can still see
actually pick up more
repetitions of external rotation?
So you're getting none of
the harm all of the benefits.
I see zero reason to
ever do the upright row
and people will argue, this
is the way they argue that,
I've done this for 30 years
and I've never hurt myself.
And I always say yet, yet.
Like, listen, the goal is
to not hurt yourself ever.
So even if you, it's sort of
like the championship game.
You might play the game of your life,
but if you lose you lost.
And when you get into the
end of the record books,
you still lost.
So even if you had the
game in your life you lost,
I don't care if you do
it for 30 years, no pain,
you're still doing it and there's no pain
I'm giving you an option
that's going to give you the same results
in the exercise that you're seeking.
That's why you're doing the exercise
without the possibility of
having the the bad outcome
come from it.
So I get a little bit
defensive of the move,
but I feel like it's like,
why would you do that?
- No, it makes me say,
being able to train for a long
period of time and feel good.
I'm proud to say and I don't have
the kind of genetics where
like we don't have a lot of
impressive athletes in our
family tree or anything.
It's some fit individuals
some less fit individuals,
but I really believe
it's about putting in the
work consistently over time.
And the more often you can
wake up not in pain the better.
And so I think that being
in external rotation
as often as possible is good.
This is actually a good friend
who's a yoga teacher told me
this is also a problem with the yogis,
all the downward dog stuff.
For those listening,
you can think of inward
rotation as like thumbs down.
Just think thumbs down
and rotation isn't bad
but less thumbs down more
thumbs up is external rotation.
So for those just listening,
maybe that gives a visual.
The more exercise you can
do in external rotation
the better it seems on average.
I'd love to chat with you
just a little bit more about
biomechanics, and this is a
personal thing that again,
your content really helped solve for me.
One is I thought I had lower back pain,
that I had sciatica so
badly that on a few trips
Work trips years ago
when I was doing a lot
more international travel.
I mean, it was hard to stand up sometimes.
I mean like excruciating pain.
I didn't want to take medication,
I didn't want to do back surgery.
In the end, turns out it
wasn't a back injury at all.
And one of the things that
helped fix it was this
just learning about this
thing called the medial glute.
And you had a video that
said fixed back pain
and then you quite accurately say that
some back pain isn't really
about the back at all.
And had me do an exercise or
allowed me to try an exercise
where I lay on my side and
essentially pointing my toe down
the top toe down, almost
like pointing a toe down
and then would slowly lift the leg up
while pointing the toe down.
Maybe I got it...
- No, you got it good.
- And then holding that,
and there's a muscle that sort of sits
at the top of the glute
it kind of peaks out
every once in a while.
You can feel it there with your thumb,
which is I think you had push back on it.
A bit creating that mind muscle link again
and there with proprioception,
the actual feeling of a
muscle literally with a limb,
we know based on the neural
circuits for movement,
that that enhances the
contractibility of a muscle.
So like if you touch your bicep,
you literally can contract
it more more strongly.
And this makes total sense based on
neuromuscular physiology.
So had me do that repeatedly.
And I started doing that in my hotel room
and the pain started to disappear.
And then it came back again the afternoon
so I did it again in the afternoon.
So this is something I
did for three or four days
and lo and behold a back pain's gone.
I handed this off to my father
because he like me has a
slightly lower right shoulder.
I think that our gate is
probably thrown off by this.
It's probably a genetic thing, who knows.
He handed off to somebody.
It turns out that we don't
suffer from back pain
and in fact, now I don't
suffer from any pain
because I was doing this exercise
which I think is helping my medial glute.
Two reasons why I raised this.
One, I know a lot of guys who
have this right side sciatica
'cause people keep the
wallet there is one idea
or left side sciatica.
There are a lot of people male and female
who think they have back pain
when they don't actually have back pain.
And the other thing is that
is a general question about biomechanics
or statement about biomechanics.
I had of a feeling
that a lot of what people
think is back pain or knee pain
or neck pain or headache or shoulder pain
is actually the consequence
of something that's happening
above or below that site of pain.
And this is a whole landscape
of stuff related to PT
and recovery and pain management.
But maybe if you could just
educate us a bit on this
and why this works, what
is the medial glute?
Why did it make my so-called
back pain disappear?
And how should people think about pain?
And I'd like to use this as a segue
to get into a little bit deeper discussion
about pain and recovery.
- Sure.
So this is definitely like a
big cornucopia PT stuff here,
but like and this is what I love.
So first of all, that video,
it's my proudest video that I have.
And the reason being is that
it's helped so many people.
Like we get comments on
that video every day.
I don't even know how
many views it's got now,
30 some what million.
- We will link to it.
- There's a lot of views.
And quite honestly,
it was a little bit of
an afterthought video
in terms of it's origin.
I think that that day maybe
Jesse was having some problems
or something like that, a
little bit of low back pain
and I showed him and it helped
right away and he was like,
well, we can make a video on it
'cause this will help people.
Not everybody, if you
have a real disc problem,
it's not going to help
because you're not changing
the structural problem
that's there.
But as you said, a lot of people don't
and even disc issues a lot
of them are non-operative.
So you'd want to try these things first.
As far as what you're sort of experienced
sometimes as that glute
medias really tightens down
and that's again, from poor biomechanics
up and down the kinetic chain,
it can actually press on the sciatic nerve
and give you what they
call a pseudo sciatica.
Where it's not like you're making it up,
it's not like you're not feeling that pain
over that same sciatic distribution,
but it's not caused from a disc,
it's not caused from
something mechanical there,
it's caused by the fact that this gluteus
has posturely become a
problem for you or weak
because you don't train it
and you need to address it.
So, unlike any other muscle in the body,
there are common trigger
points in common areas where
the muscle will become
tightened or painful or spasmed
and you can basically apply
pressure to these areas
and then sort of thread that
muscle through the pressure
by pushing down through there and then
contracting the muscle which is why
you go through that action of,
I think we call it toast stabber,
but like stabbing down and lifting up
and stabbing down and lifting up.
Taking that glute medias
through its function.
So it's basically kind of working
underneath the downward
pressure of the finger
and that tends to help
you to almost need out
what might be that trigger point.
And that's why people can
see immediate relief there
because once the trigger
point lets go, it feels like,
and that's what the
comments are in that video.
Like my God, I literally, I couldn't walk,
I've been on my hotel floor,
I did this and I'm fixed.
And meanwhile then it could come back
because your body is like,
well, I like being more like this.
This is how I've been ingrained to be.
So it might come back
but then when you do another round of it
and another round of it and
then finally it starts to say,
all right, I'm not going
to do that anymore.
It kind of eases up and
you can relieve yourself
of those trigger points.
You could do that up and down the back.
There's other people that get that
and that sort of inside
their shoulder blade,
that same type of
cramping in another area.
But once that takes place,
well, then the job that
I think people have
is like become educated that
the glute medias is different
than the glute maximus.
Like their functions are different.
You have to work on not
just extending the hip
but also abduction of the hip.
External rotation of the hip,
same thing as in the shoulder.
And this actually segues nicely into what,
into the whole concept
you were talking about.
Like the body is like a mirror image.
The hip is like the shoulder, right?
The ankle is the wrist.
The foot is the hand.
The knee is the elbow,
they're two hinge joints,
they function that way.
Well, with the shoulder, you've got that
mobility that comes from having
all that freedom of motion
but the stability is lacking.
Well, the same thing with the
hip, like you've got mobility,
but if you don't fully stabilize it
by training all the muscles of the hip
and if you don't strengthen
the external rotation
of the hip, then you're
going to have issues.
Like it's not biomechanically
going to work the same way.
If you think of the body
as a series of bands
pulling in different directions
at different levels of tension,
you're being pulled into
one direction or the other
just by the balance of tension
from one weak area to one
dominantly tight area.
And you need to make sure that
you can sort of balance this out
in order to eliminate
some of the adaptations
and compensations that happen.
So what I say, when we look at
sort of the body as a whole,
most often wherever
you're feeling the pain
is absolutely not to blame.
There's not to blame.
It is somewhere above or
below as you hint to that.
You're talking about, the knee
is my favorite example of it.
Whenever you have knee
pain, patella tendonitis
which I have forever.
I've had bad, bad cases
of tendonitis where
squatting is very difficult for me.
It's not the knee, the knee is
literally a hinge joint that
there's minor rotation
capabilities in the knee
but it's a hinge joint.
And it's being impacted
by the hip and the ankle
and the foot, as I said before,
how critical the foot is.
If you thought of the knee being
like the middle of a train track,
where the femur down your thigh
and your shin down below your
knee, where the train track,
well, what would happen if the
foot collapses at the bottom?
All of a sudden that
train track on the bottom
gets torqued just a little bit.
Well, who's going to feel that the most,
the area where it's torquing,
which is at the knee.
So the stresses are going to be felt there
meanwhile the problem is the foot
or the problem is the ankle.
People that are chronic ankle sprainers
are almost always going to
wind up having back pain
because the ankle sprain causes weakness
in mal adaptations in the ankle
that then gets connected
through the chain.
Because now once I distort
the ankle and the shin,
now the knee is trying to maintain
its ability to hinge smoothly.
So it toques on the femur to do that.
Well, the femur is now
inside the hip joint
pulling on the pelvis and
the pelvis is out of whack.
It's really is fascinating.
Like it's one of my favorite things about
how the body works is like
how interconnected it is
and how one little thing somewhere
causes repercussion somewhere else.
And the easiest way to find
out what your problem is,
is to say, okay, I know
where my symptom is,
but I got to find someone who can help me
find the source somewhere else,
because it is going to be
usually either above or below.
Mostly, usually below
'cause it usually translates
up the kinetic chain.
But usually it's going to be
below where the real source is.
So people with low back
pain usually have hip issues
weaknesses, tightnesses,
flexibility issues,
it's almost always below.
When you get into really high
performance athletics though,
it almost works the other way.
Like where we have pitchers, who can't,
I'm always fascinated by guys
that have Tommy John issues
in their elbow, right?
Pitchers.
Like if you can't externally
rotate the shoulder
that we talked about, again,
the ability to get your shoulder back
into external rotation.
Well, your arm has to
get to a certain position
for release of the baseball.
And if it can't get there,
if you can't externally rotate
the shoulder to get there
then the elbow has to sort of torque more
in order to allow the
arm to get back further.
And it will try to take
some of that motion
from a joint that's not really,
again, it is the hinge joint,
really capable of doing that.
So it starts to stress
that media level ligament
to get a little bit further back
because the shoulder's not working
and that just ultimately
places strain on the elbow.
So when you see a guy that has pain
that floats around, a pitcher
that floats around their arm,
all that is is sort of this
balance of compensation.
Once his elbow starts hurting,
then he can't get the
range from the elbow,
so he tries to dig a
little bit further back
into external rotation
and then the rotator cuff gets inflamed
and then he feels that's inflamed,
and by the way, during that time period,
it takes some of the strain off the elbow
so the elbow feels better.
Then he decides, okay, now
I got the extra rotation,
but I'm getting too much of that
so now he starts straining the elbow again
and then keeps going through this cycle.
So your body is very smart
and it's going to compensate
every single time.
It's going to find the compensation
but there's no guarantee
that that compensation
doesn't leave you with a
whole host of other issues.
- Yeah, it's fascinating.
In another lifetime, I
would've gone and been a PT
although it sounds like the
community among PTs online...
- I don't know what they,
listen, we're good people but it's like...
- Yeah, scientists and neuroscientists
can get into pretty intense battles.
Coming from the academic community,
the etiquette is so different
online because I would say,
I think in person
people would probably
behave a bit differently.
- They shake your hand and say, hello.
- Yeah, they shake your
hand and say, hello.
And there's also, look, I'll
just be very direct about this.
There are a lot of people online for whom
their only content is pointing
out the misunderstandings
or alleged flaws of other people.
It's like the bulk of their identity.
Which to me is sort of a sad existence
but there's always more
to gain by thinking about
what's possible, and
what's new and what's good.
But teach their own demise or win.
- I mean questioning what's
out there is healthy,
it's normal, is great, it
actually sparks conversation.
But as you said, some people's existence
is solely to find things to nag about
and not actually with the goal
being to advance anything,
but rather just to.
- Yeah, in the world of science
being skeptical but not
cynical is encouraged.
But I always say that
the longer that somebody's
in a career path
that's certainly in science or medicine
and they realize how hard
it is to do various studies.
Once they publish a few studies,
generally they sort of get
a better understanding of
how the various things are done.
In any case, along the lines
of pain and pain relief
and misunderstandings about the
origins of pain in the body,
one of the great tools that
I picked up from your content
which is benefit I know a
huge number of people is
I think I used to hold weights
sometimes in the tips of my fingers
as opposed to in the meat
or the palm of my hands.
And I had elbow pain.
And I always thought that,
I felt it most on tricep
exercises and pushing exercise
and I thought I was doing
those exercises wrong.
Turns out toward the end of
my pull ups or my bicep work,
I was letting the weight or the bar
drift into my fingertips.
And the mere shift
to making sure that my
knuckles were well over the bar
or that the weight was really
in the meat of my palms
has completely ameliorated that
for reasons that you point out
and maybe you could just
share with us why that is
you have this kind of
finger pull exercise.
Usually when someone says, pull my finger,
it's like a bad middle school
or elementary school joke...
- Yeah, we would say push your finger.
- [Andrew] Right, right.
- You know this is fascinating.
This is because it just shows again
how intricate the body is
and how responsive or
over responsive it can be
to something so little.
And what you're talking about
is that when you grip a bar
whether it be through a curl
or whether it be through-
And this is mostly
pulling exercises because
the tendency for the bar is going to be to
fall out of your hand not
like with a pushing exercise
where it's kind of you're
pushing your hand into the bar.
So on a bench press say.
That bar can drift just
by gravity doing its thing
or fatigue of the hand grip strength.
Can start to drift further
away towards the distal digits.
Through those last couple knuckles
that we have on our hands.
And though our hand can
still hold it there,
the muscles are not equipped
to handle those types of loads.
And that can start at a very,
I'm not going to say light,
but like it could start
at dumbbell weight.
40 pounds, 30 pounds, even
25 pounds or something
depending upon their
overall strength levels.
But then when you start to
apply it to something like
your body weight with a chin up, right?
'Cause that's natural for
the bar to somewhat kind of
float down towards your fingertips.
And it actually is a little bit easier
to perform the exercise with
that sort of like false script
little hook grip at the end
because you're not going
to engage the forearms
into the exercise, you're not
going to start pulling down.
But at the same time while it
could help you to perform them
better by getting the back more activated,
if you have weakness in these muscles.
'Cause it's not a thing
that happens to every,
it's not one of those
upright road type things
where I think this is
happening to everybody.
This is happening to people
that have these inherent
weaknesses in these muscles.
You or haven't done enough of the gripping
in the meat of the hand for long enough
but it starts to put that
stress on these muscles
that are ill-equipped to
do this and to handle this
and it starts to it's particularly
on that fourth finger,
which is part of the
muscle we call the FDS,
a flexor digitorum that is
just too much for it to handle.
And that comes all the way down
and meets right at the media level.
Right on that spot that you can say
feels like someone's knifing
you right in the middle
in that medial level.
And medial epicondylitis or
they call it golfers elbow
is something that a lot of
us deal with in the gym.
It's one of the most common
inflammatory conditions
people get from the gym
and it all comes from this
positioning of the dumbbell
or barbell or hand on a
pull-up bar over time.
So the easiest thing to
do is just grip deeper
so that what you're doing is you're using
more leverage from the
palm to encapsulate the bar
or the dumbbell or whatever
and you're not putting that
pressure really distally
right on that last digit
because that's where that
FDS muscle is most strained.
So you just almost eliminating
that from the equation.
And it's one of those exercises that
the load can exceed its
capacity pretty quickly.
So that like, maybe it's only
capable of handling 30 pounds
and then when you're doing a chin up
and it goes and it drifts so far
that it's now you say
you're a 200 pound guy
you've got let's say 100
pounds through one arm
and 100 pounds, this is simplified math
that obviously is offset by other muscles,
but 100 pounds to one arm
100 pounds to the arm,
100 pounds off of a
muscle that can handle 30
is not going to take many
repetitions to strain it
and you're going to feel that maybe
by the time that a set's over
or certainly by the time that
workout's over or the next day
you wake up and you've got
that notable stabbing pain.
Whenever someone feels that
the best thing would be to determine,
okay, what exercises would
I do that were pulling
and where the bar could
have drifted deeper
or further from the meat
of my palm into my fingers
and figure out a way to deepen that grip.
When that happens though,
the best thing to do
with most of these inflammatory conditions
is not do any of that
stuff for a little while.
Not ever, just for a little while.
There's always things
that you can do around it.
I'm not saying ever do I say,
like, don't go to the gym
or don't find something you can do,
but I'm saying that particular exercise
that you feel the pain
on while you're doing it,
never a smart idea to do that
exercise when it's inflamed.
If you are doing exercise and it hurts,
you probably shouldn't do the exercise
because another reason
for the variability of exercise is
there's so many other
options that you can do
that will train similar
muscles or even the same motion
and not cause that stress.
So, I mean, a cable curl would
be much easier to do that on
than let's say a chin up
where you don't have the
control over the weight
like you do by moving a pin on a stack.
So I think that is a common
thing that people find
and the best thing to
do is just figure out
how deep you gripping in that bar.
You're going to find that, oh
my God, I didn't realize that
because it was just.
Even though you might start
a set in a good position
and then it drifts away as you go.
- I think that's what was happening to me
and I'm very conscious of this now.
Again, for me, I haven't
had this elbow pain at all.
- [Jeff] That's great.
- Very fortunate.
So again, a debt of
gratitude to your never-
I thought there was some
wrong in my elbow, basically.
And I thought maybe it was tennis elbow
I don't even play tennis.
There you go.
Other aspects of recovery
and variables for recovery.
I think you and I both
put out content about
the use of cold and I think
we can summarize it by saying,
yeah, it does seem like
cold water immersion
immediately after hypertrophy
restrains workouts
might be a problem,
but a cold shower is
probably not a problem.
What about heat?
Do you personally use
heat and cold saunas,
hot baths, hot compresses.
And by you, I mean you
personally and athletes
that you coach or people that you coach,
what are your thoughts on
the use of heat and or cold?
- Well, I think it might
just be an inherited practice
from the days of trainers
of since babe Ruth.
But we in baseball
we used a lot of cold
following performance.
Just because the idea would be
there is some especially pitchers,
there is some inflammation
that is abnormal.
The arm is not really
designed to do what they do
especially at the speed that they move it
and everything else.
So we would use ice as a
pretty standard practice
after that.
But not a lot of heat
and use a lot of heat
and of course from the
recovery or the healing aspect
that actually becomes
rather personal preference
they've found now after let's
say the first 12 to 24 hours
where you're really trying
to control inflammation
of what might be an injury.
But then it can kind of
shift the personal preference
because the heat can bring
blood to the area also
and then the cold has its sort
of antiinflammatory effects.
So like there's a balance between
which one's working better for you.
So there's really no standard anymore
for heat or cold in that way.
But from a standpoint of like
post-workout healthy status,
I haven't used much heat or
cold in terms of what we do.
We cover the topic of the cold showers
and to try to dispel the myth of the,
even people saying that there's
giant testosterone releases
and you know all kinds of stuff that.
Listen, we hear all kinds of things
'cause people want-
I think the idea of just
turning the water cold
and being in it for 30 seconds
and then all of a sudden
magically growing three times your size
is intriguing for a lot of people
and that's why they ask these
questions 'cause they're like,
well, that would be a hell of a lot easier
than going to the gym and training hard.
But like, I'm always
fascinated by some of the stuff
that you talked about.
In fact, we started to talk
about some of the stuff
in terms of cooling and what
it can do on performance
and that was like there's
some untapped territory there
that I think you're finding out about.
- Yeah, what would be fun
would be to bring the CoolMitt
technology from Stanford.
This is Craig Heller, my
colleague Craig Heller's lab
at Stanford's done really
important and amazing work
in this area but then it
moved on to some other things.
He's also working on down syndrome
and he works on a number of
other really important topics
that scientists often do.
But I have access to
this CoolMitt technology,
no relationship to the
company, by the way,
would love to come out to your facility
and we can do the blind type studies.
- Like the blue blocker test.
- Yeah, exactly, exactly.
And see how that goes in with somebody
as advanced trained as you
that's probably the best thing to do.
So content for the future.
Yeah, I think heat and cold
are kind of staples in the PT world
and it does seem like people
use them slightly differently
but they are kind of the macro
nutrients of recovery there
along with sleep.
I do have a question about
precision of record keeping.
Do you keep a training journal?
Do you recommend people
keep training journals?
Are you neurotically fixed
to cadence of movement
and are you looking at the,
do you have a buzzer going off
when it's 90 seconds rest.
Is it 90 seconds rest?
I confess I have my slow
workouts and my faster workouts.
And they scale with whether
or not I'm training heavier
with longer rest.
Or whether or not maybe
midway through a workout,
I'll shift over to doing
higher repetition, lower rest.
This is kind of my crude
way of keeping time.
But I'm not-
Will be just to kind of watch the clock.
But I'm not neurotically
fixed to the buzzer
nor am I on social media
during my workouts.
Which is actually a way
to really improve workouts
is to just not be on social media.
- I can't claim that
I'm not guilty of that.
Sometimes I am on social media
but sometimes I'm trying
to post something.
- Well, that's different,
it's your profession.
It's your profession.
- But I mean, I'm not necessarily chained
to some sort of protocol
in terms of how I do.
I think by this point I've
been doing this a long time
and not only is it something
that I've done for a long time,
but it's a passion of mine,
it's something I really enjoy.
So I probably inherently have
the ability to stick to these guidelines
in terms of rest time
to know what I lifted.
Even six months ago on
a lift and how it felt
without journaling it.
But I recognize the value
it has to a lot of people,
it goes back to that whole
my muscle connection idea
that we talked about in the beginning.
Like there's a lack of awareness
for all aspects of training.
And especially maybe it isn't
like your interest level.
We're talking you and I
from a position of interest.
Like this is what we do.
We enjoy just how our bodies work
and understanding how they work.
Some people don't care, they
just want the end result.
But journaling and keeping track of that
raises awareness to where like,
oh my God, I have been on Instagram
for the last seven minutes
and I was supposed to be back
at my next set in 90 seconds.
Like there is a training effect of that.
Like if you're training
for a metabolic overload,
you've blown that opportunity
because you haven't,
your rest time very
important to that protocol,
working as it should.
If you were training for strength,
maybe the extra few minutes
doesn't matter so much
when you get back under
the bar you might find,
you might find that it's a
better response for your body
to rest even longer than you've been told
three, four minutes, five minutes.
And so that way maybe it helps,
but I think that anything you can do
to increase your awareness
of your performance
and also give yourself
some objective goal.
Whenever we have an objective goal,
it's a lot easier to actually obtain it.
When you're just there to get a pump
and you're just there to
lift how you feel that day,
you have to be incredibly disciplined
in all other aspects of your workout
in order to make that effective.
And I've done that too.
I've actually been able
to do that too, but again,
the level of repetitions I've accumulated
over the course of my
life in the amount that I
read about this stuff.
I think I'm able to get away with that,
but I think more often
than not what I'm doing is
not journaling but journaling in my head
exactly what I think
people should be doing
and that is getting a specific effect
from what you're trying to do.
It's not so haphazard.
You want to get a specific effect
just like any other
experiment that you're doing.
If you're doing an
experiment on your own body
with your own weight,
which to me is one of the
most empowering things
someone can ever do.
When they get bitten by the bug
for exercising and in training
and I like to use the word
training rather than exercise
'cause there's a purpose behind it.
But when they get bitten
by that training bug
and they start to see
actual changes and results,
you know how empowering that
is 'cause we can't change,
we can't really control that
many things in our life,
unfortunately.
And if there's some
things that happen to us
that we really wish never happened.
And those are not something
that we can do anything about,
but this is one thing that
we can do our best to.
We can't avoid disease entirely,
we can't predict when we're going to die,
we can't do those things,
but we can certainly decide to
show up into the gym that day
and get a workout in or go
for a run or do something
and in by doing that, you're
giving yourself I think,
a better chance at a
higher quality of life.
So anything you could do to
increase your awareness of it
and keep you on track with that
is like I'm endorsing fully.
- Couldn't agree more,
I could not agree more.
There is a topic it's
sort of a dreaded topic,
but I think it's an important one
and that's the topic of nutrition.
And rather they get into
specific meal programs,
which would take take
hours and probably wouldn't
even manage to scratch the
surface even with hours.
We could talk about
principles around nutrition.
What are sort of the themes that
you think people should keep in mind
when thinking about how to
eat generally and pre-training
and post-training are two
particularly sensitive times
for most, or at times that
people want to know a lot about.
What should they eat before training
or can they train fasted?
What should they eat afterwards?
But just in general, what
do you think are some axioms
of nutrition that really hold.
And I ask this 'cause,
not because there's a
lot of debate about this,
but because you've been
around this space a long time
and you've seen what
works for you obviously
but for other people too.
What tends to work?
What tends not to work?
And how should we think about nutrition?
- I mean, look, you've
touched on it a bit but like,
nutrition can be a touchy
subject for people.
And I understand where that comes from.
I've talked about before that
there's a dogmatic tendency
to nutrition, and there's a reason for it
because it's an area
that people struggle with
more than anything else.
And the reason why people
struggle with nutrition
is because the commitment
is extremely high.
You could start a workout program
and actually get to the gym
three to five times a week.
That's five hours
based on how you and I
were discussing it before.
Well, what about the other 23
hours of each of those days.
There's opportunity to eat
incorrectly or unhealthily
every one of those hours.
People wake up in the middle
of the night to go eat.
Like there are things that you can do
that can cause amazing amounts of damage
to your longevity in the 23 hours
not the 1 hour, the 23 hours.
So when people finally figure out a way
to make that work for them,
it's very passionate and I
understand their passion.
I do like I've put out, so my
approach, my approach is like,
I've always been sort of a
low sugar, lower fat guy.
I've made the mistake of
going no fat years ago
and I paid for it.
I was like in college and back in the day
we were the same age.
We read all the magazines
and that was what we had.
We didn't have an internet then.
So we were reading magazines
and the recommended
path was to go low fat.
It helps you to become
hypo caloric very easily
because the density of the
calories in a gram of fat
versus a gram of carbohydrates or protein
is nine versus four for
the carbs and protein.
So if you're cutting out
grams of fat on a daily basis,
you're quickly cutting out calories
that allows you to get leaner.
Well, of course as everything,
I mean, if little is good,
then a lot is better.
So I would cut all of them
out or almost all of them
and at the age of 22, 21,
I'm like standing at a stop
up at University of Connecticut
waiting for the tram to
come and bring me to campus.
And I couldn't even open my eyes
because the light was blinding to me.
It was normal sunlight.
It was blinding to me,
the photosensitivity I had
learning later on after a few more courses
that I took there in biology
how necessary fat was for the
development of healthy cells.
I realized what was going on
and not to mention other
stuff skin was bad,
hair was falling out, all kinds of stuff.
So I think that the
approach to decreasing fat
so it's not excessive,
because again how
calorically dense it could be
in having lower sugar.
I'm a firm believer in
sugar is really pretty toxic
and something that we would
all do better getting rid of
a lot of it.
That is the best approach
for, I believe, again,
in my opinion, personally,
for the overall big picture.
Because though the people can
take exclusionary approaches
to nutrition and taking carbs out or
eating only fats and proteins, or again,
I'm not saying it doesn't work for you.
And if it's the first thing
that actually allowed you
to gain control of your nutrition
to the point where you
actually saw results
and got to a healthier
weight, then I always say,
then do it, then do it.
But just make sure it's
something you can do forever
and doesn't bring upon
other repercussions.
But I think that non
exclusionary approaches to diets
are the most sustainable
for the rest of your life.
And all I'm interested in
from a nutrition standpoint
is something that's sustainable.
So when I preach what I preach,
I've been doing this since I was 15, 14.
People say like, how's he
get so ripped? How's he get?
I have been doing this for four-
For how many years? 30 years.
- Eating clean low sugar.
- Yeah, 30 years.
And the beginning it was
a slow shift I had to make
where I was like,
I went from the worst
diet in the whole world.
Even when I was 14 years
old, my breakfast was,
I talked about this so
many times, but Entenmann's
I would eat Entenmann's donuts and...
- Those long rod-
- Yeah, the long [indistinct]
- They even took the
hole out of the donut.
- [Jeff] Exactly.
Why would you delete
the middle of the donut?
- The crumb donut there.
I would eat donuts...
- I can taste it in my-
I don't like sugar very much
but over the years I've
lost my appetite for sugar.
But as you talk about the entiments
I can literally smell
and taste the frosting.
And to me now it's disgusting
but back then it might
have been appetizing.
- You would probably have
like really good information
on this, but like my ability
to actually remember,
they've said smell is very
evoking of memories, right?
- So smell is unlike the other senses
because there's a direct line literally
from our sense of smell to the
memory centers of the brain.
It doesn't have to go through
any intermediate stations.
- Okay, so my ability to actually recall
exact taste of all the
stuff that I used to love
is enough to satisfy me to not
engage in those things now.
As crazy as that is.
Like I almost get my
feel through remembering
'cause of these strong senses of memory
of what it was like,
'cause oh, that used to taste so good.
Okay, that's good, I had it so...
- Fantastic.
We know the neuromodulator
there, that's dopamine.
Your ability to get the dopamine release
from the thought of some things.
Most people when they get
that dopamine release,
it causes a triggering
of the desire for more.
- [Jeff] for more.
- Right, people think
of dopamine as pleasure.
Dopamine, there's a
book, great book called,
"The Molecule of More."
I didn't write the book
unfortunately, but someone else did
and it's a great book
and it's really about
how dopamine we think it's about pleasure,
but it establishes craving.
So you're able to satisfy that
and it is a very adaptive
thing for you because
you are indeed very lean
and that's one of your
kind of hallmark things
as a professional who does
this in the public space
that's important when people
are out there talking about
getting lean and you look
at them and you're like,
maybe you need to do the protocols.
It's a huge advantage
but yeah, I think that,
it sounds like you've cultivated practices
around avoiding certain things.
- Yes.
But not avoiding certain
things that I think
are easily avoided if
you realize that there,
I think that we have enough
science and literature out there
to prove that the altered
path is a better path.
You know what I mean?
Like I feel like if I was just doing it
because I wanted to be lean,
I'm not quite sure it
would've held for so long.
- Well and we have a
guest that whose episode
has been recorded for this podcast
who runs an eating disorder clinic
at the University of Pennsylvania.
Medical school, studies binge
eating disorders, anorexia,
OCD and he will go on record in obesity,
and he will go on record saying that
these very highly palatable
processed high sugar foods
of the sort that we're talking
about, donuts and so forth,
that they are actually dangerous, right?
That there are elements
of the way that they
engage neural circuitry.
He's a neurosurgeon that reshape the brain
in dangerous ways.
And those are his words and...
- Yeah and it's not just entiments.
I mean, I think not just entiments right?
Yeah, they're coming after
us, with what, with donuts.
- [Jeff] Exactly.
- Yeah, they can't catch us.
- [Jeff] True, true.
- In any case.
So in terms of what you do eat,
how do you structure that in terms of,
when you look down at a
plate you've done this,
described this before,
but I think it's just a
beautifully simple description
'cause I think a lot of
people don't want to do
calorie counting and all this and
how should people think about what to eat?
- So yeah, I have like
what I call a plate method
and it's just simple
'cause it works for me.
And again, if you're struggling
with real eating issues,
these mechanisms become
admittedly less effective
because you're having
maybe you have emotionally
triggered eating
and you can't stop at one plate.
I mean that you could get the plate right
but if the portions are out of control.
- Plate has a dimensionality of height?
- Or multiple plates like
second and third plate.
- Or fourth.
- Like then all these
things can be challenged
but what I say is when you have your plate
then you just simply look
at it as like a clock.
And if you just make a 9:20 on the clock,
so one arm goes over to the 9
and one of the arms goes over to 20.
Well, then you're basically...
You're going to take the
second largest portion of that
'cause you're going to make a
line towards 12 o'clock too.
And the largest portion is going to be
your fibers carbohydrate.
So that's the green vegetables, right?
So whether it be broccoli or
Brussels sprouts, or asparagus,
or pick your favorites.
Like those are the ones
that give us a lot of the
micronutrients we need,
they're the ones that are generally
accepted as more healthy
and they're also going
to provide the fiber
that's going to be both beneficial
in terms of its impact on insulin
and also just through
filling you up, right?
And then I take the next
largest portion of that
and I devote that towards protein.
And I think it's really important
especially for anybody active,
the more active you are
the more you embark on
trying to build muscle
you're going to need to
have protein in every meal.
So I have that.
And again, you know, here we're talking
cleaner sources of protein.
But like, you'll never find
like boiled chicken on my plate.
Like I ditched those days
when I was 16 or 15 or 16,
like I realized after reading
those body building magazines
that maybe the low fat
thing stuck for too long,
but the no fat thing stuck for too long,
but the boiled chicken
and a steam broccoli thing
that ended quickly for me
'cause I really I'm not
going to eat this forever.
So I'll have some sort of fish or chicken
but it'll be cooked in a way that's like
it's got maybe some sauce on it
or it's got some maybe it's tomato sauce.
Anything to just make it a
little bit more palatable
and interesting without
blowing the value of the meal.
And then that last portion
is where I put my starchy carbohydrates.
And again, that's the part
that some people will say
exclude them entirely
'cause they're not healthy
or they don't work for you
or they're not beneficial long term.
For me it's been a God sent.
And I do think I'm like most people
my body craves those carbohydrates.
I choose things like sweet
potatoes which is my favorite
or I'll have rice or I'll have pasta.
I'm Italian so I like pasta.
And like I will have those
things, I'm not excluding them,
but I don't put them in the portions
that you would generally find.
My wife and I will go out
and we'll go to the restaurant sometimes
because we travel quite a bit
or used to at least with baseball too.
There's a cheesecake
factory everywhere you went
and I love cheesecake factory,
but like the way they structure meals is
it's all rice at the bottom,
and a little bit of chicken on top.
And I mean, it's a plateful of rice
that you wouldn't find
me make a plate that way.
I'm going to just devote
that portion of the plate
to the starchy carbohydrate.
And so it gives me a little
bit more responsibility
in terms of portion control
'cause those are the foods,
again, probably dopamine driven that are
most easily over eaten.
I always ask the question,
what's the last time you ate
10 chicken breasts at a meal?
Like you're getting sick of
it after maybe two or three,
but you could eat a whole hell
of a lot of carbohydrates,
starchy carbohydrates
because the they're just so satisfying
and I think those triggers,
as you said, to want more,
like that's what happens, right?
You just keep eating, even
when you're feeling full,
you want more.
And that's the biggest
danger to carbohydrate.
So if you can develop some
sort of discipline around them,
then you can still enjoy them.
If you can't develop that
discipline for whatever reason,
then maybe they do become something
that you have to work yourself around
or adopt a different eating style.
And as I said, I'm
never to the point where
I'm not trying to be
dogmatic in my approach.
I'm always trying to
say, this is how I do it
and I'm a believer in it
just like everyone else's
believer in their method,
but I'm open to the idea that
something that works for you
and gets you to a healthier
weight and a sustainability,
like that is good, that's good for me.
Provided doesn't introduce other issues.
- Something one can do consistently,
that's something I picked
up from you over the years.
What can you do consistently?
And for me, that also meant,
when, and how can I eat?
What can I eat consistently
that will also allow me
to be alert after lunch
so I can actually get some work done.
Or eat, I like to train
fasted in the morning
but I don't do any long term fasting.
It just so happens that I'm
fine doing water and caffeine
in the morning and training in the morning
and then I eat my first meal afterwards.
But I get carbohydrates at night
so my glycogen is restored.
I think carbohydrates are wonderful.
I just don't eat them in excess.
So to me, I feel like when
what you describe as a very rational
literally balanced approach.
And obviously there will be variations
for people who are dealing
with obesity or diabetes.
I've got friends that are
on the pure carnivore thing,
I have friends that are vegan
and it's always impressive to me
when somebody can stick
to anything consistently
except when they're sticking
to just poor behavior.
'Cause there's nothing
impressive about that.
Well, I think that's very helpful
because I think there's,-
For the typical listener of this podcast,
the online content that people see,
the battles are very confusing.
They're distracting.
Because people really think,
oh, that there's a right
way and a wrong way
and it sounds like the way that one can
eat consistently over time that's healthy.
Certainly fewer processed
and sugary foods,
I think almost everybody agrees there.
- Yeah, almost everyone
agrees on that, right?
So I think it's calorie manipulation
through some other method.
So even intermittent
fasting, like you said,
like that could be, it's
for people that are grazers.
Like if you are a grazer
and your real problem is portion control
over the course of the day,
but you can respond to a rule that says,
no, you're eating between here and here,
that you can obey that rule.
Well, you're not going to be able to graze
during the times that you might
be doing additional damage.
So sure there's other hormonal benefits
that people will talk
about from that approach.
But from a longevity standpoint
and habit forming standpoint,
if it's fixing the habit that
you're breaking too often
by eating throughout
whenever you feel like you
walk by food, it's good
and it works.
And again, if people can, will tell you
you can probably eat
whatever you want to eat
as long as you're eating
within that window.
But I think the more responsible people
who are practitioners of that will say,
no, you still want to
avoid processed sugar
and things like that.
And that's just a mechanism
of eating not really a diet.
But like it's I think that people-
I hate to be as like as
basic as it sounds with that
but it's for the exact reason that
if it it's that 23 hour day
phenomenon that it's like,
you said you're impressed,
it is impressive.
It's so hard to control
all of our behaviors
and food being one of the hardest thing.
One of the biggest temptations for people.
You got to learn how to
control that for so long
and then do it day after day after day,
whatever that mechanism is that
works for you is impressive
and I'm a believer in it.
I think that's how I feel.
I just feel like the
people need to be able
to be given some reigns
to be able to find what works for them.
- Well, I love to eat
and one of the beauties of weight training
is I feel like I can eat plenty for my age
and I'm not as lean as you are,
but I'm happy with where I'm at.
I could always do better.
With each year actually I'm getting better
probably because I'm eating cleaner.
Probably 'cause I also have
someone to cook for me now.
And we like...
I have that too.
- We like healthy food
and so I'm very fortunate.
I don't think we have any
packaged food in our home.
We even started making sauerkraut
at home, I don't make it.
I mean she makes it.
- My wife actually she turned me on
to a tip that I actually
shared with the whole channel
which was like, you can go to,
we have a Stew Leonard's around
our big grocery store chain
around us and they have
a catering department.
And they're often used
for catering big parties
and big tubs of grilled chicken,
but like really good grilled chicken.
Again, not the boiled chicken
and big tubs of sweet potatoes.
And we'll get a bunch of those
and she'll go over and she'll get them
and then she'll sort of
arrange them on plates
and put the plates in and like,
I'm okay with repetitive eating.
I think more people are probably
okay with repetitive eating
than they think.
I think that when you actually break down
how many different breakfast
variations, do you have?
Three, two.
- Two or three maximum.
- So like, I think when the
people do there's more variety
for dinner probably but like
even there you probably eat
five different types of dinners
over the course of a week or a month.
Well, if you have that ability to identify
the things that you like, and
again, no plan is going to work
if you're eating stuff you don't like.
It's not going to work
forever, nothing will,
you have to really enjoy
what you're eating.
As long as these variations of this meal
are something that you really enjoy
and there are limited versions of them,
the reproducibility of that is simple.
It will take some time but
if you're fortunate enough
in our case to have somebody
who can prepare it for you,
now that's even part out of the equation.
And it just makes it very simple.
But I do think when you tally up
all the costs of medical care
that are spiked by having poor nutrition
and you then offset that
by what it might cost you
to invest in a faster strategy
like this catering trick
or whatever it might be,
you'd be best off figuring out a way
to maybe reallocate some of your money
to preparing this because
how important it is
to your long term health and longevity.
If you can figure out
your nutrition issues,
if everyone listening to this podcast
can figure out their nutrition issues,
this whole world will be different.
That is like one of the
largest sources of disease,
and pain and discomfort
because people really
struggle with nutrition.
- Yeah, and it's a huge problem.
I mean the obesity, it is
an epidemic in this country.
It's a very, very serious.
Also a lot of highly processed
foods are more expensive
than healthier foods when
you really break it down.
Even the better sourced high quality foods
are right there on par less
than the processed foods
for sure.
But couple other questions
as it relates to training.
Because I think that one
thing that a lot of people
wonder about and maybe we could do this
in kind of a true false method
just to get through some of these...
- 50/50 I'll get it right at least.
- Exactly.
Men and women should train differently.
- The science of it will say false.
And again, not to generalize,
but kind of the point you
touched on earlier today.
I do find that casually
interested women in training
will migrate more towards
certain types of fitness,
like kickboxing, like dancing, like,
- Low rest circuit type.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I think, again,
whatever is that you are
going to engage in regularly
is what you should do.
Physiologically, no.
And I think if we can get more women
to feel more comfortable in the gym
performing the same
exercises and the same,
in receiving the same
strength training benefits
and working on progressive
overload and like,
we've hit the holy grail.
But I think that it's a big bridge
that has to be gapped still
because there's just some reality to-
Listen, there are very, my wife
is a perfect example of this
living a very complicated busy life.
We have two young boys they're twins
and her attention and focus is there.
And it's like, she doesn't do
this for a living like I do.
And if she can get a decent
workout and she's happy,
but she's not necessarily
working on her deadlift PR.
And so I think that that
would help her and serve her
in the long term to work
on increasing her PRs,
and different lifts and building
her strength progressively.
But in her life right now is
not necessarily in the cards
to have the time to focus on that.
So would you then discourage
this other thing that she
might find interesting,
like some boxing.
There was a little, I
don't remember the brand,
but like one of those
punchable boxing standup things
and she enjoys it.
Like anything to get you
moving is going be preferable
but I don't think that
necessarily physiologically
there's a difference.
- You started weight
training pretty young.
- Yeah.
I messed around with my brother
'cause he was older, he
was four years older.
So I was kind of messing
around with weights probably
12 or 13 with a 5 pound dumbbell.
- Yeah, you hear that young
kids shouldn't work out
with the weights.
I don't know what the going standard is.
Now they say, shuts down long
bone growth or growth plates
this sort of thing.
You've got two young boys
adorable kids by the way.
- [Jeff] Thanks.
- One of the things that is
very heartwarming is to see
you're in great shape, you're
clearly extremely bright,
you know your craft, you loved your craft.
You work with Jesse, who
we'll talk about as well.
- [Jeff] That's great.
- Which is great.
There's a camaraderie there,
having great teammates
as part of a business
or to work out with is
just makes life better.
Let's just be honest.
I'm grateful to have great
teammates for the podcast
and my lab, of course, as well.
But to see your boys and your
dogs and the whole picture,
I'm sure it has a lot of
contours and complexity
that we don't know about
and shouldn't know about,
but it's a beautiful picture.
And will they weight train?
I've seen the videos
of one or both of them
hanging from the bar.
- These kids are naturals,
I'm telling you that.
- I wonder where they get it from.
- I don't even encourage it.
I'm not going to be the dad
who's sitting there saying,
let's go somewhere.
We got our two days.
I'm not going to do that but
they have a natural interest
in the gym.
They just sometimes like
to be out with daddy.
So they'll come out there.
I of the two of us, my wife
and I will be the one who
has a little bit more of a longer leash
to let them explore things
'cause I was a dummy at times too
and figured out best
through the mistakes I made.
- Through injury, right.
In neuroscience we call
that one trial learning.
- There you go.
These guys are going to be
masters in one trial learning
because you know, they'll
go grab the bars of my,
the handles of my jamer that's there
'cause it's at a lower level to them
and they're swinging around
they're doing pull-ups
on it naturally uncoached
nothing from me.
One will walk up to a deadlift
bar stand over it naturally
never saw me do it,
stands over there and just
goes, he tries to pull it.
So there's a definitely an
inclination to liking the gym
and I will fully support that.
But of course body weight will
be good for quite a while.
- Yeah, so what age do
you think is reasonable
for kids to start exploring
a non body weight training?
- I think around 13.
I think around 13.
Once puberty, I think
it's okay to start to.
'Cause there's so much,
I even say for people
that are like later in age
who are just starting out,
learn with your own body weight first,
there's plenty of resistance to be had
by learning how to command
your body in space.
So if you have never trained before,
you're going to get very stimulated
by doing lunging and reverse lunging,
even learning some of the
appropriate reception around
movement through space.
Pull-ups, chin ups.
Pull-ups and chin ups are challenging
for even people that have had
20, 30 years of experience
in the gym.
So there's a lot of stimulus
to be had by body weight
and jumping straight to
dumbbells or barbells
is actually doing yourself a disservice.
You can learn better command
of your body in space
so that when you go back
to the bigger lifts,
you're going to have an easier time
sort of progressively loading them
and building up that
foundation of strength.
I'm not saying that you have to become
a master calisthenics athlete
before you can touch a
barbell, that's not even true.
I'm just saying there's so much capacity.
Kids are going to be doing this anyway.
And really just, if you
look at general play,
they are jumping, they are
lunging, they are climbing,
they are pulling like,
that's what they do.
I don't know where the avoidance
of like structured training
is for younger kids.
Again, provided they're using body weight
and maybe less ballistic
movements or something like that.
Things that are, or certainly
overloaded movements.
I think we should
encourage kids to do more.
There's a lot of obesity
in kids on the rise also
and that is incredibly
disconcerting to me.
So I think and I hope it doesn't come from
the advice of some that say,
well, wait until you're older
to start doing something like.
That's a way worse trade off
than engaging in something smart now.
- We used to get kicked out of
the house when we were kids.
- [Jeff] Totally.
- My mom would kick us out.
I had a huge pack of boys
that lived on my street
but we'd get kicked outside.
Like literal, you're not
allowed in, no television.
But there were video games, of course
but we were kicked out the house.
We had to go play.
For us it was skateboarding, soccer
and then we'd find our trouble.
But so post training nutrition.
We're the same age, years
ago I was sort of neurotic
about the idea that I had to ingest
a certain amount of
carbohydrates and proteins
within two hours then it
was 90 minutes of training.
I confess I get, if I train hard,
so I'm talking about
the resistance training
not the running.
But the resistance training,
60 to 90 minutes later,
I'm really hungry.
But there have been days when I just skip
and then the hunger passes
and then later I eat more.
I might eat twice as much later
that's just the way
sometimes schedules go.
But what are your thoughts in terms of
the nutrition science, the
training related effects
of the post-training meal?
Is it something that you try to get?
Is it something you think
people should pay attention to?
- So that science has
actually probably been
the one that's changed the
most in my lifetime, honestly,
because, again, we're at the same age
and I was falling for the same trap
where I would really be focused on like,
I'm risking speeding tickets
driving home from the gym
to make you sure I got an anabolic window.
Like I did all that, I really did.
But thankfully that's been
sort of debunked in your body
isn't just rushing through
these certain periods of time
to utilize the nutrients in our body,
but are able to partition
them and use them over a long,
much greater duration.
Up to now, they're saying,
three to four hours after training,
five hours after training,
you could still see the
benefits of replenishment.
A lot of that is just
I think there's a
consistency element to it
that just utilizing a post workout window
or a post workout meal,
even if it's within two hours or one hour
is just integrating the habit of saying,
listen, I just did this activity
and now want to replenish
some of what I lost the energy
that I used to perform
the exercises that I did.
And just getting into
the routine knowing that
the engine is ultimately
fed by what we put in it.
And the concept of
replenishing the fuel lost
is still a concept that I think again,
different in mechanism but still important
in terms of fueling the
overall performance.
So the pre-workout period of time
gives us a chance to
actually have a longer window
because if those nutrients
are obtained pre-workout,
it's not like they're gone in
that hour that you've trained,
they're still there and
available for your body to use.
So I think it's important
to get one of the two right
or at least make sure you're consistently
having one or the two
or you might risk going
through all these periods
of having no nutrition
to support your efforts.
Not only will your
workouts potentially suffer
in terms of the output,
but then you're also
not providing your body
any ability to capitalize
on an opportunity to feed it
and refuel and recover.
So I'm not very dogmatic
about what specifically to eat
pre or post workout.
But I do think you should have protein
surrounding your training,
whether that be ahead of time or after.
Protein could be a
little bit hard to digest
for some people.
So if you do that pre-workout
and then you're finding
your workout is slogging
because you don't feel good
then suddenly you put
that after your meal.
But this whole concept
of the urgency of time
has thankfully been removed
and we can just learn to eat
a little bit more responsibly
and drive more responsibly so we're not
trying to rush home from the gym
and risk killing people on the way.
But I think it's great
because I think that
that was something that it just showcases
a belief that people had for so long
that has since been proven
to be not that important.
And there's a tip of the cap
towards research in a good way
where it's like, all right,
I think we could all agree
that this isn't necessarily
true anymore.
And look at yourself and say,
oh my God, I did that so often.
I bit that one hook line
and sinker but then realize,
okay, we could always make a change.
And the good thing about nutrition is
those changes can happen the
very next time you go to eat
and you'll start to see
the benefits of that.
So I'm not a big believer
in that strict approach
to pre or post-workout.
I mean, even as far as
pre-workout supplements,
a lot of people don't take them.
A lot of people don't like
them, they don't take them,
they don't like, they're not
necessarily even being used
as the new nutritive
side of the pre-workout.
They're just more used
to fuel the workout.
- For me it's water and
some form of caffeine.
- Yeah.
I mean, it is whatever,
again, I think it's important.
I do think it's important to maintain
a high level of output.
So if your pre-work attrition requires
a stimulant in order to help you do that
or if your pre-work nutrition
is causing you to have
a harder time to train
because you're feeling full or stomachache
or something else, then
that that's not achieving
what you're trying to do.
The ultimate goal is to
still be able to perform
at the highest level.
So whatever your nutrition is required
to allow you to still do that,
that is probably the most
important factor of all of it.
- Great, I love the very
clear and rational approach.
Don't ingest anything
right before your workout
or near your workout
that's going to make your workout worse.
Yeah, and it's so simple
and yet you don't hear this
because I think people will think,
oh, they must have a pre-workout
they must have a post-workout.
- No, again, even if the
benefits that are to be had
from whatever's being suggested
is going to be easily
offset by the fact that
you can't perform at an output capable
of driving any change.
So that would pretty
much negate the fact that
you're not outweighing those benefits
of whatever nutritive approach you took
and is struggling through your workout.
- For me, the best pre-workout
is a good night's sleep,
hydration, caffeine, and music.
- Yeah, there you go.
I mean, that's a simple formula.
- It works.
And then post what I do I
do find I get quite hungry
and want to eat quite a bit more and...
- Well, that's a natural
response the body's going to
and most people want to do that
and I think it should be fed.
I work out as you know,
again, a lot of my postings
on Instagram will happen
at 10 o'clock at night,
10:30 at night, 11 at night,
'cause I am actually training there
and that's where I'm
taking those little breaks
in between sets to actually
film or post something.
But like, I then go inside and eat dinner.
So I'm eating at 11 o'clock at night.
It's not necessarily ideal,
I'm not recommending that
as a tool for anybody.
I think it dispels one thing,
I've never been a believer
in Kenny carbs after six.
- That makes no sense to me.
- [Jeff] Zero sense.
- Based on all the new,
all the signs of metabolism
that I've seen makes no sense.
I think as long as you
can, sort of like napping.
I talked to Matt Walker, one
of the great sleep researchers
wrote why we sleep, et cetera,
and has his own podcast about
sleep, tremendous researcher,
public communicator
about sleep and he said,
naps are fine provided
they don't interrupt
your ability to sleep well at night.
Simple.
Some people can sleep
from eight to 9:00 PM
and then go to bed at
midnight and not a problem.
Other people they take a
30 minute nap after lunch
and they can't sleep at night.
Same thing with-
Caffeine's a little different
because Matt would argue
the architecture of sleep
can be disrupted, et cetera.
But if you can eat dinner late
and eat carbohydrates late,
I actually need carbohydrates at night
in order to be able to sleep.
Whenever I've done a low
carbohydrate type regimen
in the evening, I have a
hard time falling asleep.
I'm just too alert.
And so I eat carbohydrates in the evening
to restore glycogen
but also in order to make
sure that I can fall asleep.
- I actually can,
again obviously it's
already late at night,
by the time I'm done eating,
but like I can fall asleep
within 5, 10 minutes
of finishing my meal.
Because I do think that they
have that same effect on me,
but I'm never,
I'm not bothered by the
feeling of fullness.
I'm not unable to sleep because
of a feeling of fullness.
But I do like the fact that
I feel as if I'm at least replenishing
what was lost through my hard training.
And I do like to back it up with a dinner.
I don't need to eat smaller amounts.
Some people can't have that much.
I will say after a hard leg workout,
I don't have the same appetite
that I do after let's say,
an upper body workout.
It can really disrupt my
whole feeling of wellbeing.
- You want to eat less
after you train your legs?
- [Jeff] I do, yeah.
- Oh, wow, I'm the opposite.
- No, 'cause I could
feel sick to my stomach.
- You're clearly training harder.
I've seen the way you train,
you do train very intensely.
- Yeah.
I think it's important.
I mean, I think that...
Again, it's that trade off between,
if you're not going to train
for a long period of time
then you're going to want to train harder.
And again, I actually
feel like contrary to
what people might think as you age,
you're better off training harder
for a shorter period of time.
It's always within the
realm of safe training.
I mean, I think that's
what I like to think
that's what I bring to the table.
Like an approach that's
smarter so I can train harder.
Like not doing the dumb
things I did when I was a kid.
And with that trade off
being a harder trainer,
I think I get the results that I want
because I'm able to really
push it and then back off
and again, the meal feels like
almost a physiological reward
for the hard effort I put in the gym
knowing that I'm also replenishing
and setting the stage for
the next day to be another
successful day of training
or maybe not depending upon
how many times a day a week
I train.
I think that it's,
It's a lot less,
I hate to say but it's
a lot less scientific
than we want to make it.
And as it seems to be
coming back oftentimes
like the thing that works for you
is really the most important thing
because ultimately
getting your ass in there
and doing what you do
is really the thing that
provides the best benefit.
- Absolutely, and there are
many things that I would say
are hallmarks of Jeff Cavaliere,
but one of them is certainly consistency.
You make it happen one way or another.
- Huge. I mean, consistency
really is the determinant.
And I know that that is
the hardest part for people
that are, and why people tend
to look for the shortcut,
'cause consistency is
the part that becomes
the biggest challenge.
But if you could find,
listen, if you could find the,
you know through what I've
been trying to encourage here
is like if you could find
the nutrition approach,
if you could find the training approach,
if you could try find the training split,
if you could try all those
things that encourage you
to want to go to the gym.
Like you're locked in at
the point where you said
you actually look forward to
going and doing your workout.
- I love it.
I look forward to, I mean, it's-
Actually this morning,
one of our teammates for the
podcast and I got to workout
and halfway through I just
turned him and I said,
I'll never figure out
why that feels so good,
but it feels so good.
I just, I really enjoy it and it lets,
and I love to eat and it lets me eat right
and I love the way it
makes me feel afterward.
I don't understand this concept
of not enjoying the gym.
Cardio's a little different,
I always loathe the first
10 or 20 minutes of a jog.
I mildly loathe the middle
third and by the end,
I think this is the greatest thing ever,
why don't want to do it all the time.
And then that feeling evaporates
before the next time I do it.
- Yeah, of course I don't
even remember it either,
after we get on, then do it again.
- [Andrew] Exactly.
- I think if people could,
if we had one gift we
could give to everybody
it would be the love of fitness.
If they could be bestowed
the love of fitness
it would change the entire world.
But I think when you hear
things like this, that like,
hey, that will work and that will work too
and that this will work too.
Rather than the dogmatic
one way only approach,
which could become
discouraging for people.
Then I think it becomes a
little bit uplifting like,
well, I've never tried that.
I've actually never
tried a total body split
or I've never tried that style of eating.
Like it becomes encouraging
that you might want to explore
and then you might finally
get locked in and say,
I really like this and then
you're off and running.
- Some of what I so
enjoy about your content.
We would be remiss if we
didn't briefly discuss Jesse.
One of the great pleasures
for me in watching her content
and learning from it over the
years is that you took on a,
you decided to mentor somebody, Jesse.
And there's some poking fun
back and forth between the two
of you which is very amusing.
But I have to say it
inspired me to do something
early on in developing this podcast
as I have a young intern who has helped me
with some of the research
and he's a buddy,
he's interested in science,
he's about to go off to college,
but he also got really into fitness.
So we would watch the videos of you guys.
He was helping me get the
Instagram content out early on.
And one thing that was just,
it's such a pleasure to be
able to pass along knowledge
and of course I'm learning from him.
This is always the way it works.
We learn from teaching and
we learn from students.
But it's been great to see
Jesse's progress, it's amazing.
I've gotten to meet him in person just now
and he has grown, he's changed physically.
And I think that you
mentioned a love of fitness.
I think that one of the
best ways to be consistent
is to take on the responsibility
of teaching others.
Once one has proficiency in something.
So maybe you just tell
us a little bit about
how that's going.
How is Jesse doing and
where does he need a little
more work, where is he thriving?
I'm impressed by the progress.
- Well we have a, I mean,
physically, we can
obviously see the changes,
the list of things to
work on or is immense
it's so long for him
to continue to improve.
But no actually, in reality, Jesse,
the story of Jesse was that
I knew Jesse prior to
starting even Athlean-X.
And a matter of fact,
I think the funny thing
is the very first video that
was ever posted on my channel
was a video that he shot as I don't know,
a 13 year old or something.
And I said, can you just
film this for a second.
I was over there training
members of the family.
So he then off went off to
college, went into film,
realized he had much greener
pastures at Athlean-X
instead of becoming the next
[indistinct] or something
and he decided to come work with me.
And the expectations in the beginning
were just to edit videos
or just to help with various aspects of
like my day to day that
I don't think I was
equipped to really handle and
grow the business anymore.
So then look at by virtue of
being in that environment,
there's an interest.
I think if I worked in a gym,
I might become interested in working out.
And though that mine
was not a commercial gym
it's sitting right
behind my office window,
there became an interest
in wanting to work out a little bit.
And it wasn't even an
intentional experiment
to put Jesse there.
I just thought that he's
a very likable person.
He has a very funny personality
and he's also the, every man.
In some ways as I'm sure
maybe you experience sometimes
like I'm the guy that this
comes naturally for me
is what people will say.
Like, this is what you do for a living.
Like this is what you-
Like there's an element of disconnect
in terms of the relatability
because I do do this for a living.
I can't deny that I do work
with professional athletes.
So like there's a level
of interest in this
above and beyond.
But for him, he's just the
kid who wants to train.
Maybe if he rolls out
of bed before 11:00 AM
and doesn't have a date on Friday night,
but that's the guy
everybody could relate to.
And watching him transform
and I love the fact that
even the interest level
was up and down.
Like it wasn't consistent
for him because he was like,
part interested
and then maybe not
interested for three months
and then interested or not.
And I never pushed it on him.
This is again, this was no
orchestrated experiment for me.
It was just like, if you want
to do this, then do this.
And also from a standpoint
of like lending my help
or expertise to him,
like I said, with my son,
I'm not going to force it on anybody,
I don't want to do that to anybody.
I don't think that that's ever
going to spark that desire
for long term adoption.
So he got more interested,
he started to learn more about it,
he watched just the
videos that we're filming.
He films the videos that we're filming
and he's learning through what I'm saying
he's becoming more of
a student of the field.
And I have to say his knowledge
in the field has grown
with the growth of his physique.
And he's put into practice
some of the things that I say,
he's put in practice some
things he hears other places
and he winds up improving as he goes
and he winds up starting to love this
like he never thought he would.
But it's great to see anybody grow
and whether that be physically
or that be emotionally
or whether that be just in their career,
it's great to see somebody grow.
And I like to tease him.
Funny admission here,
there are times when the
jabs that I will throw at him
are something that we
might know ahead of time
of what I'm going to say to him.
People will say you're so mean to him.
I can't believe it
you're that's so abusive.
Like, dude, honestly, we
laugh after it's over.
It's good, we're good.
So of course, but like...
- He's tougher than he
looks is what you're saying.
- [Jeff] He's tougher
than he looks, believe me.
- And he looks tough,
he's got the big beard.
- He looks more manly than I do.
I can't grow a beard, I don't,
I mean, believe me, he's totally alpha
and I'm like quickly becoming
the second star of this show,
but like he's definitely contributed
and people enjoy his presence for sure.
- Yeah, I certainly do.
And I think that as you pointed out,
he's a kind of a proxy and
a template for everybody.
We can relate to him because
even though I've trained for many years,
it's been a struggle through
graduate school, post,
made it happen one way or another,
but with more or less attention
and admittedly through waxing
waning levels of motivation
although I'm fortunate that I do enjoy it.
- What I think is nice
about it too is that
it's a realistic expectation that we set.
'Cause you're showcasing
what the journey actually looks like.
And he's been on the journey
for again devotedly for
let's say the last year and a half
but on the journey for five years.
If I could make the gains that he did
starting when I started
training at 14, 15,
and you're saying, hey, by 20,
you're going to have the
strength levels he does,
the physique that he does, the
knowledge that you've gained.
Like that seems like a blink of an eye
now looking back.
At 46 years old, I'm like, holy cow.
Like I think it took me
20 years, 15, 20 years
to just even start to get into a groove.
For him to do in a period of five years,
it doesn't seem long
whereas there's people that
will criticize his journey like,
oh, it's just taking so long and so like
there's such an instant
gratification that people seek,
luckily that's the minority.
Most people are like, this is amazing,
but I think that it becomes
very uplifting because
not only is it relatable
but the journey is real
and people can appreciate that.
Like, this is what will happen
if you actually put in
consistent hard work
and you'll watch him transform
and go back and watch the
videos like you look at.
We like to oftentimes throw
back to videos where he appeared
as smaller Jesse but also shy Jesse.
Arms crossed, head down,
not making eye contact with the camera
to where now he's got
his own skits and intros.
It's like it's funny
because the confidence
with the growth of physique
came confidence too,
which is great.
- Absolutely.
Pretty soon it'll be his world
and we'll all be living in it
as they say.
Well, on behalf of myself
and all the listeners,
I really want to thank you.
First of all, for the discussion today,
I learned an immense amount
even though I thought I
knew your content well,
I still learned an immense amount,
many things we could deploy
from when to stretch,
how to stretch, the skipping rope.
We talked about nutrition,
we talked about heat cold
training regimens.
And what I love about all of this
now that you've given us is that
there's a backbone of logic
and some consistent themes
indeed about consistency.
But the logical backbone, I think is what
will enable people to
really show up to the table
and stay there for training
consistently over time.
And as you said, the gift of
fitness is an immense gift.
I can't thank you enough.
I know you're an incredibly
busy human being with kids
and dogs and a marriage and...
- It's my pleasure.
I'm happy I was able to make it work
'cause I really I've been
watching your stuff for a while.
And I really love the science of it,
I like the way you think.
And it's just, I'm just really fortunate
that I was able to do it.
- Oh well, I feel very
gratified in hearing that
and honored to have you here.
So thank you so much.
- Thank you.
- Thank you for joining
me for my discussion
with Jeff Cavaliere.
I hope you found it as interesting
and as actionable as I did.
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