Mark Bell's Power Project - Preparing UFC Champ Sean O'Malley - Protocols for Diet, Mindset and Recovery - Dan Garner || MBPP Ep. 1036

Episode Date: January 31, 2024

In episode 1036, Dan Garner, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about how Dan helped prepared Sean O'Malley to fight and win the UFC Bantamweight Champion Belt.   Follow Dan on IG: https://www.instagram.com/dangarnernutrition/   Official Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw   Special perks for our listeners below!   🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save up to 25% off your Build a Box ➢ Piedmontese Beef: https://www.CPBeef.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150   🩸 Get your BLOODWORK Done! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel!   Sleep Better and TAPE YOUR MOUTH (Comfortable Mouth Tape) 🤐 ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject to receive a year supply of Hostage Tape and Nose Strips for less than $1 a night!   🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!   Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained:      ➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!   ➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!   Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject   FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell   Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ UNTAPPED Program - https://shor.by/untapped ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en   Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz   #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

What's the deal with this octagon-looking thing on your wrist? This is the world championship watch that O'Malley got. He has to be 135.0, and that is my job. Cutting weight for an event is really, really challenging. You can drain weight out of a muscle way more than you can drain weight out of facts. Pull back. Bye! Switching stances. That's a rap song.

Was the switching stances, was that part of everything right there? There's a video of him doing that exact counter backstage before the fights. Did you work with him on his breathing at all through the years? That shallow mouth breathing, that's very sympathetic. It sets your physiology up to control your psychology. Say UFC decide we believe that these athletes should be able to utilize some HRT, some TRT, and they task you with making sure everyone's healthy.

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Do we have that shit again? And Seema comes back. He runs to the bathroom and is like, what are you guys, what? What are you guys smiling about? He either just had like a little bit of poop on his hand or he had to wipe one extra time. He comes back like it's our fault. Like what? Blame it on us.

Laugh at me one more time, man. I swear. I mean, do you want to explain what happened? Dead air. Nothing. It was just a mystery. I had to go to the bathroom and check something. Comes back laughing at me again aggressive

oh a great way to start the pod so a toboggan right there was some controversy there was i think we need to clear this up we andrew can you look up a toboggan a shirt thing a toboggan is a sled it is not how canadians say hat the hat it's not canadians do not say toboggan for hat and we don't have like the heads like on south by hey you're not okay these are this is fake news this is not this is these aren't real things. You are not in Canada anymore. You are in the United States of America. Why isn't it just called a sled then? A sled is a sled.

A toboggan is a sled and a toque is a hat. Look at all those sleds. It's a tall hat. Look at all those sleds. You'll see. Look at all those curved sleds, which are exactly what a toboggan is. So where did you get the idea that a toboggan is so where did you get the idea that it's bug no look it up further keep looking just keep looking just type in toboggan hat then

like see let's see if that like gives us something no because that's going to be a brand no it's not a brand there you go there's tons of toboggan hats and boggins well if you type in it's a winter hat motherfucker you. You can type in anything. Type in scissors hat. Images are going to come up if you type in hat. That's probably a nice hat. Oh, look at all the scissors hats. A whole country must call scissors hats.

What does Wikipedia have to say about this? Just because you're from Canada doesn't mean you know what a hat means. What the fuck? He is a high-level coach, though. That might mean something. This is a high-level coach, though. And that might mean something. This is nationalism. I don't like this.

I am allowed to be here. Barely. The most stereotypical thing, I went out for lunch yesterday. She's like, where are you from? I said, Canada. And she's like, oh, my friend's there. She got maple syrup. And I was was like i'm supposed to be like oh my god you understand me yeah thank you that is our culture oh what do you think is your culture

like what would be the thing that like is like canada very canadian we say sorry a lot yeah okay we say sorry a lot play hockey hockey is culture yeah sports yeah yeah in the same way that like like high school football like whoever's the captain the high school football team like that that kind of is huge here that's like the complete opposite for hockey in uh in Canada so hockey is definitely culture there seems like that's where you guys let your anger out too yeah because like you they're known as being nice people but you'll fuck each other up on a hockey hockey is very violent if you get in a fist fight a bare knuckle fist fight you just go you go sit down for five minutes and then you're allowed to come back out again it's so weird it's the greatest thing of all time the goons yeah each team has a couple guys that like just know how

to fight mainly yeah and you can just go out there and just drop your gloves and fight somebody is it still like the same like nowadays versus the way it used to be like they still do that oh there's definitely still goons there's definitely still a checklist like if you went after a star player in a dirty way 10 games ago that goon hasn't forgot and then he's going to check you the next time. There's checks and balances. That's how the Goon works. That's Goon code. That's amazing.

What's the reasoning why in hockey though the refs are just like, oh, they're fighting. We're just going to let them fight. I don't understand it. Why do they just let them fight and then get it out? It's a really cool approach. It's very American. It's just not done in any other sport where they're like all right guys go ahead yeah you know how you lost hey come on guys let's go like when who goes to the penalty box both guys

or the guy that lost and they both do they both go sit down for five minutes and then that's it that's kind of amazing too now the game's played with like four people on the ice rather than five or whatever and they just get to go rest that rest. Your penalty is to go sit down and chill. The penalty box. You ever seen when the fight carries over into the penalty box? That's pretty good. Or into the crowd. That's even better. And then there's bench clearing brawls.

Do they put the penalty boxes next to each other too? Or is that separate? Oh yeah, you can chirp each other. It's usually penalty box, announcer, penalty box. So you'll be leaning over, talking to each other. When they're mic'd up, it's usually penalty box like uh announcer penalty box so you'll be leaning over talking to each other yeah yeah when they're mic'd up it's fantastic like a dog pound this is wild yeah yeah two dogs and other sides barking at each other yeah yeah that's sick surprised i don't like

hire some mma guys to come in yeah like yeah you could skate well enough come be on our team just jack these people up for us every once in a while. It would be dangerous, dude. Dangerous. It would be bad news for everybody. It seems too hard. It seems like too hard of a sport. It's a very hard sport.

You need every quality. You need strength, power, endurance, a lot of ankle stability. And you have to skate at the same time. So the speed of movement means the speed of thought needs to be really fast. All of those things. And then also people are trying to kill you. yeah it's uh all of those things combined uh make it a make it very cultural for canada what's the deal with this uh octagon looking thing on your wrist that's an amazing looking watch what do you got going on yeah man this uh this watch is the world

championship watch so uh this is an octagon they don't actually make these this is the world championship watch that o'malley got some Ric Flair shit right there winning the title and he gave it to me and he also he gave me this chain with it yeah yeah you carry weapons with you you know I was like people are gonna think that you're a fighter and they're gonna come test you good that's fine no this is uh yeah dude this is an incredible gift from him and it's got the one red jewel in it because uh that's like your first win and then there's gonna be two jewels in the defense one three and the third so yeah it's super super cool having this watch it was one of the

coolest weeks of my entire life being in boston for that win yeah what was that like watching uh i mean it's got to be nerve-wracking you know watching these people that you know and care about and you get close to them you get close to their families i'm sure yeah you get close to their camps you get close to everybody and then you see uh you know the person you've been working with for a long time doing a very dangerous sport and i'm sure it feels great sometimes sometimes when your guy comes out on top, but there's also the worry and the concern of like, this is a very dangerous sport. Right.

Yeah. I've had those kind of like butterflies with a lot of my athletes because like there can be tens or even hundred million dollars on the line in those types of situations. Just like the Boston Marathon for me. Right, yeah. Hundreds of millions of dollars riding on that. Identical.

Yeah, you can have butterflies, man, but the real key is getting those butterflies to fly in formation. I think one of the most powerful tools, having anxiety and nervousness is one of the most powerful states you could ever be in if you can also control it. So having that, it's like there's a quote out there that's like, anxiety is like a fire. And you can either allow that fire to consume you

or you can throw it at your opponent. And his mentality is fantastic in that regard. And yeah, him and I have been working together for about five years now and nine fights. And him and I, i our journey he was a unranked fighter when we first started working together and now he's the world champion so it's been a it's been an incredible journey and that week um like you you gotta understand like you're right there are nerves that come from me because championship weight like he has to be 135.0, and that is my job.

If we don't get there successfully and then successfully rehydrate and refuel, then that is my job. And a lot of people only ever get one title shot. And he's able to get that done. So there's nerves in my perspective being there, having the diet, going to the grocery store with him, being involved in his weight cut and getting there. And then once that all goes successfully, those nerves and, and being around his confidence, it changes the whole energy in the room.

And then it's time to rock and roll. When you have an athlete like this, you know, I'm sure there's – these guys are so quick. It's just absolutely ridiculous the way they're able to get up and down. They're so fast that even just you watching them. There it is right here. Pull back. Bye. Switching stances.

That's a wrap, son. Was the switching stances, was that part of everything right there? Because that looked like it set everything up. Yeah, he threw the teeep and baited him in because Aljo lunges in. And then he did that pull back too. And yeah, that was a wrap. And there's a video of him

doing that exact counter backstage before the fight started because that was part of the strategy. And it was huge. I lost my voice for like a whole week after that right hand landed. And it was huge. This it is there's something different about a high performance mentality because um aljo is the best grappler in that division and o'malley had a rib injury and he couldn't grapple for six weeks

leading into that fight six weeks and he still shows up nasal breathing confident i'm gonna knock this guy out and he's going against the greatest grappling in the division without grappling for six weeks but it's almost like a blessing in disguise because it forced his camp to emphasize his strength how are we going to use striking to how we're going to use footwork how are we going to use movement how are we going to bait him because you can you can spend a fight camp trying to neutralize someone else's strengths or you can spend a fight camp emphasizing your own and that kind of forced us in that way and then that that right hand bomb landed and it was it was an incredible night when you uh you know you're helping these guys like i'm sure you're you're taking on more and more tasks like the more that

they trust you and stuff like that and right it's i don't think people know like it's not always common to take on someone's weight cut. Like sometimes there's like a coach for this. There's a coach for like lifting. Right. There's a coach for like nutrition. But even the weight cut thing a lot of times is like left to some other dude that just knows it really well.

There's a bunch of them in the UFC. Right. And, you know, when you, when you agree to something like that, I mean, I know you're super smart and you know your stuff. Are you kind of like, oh, shit, I just agreed to something that's going to be intense. You know, this is a lot. This is hopefully I didn't bite off more than I can chew. Bro, I love that.

My job is high pressure, high reward. And I fucking love that. That's what wakes me up in the morning. That's what keeps me excited to keep reading research and keep learning more. That's like my main education now. The way I learn things now is not really through certifications or anything like that. It's an athlete giving me a set of variables and context that need to be accomplished within a certain time frame. So I'm just given this case study, and then I have to figure it out.

My job is to figure that out and that's how I learn things now I'll be given this context this situation, these variables and a timeline and how do I get physiology to do this within that context by this date and it takes you down an incredible journey

that can keep you up at night I love feeling alive that way and a saying that I had way early in my career. So like, man, like probably 13 years ago, I used to, I would say, say yes to everything, figure out how to do it after. And that's actually, uh, something that I, that I'd done for a long time. Like, yeah, I can help you out. Yeah. I can help you out. Um, turn around out turn around go oh shit dude this is actually this is actually how i used to uh do more uh sales in the gym this is funny um because you have to do your own sales and personal training and someone would be like um i always use this line they'd be like hey dan so do you know something about the thyroid i would

always say did someone tell you to ask me i would always say that as if I'm already ready to rock, right? And they'd be like, no. And I'd be like, oh, okay, well, yeah, I'm your guy. Let's go. I would do that all the time. For all you trainers, there you go. There's your fucking tip. Well, dude, it worked because someone would say,

what do you know about belly fat? What do you know about the heart health? What do you know about endurance? I would say, did someone tell you to ask for me and they would say no and i'd be like oh i'm your guy but yeah so and then all the ice is broken they're laughing and i've built trust with them yeah and i was like boom that's i'm your guy so that was oh mal he's listening to this he's going oh fuck he did that he's remembering weight loss i'm your guy yeah did someone tell you to ask for me, Sean?

I'm your guy. No, that was in the Gold's Gym days. That was when I was on the floor personal trainer, trying to get exposed to as many case studies as possible so I get as much experience from different angles as possible. And it worked. It worked. Yeah, it was a very non-sealsy way to close people very fast. I'll go ahead and see him.

I'm sorry. Let me ask you. We just had Alan Belcher on the podcast. He's the bare knuckle heavyweight champ. And he went deep into how his coach changed his breathing. When he started like implementing nasal breathing, he said that just like totally helped his endurance. He became a much calmer fighter.

And you mentioned nasal breathing when you were mentioning, you're talking about Sean. Did you work with him on his breathing at all through the years? Or is that something he already did well? It's something he already did well. He already had interest in, and he actually has a strength and conditioning coach named Brandon Harris, who's very big into breathing and breath work. And so he's worked with Sean a lot on that. But I think that it's super important to have that because that type of nasal breathing approach, it helps keep you calm. That shallow mouth breathing, that's very

sympathetic that's very activating it's very anxiety based and um it sets your physiology up to control your psychology like your physiology is doing something anxious your psychology is going to respond they're not two different things that is that is a feedback loop and that nasal breathing approach really helps people calm down get out of that state of mind and allow them to actually execute what they've been training like you can actually have um eight weeks of fight camp and uh like o'malley right there teep bait pull back right that is that that combination is what essentially won him the title but so many guys will run eight weeks of fight camp just work on something,

and then just go back to what they're most comfortable with come time for the fight. You work on this stuff, like I'm sure in the grappling world, you know, like there's a high pressure situation. You've been working on this one move this whole time, but then you go back to your natural instincts because you're not calm. When you're not calm, you're going to go to what's most comfortable with you. But when you have the ability to be calm, you have the ability to execute a strategy that you actually worked on that gives you a higher percentage chance of success rate and an ability to be patient as well. Your ability to be patient and see things, that's what a flow state is. Like that controlling of that arousal. Because if you have a very low arousal, you're not going to be able to access a high performance mindset.

But if you have too much arousal, you're also going to have way too much anxiety to access that high performance mindset. But if you're right in a flow state, if you're right here, that's really where you want to be. And the development of your rituals and habits and breath work and confidence and preparation. Those are all the things that are going to help you be in that flow state. And yeah, in Boston, that was a perfect representation of that. And a heads up real quick for everybody who wasn't able to see that Alan Belcher episode. Some of you might have a deviated septum and Alan Belcher also had a deviated septum. And it's interesting because we've had people on the podcast that have talked about it. I think Joel Jameson mentioned, he's like, you know, I don't worry about that too much

because some athletes can't do that. But Alan Belcher mentioned that like, if you have a deviated septum, you just need to breathe slower because you can open those areas up as it worked for him. So he just breathed slower, focused on nasal breathing. And it's something that made a massive difference as you're mentioning for his fighting. Yeah. Yeah. You're able to calm down. You're able to allocate different fuel resources for better endurance, something that you're mentioning for his fighting yeah yeah you're able to calm down you're able to allocate different fuel resources for better endurance something that you're doing for the marathon as well um that whole performance and psychology from you being able to control your breath that's huge but a huge part of honestly like aside from breath work like is using it to calm down i don't really rely on that to be honest um like

when i go into a fight camp like you said like you build trust with people over time lots of times like i'm first brought in to look at blood and they're like okay shit um can you also do my meal plan i'm like yeah 100 will and then after that it's like hey what do you think about this so like over time i kind of become like not their one guy everybody has lots of coaches but i become almost like a human performance director to where like i've got your blood and your nutrition but they also want me to build like how their week looks like if you're doing these sessions back to back is it going to offset recovery like i would go in and kind of change the schedule not what the coach is doing but change the schedule and overall layout to make the overall volume more

recoverable. And I end up doing that a lot. But like from a, from that perspective, I kind of view performance anxiety based upon preparation. Like if you're a hockey player and you've got pregame anxiety and you're like, coach, do you have any routines for my pregame anxiety? I get out there and I just, I can't really perform. And I would always, coach, do you have any routines for my pregame anxiety? I get out there and I just, I can't really perform. And I would always be pretty brutal with them. I would be like, okay, well, did you follow your hockey diet this week? No. Okay. Did you do your hockey mobility this week? Not really. Okay. Did you do your hockey training? Yeah, I did that. Okay, fine. You did that. Did you do your hockey recovery or did you get good sleep? Like, no,

you earned anxiety. I'm sorry, but you deserve to feel how you feel right now because you cannot expect to be confident when you're not prepared. You're like, now you got me fucking worried too. You're not doing the shit that I told you to do. Right. Yeah. I'm sorry, my friend, but you deserve to be anxious because you're not prepared for this day. So use anxiety. Anxiety is a state of mind designed to create an action out of you to find a state of mind that isn't anxious anymore. That's used as a fuel. Anxiety is a state of mind. That's a response to tell you that you need to change something.

I think a lot of feelings are that way. Like in the same way that I can feel hunger and then I'm going to go eat. I think if you have anxiety, you need to take action to change your life. If you have emotions are feedback. And I think emotions are messages and stoicism is your ability to process those messages. You can use them and turn them into action points.

That's somebody who's going to be way more prepared. And as a byproduct of that, they're going to be a much higher performer. Can you be over-prepared? Can you dive into every tiny little thing? Like, oh, what if he does that? And then you start thinking, oh, if he's going to, I don't know, I can't think of any fight terms or whatever,

but if he's going to throw an overhand right, I've got to be prepared for that. And then you get locked into this overhand right, and then you just never see it in the fight. Can you make the mistake of going maybe too prepared in one specific direction i think so i think that that would be too much arousal so that's some yeah i also think that's what you were pointing out um with um uh with uh having the guy be such a great grappler he was limited right in the galley or he was limited on what he could uh what he could prepare for right so right it kind of shuttled him into like thinking about less shit yeah you know like if you if you're

overly concerned about maybe too many different things uh then maybe you're it's going to be hard to make progress right if you're trying to be that prepared yeah and that's that's a commonality i've seen across high performers is that they don't perform with what they wish they had they perform with what they have that's like that's oh it's like i don't perform with what they wish they had. They perform with what they have. That's like, oh, it's like, I wish I had this coach. I wish I had those genetics. I wish I had this mobility. They don't ever think about what they wish they had.

They think about what they have. What does O'Malley have? He's got my striking. That's what he's thinking. I've got my striking. Boom. You're able to do that. And high performers, that's just the way they are.

Like I work with Sheaay mcclellan um him and i won a super bowl together he was on he was the starting linebacker for the patriots he was a monster he played both inside and outside linebacker like that he was an absolute animal um and one of the most explosive people i've ever trained we had actually had 10 NFL and 10 NHL guys all in an offseason, all with me in Irvine. And I'm doing programming for all of these guys. And there's NHL guys there that are like, you know, 180, 190. Shea was 260, still ran the fastest, still jumped the highest out of anybody there. What's his name?

Shea McClellan. He was an animal. And he just came from a really really small town and um he was talking about like the the ways that he trained was just like outdoors with stuff like not just not you know just like with stuff like these guys they they don't perform with what they wish they had they perform with what they had he's like oh i thought it'd be more challenging to run if i picked up that rock over there just like do real basic stuff that's difficult right yeah i remember talking to him i said that um it's not yeah there's my man right there yeah he was he was with the bears and then he moved to the patriots and because of the coaching at the patriots he really

shined at the patriots compared to the bears and um yeah uh real top draft draft pick he was a he was a legend to work with man and an absolute animal he looks like he fits the mold of like a lot of the Patriot players like they have that same like body type yeah you see that time and time again where when you know when when they were in their prime it like the guy looks like he could play almost any position on the field right yeah like a weird trait of like so many of the New England Patriots When they were in their prime, the guy looks like he could play almost any position on the field. Right. That's like a weird trait of so many of the New England Patriots from the years where they were dominating.

Yeah, and he's one of the guys who could have done anything, too. He's really good at basketball. Really good. Just one of those guys. But yeah, it wasn't what he had to work with. It's how he worked with what he had. They're called cacti. The Zulu warriors would march hundreds of miles in them. And so did the Romans. They conquered a bit of land themselves. That's great to know.

Is that the new Victoria's Secret job? Grab your Flex Sandal now at powerproject.live. I want to get back to the weight cut a little bit because I know some of the people that are listening probably do jiu-jitsu. There's probably also coaches and stuff that are probably interested and i know sometimes you know we can't give away all the secrets but um cutting weight for an event is really really challenging or it can be really challenging yeah um and also like you know how long before the fight uh you weigh in and stuff like that is uh are some of the athletes that you work with,

do they sometimes weigh 10 to 12 pounds, 15 pounds more than what they weigh when they weigh in? Or 20 plus. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a performance enhancer by itself. And then the idea and the goal, correct me if I'm wrong, is like they just dip down to that weight just for that split second that they're on the scale and then they're right back up right right yeah that's

that's how it works man like uh i can run you kind of through um the high level strategy here um and it's funny because i did a video like with sean on weight cutting and then there were some comments like whoa these are secrets i don't know if i would say something like that like these aren't secrets man this is this is programming that's available like anywhere. Some of the basics. Right, right. But like, um, from a, from a big picture perspective, um, you want to get as lean as possible. That's like that you absolutely want to be lean because, um, the amount of water in muscle, uh, muscle is 75% water. So you can drain weight out of a muscle way more than you can drain weight out of fat which almost has no water in it so the fatter you are um the actual the harder your weight cut is because there's less areas that you can pull water from so you want to get as lean as possible

so that you're you're losing tissue weight rather than water weight and this is like you want to get as lean as possible as early on as possible. As soon as you know that you're going to compete in X weight division, right? You want to start prepping for that with a body composition changes, right? Yeah. I like my guys entering camp, like to put a weird number on it. I like my guys entering camp about 80% in shape. Um, that's where I like my guys. Um, so that we still have linear progression, the whole camp for your physiology, but also for your psychology. You're starting to look better. You're starting to feel better.

You're starting to move better. You're getting in better shape. Your heart rate's lower even with these increased conditioning sessions that we're doing. You enter camp about 80% for physiology and psychology, but also so you don't overtrain. You start camp at 100% in shape. You've already got there. Your injury risk by the time camp is over and your, your ability to overtrain. And since you're a fighter, um, your ability to go through

overtraining just cause you're so mentally resilient, even though you're physiologically breaking yourself down, um, that it's not going to work to enter a camp at a hundred percent. So you're getting to there. And then it's the final week where a lot of these things come together. Um, I have passive and active weight cutting strategies. If you're first passive, passive is like how you can have weight just fall off the body. Active is when you got to do something like a sauna or a steam room or something like that. When you are doing passive strategies, about seven to 10 days out, depending on what your weight is, you're just pulling carbs.

Because for every, a lot of people know, for every gram of glycogen stored, you're going to have three to four grams of water stored along with it. You can write in the air if you need to. I remember last time I did a minority report. I was telling Andrew, I was like, I'm glad I have a bottle

because when I get socially awkward, I can hold onto it. Remember he was drawing like molecules last time? Yeah. Yeah. No, yeah. So we got pulling the glycogen out. I'm going to get five to eight pounds easy just from that and possibly more. And we're going to pull that and that is, I don't even have to produce his calories. I can just swap macros, fats for carbs. And so he still has some satiating meals, but weight is falling off of him due to glycogen loss. Then we're also going to do a water loading strategy. You water load for about

three days, and that's going to offset something known as antidiuretic hormone. And when you consume a ton of water all the time, naturally your P frequency increases a lot. And when you do that for three days, you can offset antidiuretic hormone. Antidiuretic hormone is actually going to be offset for 24 hours after, even if you've stopped drinking water. So you can water load for three days and then stop drinking as much water on that fourth day. And you're still going to continue to pee as if you were drinking a lot of water. So passively, you're losing a lot of water weight and you can also pull sodium that day. I want to add something quickly. So that try this be aware you're going to gain a lot of weight yes when you start drinking that much water you're going to look at the scale and be like these guys

are wrong man this shit ain't gonna work yeah no that is that is hydration that i've talked to fighters about that a lot i typically have them water load on monday tuesday wednesday and then thursday i call whoosh day. So that's when we would pull it. And that's when like, they might be heavy for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Um, but then Thursday is whoosh day and they will lose a ton of weight on whoosh day from the sodium manipulation, from the water manipulation, from the ongoing glycogen depletion. Um, certain forms of fiber can be utilized to clear GI residue, which is essentially, I'm just pulling all of the poo out of your body. Um,

from that perspective, um, you can also use laxatives during that time if you need to more. Um, these are all different ways. Uh, laxatives is a kind of a different one cause you can, you can offset your electrolyte status if you start pooing too much. So that's when you don't want to be too aggressive with mirror lax. It's actually a great option in there. You don't want to be shitting like crazy after you weighed in either. Right. Yeah. So you got all these things taking place.

And then Thursday is your whoosh day. And then on Thursday, that is like when you would do maybe some sauna work or a hot tub, something like that in the morning. And then allow also whoosh day to take place all throughout the day and then we're also going to do another active weight cutting session at the night at nighttime to get some more off but the the real objective here is to use as many passive strategies as possible so that you don't have to use or rely on active strategies which those are the ones that can decrease performance more when you're forcing something out of your body rather than doing some more intelligent scientific manipulations

to hormones and stuff to passively lose weight, that's a way in which you can maintain a high level of performance. And after that active strategy, like our whole objective with this thing is for him to be on weight for as minimal for as minimal time as possible. So I've actually already done the metrics as well on like their night rate weight loss. So if you typically lose one to two pounds overnight just from sleeping, I'm going to factor that in. So let's say like you're going to we want to weigh in at 135. I might have you go to bed at 140

because I know you're going to wake up at 13 38. And then we just do that final little three right before you hit the scale, boom, hit the scale right after you're going to begin rehydration and refueling, um, for the next 24 hour period before you compete. And, um, like O'Malley, this is something I've posted before. Um, he's at one 35 at about 9. And then that afternoon he's one 58. So going, going up for the ceremonial lands um up to 158 i had bisping at um uh 185 when he won the world title knocking out luke rockhold um and

that afternoon he was already back up to 208. so yeah so that i've got these guys i have weight cutting completely dialed in because they will put on all of that weight. There will be no diarrhea. There will not be gastrointestinal upset that they just fill back up and come back to life. And then I'll do very subtle and like sophisticated manipulations based on their current weight and what I know about them. And we're going to do that up until they reach their training camp weight. I know about them. And we're going to do that up until they reach their training camp weight. And then once they reach their training camp weight, then we can kind of hit the pull on the brakes a little bit and eat like a little less frequently.

Just do things for what they enjoy, what they're used to, what's going to have them good satiation. But goal is to get to training camp weight with zero gastrointestinal distress. You can do that. You're going to, that is a massive unfair advantage where you can be 20 pounds heavier than somebody. When you hear a coach talk about weight cutting, what are the red flag practices that you're like, Oh, you're doing that. You're doing that. Yeah. So what are those? Yeah. Weight cutting is unbelievably prehistoric in some camps. Like it's a, you wouldn't, maybe you guys have talked to a lot of pro athletes

maybe you would believe me but like you wouldn't believe how terrible some of these strategies still are in 2023 like you'll have uh fighters just spitting in a bucket so they just never swallow their spit they just keep spitting in a bucket um and that is a weight cutting strategy um that you'll have uh guys literally literally starve themselves when they could have been eating the whole time. Like O'Malley eats the entire fight week. He's eating even on whoosh day, the day before weigh-ins. I still have him eating four or five meals that day. That is still happening the whole way through. Are those foods any like lighter or anything like that? Like, is there any reason to like have like a Rice Krispie treat or something? Or not a Rice Krispie treat, but something super light that has some calories?

Yeah, yeah. You're going to have, yeah, we won't have Rice Krispies. We're getting carbs out of there. But something that is a low to zero fiber with protein and fats. That's kind of ideal that day. So it's super easily digestible. You get your calories in, you get satiationiation in so you can still do your fight interviews and media without being starving and dying the entire time and uh not i'm adding any sodium or glycogen load to the day um but you can do that four or five times that day

and uh like there's so many there's so many red flags like uh the inflammation like so the you'll get guys who will starve themselves which is completely unnecessary and then you'll also get guys who like they equate hard work with losing the weight. So they're doing like a lot of these things. Inflammation causes water retention. So if you're in there doing high intensity intervals or doing going crazy for no reason, you are going to create inflammation. You are going to retain water.

So you're doing this thing to try and lose weight. And you don't know that you're creating certain cytokine activities in the body that do the exact opposite. You're going to be retaining water. So that's another giant red flag. Um, there, there's so many of these things. I would say a very common red flag. I'll say this actually happens after weight cutting. Um, it happens almost immediately after weight cutting. Like a lot of fighters think that you've won once you've made weight. It's like, that's the celebration.

So then they go eat something that they haven't eaten all fight camp. Which is like the worst thing that you can do. You're going, you've worked so hard this whole fight camp, and then immediately after weigh-ins, when your gut is the most sensitive it's going to be, you go and have something that your physiology is not used to.

And I have made that change for everybody and it's something that drives me insane. Because like the day before the most important competition of your life, you're going to introduce a new variable. Why did you do that? Why did you go out for lunch at a local spot and put something in your body and then get a negative

response from it? You should only ever eat what you have eaten the entire fight camp after weigh-ins. Go eat whatever you want after the fight. But after weigh-ins and before the fight, it should only be foods that you're unbelievably confident will not cause you gastrointestinal distress. When the guys are getting their weight back on, do you have them doing some movement? Because I know like sometimes in powerlifting, when I've done bigger cuts, it seemed like if I didn't move around, like the, it's a weird way of saying it, but like the carbs and the water like would end up in like weird spots. So I needed to like to move my whole body around. I needed to like exercise my legs. I needed to exercise my arms, my shoulders to try to get everything in there evenly. It was more of a field and a science, I guess. No. And that is, that is the art of

coaching. And I know exactly what you mean, because when you do activity, it feels like it does go in the right spots. Like you do almost just like how it feels when you eat and then go for a 10 minute walk, how much better your digestion and body feels. It feels like all of those things are just nicely going into the right spots and they're not sitting in your gut and everything just feels so much better. So I'll have guys typically do like a super light, very, very light shadowboxing session. But preferably like a little walk or a bike. Cause like if somebody wants to do shadowboxing,, if they do want to work on something, it's good for their confidence, then that is okay. But I always say

the point of this session is to not become a better striker. Because you are not going to become a better striker right now, the day before a fight, doing 20 minutes of shadowboxing. So do not go hard. Do not do high impact. Do not do a ton of bag work. Don't do any of that. What is best now is just to enhance your physiology. And you can do not do a ton of bag work don't do any of that um what is best now is just

to enhance your physiology and you can do that on a stationary bike you can do that on an elliptical you can do it or walking anything super low impact because the goal is not to become a better fighter because camp is over the goal right now is just to get those nutrients back in the right spots how much weight percentage wise are you looking at to pull off of somebody approximately? A 10% is pretty solid. Yeah. So like if somebody weighs in, if somebody is supposed to be at 135, then 13.5 pounds above that can be pretty solid. I think that's a pretty good recommendation. As you learn your body, as you get more crafty with the science, as you know, um, how much people can take and tolerate, you can continue to enhance that.

But I think 10% of body weight is something that's very, very reasonable and doable. Does it get to be harder over time for the guy to do the same weight cut? Um, or have you not really run into that? Yeah. What I've found is that if it's a high frequency then it gets harder um but like if you fight two three times a year then not really but if you're a wrestler and you're cutting weight every weekend for your wrestling tournaments that's when your body starts creating some adaptive responses to stop losing that water and things get very difficult and that's when it can get super healthy,

uh, unhealthy rather. Um, but the way we do it, like, um, you could interview Sean or, or Bisping or any of my other fighters, um, that these guys would tell you that they feel fantastic and, um, that it's, it's, they would do it every single time for the performance benefit and it's not harder. And if anything, it might be easier because we learn them more every single time, new things that we can do and ways to work with their body and not against it. Do you, by the way, do you use any type of, because I see some people that use like IVs and stuff

with rehydration or whatever. Is that, I'm not sure if that's a legal thing, by the way, but do people do that? People do do that, but that is illegal in in usada so you can mask drug use with ivs so um yeah it's a it's kind of like a it'll it'll mask drug illegal with usada and current ufc rules because they have a departure from usada i think right yeah yeah they did depart from usada but i still think they don't want people using ivs right yeah so the but when if you know what you're doing you don't need it okay like there's a lot of people who want people using IVs. Right. Yeah. So the, but when, if you know what you're doing,

you don't need it. Okay. Like there's a lot of people who want to use IVs and that's fine. But, um, if you know what you're doing, you don't need it. Like I'm, I'm putting 20 plus pounds on guys in a day. Um, and we're not using that. So you can use it if you want to, but it's when it became illegal, we stopped using it and there was already information available to not even need it. When do you, or when should people incorporate like sauna and stuff like that? Yeah. So I do it on like a hierarchy of stress. So what I want to do is use the lowest stress response way to have an active weight loss

technique. And we only use increasing stressors to the degree that we need them. So the lowest one is going to be put sweatpants and a sweater on and get in the bike. This is a very low impact thing. We're actually going to lose a lot of weight there. Okay. You've done 20 minutes on this bike. And then the next thing you're going to do is get in a hot bath. We do the hot bath, you're probably going to be on weight. We can pretty much stop right there. Between those two tactics, those are my two favorite.

You do a little bit of bike work and then you go into the bath. That is going from low stress to more stress. If we needed to do something else, that's when you would get into a sauna. That'd be almost right before weigh-in. Right, exactly. That's what we're talking about. Several minutes before weigh-in you're doing that because you want to

dial that weight in just for that moment yep and with uh some of what andrew and sema do with jujitsu i think the weigh-in is uh it's not like the day before or anything like that right it's day of yeah day of right so in that scenario what do you think you might suggest um the day before or the day when they have before or the day of? When they have day of. The day of weigh-ins. Day of weigh-in. So they weigh in and perform on the same day?

Right. Oh, yeah. A few hours apart, right? Maybe, what, four hours or something like that? Yeah. Sometimes even less, yeah. Yeah, just say two hours, I guess. Yeah, same day weigh-in is more like a 3% offset from your weight.

That's typically a good rule to have. 3% more than your weight, you can do that on same same day competitions. If it's the next day, you can go like 10. This is something where it's a big spread and big difference, but same day. Is a sauna still appropriate or what are your thoughts there? I'm way bigger fan of the bath. The bath gets weight. Yeah. Gets weight off people much more efficiently without the same kind of heat load on people. When people are getting dehydrated and they're exposed to that level of external heat, the stressors and the hormone response from that is higher than if you did a bath. So I am a big fan of stationary bike. But if it's same day, I probably don't want them to do like a workout activity and possibly deplete some fuel sources from that bike.

out activity and possibly deplete, deplete some fuel sources from that bike. So if it's same day, um, me personally, I would be using the bath that morning, weigh in, rehydrate, refuel, go compete. And bath like hot tub or literally like bathroom bath at like however hot the water can get. Same thing. Both. Yeah. Yeah. If you're at a hotel, you can go in the hot tub and just hang out there. Like 104 degrees or something like that? Yeah, yeah. About like 104. You do five to ten minutes in the bath. Get out. Mummy wrap yourself to dry off and stay in there.

And then after you jot off, get back in. Pull in more water back out of there. That's typically the strategy. You're going to do like you would do, say, five to ten. Bath. Ten to twenty. Mummy wrap. Repeat that cycle. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth,

and your weight will come off very quickly. Improving your sleep quality is as easy as shipping your mouth. And what I mean by that is putting some tape on, breathing through your nose will increase your sleep quality. It's no longer just something that only the bros do. It's now been researched and people understand that if you can breathe through your nose while you're asleep, you'll have better sleep quality and you will wake up more rested. Hostage tape is also really awesome because I know what I used to do. I used to use a little bit of a cheaper tape and every time I'd wake up in the morning, the tape would be somewhere else on the bed or on my face, but it wouldn't be on my mouth anymore. But hostage tape, if you have a beard or if you

don't, will stay comfortably on your mouth all through the night. And if you're someone who has a problem breathing through your nose, hostage also has no strips. So you can place those on your nose while you're asleep or if you want to be like one of those hermosy guys you can wear during the day. Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, that's over at hostage tape dot com slash power project where you guys will receive an entire year supply of mouth tape and the no strips for less than a dollar a night. Again, that's over at hostage tape dot com slash power project links in the description, as well as the podcast show notes. Along with that, what like for athletes that are currently weight cutting or they plan to do this, what are some things that they should try to keep on them? Because they're going to be some people that they take the very general idea of what you said and then they're feeling dizzy as fuck or their stomachs feel like horrible or just they just have all these bodily things where they

don't know how to fix the issue yeah so what are some things they should think about and what should they keep on them um well a little bit of fruit actually goes a long way if you just have some blueberries or something like that um that's a good way to actually get something in your system that can have some electrolytes in it that's not going to add a lot of any weight or glycogen to it that gives you something to enjoy that is also palatable when you're dry. If you have a dry mouth, having like a rice cake is just adding this dry thing to a dry mouth. That's fucked. Yeah, it's torture.

But if you have blueberries, that already has some moisture to it. It's much better. Okay. So that is something that people can definitely have. A cold towel goes a long way too. So if you're in the hot tub, you can actually have a cold towel around your neck. Makes a huge difference. You're just in the hot tub without the cold towel.

The process is way more painful than if you have the cold towel on. You're going to lose the same weight regardless, but one keeps your head a lot cooler and kind of has this nice balancing effect to it. So that cold towel is huge. You can have the cold towel on your head during the mummy wrap too. Keeping it in both areas is a total game changer. When you're that in the weeds of your weight cut, that cold towel is like a hug from heaven.

It is. So yeah, I would say fruit and cold towel is like a hug from heaven. It is. So yeah, I would say fruit and cold towel. Those are the ones that you want to have. But if you do have like all of these other issues going on, you can have water and electrolytes nearby, but that means your weight cutting strategy was not designed appropriately. You shouldn't have those responses. You see cat paralytics are like Pedialyte all the time.

Yeah. Right. Post weigh-in. Post weigh- like Pedialyte all the time. Yeah. Right? Right. Post weigh-in. Post weigh-in. Yeah, that's when it should happen. If you're reaching for that during the cut, then your protocol was not designed appropriately, in my opinion. Gotcha.

Yeah. What about the rehydration process for maybe some of these guys that are doing 24-hour weigh-in? Is it like they start with liquid then they move into food or how does it work mm-hmm you want to start with liquid I'll have my guys have three shakes within the first 60 minutes post weigh-in so there's gonna be a certain this is where kind of bit of the secret sauce comes in you're gonna have a certain amount of water mixed with a certain amount of carbs and protein and then I'm also gonna include glutamine

electrolytes and creatine. That Dan is actually shaking up for you. He did this for me at the Boston Marathon. He's like running around with shakes. It was amazing. I was like, thank you, dude. And there's just trust. I'm like, drink this.

Yeah. No, that was funny. Yeah, I was just in there being a chemist. But no, so I'll have that, uh, they'll have that shake immediately post weigh in and, and you drink it as fast as you want. You have that first one as fast as you want.

Um, but then the second one, I want you, um, you're going to have the same one again, but I'm going to remove the creatine. Um, and then the second one,

I want you to have it, but make it last until the 30 minute mark. So if you wait in at nine, chug that first drink at 9. And then for your second one, you're going to make it last until 9.30, and then you're actually going to have that same one again from 9.30 to 10. So at that point, you've had three shakes within an hour. You are getting all of these things in the right spot, and it really brings you back to life.

of these things in the right spot and it really brings you back to life after that i'm a huge fan of high frequency low volume meal patterns so you're going to have a very small meal about once an hour and that meal is going to be extremely well digestible um for really three reasons number one it's going to be low fiber number two it's going to be low fiber. Number two, it's going to be low fat. And number three, it's something you've eaten the entire fight camp. So you know it's going to agree with you. I mean, fat and fiber slow digestion down. And the goal right then and there isn't to get the health benefits of fat and fiber. The goal right there is to get you back to your training camp weight. So we're going to have high frequency, low volume meals about every hour. And a huge cue that I give my guys is you want to think about your stomach like a gas tank. And it should always be half full. So you don't

want to be hungry and you also don't want to be full. If you can just conceptualize your stomach as a half full gas tank and maintain that sweet spot, that's what's going to allow you to gain a lot of weight without gastrointestinal distress and without having diarrhea, which is actually a pretty big problem post weigh-in. And then in between those little meals, you can actually have some super light snacks if you want. Something like fruit, baby food is a really good option. Yeah. Baby food is extremely well digestible and it's just ground up food. It's a real trick that people can use and in a low gastrointestinal way, get back to weight.

So they're typically gonna do that until they hit their training camp weight. Once they hit their training camp weight, we're still gonna do that, but it doesn't have to be as frequent. That's when you can kind of just listen to your body a little bit more. And we're going to do that really all the way up until you compete. You said carbs in that drink, and I know we can't give all the secret sauce to it.

But are you talking like a powdered, like mixed drink type of carb? Okay. So with that in mind, I'm just curious because a buddy of mine had a really awesome weight cut, made weight, won a championship. It was freaking amazing. When I recommended dextrose and I'm like, hey, this is going to be the protocol. We're going to bring some carbs back in to give you some energy. It really bothered his stomach. The rest of his diet was on point. It was very low fiber. It was again more protein than anything and then i don't it was pretty high in fat but it wasn't like quite time yet but it was interesting that his stomach got super irritated to the point where like he's like dude i think i'm gonna throw up during training today and so it was wild because i'm like why is this happening and this isn't my world i'm just doing my best from what i'm learning and so i'm curious like why do you think what do you think happened there um did he have it all throughout his training camp no there you go yeah

so yeah we were about two weeks out and so that's when we started mixing it in because he was depleted like a lot so it's like dude we need to get you some energy yeah and that's what happened so you want to try it like post-workout and get used to it and so forth. For sure. And I'll just tell you straight up. I use Vitargo. Vitargo is very, very well digestible. I love that product. Tastes good too. And its rate of gastric clearance is two and a half times faster than Dextrose.

So it's going to leave the stomach fast. Which Vitargo are you using that tastes good? I like it. It's like an orangey flavor, right? Yeah, yeah. They do orange, grape, and fruit punch, and mango. And mango and fruit punch is where it's at. I've always liked it.

You just have to shake it a lot, but I like it. Yeah, yeah. I've been using that forever. I used to not buy certain things in college just so I could afford Bitargo. Bitargo's been around forever. portargo like wait because the target's been around forever yeah actually the first time petargo was ever in uh the u.s it was because it was a part of myoplex do you remember my dude it's a supplementation historian moment here the first time it was ever in the states is it like a cyclic dextrin or is it maltodextrin or what is it it's just a it's a it's a it's a

form it's a proprietary form of potato starch and it's been around forever it has the most um most scientific literature behind it and it's does a lot of really good things like i couldn't recommend it more um especially post weigh-in so like my fighters will have that all throughout training camp because that's my preferred training fuel source as well and then it already agrees with them so that's what we're going to use after weigh-ins as well and i also really like vitargo for a reason that a lot of people don't think about vitargo does not contain any electrolytes which gives me the freedom to have a customized electrolyte mix in that post weigh-in so i'm not forced into a box in that situation. I'm able to inform or create an electrolyte protocol for that fighter for them.

So there's more freedom in that regard as well. We were talking a little earlier and we were saying how much your social media is blowing up. We were talking about how your social media doesn't move the needle for you business-wise, and that you get business by getting people results. And I think that's really interesting because every time you work with somebody, your ass is on the line, whether it's you're working with somebody for a movie, trying to create a new superhero, or trying to get someone a championship, or preparing somebody, like you mentioned, the football player and so forth.

And I think that fits your personality really well because that's what you love to do. You love to research and you love to – how many different types of athletes, how many different types of people have you worked with? You're working with UFC people, NFL. I don't know if you work with hockey and a bunch of other sports too. Yeah.

No, I've worked with athletes in 15 different professional sports. Yeah. I've coached Olympic gold medalists, two silver medalists, two bronze medalists in that acting world. I've coached two Marvel superheroes. So like these people, they don't find me because I post it on Instagram. I am integrated into that network. Yeah, the three Super Bowl champions. Jon Rahm won the Masters Golf Tournament last year.

Those people don't find me because I had a sick 60-second reel. That's just how it is. I actually left social media for one and a half years, not long ago. I completely left it because I am a coach first and an educator second. So when I left social media, nothing changed from a business perspective. So working with pro athletes, still doing all those things because that's what I do. I actually only came back to social media because I had a daughter and a lot of my family doesn't live close to me. And I wanted to share in my stories and in my posts, my daughter's name, Hallie, she's two years old. And I wanted to, I knew that they would want to be a part of

her progression and see how she's doing and those kinds of things. So I came back for that. And then I just organically started posting again because it's what I enjoy doing. But if anybody goes to my page, they're not, they're like, this guy is not after clickbait. My, my, what I post, I have, my images are just studies that support my caption. Um, and it's long form, it's context specific. Um, I'm way more like going, I would rather go, um, an inch wide and a mile deep rather than a mile wide and an inch deep. I'm going to go. I'm going to have that long form content to really smash something and post a research review within a caption. Back in the day, I read it somewhere and I can't remember who it was from, but they said that don't try to be popular. Try to be a leader.

said that um don't try to be popular try to be a leader and that's how i've always kind of approached my social media is um not to try and gain a lot of clickbait but to actually inform new knowledge i want i want to have a net contribution to science and not just consume science um yeah so there we go that's my clickbait that's on carly yeah yeah so most most research what's the secret behind getting like picked up by the algorithm like quit hiding it um what secret exactly yeah i've got no i've got no secrets on social i uh i'm the opposite of dan yeah yeah you'll be sailing along well you'll be popular um but like uh remember last time we were talking about NASA and how the Department of Defense and those things that I was doing, they don't find me because I did a post. Like, that stuff has never really informed my business.

And that's who I want to be anyways. How do some people find you? Because it is interesting. Like, you know, you work with o'malley and then you work with uh the top golfer it's like you would think a golfer would want like a golf coach right um but what do you think it is that attracts people to you in the first place and then when you start to communicate with them do you just dive all in on golf and do you start to learn about these sports? I've dived all into physiology. So working with athletes across 15 different pro sports does not mean that I can teach these athletes techniques within each of those sports.

I know how to optimize physiology. And then you are able to point that physiology in the direction that you want to be optimized in. So that's always how I've approached this thing and why I've been successful across many different sports is because I know what a high-performance physiology needs to look like from an objective perspective. So sleep for an MMA fighter, for a golfer, for an NFL athlete, it's still sleep. Right.

And they all face very similar things in their lives, whether, and even just your average person, right? Right, and like a big part of the way I approach coaching is through the theory of constraints. A physiology is only ever going to perform to the degree that it is constrained. So what I'm doing is you have this constraint and you will only ever perform to the degree that you are constrained in the same way, like a CEO, he would look at his business because the business is only ever going to scale to the degree that it is constrained. So he's going to look down at his organizational chart. Is the constraint in marketing? Is the constraint in sales? Is the constraint in product quality? Is the constraint

in culture in the company? He's going to identify the constraint and remove it so the business can scale to the next level. That's exactly how I view physiology. I am going to do your lab work. I am going to assess your lifestyle. I'm going to look at your life from the outside in, but then also look at your labs from the inside out. And I'm going to look down at the architecture and blueprint of who you are, identify the constraint and remove it so that you can perform to the next level.

If you're a golfer or a UFC fighter or an actor, I am going to find your problem and I'm going to remove it. And then you are going to have a higher performing physiology in the direction that you want to point it. Dan, I'm curious. I want to know about this. And there's so many things we can talk about as far as the recovery and physiology of the athletes you work with. But when it comes to caffeine, it's a conversation that we've been having for a while now.

I've been drinking coffee since I was like 19 or 20 years old. But I've been careful with my caffeine consumption, whether it's from coffee or from tea. I never have caffeine after like, you know, 10 a.m. I usually only have like one cup of coffee per day. I didn't keep stimulants in any of my pre-workouts or anything like that. But one thing that I noticed for a long time, and I've talked with Mark about this, is that I've had low HRV numbers. And sometimes my highest HRV would maybe be 32 or 33. Oura Ring, Whoop, Apple Watch, 8 Sleep Mattress, all these things give me these shitty HRV numbers, even though I felt okay.

About six weeks ago or seven weeks ago, I decided to just stop drinking coffee. Not for HRV or anything, but just because I realized that it makes me feel too good. Like I can wake up. I'm not motivated. I have a cup of coffee. Super motivated. I don't like that. So I stopped.

And I had a little bit of withdrawals for about a week. And then a little bit after that, all my HRV numbers start going right up. Like now I'm averaging around 40 or 50. And I never have seen those numbers in my HRV. My resting heart rate's lower. All these things are improved. And I wasn't even a big caffeine consumer. I would say I was the type of person who can drink caffeine before bed, even though I'd never do this, and go to sleep. You know what I mean? So I'm curious, what have you seen with caffeine consumption, negatives, positives? Maybe I just react to it differently than other people.

It just doesn't sit with me, and I thought it always did. But what is it something that you notice when it comes to working with athletes and caffeine? Okay. So first off, everybody's on the bell curve, right? So you can just be an outlier and have a weird response. Yeah. When it comes to caffeine or even magnesium, vitamin B1, you're going to have people who have a weird bell curve response to anything. I used to work with a guy who works at XBT,

and he couldn't even have magnesium upon waking because it would give him so much energy he couldn't sleep at night. It's like one of the weirdest things I've ever seen. And he just had such a weird bell curve response that i couldn't give him magnesium even upon waking can i mention this too i'm not the type of person that drinks caffeine or coffee and it's like like it hits me all day you know i mean like i feel good but it's not like i get jittery and shit so that that's again so something almost like the absence of feeling bad yeah right yeah yeah that's what i would say with it too, for me.

Yeah. You have adenosine that will build up throughout the day. It's basically a form of sleep drive. And then when you have caffeine, it lowers this adenosine. Yeah. And then you just create a more wakefulness. That is going to be physiology. You're going to have that response. Caffeine is going to do that kind of regardless of how you feel. That's why if you have, there's a difference between sleep length and sleep quality if you have caffeine right before bed you might still sleep but the quality is not going to be the same because of the catecholamine response and the adenosine suppression that's gonna take place in terms of this kind of an unpopular

opinion but that literature absolutely supports that people can have 400 milligrams of caffeine per day and that can be safe and healthy in the long term a lot of people are like, well, what about the glucose? What about this? I would say, look at the research. Coffee has so many benefits. It's crazy. I did a full literature review recently on coffee being one of the best liver supplements anybody could ever take. And people talk about milk thistle and what that does. we have this so much research on caff on coffee and what that can do even in states of fatty liver which is like wild

like it's improving these states caffeine specifically or coffee coffee coffee interesting yeah coffee um in terms of like what i've seen caffeine do for athletes um it is a way to mask fatigue that you should be listening to like Like we talked about previously, like emotions being a signal and you should need to create action based on that signal. Fatigue is also a signal. So if you had some fatigue and then you needed liquid motivation in order to go do the thing that you're supposed to do, you are masking a recovery issue that is going to hurt your HRV over time. So, yeah, I think that that's probably a pretty common response. But if you felt no negatives coming off of it, then you're good to go. On paper too, you can actually completely resensitize your body to caffeine after 11 days of no caffeine. If you abstain from caffeine

for 11 days, you will go completely back to baseline to where like, remember the first time you ever had 100 milligrams and how good that felt and then now like i need at least 400 upon waking on an empty stomach that's that might ring the bell for me but um that first 100 milligrams you felt amazing you can have that again if you were if you take 11 days off and that's probably not a bad thing for people to do even once or twice a year. Is that something you do? I mean, I don't really care about it.

Not right now. I'm building a blood work business right now. I need some caffeine in order to get the job done. I am Mr. Stimulants right now. Even when I showed up to Mark, I was like, hey, Mark, what's going on today? You joining me for the podcast? We're going to go for a walk? What you got for me?

Hey, Mark, what's going on today? You're going to do the podcast. We're going to go for a walk. What you got for me? I wanted to ask you like about like building up the confidence early on when you were talking about like I'm going to say yes to everything and I'll figure it out as I go. That sounds terrifying because you're like, you know, whatever X task is. Yes. And then because I know I had I did something similar with this podcast. I asked Mark if I could take over and he's like, sure.

And I'm like, I don't know what the hell I'm doing, but we figured it out. Moving forward, though, it blows my mind to think that you kept doing that over and over and over. And I understand that once you get like a win, you're like, see, I knew I could do it. But then again, like you get faced with like, holy shit, I've never seen that one. I can do it. Like, where did that come from? And like initially, how did you just was it kind of just like um i don't know you're back against the wall and it's like hey i have to get through this or else i'm like gonna starve today or something yeah it's

probably two things like number one i truly don't think people learn things like until they get their ass kicked like you're gonna have someone who is going to drive like an asshole until they get in an accident. Then they're going to learn that lesson. You're going to get someone who's going to speed a lot until they get a brutal ticket and they're going to learn that lesson. I truly think that unless you are emotionally shocked into something, it's very difficult to learn lessons unless there is a price to pay for it. And a way to force myself to learn lessons and learn new things was to put myself in those situations that created a way to force myself to learn lessons and learn new things was to put myself in those situations that created that emotional value for me to go out and get something

done and learn that new thing. So I was aware of that early, where if I continue to coast, I'm probably not going to learn anything, which kind of bleeds me right into my second point is, bro, I got bad grades in high school and then I worked in a machine shop after that. And then the best things that have happened to me in my life are the worst things. Your ability to pivot off of the worst things that have happened to you is your ability to seek the best things that will ever happen to you. And the best thing that ever happened to me was I got laid off from that machine shop. 50% it wasn't doing well. 50% of the people in that machine shop got laid off.

And I saw that as my second opportunity at life. And I ever since then, I've been an absolute lunatic about all of this stuff. It's very motivating for me to never go back to a situation like that. Even like at this point in my career, it's impossible to ever go back. But it still motivates me all the time is I'm not going back i know what that feels like i know what it's like to do something that you can't even go back they fucking fired you they're like sure you can you're like i'm never coming back they're like good we fucking got rid of you a long time ago yeah it basically taught me that you can uh you can fail at something you don't even want.

You can fail at something that you don't even want, so you might as well go after something you do want. And I saw how much work it was going to take in order for a guy from a machine shop to move to a position where he's going to start teaching doctors about blood work. Or move into a position where he's going to be teaching doctors about blood work or move into a position where he's going to be involved in world championship fights. That is what I wanted. I wanted to be a leader and I wanted to work with athletes and I wanted to innovate. And I was coming out of a machine shop and I was like, okay, I don't know what the step-by-step process is, but I know I'm going to need to start saying yes to a lot of things. And that's how that mindset informed me of you learn things when you're put in difficult situations. I know where

I want to be and I know my starting place and I better start saying yes right now. Dan is different, man. Like he, he'll do deep dive, you know, like, uh, like you never seen before when I was working with you. Um, you know, I would mention certain coaches to you, like, what's their number? Who are you talking about? And you write it down or you'd say like, oh, I bought like four of his books. I read them, you know, and Brian McKenzie or Superbrain, you're like, oh, I did a consult with him. I've learned some stuff from him. And then you're telling me other people that you're consulting, you know, and so I think it's awesome that you still have like a white belt mentality to keep learning and to keep, and you're not against, you know, there's a lot of

times to see what other coaches are worried, like, oh man, like he's talking to this other guy too. Like they, uh, they get intimidated or think that something's going to happen and you're like more encouraging. You're like, no, this is actually good. Let me learn from this person. Let me see what they have to say. And, uh, it will probably help us even further as a team, as a squad. For sure. That's something you have to do in athletics because there's always a team. And your ability to join the team is going to depend upon your ability to be the puzzle piece that fits in there and doesn't try to be the whole puzzle. You got egomaniacs sometimes that want to be the guy for that person. I am the coach. I want to take the credit. that person i am the coach i want to take the

credit um until you come across a fighter who has five coaches or uh an nfl player who has five coaches like that that's always going to happen and you're going to hurt someone's progression more than help them um so that that team integration mentality um is forced um in the world of professional athletics because you you're, you do, you're there to do your job and not try to take over. Um, that's kind of number one, but number two, um, I've always had that white belt mentality. Um, but I call it the owl mentality. Um, because if an owl, yeah, an owl, if, if, yeah, if an owl, uh, when an owl eats erotiv, he actually eats the whole thing. So he's going to consume the entire mouse.

And then what he does is afterwards he's going to spit out the bones and fur. So he kept what was good. Fucking gross. Owls are so weird. I was thinking, oh, they look everywhere. They eat their prey. No, they keep the good and they discard the bad. He's going to spit out the fur. He's going to spit out the fur.

He's going to spit out the bones after. He kept only what he needed. And that's how I kind of approached everything. Because I think you can learn a lot from people who do the carnivore diet. You can also learn a lot from vegans. You can also learn a lot from certain scientists. You can learn a lot from breathwork. I think that your job is to like be the owl.

You want to expose yourself to absolutely everything and then keep what you need to make your job higher performing and discard what you don't need. That's some fucking heat. Yeah, it is. Be the owl. Whoa, dude. Owls are kind of scary. I have a ton of them out where I live. It's horrifying, especially because I got my little tiny dog.

Oh, yeah. I always think one of those owls is going to pick up my dog. Yeah, you ever see owls attack big ass? It's like, they're scary. Scary looking motherfuckers. As far as going back to sleep real quick, are there any general, because I know you deal with your athletes on an individual basis. You look at their blood work, their poop. You still look at their poop?

Oh, yeah. Okay. Are there any general supplements that are good for around bed that most people could probably have some benefit from? General supplementation prior to bed. I mean, definitely magnesium. Magnesium. Glycinate. Glycinate is an option. You can have bisglycinate.

If someone has gastrointestinal issues, then bisglycinate is the most GI-friendly. So if you're someone who's prone to issues, bisglycinate is super easy on the system. Magnesium oxide is like a laxative, so it's the complete opposite. But also magnesium gluconate is a very well-absorbable option. Magnesium citrate is the most absorbable option and the most researched and also the cheapest. So, and lots of times that's like the one to go with. But also magnesium 3 and 8, that's a version of magnesium that has some neuroprotective components to it and also has some inhibition components to it. We have a part of the circadian rhythm. We want to have

excitatory activity happening earlier in the day. So things like cortisol, catecholamines, dopamine, these things are going to rise earlier in the day and they should progressively reduce as the day goes on because before we had lights in rooms, we only had natural light. So as a biological adaptation to that, we needed to get our to-do list done while the light was still on. So we have excitatory things happening earlier in the day. They progressively decline until we have a natural increase in inhibitory things. So things like serotonin, melatonin, and GABA, these are going to increase more as the day goes on. If you have a healthy circadian rhythm, magnesium threonate informs and helps the GABA component of that. So it has a little bit of a better effect effect on anti-anxiety and just from coaching i found that it helps people reduce uh nighttime planning if you're one of these people

who like plan the next day and you've got lists and things like that and you want to think about what you're going to do the next day um that really helps reduce chatter i guess i'll call it um and then our gram amount uh magnesium three 8, the most researched version of it is 2 grams of it, which it provides not 2 grams of elemental magnesium, but 2 grams is the totality research of what people could and should start with if they're not going to have it without lab work. So that's a good option to have. Also, lavender and passion fruit. option to have um also uh lavender and passion fruit um people don't really talk about those but in terms of quality scientific literature those are phenomenal for reducing anxiety they're non-toxic they're things that basically anybody can take and it's not going to have this this negative response for you so do you want to say something about that real quick

yeah i i think it was lavender right that like kind of promoted something in regards to like um what's the uh the female hormone um estrogen yes it could kind of uh promote the production of estrogen in males um in a very rare response so there's the lavender has actually been connected to gynecomastia um in in certain outliers that way so actually i've done i've done a social media post on this before. But in terms of long-term safety and what people can do and how little of an occurrence that's going to be, I'd be very comfortable telling a very large audience

that lavender is going to be fine for them. Lavender and tea ain't nothing. Yeah, even small kids like a three-year-old. Yeah. There's also little sprays you can put in your pillow the the aroma is as well researched as orally consuming it yeah so you can do either um but magnesium passion flower and lavender are all like super safe broad recommendations you can make for everybody but beyond that i do like labs yeah yeah no because um you know again three-year-old

and you know my wife has a bunch of like essential oils and stuff. And there's like blends that will help, you know, help you with sleep and anxiety, all that stuff. Yeah. And is there lavender in there? He's like, yeah. And I'm like, get that away from my kid. But that's just because, you know, I'm like better safe than sorry, because, you know, again, I hear these things and I read these things. We've had people on the show kind of mention these things. But when I ask ask i'm not getting like any super clear answers from people that i respect right so right um that's why i've always just been more cautious than just like you know better safe than sorry being cautious is not a bad thing and also nobody needs lavender to sleep so it's not like a you have a rate limiting requirement of lavender in a biochemical pathway. Lavender is used here to form melatonin

that is not required. So you don't need it at all. But dude, in terms of long-term safety and research quality, it is a good option. Yeah. So passion fruit extract like a powder and even lavender, what, lavender sprays or? Yeah, you can do lavender spray or consume it as well, just orally. There's a product called Trimag Supreme from Designs for Health. It's a Trimag Supreme night, and it contains lavender and certain forms of magnesium. It's a nice little blend to have pre-bed that I use a bunch in my coaching. Do you have to worry about magnesium 3 and 8 the way you would just like magnesium? If you take too much of it, you're like peeing out of your butt like do you have to be careful with how much you're taking with that um i mean you'd have to be careful with how you take anything too much of anything might result in peeing out of the butt so yeah i think that uh that you could probably say that regarding anything but um in terms of laxative qualities, it does not have those. Magnesium oxide is the real laxative one.

And you said two grams anyways, that's very reasonable. Got it, yeah, very, very reasonable. Where did your obsession with blood work, where did it begin? The obsession with blood work kind of came from my white belt mentality. Like, I am not confident when it comes to this stuff. So something that helps build my confidence is objective data.

If I can look at something and I know that I'm not just saying something, but I have numbers to work with that are objective, like blood work has a beautiful way of not giving a shit how you feel about the results. It's a murderer of bias from the person that I'm working with, but also from me. I have the self-awareness to know that I have a bias too. So Bloodwork killed our biases. And then it allowed me to have objective metrics to work with and build protocols from in the absence of bias, which was very confidence building for me. Because my job is high stress, high reward. And in those situations, I want to work with real data and make real decisions. I didn't start with blood work in Gold's Gym, for example.

I was molded into who I am now based on the situations I've been put in. Michael Bisping, a good example, right? He got a short notice. He's two weeks out from a title fight. And he was on a film set in toronto and then he calls me from that film set says he gets a title shot can you get me ready in two weeks yes i'm your guy yeah yeah i told you to call me right so that those forced me to be who i am today. I was forced into needing objective metrics

based on how high pressure my situations are in. Because if I'm working with those, then I have an answer, a clear answer for everything I put on that protocol. I'm not just saying something. I have a clear answer for it. So that's kind of like number one. It was confidence building for me and my clients

and it removed bias. Number two is it's the best way that I can look at your whole, like we talked about previously, if I'm looking at an organizational chart and I'm trying to identify the constraint, like a stool analysis. We've talked about stool. A stool analysis is very valuable, but its value is quite localized within the gastrointestinal tract. Blood work is valuable to any organ system that requires a blood supply, which is all of them. This is why you get brain markers, heart markers, liver markers, kidney markers, gut markers, hormone, micronutrient. The blood is the communication and messaging system for the

entire body. So you get a physiologic portrait and that portrait based on bowel markers, but also the relationships between the bowel markers gave me such a beautiful way to have an objective reflection on the constraint that I needed to remove. I identify that constraint. I talk to my client to qualify that constraint, say, based on a current symptom and ensure that they do have that issue. Talking to them, listening to them is the art of coaching. Blood work was the science of coaching. And I combined those two. And blood work has allowed me to get the results that I get with people. It seems to be like, you know, blood work is like this crazy, like orchestrated symphony that's going on all at one time. And there's, you know, certain levels going up, certain levels going down down, various stresses that someone might have, various supplements someone might be utilizing. People's sleep, people's circadian rhythm, you know, just kind of take every factor that is inputted into a human being and it's going to impact their blood work.

The blood work stuff is interesting to me because the science seems to be changing so much about it quite often because it's still like relatively new. I don't know how long we've been really studying people's blood the way that we do now because now, I mean, you can do maybe endless amounts of testing on someone's blood, right? You can get so many different, you can test for so many different things. Have you ever looked at someone's blood, right? You can get so many different, you can test for so many different things. Have you ever looked at someone's blood and had it register, you know, in your mind to be very unhealthy and then to have the individual look like someone like this, look like in SEMA before? Have you had situations like that? And like, what does blood work tell us? And like, what doesn't it tell us? Because it seems to be really confusing, especially surrounding

something like testosterone. You know, you'll see this person and he's got a beard and he's jacked and he looks amazing. And you're like, that guy's testosterone must be through the roof. You know, it's like, must be 1200 or something, but oftentimes that's not the case. So it seems to be confusing sometimes. What are some things that you've seen? Well, in terms of what it tells us, it's a great way to have past, present and future insights on somebody. So like, for example, if you're looking at blood sugar, your hemoglobin A1C is a representation of the last three to four months of your blood sugar control. So our red

blood cells, we have 120 day turnover rate. So you can think four months from now, you're going to have new blood. So when we have these past metrics, it's based upon your past turnover rate. Hemoglobin A1C is actually like a marker for actual damage. If blood sugar hangs out with red blood cells too long, it creates glycated hemoglobin. Basically, you can think about like the sugar is damaging this hemoglobin molecule, and then it becomes what we call on paper hemoglobin A1c.

So that damage only ever exists if blood sugar hangs out with red blood cells for too long. So this is why this is a chronic marker of your past four months. So I'm able to look at how you did blood sugar for the last four months. But then in present day, I'm able to look at fasting glucose.

Fasting glucose lets me know what your blood sugar was that morning. And then in terms of the future, fasting glucose puts you as an independent marker for a lot of risk factors. So for every one point above 85 on a fasting glucose measure, you are at a 6% increased risk for developing type 2 diabetes over the course of the next decade. The reference

range goes up to 100, by the way. It's about 70 to 100. So if you had a fasting glucose of 95, you're at a 60% increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes over the course of the next decade. But you came back as normal, right? So this lets me see where you're going in the future also above 85 it becomes a cardiovascular death risk marker so above we are getting into cardiovascular risk we are getting into type 2 diabetes risk after 95 it actually becomes a neuropathy risk and then actually retinopathy so you ever see like someone with diabetes for a long period of time that might lose a toe or even a foot or something like that. So that can actually begin with macular damage after 95, even though you're still in the reference range. So I can look at like past, current, future issues and how the heck we're going to be able to deal with this.

And that's just one example of all of the different organ systems we talked about that I can look at in blood work. So I'm designing protocols based on what I'm seeing here, based on what are the current constraints across the entire body. But you also have to take into consideration a handful of things in order to avoid the confusion and noise with it all. Because blood work, if you're not good at blood work, you can chase false positives. You can do a protocol that you didn't need because that biomarker has natural variations, just might have diurnal variations based on when you got your blood drawn that day,

like testosterone does. Testosterone and white blood cells, if you do AM, PM measures, they can be completely different. So you can have a lot of false positives that you're chasing. So I lean heavily on patterns and relationships over single biomarkers. A biomarker will inform a recommendation, but a pattern will inform a protocol. So a biomarker is a single blood metric, and that will inform a recommendation. A pattern will inform a protocol. So if I see somebody has low testosterone, let's say you're a big jacked guy, right? Super jacked, big beard, Viking. From the outside, the dude's an animal, and he's probably breathing really heavy into the microphone,

which is the worst for headphones in a podcast. and he's probably breathing really heavy into the microphone which is the worst for headphones listening to power lifters and strong men breathe into microphones for three hours imagine what sex is like for those guys oh my god sweating okay sweating even though they're on their back still tired still tired too red just red yeah okay um okay so that's what we're talking about um somebody's super jacked um i can see i'm gonna look i'll say okay well that guy's testosterone is actually pretty low and his cortisol is high and his sex hormone binding globulin is high um and his dheaA is starting to trend low. Okay. That is a very, very common pattern for someone who's under recovering slash overtraining. So this guy can be super jacked, but his current physiology

needs some changes in his program because he is entering that state of under recovery. So you get those things often too. If somebody is at an increased risk of stress fractures, they could have a lower vitamin D, increased alkaline phosphatase, and increased calcium. This is somebody who's going through a lot of bone catabolism. And I'm going to – like this is something I'll see in endurance athletes a lot is that they're at a huge risk of stress fractures because a lot of them don't eat a lot because they want to be very light in order to go longer. It's just kind of, I've just seen it a lot. So you have catabolism on top of catabolism, not eating a lot and then running for many miles every single day, puts you at a massive increase for stress factors. And that's a pattern you'll see for stress factors. If you want to look at someone who is in a state of fatigue. Fatigue is a symptom that has many

different root causes. So like if somebody had low white blood cells and increased lymphocytes, that is a representation of viral load. So that would inform my protocol. Viral load, number one symptom of viral load is fatigue. So that would inform my protocol to move in that direction to remove that constraint. But if they had a sodium potassium ratio, that ratio is actually an excellent reflection of adrenal health. If they had an offset sodium potassium ratio, then that would inform my protocol to be involved in the removal of stressors throughout one's life. If they had glycemic variation, that's going to inform fatigue as well. That would actually go in that direction too, where I'm looking at patterns between C-peptide, insulin, glucose, HbA1c. These are all

patterns that reflect a physiology. So like the most important thing to take away from this is a biomarker informs a recommendation, but a pattern informs a true protocol. And that's why the lab never provides the value. It's that's why the lab never provides the value. It's the interpretation of the lab that provides the value. If you can really master the science and art of interpretation, then you're able to create protocols that are truly life-changing and truly customized to that physiology. So even with like other other like you now understand like all the ins and outs obviously but like if i get you know really poor sleep maybe i so the day before i trained my ass off i ate really bad i got terrible sleep and then i wake up early and go get my labs done doc my testosterone's

super low look at the numbers you have other metrics that can prove like, well, actually it's maybe not as bad as you thought it was. Yes. So yeah, I've categorized, I'm creating, I'm in the process of creating in my blood work algorithm so that I'm basically putting my brain into a computer so that you get the high value interpretation from a performance perspective. It's a big project I've been working on for the past year that's going to launch January 29th. It's a big project I've been working on for the past year that's going to launch January 29th. And what you're able to kind of do is categorize high variability biomarkers, moderate variability biomarkers, and low variability biomarkers. So if a biomarker has a very low variability in terms of day-to-day change,

then that is going to strengthen your confidence in designing a protocol based on that biomarker because it has a very low variability of ever changing. So when it has changed, it is representing a current constraint. So you're actually able to weigh decision making based on high, moderate, and low. Testosterone has high variability. So what I would want in terms of protocol design for testosterone production is I would actually want more readings of that. You can create an average over time and you're going to learn much more about your body from multiple readings rather than just one. With that said, your one reading of low testosterone might actually

be actionable if we did see the overtraining pattern in there or if we did see micronutrient insufficiencies in there if you if you have lower vitamin d if you have lower magnesium if you have are in a physiologic state of overtraining if i can see that you're sleeping poorly because of increased ferritin and low white blood cells and high c-reactive protein then that is going to be the thing that's going to help your testosterone so just because something's highly variable, it doesn't always mean that it's inactual. You'll get a greater insight on it by creating averages over time. But if a pattern reflects the body's response within the same lab work, then that is actionable and you will increase your testosterone by creating a protocol

based on the target that impacted that bowel marker. Paparazzi Family on the podcast, we talk all the time about feeling good, good habits to make sure that your health is in check. And one of the things that's super important is getting your blood work done because you could be getting great sleep, you could be having great nutrition, but under the hood, there could be things going on that you don't realize. So it's always good to get your blood work checked so you can totally understand what's going on. Now, the thing is also when you get your blood work checked, there's so many different things in so many different numbers that it's hard to tell what's good, what's bad, and how do I optimize things. And that's where Merrick Health comes in because they have patient

care coordinators on staff that can help you interpret your blood work and then give you the necessary recommendations as far as supplementation, nutrition, and if you need it, hormone optimization. That'll start moving you in the right direction. Andrew, how can they get their hands on it? Yes, that's over at MerrickHealth.com slash PowerProject. That's M-A-R-R-E-K Health.com slash PowerProject. At checkout, enter promo code PowerProject to save 10% off the PowerProject panel, the PowerProject checkup panel, or any individual lab you select.

Again, that's at MerrickHe.com slash powerproject. Links in the description, as well as the podcast show notes. As far as getting your blood work is concerned, because like Andrew just mentioned, all these variables can affect the reading that somebody gets. What do you tell people to do when they plan on getting blood work done? Do you tell them, hey, I want you to take a little bit of time off training one day or two days? Because you want to see consistently where everything is at ideally, correct? Yes. Yeah, 100%.

I like people to come off all supplements three days before the blood draw. Wow. All supplements. All supplements. Yes. Everything. I want a full physiologic baseline. You come off of everything three days before your blood draw.

And it's funny that people do get that response. It's like, I don't want to. I like my creatine. For three days before your blood draw um and it's funny that people do get that response it's like i don't want to i like my creatine for three days man i'm gonna i'm gonna shrink what do you mean um caffeine as well too um no not caffeine okay you can you can continue to have caffeine um in the form of coffee um because it's interesting if you have uh coffee even the day of your blood draw it's been shown to not show variations. I still don't recommend it, but, um, it has been, it's actually one of the safe ones, but I like people to come off of all supplements, um, three days prior to, I also like people to not train at all three days prior to, because if you're training, then you're, you're, you're just making the process harder. It's like, you're going to come in, you see reactive protein might

be higher from inflammation. Your creatine reactive protein might be higher from inflammation, your creatine kinase might be higher from inflammation and muscle damage. You're going to have the intracellulars possibly leak into serum. So like if you have potassium, potassium at like a trending higher rate is going to be at like 4.8,

whereas sodium is hanging around at like 145. and that's because sodium is extracellular but potassium is intracellular but if you're training and creating a lot of muscle damage and muscle breakdown we're going to have intracellulars leak into the serum and that's going to offset a proper electrolyte ratio so that i'm not able to like correctly create your electrolyte protocol i'm i actually i'm not in totally ensured all the time about, is your ALT high because you just trained and you got muscle? Or is it high because something else is happening here? So if I don't have a baseline to work with, because you're not removing supplements and you're not training, or you're not removing supplements and you're continuing to

train prior to, it becomes more difficult to get a clean picture of what's happening. Any adjustments to food on the day of? Just fast. Fast, like from the night, like, so example, do you eat dinner the night before? And then that's the last meal you have before your blood work the next day? The most important thing is to try and create the timing the same. So like, some people can have, if you do, it says, take your blood work fasted. Some people might fast for 12 hours, but some might be 16.

It can be a huge variance there. So one thing I like is if somebody has their last meal at dinner or 8 PM, just do that again. Next time you're removing as many variables as possible. So like insulin is a good example. Insulin is a pretty good hormone to see what's going on with blood sugar. But the problem with insulin is it has a very quick half-life. So it is there. It is going to find a home for the glucose from the most recent meal that you just ate. And then it's going to

return back to baseline until your body detects an incoming glucose again. Insulin will do that, but as a very quick half-life. C-peptide is actually kind of a better marker for insulin than insulin itself. Cause if it is co-secreted with insulin. So if you secrete one unit of insulin, you will also secrete one unit of C-peptide with it, but C-peptide has a longer half-life. So I'm actually able to get a little better insight on what glucose control was like previously that day than insulin itself, but you're still creating variants. If I had like pasta at 5 p.m. and then did a blood draw at 8 p.m. or 8 a.m., then it's going to be a lot different than if I had pasta at 5 p.m. again the day before, but then got my blood draw at like noon or something like

that. Things with short half-lives become way different. So you want to fast that day, but you also want to eat at the same time the night before as well so you're eliminating as many variables as possible um but wouldn't um so in trying to eliminate all the variables for an athlete wouldn't that create an even bigger variable because this athlete's that's not normal for them yeah they're training every day they take these supplements every day and then they're getting tested after stopping everything that they normally do and then getting right back on everything the training schedule and the supplements so wouldn't the readings i mean since they would be they would be read differently wouldn't that create different outcomes in the

blood work many people self-select supplements in order to eliminate the symptoms they currently feel. So if somebody has a gut problem, they're going to take digestive enzymes or probiotics. That's going to throw off the results of your stool test because you're currently trying to mask your own symptoms. Same thing for caffeine. Same thing for many of the supplements that we have. Like the reason why we feel good on certain supplements, lots of times, is because they're suppressing the symptoms associated with a root cause problem. You haven't found yet because you're not creating a true baseline. Uh, like the, the things that you're doing should always be informed by a true baseline because it allows your root cause

problems to become more magnified. Um, if you had an electrolyte problem, but you took electrolytes on the day of your blood draw, we're not gonna be able to see that anymore. Then that's the reason why you need electrolytes so often. Like, okay, so this is probably, this would be a good example of why we would need to do this. So the sodium potassium ratio, I talked about just previously, I said it can be reflective of a root cause of fatigue.

Here's how that works. Your sodium potassium ratio typically should be between 30 and 35. It's how that works. Your sodium-potassium ratio typically should be between 30 and 35. It's a reflection of adrenal health, okay? Now, you've got this range between 30 and 35, and it actually reflects cortisol. So when you secrete cortisol, which is a stress hormone, that is increased in response to stress. you will co-secrete something called mineral corticoids along with it. Mineral electrolytes, corticoids, hormones that regulate the electrolytes. So you're going to have this cortisol measure. You will co-secrete mineral corticoids with it. There is

a hormone called aldosterone. And for the purpose of this conversation, aldosterone reabsorbs sodium from the kidneys. One of its jobs is to reabsorb sodium from the kidneys and excrete potassium so that you end up back in this level of homeostasis. That sodium's still good. Let's reuse it, but we need to balance this out with the potassium as well. When you start to see sodium getting lower

and potassium getting higher, that's the opposite. So that means there's been very low aldosterone secretion, which reflects very low cortisol output, which can reflect states of fatigue in people who are under-recovering from exercise. This actually began in the medical literature. A lot of times you have to do that. You look at medical literature, and then it informs you on how you can create performance-based protocols from a different perspective because Addison's disease and Cushing's disease are actual disease states of either hypercortisolism or hypocortisolism, either super low or super high.

The beginning diagnostic process of identifying if someone has that issue is the sodium-potassium ratio. But just because you're not in a disease state, it doesn't mean that you are optimized. You can narrow in this sodium potassium ratio, which is a reflection of adrenal health, which is a reflection of total stress load, which is a reflection of recovery status. Now, if we are to connect that to this electrolyte and supplement issue, if you have this problem of low aldosterone output and you take electrolytes on the same day of your blood draw, now I think your electrolytes are fine,

but you need a totally different protocol, not for your electrolytes. The reason why, like I said previously, you're taking it to mass symptoms. Your electrolytes that you're taking, the reason why they feel so good is not because you needed electrolytes that you're taking, the reason why they feel so good is not because you needed electrolytes. It's because the hormones that regulate the electrolytes are currently your

root cause problem. So I won't be able to detect why you need these electrolytes so much, which probably means you're cramping during exercise, which probably means your urine frequency is going to be offset. It might have some water retention. I'm not going to be able to explain that in a clear way because you're not showing me your clear root cause. But if you do, I will see aldosterone offset in that lab. I will create a protocol from it and boom, you will be performing much better hormonally, but then also from a mineral perspective. Couldn't we make the same argument then if you take three days off from training that that would be unusual and that that might be masked like your cortisol,

your estrogen, your testosterone, like those things might be altered greatly by not training at all? They could be altered and they probably would be altered, but that root cause problem is not gonna be solved or eliminated in three days. It's a short enough time

period to where i'm still going to be able to detect exactly what's going on especially like in a true root cause state got it that makes that makes a lot of sense yeah short enough period to be informative but not long enough to ask anything when it comes to um you know so i like this idea here because i think oftentimes supplements performance enhancing drugs and so on are kind of covering up maybe what's going on or what someone has. And we just see and I harp on vitamin D just because it's such a popular thing for people to be consuming large dosages of. And I think they think that they're doing their immunity. I think they think they're doing their body some good. But I just really have a big question mark around it.

I stopped taking vitamin D probably almost two years ago because I was like, I get plenty of sun. And then you and I have gone on blood work and we've had discussions about this before. But I guess the question that I'll pose to the audience and to you is, if T3 is something that we know, like you shouldn't be just haphazardly

taking thyroid medication because it can alter your own thyroid. We say the same thing about growth hormone, shouldn't be just haphazardly taking growth hormone because it can impact your body producing its own growth hormone. And we say the same thing with testosterone. We know these things.

But then for some reason, vitamin D kind of slides underneath the radar, and I'm not quite sure why. What are some of your thoughts surrounding that? It's a framework that surrounds all biomarkers. If something is high or low, it's a response to a current adaptation the body has. One of the most insightful questions anybody could ever ask themselves when looking at blood work is think,

huh, I wonder why that was a good idea. Like your biology created that response and adaptation based on millions of years of evolution, okay? We will never be smarter than biology. Biology has answered questions that we don't even know we're questions yet. So when you see something as high or low, you gotta go, huh,

I wonder why the body thought that was a good idea. And that happens with every single biomarker. Like vitamin D is a good example because it is highly variable. Vitamin D is not just a representation of your vitamin D in like this clean format. Vitamin D is so deeply connected to glutathione and glutathione metabolism that it's been

demonstrated in research many times over that supplementation of NAC alone linearly brings up vitamin D alongside it. So you didn't have low vitamin D because you had low vitamin D. You had low vitamin D because your glutathione metabolism was off. So increasing glutathione status linearly increased vitamin D along with it. Vitamin D is a negative acute phase reactant. That means in the presence of inflammation, vitamin D is suppressed. And even in that specific literature, it states right in the abstract,

vitamin D is not an accurate marker for vitamin D due to it being, literally vitamin D is not an accurate marker for vitamin D because of how sensitive it is to inflammation. So that suppresses it. Vitamin D is involved in metal uptake. So it's been demonstrated as a host defense mechanism. Your body reduces vitamin D as a protective mechanism as to not uptake more lead. So if you're exposed to lead, say, due to poor plumbing, your body will reduce vitamin D to reduce metal uptake of the toxic metal

that you're currently exposed to. So then if you see low vitamin D in your blood work and your coach says, take 10,000 IU of vitamin D, your body's going, bro, I was trying to not uptake lead and now you are forcing this thing to happen. The reverse happens with boron.

You're exposed to a lot of boron. It actually artificially increases vitamin D. Air pollution has been demonstratedially increases vitamin D. Air pollution has been demonstrated to suppress vitamin D. These things continue to go on and on and on and on to where you're going to come across somebody in Arizona or in California or in Florida who's exposed to sunlight every single day and has low vitamin D. And then the people's recipe book approach, well, if this was low, take this. If this was high, take this. They're looking at a biomarker and they're not looking at pattern or physiology or they don't understand what impacts that biomarker. able to actually go down a thought process that leads you to a root cause rather than just a symptom suppressor, which is, let me have 10,000 IU of vitamin D. And these examples go on forever.

Like albumin is another pretty good one. Albumin is just a protein in the body, and it does a lot of cool things, but it's brought up in states of chronic dehydration. Albumin has a life of about 20 days. So if albumin is high, that represents dehydration, but it is also a negative acute phase reactant. So it is reduced in the presence of inflammation. So if it's pulled up due to dehydration, but then pulled down due to inflammation, you're going to have an albumin that looks completely normal, even though it's not. You can be dehydrated and inflamed and have this normal albumin. If you look at the biomarker for the reading itself and not the iceberg underneath the

water that informs how the biomarker came to be that day, then you are chasing false positives. You're not designing a protocol and you're not doing blood work coaching properly. And I think the industry has completely messed up when it comes to vitamin D. I absolutely think that we'll look back on this and be like, dude, we're taking 5, 10, 20, 50,000 IU. Why? So not for B vitamins or vitamin C. This one, though, everyone's just low in, and we're not questioning it.

Why? Is that logically, if somebody takes 5,000 IU of vitamin D, and they have low, and the coach just goes, better go up to 10,000. Let's do that. More is better. Instead of asking, why is that low? That happens in every single biomarker. Vitamin D is just one of the most popular ones that happens, too. low that happens in every single biomarker vitamin D is just one of the most popular ones that happens to let's say that you're you are asked to your your tasked with this equation for let's say

the UFC say UFC decides hey you know what these athletes are a little different and it would be in our best interest to protect these athletes the best possible way. And therefore, we believe that these athletes should be able to utilize some HRT, some TRT, something along those lines. And because, I mean, there are guys that have low T and some of it is associated with depression. Some of it's associated with getting knocked out frequently, getting hit in the head and so forth. So somebody decides that this is okay, and they task you with making sure everyone's healthy. How would you do that? And do you think in general, in sports in general, like this would be a good idea for not necessarily the performance-enhancing side,

but just for all sports to start to allocate that all of their athletes get tested for blood work? I think that would be one of the best things that sports could do is to have blood work. And the UFC would make more money using my blood work because more fighters would make it to fight day. The injury risk factors would be taken into consideration. So you're not going to have fighters pull out at the last second my blood work would also detect over training so you're not

going to have fighters pull out for reasons like that as well the blood work is also going to inform a more productive fight camp so you're going to not just have a fighter who makes it to fight day but performs better on fight day so i think blood work is something that keeps athletes safer and keeps them performing better so then the athletes get to feel better but then the dudes at the top also get to make more money from more people making it to the actual event and performing better because of it so that's i think that blood work is one of the most important things that anybody could ever do due to its objective ability to save the day um if somebody is going to like are you asking

or if all athletes are going to go on trt too what would i do uh you know i don't know like if a sport just said like we like um i don't know maybe it will get to that point because it will get so complicated with testing and trying to figure out whether people are on it or not since there seems to be quite a bit of that going on anyway yeah so yeah like if uh let's just say that it like testosterone has been shown to like help with cte and they're like this is the answer like it we're just gonna let it we're gonna let it be uh how how would they let it be and do you think it could be something that could be done safely relatively safely uh yeah i think it definitely could be done relatively safely trt is safe and beneficial in a ton of ways like it's a it helps I did actually a

research review recently on the neuroprotective effects and what it does to our brain testosterone does a lot of very positive things for our brain as well like a lot of people forget testosterone is originally prescribed as an antidepressant it's like one of its first prescription qualities about it was to make people feel better. And that's not just because you got bigger and stronger. It's because it actually has neurological effects to it too. So testosterone is powerful that way.

One milligram per kilo is the typical starting dose for someone getting into TRT. But if you still have symptoms, then you'd move to two milligrams per kilo. And then that's kind of like the top amount of TRT one can take. If you go higher than that, then you're more like on a more of a cycle, a low dose cycle than you are actually on CRT. Whoops, I miscalculated.

You don't understand. I'm really depressed. Yeah. I'm still depressed, man. I'm so depressed right now. Come in like that mountain man we're talking about. Yeah. So like that is a typical dosing scheme that is a neuroprotective effects

one can have i think it can be done safely but it would be difficult to assess other performance enhancing drug use as the because the masking component that i could do but then it would also like you're not informed on why it was low to begin with um that is a response. And if we take TRT without understanding the iceberg of knowledge that led to that end result, then we feel better, but we're not healthier. We just kind of feel better for it. We might be healthier, actually. Putting on muscle is going to improve glucose. Psychologically, there's going to be things that happen there.

But the why as to why that was low will never be answered. to be things that happen there but the why as to why that was low will never be answered so if someone can kind of continue their current life pattern without altering why testosterone was low in the first place i think that like um that happens with a lot of things like even like even with vitamin d like someone is it vitamin d that gives you the benefits or is it the lifestyle that is associated with someone being outside and active and having a higher vitamin D? We're creating correlations with vitamin D,

but it might be just being outside, doing other things. I think that the lifestyle associated with low testosterone is what needs to be worked on more than the testosterone itself. Outside of testosterone, are there any supplements that are that are banned and i know again you look at everything through the lens of blood work and what does the athlete need but even with that being said are there banned substances that you think you know this is

something that is safe enough these athletes are putting themselves through the ringer they're taking physical damage all the time if they want to be able to have long careers these would actually be beneficial for them to have is there anything like that on your mind? DHEA is fantastic. That's legal? It's not legal. I don't think it's legal. Okay. I don't think it's legal in athletics, but it's legal for anybody else to just go by.

There are a lot of big rocks in health. I think that if people just did some simple things, they could have unbelievable benefits on their life. Like if you go outside and get 30 minutes of light exposure, if you go on a walk once a day, if you do some resistance training, doesn't even have to be a lot. I'm just talking about the average person. If you put your phone away after dinner, if you stop watching porn, like these things are – it sounds just like five things, but that is, they are associated with a myriad of benefits. Those are each one of those has dozens of benefits associated to it. Those would be considered like big rocks. Like you do these things and it's going to take care of a lot of stuff for you mentally and physically.

In the world of blood work, the cortisol to DHEA ratio is a big rock. That's like one of the big things I'm always looking at. Serum cortisol and DHEA sulfate. That ratio, when divided into each other, should be less than 0.09. It's kind of a weird number, but the data is what the data is. You want to be between 0 and 0.09 for your cortisol to DHEA ratio. Once it exceeds that, you are now walking down a path that is associated to dozens of negative outcomes. There are mortality risk factors when it comes to the cortisol and DHA ratio. You're literally looking at the anabolic to catabolic equation, cortisol being systemically

catabolic, DHEA being anabolic itself, but also being the precursor for other anabolic hormones like estrogen, androstenedione, and testosterone. So you're actually looking at the anabolic to catabolic ratio, which has been one of my things. Like I've said before, I don't think heart gainers exist. I just think that they don't have the biochemistry to support gaining. If you put calories and macros into a non-biochemically optimized physiology, for lack of a better phrase, you're going to get a very different protein synthetic response.

It's like one of the reasons why drugs work. If you have two people who are biological twins and you put them on the same diet and training program, but one of them on gear, the one on gear is going to get way better results, not because his training and diet are different because they're not, but because the response he's going to receive from that training and diet are different. He is

going to get a higher anabolic and higher anti-catabolic response because of his chemistry and not just because of the macros and training. That happens on a natural level too. And that is the anabolic to catabolic equation between cortisol to DHEA. This equation is also reflective of inflammation. It's reflective of your immune system strength. It's reflective of injury risk. DHEA also protects your brain. DHEA, so it's been demonstrated that cortisol, when chronically high, actually creates oxidative damage directly to your hippocampus.

So your hippocampus is your memory center of the brain. Cortisol damages the hippocampus, but not if DHEA is around. If you have enough DHEA, you can push cortisol as high as you want. This is a study that was continuing to push this up. DHEA protects your brain from the negative effects of stress. So in combination with that, it's also the precursor for anabolism. So it is protecting your brain and your musculature in states of stress by improving that equation. So now you start thinking, okay, so if I have better inflammation control, if I have better immunology,

if I'm protecting my brain, if I've got a precursor to testosterone, I've got a precursor to estrogen and histine dione. This is reflective anabolic to catabolic, if it's reflective of mortality risk, you start actually seeing the power of this ratio. So something I'm incredibly interested in right now and something that's not being discussed is the power of that ratio. That anabolic to catabolic equation and how that reflects stress versus resilience to stress

is an enormous marker that people could use. And I think a lot of people are chronically stressed out. And since pregnenolone is the precursor to both cortisol and DHEA, if you are chronically stressed, well, stress, evolutionarily speaking, is at the top of the hierarchy. So if we use the same raw material for stress that we use to create the thing that's supposed to be resilient to stress, well, this raw material is always going to go to stress if we are chronically stressed. And that's what offsets this cortisol to DHEA ratio.

So our job is essentially to remove the stressor that's creating the chronic stress. But in the meantime, you can also take DHEA to offset that. That's something I do a lot with my clients. And there's a ton of benefits associated to correcting that ratio. If you had a bad blood work and you only created, you only corrected that ratio, so one thing you focused on, it would create staggering effects system-wide. This is wild and there's a lot here, but I want to go back real quick to the top five habits you mentioned. Why did you mention porn in there? Because that just seems like the one thing that no one would really put into that habit that people should

necessarily stop. I think that people don't want to talk about it on podcast. I think number one, but I don't care. That's something that I've said to clients a bunch because really, yeah, the addictive component to it, what it does to one's psychology, what it does to one's dopamine, what it does to one's attention span, what it does to one's psychology, what it does to one's dopamine, what it does to one's attention span, what it does to one's relationships with the other people they have in their life. These things all contribute to one's total stress load. And when you are able to remove that, you are able to improve the relationships with your loved ones in your life and you're able to correct dopamine, offset addictive behavior, and stop doing such a low ROI task. Like, Jesus, you can be in front of the computer for like an hour.

Yeah, or longer. Or longer, right? And all the power to you. That's if somebody wants to do that. I obviously, it doesn't change my life in any way. So I'm not going to take a stance and die on this hill. Like, no, the point of this podcast is to not watch pornography. hill like no the point of this podcast is to not watch pornography but in terms of improving your life as a whole and stop doing such a low roi task a zero roi task um i think that that belongs

on the list you fucking loser yeah i feel like a real loser when you're done you know you do you do I'm ashamed come in your palm why did I do it again also right when you're done you're like what the fuck is that the fuck was I into that for delete your search throw the whole computer away oh my goodness

it's a search for more and more dopamine so then no one's truthful about their search history oh no i was just watching normal stuff like i was starting to get a little weird so let me have you had any resistance from athletes in terms of that because i'm assuming that is something you try to work with athletes on but again it's just again it's not we've talked about this on the podcast before but it's not something that i would have expected from you to actually tell athletes to do.

I'd tell athletes to do it, but I feel like most guys are resistant to that. Right. I have to tell my athletes. My job is to do my job. And that is a part of doing my job. And I feel like if I don't tell you things that are going to increase your performance and improve your life as a whole, then I can't rest my head on the pillow at night and know that I did everything I could to prepare that athlete on that day. So that's really just a part of the conversation

is I'm doing my job and you are going to be better if you do X, Y, and Z. I believe it belongs high up on the list. And I think it can mess up a lot of people too. That's a rabbit hole you can go down and you don't realize you're in a rabbit hole because you get that short pleasurable hit but in the long run it's like it's like an opiate right you get that warm fuzzy feeling um but in the back door it can ruin a lot of things the back door

warm and fuzzy and back door yeah so uh let's uh fast forwards let's say it's january 29th and your app is up and running what does it look like for somebody they let's say it's January 29th and your app is up and running. What does it look like for somebody? Let's say it's me. I have previous blood work. How do I input it? How does it get uploaded? Or how do I get the feedback and get the advantage from your app?

I get a blood panel for you. So I want you to get the maximum ROI from a blood panel. So I want to control the panel that you order. So you order my, the company is called Vitality. So you order my Vitality athlete panel, either male or Vitality athlete panel, female. And you can get it, go to a local clinic and get your blood draw done. I'm also connected with mobile phlebotomists all over the country as well. So you don't even have to leave your house. You just go online to vitalityblueprint.com, order your panel.

Someone could show up to your door. You get your blood work done. Once that blood work is done, you don't have to do anything. Those results are immediately sent to my software and then my software immediately generates your report for you. And your report is going to include lifestyle, training, nutrition,

and supplementation recommendations on that report. So you get a full holistic approach to what do we have in science-based performance blood work recommendations in a holistic manner for training, nutrition, supplementation, and lifestyle. You get that full report and program sent to you. You're graded on different areas of your body. So I'm actually looking at your blood. I'm giving you a totality of your entire blood work. It's called your vitality score. So it's going to be graded out of 100 based on your current level of optimization and blood work. But I'm also individually grading

you on brain chemistry, hydration, injury resilience, micronutrient status, inflammation, gut health. We've got 13 different categories that I'm individually grading you on. And the combination of these is what informs the totality of your score. You're going to get all of this over time. My machine actually learns you better over time.

So the more you do, the more those averages are going to inform it knowing you better. So when you use it more, it actually knows you better over time. So the more you do, the more those averages are going to inform it knowing you better. So when you use it more, it actually knows you better and it's created, be able to create averages and more efficient protocol design for you. And that's like the biggest thing that is, that's got me excited right now. Cause in the world of blood work, nobody is doing it performance based. A lot of people are doing it longevity-based. And what is longevity? Longevity is I've got a reference range, and I'm going to try and be in that reference range

and hope I don't die. It's like I want to be in that reference range, and I hope things work out. Whereas performance, it's not you getting into a reference range. It's you feeling the effects of it. When you are feeling better, you go through performance-based blood work, you will have more energy. You will recover better. You will feel better psychologically

and physiologically. As a byproduct of that, that is going to help with longevity. But in an acute performance right now, I optimize physiology. And you can point that physiology in the direction that you want to point it in. So when you have those constraints removed, you have an optimized physiology if you're a CEO, if you're an athlete, or if you're just the average person looking to do blood work. It's a huge passion project of mine, and I, in large part, believe it to be my life's work. I've been perfecting blood work interpretation and protocol design for 10 years, and this thing is coming out this year. How much does it cost?

called Design for 10 Years. And this thing is coming out this year. How much does it cost? It's going to be dependent upon if you want to do once per year, semi-annual, or it's going to be quarterly as well. So you have different package options. My previous program where I had all of those, very non-scalable, very expensive. This is the scalable version of that that's going to be about $1,000. Can you bring up the website, Andrew? Was it vitality.com? Is that what you said? Vitalityblueprint.com. Vitalityblueprint.com. Yeah.

So it might cost somebody about $1,000. Is that for the year? Yeah, that's for the annual. And then you go up to semi-annual, it'll be a little bit more. And then if you do quarterly, it'll be a little bit more. But what you're getting based on your blood draw is two 90-day protocols that are algorithmically broken out so that you can optimize everything about your physiology. What would it cost to kind of get started, I guess, is my question. A thousand. A thousand. Yeah, you can come in and do a one-off and make sure that everything is appropriate for you. But a lot of people don't understand how good the human body is designed to feel.

So once you do this thing and you start feeling better, that's what the other packages are for. Right. Awesome, man. Congratulations. I'm excited for you. Thanks, buddy. Yeah, I wouldn't have got into the industry if I didn't think I could come into the industry and do something completely different that people haven't seen before. And it's ready.

And I can't wait for people to get onto it. Cool, man. Thank you so much for your time today. We'll have you on again, I'm sure. And we'll talk for another three hours or so. Hell, yeah, dude. Thanks for having me. It's always a blast here.

Strength is never a weakness. Weakness never strength. Catch you guys later. And stop eating your meat. No. Yeah. Stop jerking off.