Mark Bell's Power Project - Robby Ellis - Respect Pain, Understand Why It's There, Accept Healing YOURSELF || MBPP Ep. 820
Episode Date: October 17, 2022In this Podcast Episode, Dr. Robby Ellis aka The Movement Doc, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about how important it is to first acknowledge pain how to address it and remove it fro...m your body. Follow Robby on IG: https://www.instagram.com/movement_doc/ Subscribe to Robby on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtXNVwAn3DmI3-0EJQJzBgA Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://www.naboso.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 15% off! ➢https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!! ➢Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject Code: POWERVIVO20 for 20% off Vivo Barefoot shoes! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://eatlegendary.com Use Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori! ➢https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep! ➢https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok 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 ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢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
Transcript
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Our Project Family has a go.
And now, as you guys know, we have been talking about cold therapy for a while.
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Brett Favre, Oprah Winfrey.
Yeah, yeah, do whatever you want.
Oh, shit, Oprah's down there?
If you need to get anywhere, yeah.
Jerry Rice. Walter Pay Mississippi. Jerry Rice.
Walter Payton.
Jerry Rice went to college there, huh?
Yeah, he went to Jackson State.
The GOAT.
Walter Payton.
Another GOAT.
Brett Favre, I'm saying.
Legends.
Yeah, Brett Favre played, what, eight-man football there, right?
And Hancock.
No, that was Peyton Manning.
That's in Mississippi, too. Yeah, that was Peyton Manning. Oh.
That's from,
that's in Mississippi too.
Yeah.
So they're all associated in Mississippi too.
Peyton,
all the Peytons.
Yeah.
There's a,
there's a lot of greats,
but it's kind of cause it is kind of gutter in a way,
you know,
think about what inspires.
I never been.
And greatness is,
um,
is people that have learned to be very adaptable
you know and i think mississippi is a good place to learn that
sounds like it yeah all right you have a you have a pen right sure how do you uh how do you
take a hit of that uh two three seconds so you just you just suck you don't have to press anything
we're talking about drugs? Yeah.
This will be interesting.
I've never done this during a podcast before.
The one episode that your mom checks into.
Stop it.
It's CBD.
Oh my God, I knew I shouldn't watch this stuff.
It's definitely CBD.
Is it?
Yeah.
But also... Oh, God.
Oh, I made a mistake.
I made a mistake.
I thought you were serious about the CBD thing, so I just took a little bit extra.
I mean, it is CBD.
I'm so, I mean, I guess.
Look.
That's crazy.
Thank you.
This will be fun.
Sorry, Mark.
If I'm just silent during the whole interview.
That's okay.
It's the Mark Bell's Power Project for a reason.
You'll be within your own thoughts over there.
You'll know you're like working shit out, you know?
Well, you do this every day.
You got to find something to keep it interesting, right?
How long have you been messing around with some of this stuff?
What stuff?
This stuff.
Vape.
And you had a dip in before.
And we got some fucking pre-workout and some kratom going on over here.
Hey, I'm experiencing a party.
Yeah, man.
Well, think about it.
It's all in thinking about optimization versus escape.
What are you doing it for?
Why are you using it?
Whether it's microdosing mushrooms or using caffeine or nicotine um it's each person
have their own discretion on what they feel like kind of puts them in a state that they're
comfortable with and dependency is a different thing but i think whenever you train um it helps
you to purge your system and and really have a clean slate to detoxify and different things to where, you know, experimentation is not a negative.
And you think about the outcomes of what these things do and also giving yourself a break here and there.
You know, there's times I'll skip pre-workout for two, three days just for the sake of it becomes a morning ritual.
But I do athletic greens every morning.
I put the pre-workout in there.
It sweetens it up.
But even the athletic greens on Saturday and Sunday, a lot of times I'll skip it just because.
I think it's just good for your body to have a, remember what the other
thing is or what it's like not having it, you know. You took us through some interesting things
in the gym. Um, you know, a lot of it was just like real simple stuff on the floor. And I know
you said that that's kind of step one and there's a lot of other fun stuff you can get into, but
I think, uh, maybe, I guess maybe we could start with why would you
start someone there and let's just kind of just say it's somebody that's potentially in pain or
somebody that's not moving great why would you start them on the ground and why would you start
them using the wall well um developmental neuro um was really what got me into understanding the value of the ground.
And you look at children and you look at the way that we all, every single human has a blueprint in their nervous system based off of their eagerness to fight gravity, number one.
And two, their excitement about exploring their environment, right?
Well, what stops you from exploring your environment is hypersensitivity.
So if you're a baby, just like if you're a grown human,
you're going to, let's just say, for instance, the grass on the baby's feet.
Ugh.
Like nails on a chalkboard, right?
It's like, oh, they freeze.
They don't like it.
It's wet grass.
This is gross.
And they are not moving.
So the avoidance of that grass is going to, could in turn plant a seed and create a big problem.
Because now they're not exploring their environment.
That's a mental, it's the body's interpretation of the environment.
Maybe somebody has a problem with their knee and they don't want to get down on the ground.
Thank you.
Right?
And you felt a little bit of that when we were doing on the hands and knees.
Yep.
And so we get down into thinking about muscle and we think about bone or connective tissue in this Newtonian way.
about bone or connective tissue in this Newtonian way,
but we forget that we're integrated from small babies and we have the information.
Nobody taught you how to do that.
Our own fight of figuring out how to get from our backs
to our bellies, to our side, to our knees,
or even creeping along on the elbows,
all those are milestones
that build upon each other and you can't skip a step um i've we'll see children in the clinic
that they're they can stand great and they can even stand to the point where they can almost
balance themselves but they're not walking and it's because they're put in standards all the time
and the kids experiencing standing they enjoy it but
the reason they can't uh walk is because they haven't crawled because crawling is what creates
the discern this the dissociation of the hips and the shoulder girdle um so that experience of them
crawling just for a couple days even now they're walking you know so that's the idea is that we have a
ladder that we come up um it's your ladder it's my ladder it's his ladder um and it's personal
because how you got there is different than how i got there and when right you see some babies
might walk at 15 months some might walk at 10 months or nine months right so uh it's the range
that we understand and we're not really looking
at anything and calling it pathology unless it's outside of that range so it feels like 16 months
now i might see them right or 17 months and they're not walking it's like what's going on
but that's the idea and we don't treat babies per se but we treat the community so babies are part
of that community um and that's that's kind of my experience has always been i just like
the idea of thinking of those principles and how i can help an athlete with that right
and you think about orthopedic injury or frozen shoulder or this pathology that is um plaguing us
right and it's all tied to the way we regulate our autonomic nervous system and our create states
of being right and we feel like these things are
fixed or we're a subject to our environment and so as far as the developmental process
it's just a great analogy too if you think about as we get older um it's the same ladder we kind
of fall back down and you look at the movement skills that deteriorate they're attacked they're basically
the same skills it's it's in reverse order of in the in which we gain them right so if you look at
loss of rotation if you look at certain pathologies like parkinson's and shuffling
gait um they're they're not getting separation of their their and shoulders. And so a lot of the foundation of movement is based off of, yeah, gait patterns,
but you can go even deeper into the breathing pattern, the diaphragm,
and how it's controlling the pressurization of the core,
how it's helping and assisting your pelvis in creating a foundation for your body to sit on.
And you can even look at a lot of the things in babies, for instance, right?
And you see adducted scapulas, right?
They don't have core support.
Their hips are behind them.
Their cores are extended.
And this is the first posture a baby walks in.
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah, sometimes it's honestly perfect.
Toes are in. Yeah. perfect toes are in yeah and so they're yeah they got like almost
like an internal rotation of the of the lower body and external rotation of the upper so they're
sitting into these these efficient um pathways fucking kids are overextended unbelievable right
super hyperextended but if you think about what does an eight-hour office sitting job do to you, it's simulating the same effect, right?
And so clinically, that's what I would see a lot of is especially in sedentary obese populations where you would have – that were in longstanding office jobs.
And essentially, I'm like, that's the same thing.
And you think about it, okay, well, in that case.
Wouldn't sitting be the opposite way?
Wouldn't it be more folded over or no?
Well, it depends.
It depends.
There's a hip flexor contracture that's forming that once you stand,
the attachment of the psoas on the front of the spine,
it drags the spine into hyperextension.
And so you have to make that up somewhere.
It would be hyperextension or flexion.
It would be hyperextension because your hips would be pointed towards the ground a little bit
because you got so tight in the front.
They call it lordosis to describe the lumbar curvature.
So you say it's an excessive lordosis or it's like it's getting to the point where the spine is meant to stack upon itself.
So you want to create neutral forces on this axial load, this zero degrees to gravity.
And we're naturally doing it, right?
And we can base it off of our two points of support.
There's four points of support, right? So now I can actually, if I'm leaning forward,
it's all based off of my orientation and sensation of vertical.
Can you bring up Meg's squats just because she's hot?
Can you bring up Meg?
Yeah, she did something with the rib cage the other day,
and I think this will really help the people that are watching.
Sure.
I think it will help identify.
She just showed something.
She was like, hey, this would really help with the squat.
And I was like,
that's really brilliant.
She demonstrated it really well,
but I was also thinking like,
that's going to help people in their day to day life.
Getting that spine straight.
That's the,
okay.
Baby adducted position.
This is the,
this is a high school ninth grader that's learned how to squat.
Yeah.
And so how does the coach that's coaching 30 kids,
um,
move this, move this session along and teach people what they need to learn?
I think it's the purple one.
This one?
Yeah.
I think it's that one, yeah.
Yeah, she's showing some overextension, and then she just kind of clamped down on the rib cage and the stomach, pulling the belly button in a little bit and keeping the back kind of flat.
That's a good representation of a posterior pelvic tilt. And she's basically,
if you think of the crown of her head and her tailbone, when she does that, it's stacked up against that zero degree, uh, axis that we're talking about. So it's hard to say, and this
was not anything that she was saying. She was just saying like, this is a good activity to learn for
squatting. Yeah. Do you think it's a movement skill. Do you... Okay. Yeah. Do you think that people should
practice being able to do that
or do you think that people
should primarily try to stand that way
or...
No.
What's your take on that?
Because sometimes I think
we try to force ourselves
to do stuff that's not natty enough
and then we get fucked up
the other direction.
That's...
Well, you said it.
It's forcing doesn't work.
What I've learned is that you have to put the human mind and you have to understand the psychology is real and it is what it is.
Okay.
So reverse psychology works for a reason, right?
Because people don't want to be told what to do.
shoulder problem, there's parts of this where I need to help make him empowered to address and to understand the shoulder problem. So he becomes an advocate for himself in this shoulder. And in
doing so, I'm also limiting his need for me as a clinician or business owner, right? so what most people in my field can do is they can accentuate what it is
the value they're bringing and they become the fixer or in the healer right but now if i'm not
fixing shit i'm not healing anything and it seems the body and the wonderful um body we've all been
given has the ability to heal right under the Under the conditions of a neutrality of balance.
So I'm actually curious about this.
You know, like the go-to guys that came on?
They have a way that they believe that people should be standing.
And one thing that I've seen, I'm not going to call out anybody,
but I've seen some of their coaches try to mimic that way of standing with the somewhat pigeon-toed butt out or whatever, right?
And you know that's not the way that they stand because when they're in those positions, taking pictures, et cetera, they are very awkward.
It is not the way they move.
But they're trying to make their bodies get into that positioning.
Right.
And what they're speaking to, and I think it's more about, and I've learned this a lot, it's more about we're kind of talking about the same thing, and then we can find areas where there's like small indiscretions, and then it's easy to kind of harp on it.
They're saying there is an optimal standing posture, which I would say, yeah, there is a, there's an optimal way to stand, but I would say, and it does mirror kind of the mountain pose in yoga if you've ever done yoga.
There's a – almost there's a positioning and posture to it, and it is.
It's saying I'm presenting myself to the world in a way that is strong and powerful, and your body does have a nice way of how even blood flows and how your nervous system talks.
It's almost if you stand
there like wrapping your hands around your penis is there a reason for that well maybe we're talking
about the thing about the lap i can get behind that yeah right oh so think oh okay right so you
can you were going more in close right so this always well and i hadn't gotten there yet so i
so i start here but you think about it, you go here to here.
That's it.
So just think about the dynamics of when your palms are facing your groin and now bring your palms into the position he's in.
That's what you talked about, that empowering position.
I can feel that.
It's a weird thing, but I can feel that when I'm running.
When I'm running and I just get into some good sunlight
and there's some good scenery, I feel a little bit – I feel empowered.
I feel like my palms are kind of like up, almost like receiving some sort of energy from the universe, as weird as that might sound.
Well, you're – these are things that go back into ancient thinking that we're just not connected back to.
ancient thinking that we're just not connected back to.
But think about the thousands of years of human existence when we didn't have the Internet and we didn't have these things
and these paradigms that existed in different parts of the world
at the exact same time, but yet these people weren't communicating.
And yet we find that these postures, they are alignment to the Earth, the sun.
And SEMA's there right now. You know, after you said, I feel like I'm getting some energy, they are alignment to the earth, the sun.
And SEMA's there right now.
You know, after you said, I feel like I'm getting some energy,
I'm like, did you smoke?
Well, what do the earth medicines do in a sense?
I think it just puts you in a perspective that puts your ego in a little farther back position,
and it gives you more of a sense of what is
and your connection to the whole.
It does sound weird, but like, yeah, when you take shrews, you're like, I feel at one
with everything and everyone.
And then when you say that, people are like, bro, you've done too much.
Well, energetically, I think you are more, it's more about that.
Once you transcend our physical body, my belief is that you transcend into that spirit.
And that part, there's a part of you that is a higher power.
It's God, if you will.
And it's in your heart.
It's in your mind.
It's a witness.
It's a part of you that can surpass judgment.
And it's something that you can, it's a state.
But it's just like we're talking
about with recovery um in a power lifting right the quicker he can turn his mind into a state of
recovery and condition himself his physiology can then mirror that recovery and now he can be ready
when the time comes he's not just burning fuel for no reason mentally in the mind explains john
hack who we talk about incessantly on the show because he's a fucking burning fuel for no reason mentally in the mind explains john hack who we
talk about incessantly on the show because he's a fucking freak but he'll just walk up to the bar
as if it's nothing and deadlifts 870 a couple days later deadlifts 900 a couple days later
deadlifts 870 again you're just like what the hell's going on here but he does seem like he's
got some intense and some vigor to him when he's in the set. He's not yelling or screaming, but he's, you know, he's giving it a good effort.
It's heavy ass weight, puts the weight down.
He's back to being calm again.
Right.
And so it's not about the mountain pose.
It's not about the positioning that she was saying.
And it's not necessarily not to discredit the go to guys.
It's not about that even.
It's about there's a fluid experience and an intention to how
i'm standing and do i check into that do i feel the fact that my pelvis still has some movement
here do i feel like it's stuck in space do i feel my weight on my heels or my toes or is it on my
midfoot in my am i shifted to my right leg my left? It's good to find these subtleties just like we worked earlier with just these little shifts, right?
These little lateral shifts.
And Weck has that great explanation of the foot over –
Head over foot.
The head over foot, right?
And then a lot of these great – what he's explaining is pivot points.
These wonderful little axes of rotation that exist in the body with certain movements.
But those also exist here in the pelvis.
I could put a rod through your pelvis and we could find the axis of rotation that exists
here.
And it actually influences the whole body and whole posture because it's the foundation.
So it's good to understand and to feel and to know there's a deeper – these things
that people do are essentially this – your state of emotion is your experience, right?
And a part of your body, it is conditioned with the mind and it stores trauma, right?
And it stores tension.
And if you can't get to a place where you can affect your autonomic nervous system and feel your body in space
and understand that interoception is as vast and powerful and important of a skill as proprioception.
More important, right?
Because it's the internal environment in my awareness.
And by the way, for people that don't know, interoception is your ability to sense what's going on within your body, correct?
Yes.
Okay.
From a somatosensory way, so I can feel my breath, feel my heart, how my heart's being influenced, right?
I can feel the – for instance, if there's sensation in the body that is information, a lot of times I feel like there's a disconnect from it.
This is what I loved about what we did yesterday.
And this is in some practices of things like yoga and some other things.
But you just really don't see it much in lifting.
And maybe that's something that Ben Patrick has called some attention to when you're doing your Jefferson deadlifts, like you're thinking about A, B, and C, like you're actually being a man of thought.
You're not just lost in like the weight.
But what you were taking me through yesterday, I would get kind of stuck.
Something would kind of hurt.
And then you were like, see if you can do a different position.
I actually showed Andrew some of what you showed me yesterday.
And I was trying to move, say, my right shoulder.
You're like, well, maybe there's something more you can do with your left.
And I just, as silly as that sounds, I have never even thought about that.
I think sometimes these athletes that we look up to, people that are good at mimicking physical activity like in SEMA, I think maybe they intuitively kind of go to that.
And some of the rest of us are kind of like, oh, shit, I didn't know that was an option for me.
So just simply moving my left shoulder more, I was able to rotate so much more.
Through your front side, yeah.
Yeah, to the left.
And it was, again, it was something I just didn't
think of, but I think a lot of times we're lost in the amount of weight that we're doing. We're
lost in the timeframe that we do it in. We're trying to set these records or do these things
that we deem as cool. And there's not really a thought process to it. And if you think about
what we're trying to do in the gym, especially if you're trying to maximize lift, you're trying to
do the lift in the most optimal fashion as possible. lift, you're trying to do the lift in the most
optimal fashion as possible. And if we're going to do the lift in the most optimal fashion as
possible, we should probably lighten the load up enough to where you can think about it, to where
you can think about, oh, wow, look at that. My big toe is coming up every time I'm doing these squats
with 300 pounds. Let me put on like 100 pounds, and let me see if I can work my way.
Oh, now my toe's down.
Now my knee feels much better.
Just start with body weight.
Or with a wonderful, that winning warm-up, right?
The wonderful part of that is it's all really neuroscience.
It's based in, now that works wonderful in powerlifting.
Now that same warm-up, that linear movement in that path,
doesn't really serve a lot of other athletes outside of getting into an athletic position, right?
If you're a shortstop or you're a linebacker or you're a running back,
it's really that kind of 45-degree angle that you create where you're semi-loaded and ready.
So it's still good in that fashion, and you're doing it at such a light load and so many reps,
you're sitting into the myofascial slings of the body and those eccentric loading of these springs,
and it's all kind of essentially what we were doing.
And what's cool with the go-to principle with that, the big thing is that big toe connection, right?
So now you're getting the big toe connection.
You're getting the platform of the foot loaded properly to bypass the arch.
And then you're getting back into the heel.
So it's like heel, lateral foot, great toe.
Almost doesn't matter if you have much of an arch if you can get your toes to move that way.
You create the arch with the activation.
And I saw you like, wow, I've changed my foot anatomy.
You've talked about that, right?
But it's due to the fact that you're changing the way your body is engaging itself through these functional movements, right?
It's the basics of just like the baby.
We don't need to make it more simple.
It's a skill to get from your back to your belly, from your belly to your hands
and knees, from your hands and knees to half kneeling position.
Nothing cooler in the world than seeing a baby roll over for the first time.
And they kind of throw their fat head back and they roll over.
And then they're kind of like, what did I just do?
Like their face is amazing.
Remember that, Andrew?
Yeah.
Well, it was funny because yesterday, because you've heard, you've said this a bunch of times on the podcast like when a baby moves like when they freak out or
what there's like how fast they do it oh yeah uh a couple days ago he was just doing the thing
where his legs he was just going side like this way and then windshield wipering this way and i
was like holy shit i'm like i need to film this because yeah it was like faster than any of us
like if trying our absolute hardest like we break your back we would break a lot of shit pull abs you know a lot of and he's just like like fucking you know starting with a
big old head and then rolling the rest of his body over just like it's it's amazing yeah and he's
generating momentum through my fascial slings and he's he's he's exploring and feeling himself
as we all should as a dog our instructor that our instructor. That would be cool. Honestly.
Actually, you have a point.
I'm not sure what's going on, though.
He's starting to get a little like the arches of his feet.
He'll dig in there and he'll go side to side.
I'm like, hey, no, no, no.
You got to bring your stance a little bit closer.
And he's like, I don't know what you're talking about
because I'm only one and a half.
And I'm like, nope, no excuses.
He's been watching Ido Portal.
Maybe that's what it is.
He wants to be able to do it from all angles.
Nah, that's true.
Well, here's the thing.
We're all looking for influences.
Maybe Ido Portal is actually –
Watching him.
He is.
He's studying the baby just like me.
And he's studying animal patterns of movement.
And how do animals process emotion?
Because they do.
And they do it through physical means.
And they move.
And they have things they do.
There's ways that they deal with the things they feel that are uncomfortable.
But as humans, we try to deal with those same things in our mind.
And we try to subtract the body.
But first, the fact is we just deal with it.
It's the American way.
We swallow it and just deal with it.
We think about other people's thoughts a lot too.
Those are accounted for.
So if I'm going to have a particular posture, when you walk into the room, I'm going to be thinking about how you're going to receive that.
And then so I'm going to change the way that I'm standing because you just walked in the room.
Which is silly.
Because – and that's the thing.
I am who you think that I am. Right. And that's not true. I am who you think that I am.
Right.
And that's not true.
You are who you are.
And there's a freedom in releasing all these confounding ways of thinking.
First, we have to identify the pathology is the fact that I'm focused on those things.
And that's okay because it's a part of our psychology, right?
It's a part of the domestication that we went through as we were raised, which is important.
I'm raising kids.
I see like, okay, there's parts of this.
I need them to have this structure because I'm tired of wiping asses.
They need to figure that one out.
Curious about this though.
You mentioned you start people out from the ground.
And we were talking in the gym about like flow, right? And if an athlete's going to get into flow, they automatically have to have no cues and boom it's done and you don't have to do anything outside of that but when it's a sport like mma when it's jujitsu when it's when
it's any fighting sport these athletes are moving in such dynamic dynamic fashions like we were
talking about the brace with mech squats right the boxer's not moving like this rib cage over hips
going back and forth right it's like if you dog pull up a highlight video of anderson silva
yep you see the way he's moving his body adaptable and you like you know you were showing the thing
about the stance right anderson sometimes everything he'll widen his stance and he'll
switch stances whatever like it doesn't matter so how did you help me so happy that's my favorite
anime fighter of all time he's so beautiful to to watch. When we bring up the silent dance, pause.
The spider.
And the relaxation.
And that makes me curious because... Watch him against, oh my gosh,
watch him against Forrest Griffin.
There's a slow motion clip
where he finished Forrest Griffin
and it's one of the most magical things.
If you watch his torso and his face,
it's so relaxed.
Yeah, these are probably more knockouts. But still, if you watch him torso and his face, it's so relaxed. Yeah, these are probably more knockouts, right?
But still, if you watch him in slow motion, you can see that his face and his torso is very fluid.
And even later in his career where he had a lot of magical moments were purely flow.
He's in a state of observation.
Oh, that was unfair when he got, him and that Muay Thai clinch
was over.
So, you know.
So, how do you,
what I found is
martial arts
in the preparation
and working with fighters
has helped me stretch
my thinking
more than anything
because my,
oh, that's it.
Boom, here it is.
Look at this.
Oh.
Rewind. Oh, God's it. Boom, here it is. Look at this. Rewind.
Oh, God, rewind.
You got to see that tap again, bro.
That's so disgusting.
It's insane.
Just.
But he has an ability to really move and contort his body in some weird positions and to the point where he's still able to put a lot of power into what basically looks like a jab to knock out a fellow MMA professional.
And it's in respect to his eyes.
His eyes, just like with Lomachenko in boxing, their priority is positioning their eyes into spaces, into generating perspectives, into keeping this untethered, right?
I see it all.
And then now they're in a fluid reactionary state. making you have like what Forrest Griffin there was a reaction that was generated by Anderson Silva.
And now Anderson Silva is just playing and flowing and,
and looking for an opening to expose.
And so your job as a fighter is to put your opponent into a state of reaction
because now you're my slave.
If you're reacting,
you're a slave and that's the same thing in life.
If you're reacting,
you're a slave and that's why you live your life how you do.
And I appreciate that so much because you really, you prioritize making sure you're not in a state of reaction.
And I think that's a quality to health and lifestyle that we should really focus on conditioning more than anything.
Become a slave to your emotions.
Are you a slave to your emotions?
Cause I think most people are,
but they're in denial about it.
And the best way I can help them is to help them find that out without me
having to tell them directly because that people don't want to be told that
people don't want to be labeled.
I mean,
they don't want to be,
uh,
Hey,
you know what your problem is you're an
emotional wreck like that's not going to go very well like you're really pulled around by your
emotions aggressively and it's not great but they're not going to respond well to that so my
my objective from day one has always been how can i be effective at helping people
and i realized the the the effectiveness that i can have is based off of how well I can help them find things and experiences within themselves.
Just like when I was talking to you about your exercise, instead of me trying to condition you on a system or trying to overanalyze a problem, see if you can find something over there with your left arm.
See if you can find something over there with your left arm.
The least amount of information to where you produced a sensation and a connection to what I wanted to see happen, which was more movement and to connect, right?
But if that was your process of finding that based off of me not giving you information. We've had people come in and kind of right off the bat didn't have good bedside manner and boom, just shut them down like that.
You're not listening to them anymore.
You don't respect them.
Even if you want to listen to them, there's some sort of little defensive thing where you're like, I don't know.
It just feels like insulting in some way.
So what do you mean?
I'm curious.
What type of interactions?
People have come in that have said specific things to you, like on some of the testing and some of the breathing,
some of the different things we've done.
Okay.
And I think Andrew and I have been kind of sitting there going like,
oh my God, like this could quite possibly be
one of the better athletes in jujitsu at some point.
And we're around you every day,
so we're like, this is impossible.
Like whatever you're saying, not that it's not possible that you don't have errors in your system, just like anybody else. Um, but when somebody comes in and just says something to
you right away, whether it's you or whether it's me, I personally will feel a little defensive,
even if it's something about you, because I'm like, they're not here all the time.
Like they don't understand like what we're doing and what we're working on.
And so I think that's why people kind of get offended.
That's why I get offended because I'm like, well, you don't understand my story because we all feel that our story is super unique, right?
And we feel that.
No, it is.
It is.
It is.
It is.
And we feel that our issues or problems are, you know, they're very specific and they're very particular.
So I think it's a thing where you can be a little defensive or sensitive, even as open minded as we may try to be.
It's hard once you get kind of picked on. Oh, Andrew, this is why your back hurts.
Look at the way you're standing, you know now it's like yeah i don't know and i
know it's like a little bit different but even subconsciously because like um chris kadowski
was working on chris bell and you know chris is always like every time somebody works on me they're
like you're the tightest person or your your muscles are the tightest i've ever touched my
whole life and so chris kadowski was like so already off the bat they're setting you up to
let you know that like hey you're the bat they're setting you up to let you
know that like hey you're the absolute worst i've seen so i'm gonna do what i can right so and even
in that moment if chris is like all right yeah i'm gonna buy all in his body's already like thank you
nah man his he's not gonna be able to do it because he's already telling you he's already
telling you that it's probably not gonna work so as a person that's a professional that's probably not going to work. So as a person that's a professional that's probably really trying,
and his intention is to help Chris,
and he wants to see a positive outcome because that's good for him
and his business, right?
But the labels sometimes in the systems, they're labels.
And that's the challenge I take is just say,
let's be aware of the things we're labeling and realizing that
now the emotions that those labels are generating are stopping what the person's trying to accomplish,
which they probably want to help people too. And by the way, I want to, I want to make a
compliment because you mentioned Chris Kodowski, but everyone here, like Chris Kodowski taught us
a lot, but especially when he was actually working on each
person you know you can tell this is why this guy has is so popular with so many people because not
only is he actually doing good work but he's amazing at communicating what may be the problem
to that person but communicating in the way where they're actually open to it right and some will be
like well get get the fuck out of your feels they're just trying to help you out like for example they say well it's because you're
doing that right but at the same time it's like motherfucker delivery matters yes it does get
the pain bible by the way that's chris's book he has multiple books great information in there well
and then timing matters because you got to remember what is pain. Pain is represented in your mind just like your body right now as we stand.
There's a representation in your brain that you can touch with electrical probing,
and it literally is a homunculus, right?
So now think about there's a somatosensory.
I want to flip a picture of a homunculus.
You're going to laugh at this.
How do you spell yeah so but here's
the thing that the one we know of is a motor cortex um it's the one that sits right there
on the uh the frontal occipital or frontal parietal junction yeah but the uh i mean this
is just when i i searched it's like what the fuck is that and look at the hand how big it is
so look at the one where it's
yeah that top left
yep
that one so that's the brain
and how the homunculus represents the brain
so look at the size of the
area of the brain that's dedicated to your hand
those are neurons
like billions of neurons
that are dedicated to just this
just your hand right just this one area of your body now think about your hands contact with the
ground yesterday and you're not and think of that those neuro neurologic representation in your brain
right and now think about how when your's now fully active and engaged and grounded and
connected to the floor, now what's happening in your brain compared to whenever I'm like
compensating and, oh, the wrist pain and this thing's going on.
Yeah.
And if you're trying to tell me about like, oh, you know, you should be able to feel your
shoulder.
Like sometimes you do like, I don't know how much yoga you've done, but they say stuff
in yoga and they talk real nice and real kind.
And I'm just like, my wrist just feels like it's going to break in this position.
Like I can't really think of some of the stuff they're talking about because my focus, my brain, the space in my brain is being consumed and overridden by this maybe particular pain or sensation that I have.
and overridden by this maybe particular pain or sensation that I have.
Kind of just like the Outwitting the Devil book that was suggested to us by Bedros Koulian where poverty and fear are the kind of main things that can occupy your brain.
And you think about if we lump some pain in there too,
then we get into situations again where I was mentioning to you yesterday,
you might be, if I said, hey, why don't you jump up onto that box and then jump down from that and jump on the other one, you might be like, what?
Even though you heard me, you just might want a little bit of a moment to think about it and maybe you come up with your own version of it.
But if you were like a 14-year-old kid that skateboards and shit like that, you'd be like, sure.
Cool.
Pop, pop, pop, pop.
Yeah, that's good.
I'll just do that right now. Yeah, second thought yeah well that's what i appreciate about
you is that you kind of have that attitude with the people you work we all work with and i like
it too because i can see it helps mark kind of have the moment to understand and get comfortable
with it because you just jump in and then he can kind of get in there and has a little it's more
makes him a little more comfortable so it's a good team it's a way y'all's team functions that i could see you know that i
don't know if y'all appreciate that well but um you're right these guys go through it first and
andrew didn't die all right i'll give it a shot and y'all but in same token yesterday y'all kind
of switched spots you know you kind of um and then, I got to talk and work with you a little bit.
So it was great.
And from my perspective, learning from people and listening to what they say,
like you're such a good active listener, both you guys, all of you are really.
And that's something me and Batchy had a lot to say about.
Everybody we connected with was really actively engaged in the conversations we were having.
It wasn't just rushing to try to share their thoughts.
And I know y'all probably are used to people coming in in my seat and being really eager
to share their thoughts, their ideas, their programs.
And where I come in, I guess, in terms of adding value and looking at all the great things that you guys, um, get into is looking at, okay, look, actually there's way more in common between these systems and these, these perceived competitors.
that connection, the more the businesses themselves flourish and the more the systems can do and the more populations they can reach. Because now instead of me having to prove you wrong to help
you and versus like, well, you know, like that mentality you're talking about earlier, where in
a sense I have to be right and you have to be wrong for me to help you. And that's a bad place
to be. That's not a very good paradigm for a high level of success.
The, I need, you need to be right and I need to be right.
And we need to work on this thing together.
There is no right or wrong.
Unless we're totally wrong.
Yeah.
I mean.
Sure.
Sure.
You can get to, yeah.
You know what I mean?
But that's a bigger problem, you know?
And I feel like sometimes we can investigate those problems through our movement and through this exchange of trying different positions.
Well, this is a little stale.
Let's try a different position, right?
And remembering that our sensation and experience, if we're feeling moments of frustration,
and I could tell in the very beginning that we had a little breakthrough because there was a moment where I could tell that there was a bit of frustration.
You're tired.
You just did a podcast.
You have a full day already.
You already ran God knows how many miles. Your hip was hurting you. You were having to go into a place of focus where most people don't have that capacity, where that cortisol build up or whatever it is that the day does to us. Now they can justify being impatient breakthrough feels so good because you kind of get like kind of hot and agitated like you literally get like physically kind of sweaty and you're kind of halfway agitated
you know you're kind of pissed but you're like i think i can still do better with this and then
you took a two minute walk you got a sip of water you came back with a fresh perspective and i could
see the energy in your body change and And that was so powerful for me to
see because everything I needed to hear is to learn about you. Nothing, nothing about what you said or
anything you proved in that moment that you are willing to confront something and you're here.
And almost that sensation, instead of making it, you avoid it and say, oh, it's not good for me.
Let me, uh, I got better things to do. It's like, no, that's the
stuff I'm going to chase and get really interested in and get real excited about. And now when I get
scared, those are the things that, okay, this is actually an opportunity. Every single time you
confront a fear, it's a chance for you to grow, but it feels really daunting, right? But there's
also a part of you that has to lean on your experience and say,
oh, this is that thing that I do.
And every time I do it, I come out the other side,
transcend it a little bit, right?
A little more enlightened, maybe a little of shaking off whatever it is,
that pressure I was putting on myself.
And usually it's the pressure of the eyeballs
and the perception that I am who you think that I am, right?
You have to know
yourself too and tell the coach or instructor or whoever you're working with uh hey you know i
think i had enough that's right and if that coach is like no man we've got you know then maybe you
found the wrong person and also if the coach is in a state of where okay well let's instead of
let's just throwing the baby out the bathwater, let's just take it down a notch.
Let's move it to a different position because we still need to get the work in.
We're still here and we still need to use a lot of this time.
How about we bump the intensity back or would you be okay if we move on to another exercise?
The person's probably like, yeah, sure.
Thank you.
And the flexibility to do that is really the key.
And the adaptability, human to human to human,
me working with you or you or you or Andrew,
the same clinical approach that I had to use with really high-level chronic pain patients and building rapport with people that are like, they're isolated.
They've been thrown around and used by the system, right?
So you have a chronic pain patient that's already had maybe two or three back surgeries,
and then now the neurosurgeon is just tired of dealing with it, and they send them to pain management.
And the pain management is just filling them full of drugs, and then they still have a GP, and they might even have a motor vehicle accident tied in with an attorney and a chiropractor.
A lot of stresses around that. So I'll sit in front of a person that's just dying, but I realized that 80% of the things are, are, are things in their life
and their people that are associated with them. They're throwing labels at them that benefit
them in their priorities, not the patient probably helps you a lot that you, uh, probably are
confident in the fact that you can, you probably know in your
heart that you can at least help the person make some progress.
Right.
Maybe you can't fix it because maybe like there's just some, like we don't know everything.
We need 1%.
You can probably, I would imagine you probably have 100% success rate when it comes to helping
people get some sort of progress.
If they show up.
Because we can only change so much
you know uh just like what we did yesterday i'm like if we really have a really good if i feel
like we're understanding those ground forces and reacting and the pushing to to push to reach idea
to separate right so that's a that's a concept right but there's a lot of different ways you
can go about that for each person
to feel it effectively.
You could have the best session of your life and create
motion and get all this range that you
literally have never had,
but only keep
30% of that
tomorrow, that's impressive.
But I would say
even if you kept 10, but now
I have to go back to that well and I have to keep
getting water from it and I have to keep experiencing it you by yourself in your space
and all of a sudden it becomes this thing that oh you're like oh I can do this on the wall
like oh I can do this on a on a bench I can do it in so many different ways and give myself a
totally different experience and that day-to-day-to-day routine discipline this
playful uh activation of just say oh let me use my my arms and hands as weight bearing
as like legs i'm gonna treat them like legs and then teach my shoulder girdles to be like
like hips that seat into the body in the rib cage um that concept itself and you just play in 15
minutes can solve way more for you than any system i can deliver you uh but how can i make you believe that it's important is i have to show you and allow you
to have that experience in a way that was fun that you you felt better when you started even if it was
just you felt like you can breathe deeper right breathing deeper makes you feel better you get
more oxygen you know you create more good hormones And so if we can prioritize the expansion of the thorax,
the way that our shoulder girdle influences that,
you optimize the function of the rest of the body.
And in martial arts, everything's about balance, right?
So I want everything to be everybody's orthodox or southpaw.
balance right so i want everything to be everybody's orthodox or southpaw well for me as a from the movement perspective coming in to working with fighters well the outcome we're seeking is in
from a scientific perspective look at what's happening what's working what's not well this
means i'm predictable because that means that every time i see people get knocked out or
counter-struck,
which I don't want my fighters getting hit.
That's my first priority.
I don't like them having cuts and bruises and being hurt.
That sucks. It hurts me.
So I want to help understand that me being predictable and standing here with this chambered right hand ready to throw it,
that's every time you see a fighter get knocked out,
it's off their right hand.
So the idea is, or even if a wrestler's grabbing this front leg, we'll just pull it out.
Well, why don't they pull it out?
That's the simplest thing, and I got distance because they're not comfortable switching stances.
So the idea is there's more optimal ways of moving within a fight,
but it's contradictory to the boxing dogma or the Muay Thai dogma or the jiu-jitsu dogma.
And we got to realize that there's what did Bruce Lee say?
Be water.
It's a blending in martial arts is an experience.
If you practice martial arts, it's for you and you and me.
It's an individual experience and what it can be is limitless when it's you against you
versus you against somebody else. What's really interesting about some of the part of what the,
what you just said is when you think of like Lomanchenko, I think you mentioned Lomanchenko
when he's in the ring, he, he's doing a lot of wild stuff that you don't see individuals in
boxing teach or you don't see people who are working on that like teach but it's because he has a background of dance like he has that totally outside background dancing where the
footwork from literally just play he brought that into boxing and i mean i don't know if he has the
best record ever or whatever but like when you watch lomanchenko box you got to pull this up too
it it's insane like you can't even fathom.
You're like, how the fuck do I train that?
You know?
Well, watch his training.
It's very, it's all about, it looks just like what he's doing.
Like you said, it's neuro, neuro, neuro optical based.
Right.
And then I got pages of notes of just my thoughts on these things.
Right.
Because there's not a lot of.
I'm sorry.
If you're listening to the podcast right now, you got to check this out.
We're checking out Lomachenko.
And watch his eyes.
That's what I watch.
Watch his eyes.
They're always seeing everything.
He never loses vision, even when he's slipping or underneath.
And he's playing with his opponent's eyes.
or underneath and he's playing with his opponent's eyes and a lot of his movements actually are creating uh obstructions and very subtle things that give him opportunities that other people
don't even realize well i think you know someone like muhammad ali just had like an incredible flow
he didn't do anything you know crazy but for his size you know people forget that muhammad ali
um probably has like one of the most impressive physiques in the history of sport as well.
Like he looked incredible when he was young.
But he did some unconventional things.
He would run in boots that were like heavy intentionally, try to bring the knees up a little bit more.
And whenever you see video of him, he's not just running.
He's not just out there running.
He's running backwards. He's running sideways. He's throwing punches. see video of him he's not just running he's not just out there running he's running backwards he's running sideways he's throwing punches and he looks like
he's dancing and he would talk about it in the ring right how he's just going to dance around
like he talked about uh george foreman in in that famous fight where he did the rope-a-dope he just
kept kept on the ropes and talked about how he's going to dance around george foreman and george
foreman was killing everybody george foreman knocked knocked out Joe Frazier I think in three rounds
and Joe Frazier is the guy that you know uh just he gave gave Muhammad Ali a lot of fits and broke
his jaw and all kinds of crazy stuff so for Ali to be like hey I'm just going to dance around
George Foreman everyone's like yeah right look at. Look at how many missed shots. I mean, how demoralizing
is that? I'd rather have you punch me
than make me miss like that.
Yeah.
And he's having a blast. Hey,
that's fun. He's
having a good time. That was 21 punches
in 10 seconds. And that's the whole thing.
You have the mind-muscle connection, which is
so valuable in training, right? And Ben Patrick
talks about the mind.
That's a part of what we were talking about earlier where I was like I love that idea behind the focus in the feeling of that.
And not just the mind-muscle but the mind pattern, like that connection to this bigger pattern.
And I think that's a part of that value in the training.
But when it comes down to fighting especially it's it exposes everything
to the highest level because the consequences are so great it's there there's no greater consequences
in than in fighting they're real and and they're personal to that to that athlete um and so that's
the things that um you would rather them not have to be the the truth be defined by the actual
them getting knocked out and then
actually have a person that's open and vulnerable enough to listen they're confronting fear at the
highest level every fighter there's not a fighter out there that's not scared fighting is fear right
it is pressure right then why are fighting camps and coaches still training fighters with pressure
because i i get it like if you're doing, like, Tiger Woods, Dad,
and you're just going to, like, simulate pressure by just talking to him like he's a piece of trash
and, like, well, if he can deal with that, he can zone out everything.
You're teaching him to deflect.
You're teaching them to actually, like, pebbles off a stop sign, I always say.
It's like now they're learning how to ding.
The information's coming, and they're actually learning how to close it off that can be a skill or it can be a total
detriment right because now i'm cutting myself off to other information other sensation other
things that are important what's important is that i notice and hear it but it moves through me right
it's just a thing where do i take take it personal? Well, me taking it personal
is really the issue more than it is me hearing it, right? So the idea is dealing with the core
issue is the fact that you're taking something personal. That might be an exercise, right?
Or if somebody's saying something to you that you might even told them to say to you
to help you put pressure on you, and then you feel a certain way about it, well, that's the
thing that needs to be investigated. But if we're not spending some time in a deeper place in active meditation
some of my most profound thoughts about where i can correct a thing i'm doing that may not be
fair um happens in that moment of of isolation where i've cut off the sensations and i'm moving in a very diligent way
but my intentions are also to be open and to to be reflective and i think those intentions are
the thing that are most valuable when it comes to performance and with these fighters um confronting
fear in a healthy way is a difference of championship mentality or a successful career but then you lose when it
matters right and so my objective working with fighters is realizing if i can help them treat
the mind through this training and we can work on talking about fear and we can talk about uh john
jones used to always say talk about the samurai's death right so he would allow himself to go into the darkest place
and to visualize losing and being exposed and being knocked out and in just the worst possible
outcome in the samurai's case would be death right um but in what it does is from that point forward
you can you're kind of free because is this like like when we were talking in the gym, you mentioned some fighters have anxiety before a fight,
but they never bring that up and they use their camp as like...
A great utopia.
You're better at explaining that.
Right, and Alan Belcher is a source of a lot of wisdom for me
because he has this guy that has this huge season career in UFC
who retired basically while he was in the top five,
uh,
because of an injury at 26 years old at the top of his game,
uh,
because of,
you know,
and not only that,
he was having success in business.
So he,
he was like,
he had some,
some security,
you know,
and,
uh,
security sometimes is our biggest enemy,
you know,
because we forget what,
what got us there.
And that was driving forces,
uh, that seek comfort or lies.
Because you get to the point where you meet goals or you do this or you do that.
You meet this intended vision of what you, this controlled thing you tried to create.
And you realize how empty that was and how limiting it was too.
Because you could have set bigger goals if you wanted to.
You know, like there's the labels are the things we got to be careful of and i think the the wisdom in working with
guys like alan uh who are confronting fear and do it in such a relaxed way it's all about the mind
i'll tell you what this is profound um this is one of the deeper parts of like uh of this moment
that happened with alan in his last fight um because
i don't care how long you've done it there's always your it's a process of managing yourself
right and we do all these breath work and yoga twice a week and we go deep because it's so helpful
for those guys and managing and now they're talking about fears that i've never heard them
talk about they're talking about their emotional I've never heard them talk about. They're talking about their emotional experience.
And these are like, to me, sitting back, I'm like, now that's when I shut up.
And I just let it all go and just like let it, the outpouring.
But some would wonder, why is that important for this fighter to do?
Like, you know, why, if they feel anxious before a fight or they have anxiety about it,
why don't they just train their ass off so they feel confident enough to be able to go into the fight?
Why do they need to talk about it?
There's different levels, right?
And there's different experiences for each person.
And you have some guys that don't even know what loss is.
They've just used that training and they've hidden behind that because they didn't have a reason to appreciate what we're talking about.
And those are why undefeated fighters usually, it takes a really special guy that's really mentally strong
and has a deeper sense of wisdom to really stay undefeated for long periods of time.
Even if you look at like Floyd Mayweather, people are only seeing what they see.
They're not realizing that through his dedication and discipline and training,
he's learning things and insights about life, about opposition, about combat.
It's such a deeper, he's playing such a, he's playing chess while everybody's playing checkers.
And it's from his obsession, he's showing up every day.
And yeah, the training's cool cool but it's really what is it
teaching him in terms of how he's learning and he's he's looking at it from such a deeper angle
than people give him credit for that's why he's who he is but i think those are the things we
got to remember the mental is the is the thing right so um it's the it's the governor and we
need to sometimes stop thinking about the movement and the body and all these other things
and think about the best fighters these days have great generalship.
It's what they do without even throwing strikes.
It's the way they're able to control and generate positions from their opposition.
Like, look at Izzy.
He's literally steering that guy around like a matador.
Yeah. Muhammad Ali. He said, these guys are bulls. I guy around like a matador yeah what are muhammad ali he said
these guys are bulls i need to be a matador and man it's if you watch a bull fight the matador
looks that's sexy right the bull just looks like a big dummy you know and it's like well i don't
want to be that guy you know i want to be the matador that's cool how do you think differently
i'm actually curious about this when you see somebody somebody like Kamaru Usman and the way he fights versus someone like Israel Adesanya,
I think Usman has a better record, and he was actually going towards St. Pierre's.
But would you say that comparing the type of fighters they are, would you say one is a better fighter than the other?
No, I think what they both are amazing at is knowing their self and being very honest with themselves and their own insufficiencies as well.
And I promise you both of them, their process doesn't include them trying to glorify their strengths.
Their process is really being honest about their insufficiencies.
And their conversations and training with their partners are totally different.
and training with their partners are totally different.
You know, it's really, it's in all of that lifestyle.
You know, they both don't put unneeded pressure on themselves.
They both know how to process and deal with their emotions.
When you hear Usman on Joe Rogan's podcast two or three,
four days after he got knocked out on national television, did he seem bitter? I seemed chill.
He seemed chill because you guess what?
He knows I signed up for this.
I think that's the only guy to ever do that, that I've heard of.
Like go and do a big interview like that after that's a big loss.
It's a big loss.
Yeah, it's huge.
And not only that, but imagine how you don't think him going on Joe Rogan was probably as significant as him fighting in that.
That's something that he was probably really thinking about.
It's a powerful person to be able to do that.
Sure.
And so he was probably visualizing going on there and talking about him winning.
His success, right?
So now the humility to go through and to be who he was, that's who he is.
That's why he's a champ.
That's a champ.
That's a mindset.
That's a way of living.
That's a way he conducts himself.
It has nothing to do with whether or not he's holding that belt.
His posture is championship posture.
He's assuming that identity, and him holding that belt is just a material thing.
But he's a champ right now in his mind.
It doesn't change, and that's all the champs.
That's all the greats.
They do that.
And that's the thing.
Whenever they get championship status and they have the belt they're not surprised everybody else is surprised you know and so that's a part of they their trust
and commitment to that is because they're living the lifestyle they're challenging their mind
they're feeling that moment that you had yesterday and they're going to get in support taking a walk
and coming back to it and they're finishing and not letting themselves if i quit that i'm going
to what's stopping me from quitting anything?
And every time I feel uncomfortable, I'm going to walk away.
That's everything.
Even if it's in your mind, if it's an emotion that makes you walk out of a room
but you might have lost the opportunity to get information,
that's something that might be limiting your greatness, right?
And these are things that are practices of life and awareness is that
uh that we're able to it's a game we can play but first we have to transcend into a higher thing we
have to get out of the place of judgment and get into a state of witnessing and learning and now
it's an it's an attitude of understanding and connection and that's essentially when we think
about neuroplasticity and flexibility of the mind, that's really the goal.
It's trying to facilitate connection.
And these things that we do sometimes in our thoughts I think are actually stopping our brain from achieving the states that we want to achieve.
you know with some of the people that you're uh you're helping um how do you assist them in having a championship mindset so that they can get better because i think a lot of people they don't give
themselves enough credit like anyone can be some version of an athlete anyone can can go and uh
utilize some of the stuff from the best people in the world, the pros, and
they could actually utilize some of these things.
Like you'll see sometimes a pro football player might tweak his knee and then he's like on
a bike on the sidelines and stuff like that.
These are things that if you were, maybe you played a pickup game, a softball or something
at your work and you tweaked
a knee, you could be the same, similar person. You could have this kind of championship mindset
where you're like, well, I'm recovery is going to be for me to lean into this and get more movement.
How are you taking some people to have chronic pain? They don't want to move. Their brain almost
won't allow them to move. They got a governor set on them because they don't believe they can do certain things how are you helping these people you have to you have
to respect their pain first and i think a lot of people in my position they try to discredit pain
in an effort to achieve that goal so again their effort their goal is to help but they're doing it
in the fashion where now you well let's's just say that person, they have labeled themselves with that diagnosis of fibromyalgia or whatever.
I have arthritis.
I have this.
I have that.
Well, that's okay.
That's just what it is and it's nothing.
And yeah, it kind of sucks that the medical system and literally a doctor having to classify that person so they can build an insurance company and get paid.
That label is really what's now a part of this person's existence.
And they – I meet them for the first time.
They say, okay, well, you know, I have fibromyalgia and I have arthritis or whatever those diagnoses are, stenosis or whatever.
Bulge discs, all these things.
You hear people say it all the time.
You know, plantar fasciitis.
We're talking in different, these are states.
These aren't diseases or chronic.
The fibromyalgia is kind of a catch-all categorization of something
where I'm not sure.
It's an affliction.
But it's related to the fascia and the muscle.
Fibromyalgia, you know, pain of the muscle, fibrous tissue.
It's vague.
Yeah.
But it's just pain of fibrous tissue, really, muscle.
Wow.
That's what it means.
But people think it's something they're tethered to.
Oh, it's like something like a genetic derangement or some type of disease that's like a real condition, you know?
So you've had to deal with a lot of people that have had fibrobiology and you've been
able to reverse that?
Well, I think that's one thing we forget too in the normal population.
It's everywhere.
That label is used to prescribe medicines.
So people have that diagnosis.
Whether or not they accept it, it's up to them.
But the ones that do accept it, that becomes their disability
because their connection to this thing to justify to my family
why I'm taking these medicines that the doctor prescribed
that they don't think I should be on while I have fibromyalgia.
Well, I don't know.
I don't think you need those medicines.
So now they hunker into this,
to now proving this state of disease and dysfunction.
So the people around them will.
But all it does now is make you get worse and you get worse because you want to you love me and you want to protect me.
And so it's these negative downward spirals that I'm witnessing.
Yeah.
And then seeing in the clinic where I'm helping these people in different stages.
the clinic where I'm helping these people in different stages. And I realized that the biggest way for me to help them is to get to the point of having that conversation about the inner dynamics
of the home and getting them to start to peel back the layers on why they, they are attached
to that. Right. So you don't, you don't attack it directly from a movement perspective. You're like,
let's see what's going on.
You sound like you're a psychiatrist for these people.
You are because I want to help them.
Long term.
Long term.
And it's not based off of them needing me.
It's based off of them finding something inside of themselves.
And so I use movement to help create an experience of success.
So a person that's not moving at all, if I can get them laying on their back in a hook,
line position, their knees bent, and we can work on expansion and compression of the core.
I just want you to start with the nose and diaphragm, feel the body, feel the chest and
release. So we're going to a four, let's say a four seconds in,
eight seconds out interval,
which we know is going to downshift them
into a parasympathetic state.
So now once I can see
they finally connect to this
and they can focus on this,
the key element is internal focus, right?
This is a primordial movement pattern.
It's the breath.
And that's the one that that person,
regardless of their condition,
I can teach them how to do this
and they can feel an improvement.
And guess what?
When they sit up, it's visceral.
They could sit up right now
and they said it was a 10 out of 10
when they arrived.
How are you feeling now?
Eight out of 10.
Well, guess what?
That's better.
And what is it?
It's momentum.
Just like with the parabolic,
we're talking about utilizing momentum
and then you find this release where your body is not working as hard because you're
allowing the fascia slings to connect to the motion to the ground and so it's this it's the
same philosophy all right it's just about trying to help them find the grounding forces of this
the gravity pushing there and now their back and their spine is supported.
And now gravity is moving into their body and they can feel these movements that they can't feel standing or sitting.
And so not only that, but they're never, well, I never lay on my back.
Well, come on.
Your orientation against gravity is the best way to condition your nervous system in terms of your vestibular system right because if your
vestibular system is based off of orienting your head position relation to your body so for instance
if your head is never below your body like in a handstand or even in like a big a big extended
movement or a side bending movement or a side bending motion you're not allowing the fluid in
those hula hoops which i always think of fluid in those hula hoops, which I always
think of it like interconnected hula hoops that fluid's kind of shifting and moving through.
And you got these little hairs that are nerve endings that are detecting the fluid's movement
through those two canals.
But what happens is we're always in these very isolated positions.
And as we get older, we develop these little crystallizations due to the lack of fluid being able to circulate through those tubes and so when the head and the
body get in certain position there's a disorientation so right real quick do you think that individuals
over time if somebody doesn't attack that system there's dysfunction so do you think people who
are younger should be like just randomly going and rolling around? Yeah. Just like hitting rolls.
If you look at our, well, if you look at my stuff, sometimes we just like literally
we'll lay on the floor and just literally roll, roll across the floor and just figure out how to
use muscles to move you while your hands and your legs are completely extended. So you have to find,
yeah. Yeah. And for some people, like if someone's in pain or has some
soreness um you'll feel some myofascial release doing some big time it's a it's a soft tissue
massage um like a dormant yeah the floor is his teacher it is a teacher and just like the wall
is a teacher it's a it's it represents a plane right uh we all understand that uh the planes
of motion the frontal and the sagittal transverse planes.
Now you're just thinking about these represent a plane,
and it can cause me to now have a really strong awareness.
Like we're in that sideline position, and we're working on posting and pivoting onto the arm.
Well, if you notice, when you really roll into that arm, it gives you a perfect chamber as a fighter, right?
A stand-up fighter, it teaches the elbow how to fold into the body, and we're built for combat.
You're anatomy.
A lot of that pressure in there, yeah.
So think about health now in performance optimization, and now think about martial arts, right?
And now think about it in what we're talking about.
These are modalities that are helping to create.
And now think about it and what we're talking about.
These are modalities that are helping to create.
We're using the ground in these little fun little activities to create conformity where the body can conform to itself and it can fold and move into itself the way it's designed.
Your anatomy is based off of your ancestors surviving. They were the winners, right?
Like David Wick said.
they were the winners, right? Like David Wicks said. So
your humerus is the exact
length to reach the top of your iliac crest,
which that creates
a shield, a lateral shield.
So the tip of your elbow,
if you hang your
arms at your side,
now note the bottom
of your elbow, and now find the
top of your hip.
Right? Yeah. It's totally covered right there's no there's
almost zero separation actually it overlaps i got oh shit yeah i gotta kind of move down to that
side but i just see right so your your lower ribs and your pelvis and a male's your pelvis is two
inches higher than a female's on each side uh so your lat runs
right down into your hip yes so your aunt your anatomy was based off of your ancestors cool
you guys should you guys should just do that you guys yeah if you're listening sorry if you're
driving i'm sorry better pull over put your put your hands next to it on with one hand yeah you
can do while you're at the wheel just don't crash please um that's dope yeah it's super dope and now think about guarding your face right so if i bring my
hand up to my ear right because i always want to think about if you can cover the ear because the
shot behind the ear is the one that's devastating like if i teach a hook i'm always teaching them
to throw it aim behind the ear and those are usually ones that catch the chin, believe it or not.
But that's kind of a vulnerable target.
So being able to access this space without losing, if I'm having to do this, right?
But people don't even realize some people can't create a vertical position in their forearm, right?
You ever see those street fight videos?
Right.
And so. You know that shit. Those fight videos? Right. And so.
You know that shit.
Those hood videos, man.
I see that shit in person.
It's hilarious.
And they're stuck on their back leg and everything.
Those guys, a real trained fighter will destroy those guys, man.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's not old school boxing. Sure. Yeah. It's not an old school boxing.
Sure.
Sure.
But the idea is that all these things in fighting have really helped inform me back into understanding that this is really a holistic way of thinking in terms of creating balance in the body.
What is yoga?
It was what warriors used to prepare themselves.
And when they prepared themselves,
these static poses and the warrior poses
and all that stuff,
some of those have feminine qualities to them, right?
So in our culture, it'd be like, oh, yeah.
That's very woo-woo.
Yeah.
But if you think about like the warrior three pose,
you're in that full split lunge position
and you're having to basically touch your back leg and then extend this arm all the way out into this deep posture.
And I used to even look at that stuff.
When I started doing yoga, I did it twice a week at a local gym.
I found this yoga.
It was at a crunch fitness.
It was the only yoga class they had.
It was like twice a week.
And I didn't tell anybody for a year yoga at crunch fitness in mississippi are they gonna let you back in yeah when you go back oh i don't well i don't go there anymore
that's where i started i was in the closet i was a closet yogi for almost a year twice a week dude
and even through my clinical practice i'm'm like, I've always done yoga.
Yoga is just essentially an alignment and attunement.
And just like any machine, there's a process of doing so.
But with ours, it's somatosensory.
It's muscular.
It's connected to the ground.
It's connected to our relation to gravity and the feeling of it all.
I'm sorry.
I'm just thinking of some of our listeners.
You're like, dog, that's gay.
I'm just trying to be –
Yeah.
But I get what you're saying.
I agree with you.
It's just like –
I'm using these practices to train the most savage killers in the world.
Alan's fighting for a heavyweight bare-knuckle fighting championship. So he's about to take the belt in the bare-knuckle world as a former UFC fighter.
And these are things that this was a lot of the pair ball and a lot of these ground force things that we work on.
I've always did them in the clinic, but I didn't understand it in relation to a specific goal.
Alan was arm wrestling competitively in
bodybuilding uh in in two-year period when i measured his reach it was like he had elbow
contractures think about how hard it is to punch properly yeah we had to remodel his his body
can we pull him up by the way yeah yeah please do do. I'm sorry, who am I looking for? Alan Belcher.
And this is the
bare knuckle, what's he getting ready to fight for?
BKFC championship.
Oh, shit. You have the heavyweight
title.
And then Chase Sherman
is a UFC fighter that I got
started with and that was back
12 years ago.
There he is.
He's alright. He's a's a savage man he's an absolute savage and he's an athlete and he's supple and quick and he's dynamic um
and that's uh the he's he's a next level guy because again his process i already know he's a champion and it has nothing to do with
and people will find out jack dude yeah does he uh does he do any strength training on the outside
to look like that or does he do very minimal strength training so at this point he was doing
this was kind of us coming off of him doing like bodybuilding type stuff and then transitioning
him back into trying to create all this length and really
try to develop him as a as a really balanced mover um it all started in those fascial slings in the
upper back and a lot of those things we did like we improved his reach by four inches wow explain
that actually because you were talking about that in the gym when we were using the pair of ball and also the WEC.
What's the Macy's?
Yeah.
The WEC Indian Club type.
Lollipops.
Yeah.
But you said even your reach, you gained a few inches because it helped to actually lose some weight. We can measure marks right now and go through about 15 minutes of that.
And we can put probably an inch and a half on it, you know, tip to tip.
Yeah.
In days, you can add more and more and more. Because you got you know you want to rewind so think about the scapulas right yeah
and so we're thinking about okay this as far as i can go yeah if you have some winging and stuff
right it's going to be shortened and again that it's kind of what i was working with winning on
yesterday where if you're attached to this let's say a wall for instance and i'm reaching away from that wall your instinct is to almost
or if you had a pole you're going to hold on to that pole and want to stretch but if you realize
that pole is only going to get you so far but now if you turn that into a push you're going to push
and you just got an inch and a half stretch to a motion as your arm can separate and create a bit of that kind of there's a deeper
pattern there right yeah and what it is is it only exists if somebody punches you have to slow down
that punch and you see at the very end in slow motion you'll see there's an extension of that
punch as the arm kind of gets away from the body it goes out about an inch and a half, two inches out, but it's so fast, it's the whip.
And so that's the whole idea is even trying to create
really good striking technique.
It's being able to deliver without any recoil.
So I never draw something back before I bring it forward.
And so now everything delivers,
and the hand goes before the foot even connects.
As long as the foot's connected by the time that shot lands you have to trust your technique what fighters want to do is they
want to drive all the way through it i'm going to drive through their targets but it makes it slow
and even good fighters so a lot some good fighters do it and win yeah using kind of
suboptimal technique one of the big reasons why something like a lot of lat work will help a person be able to deadlift more weight,
and it's something that probably is really not recognized by the strength community,
but it's the simple fact that your lats will pull your arms downward.
And because it will pull your arms downward.
And inward.
Yeah, and inward.
Downward and inward.
Because it will do that, now you've finished your deadlift a half inch, maybe an inch sooner.
Yep.
Just by having that.
You know, you're getting the pull of the lats.
You get big, strong, lengthened and strengthened lats are going to kind of sit down here.
Your shoulder is going to be a little further away from the ear and the deadlift moving.
And your lat is encased in fascia, just like your pec and every other muscle.
The shape of the muscle is 100% contingent upon that fascial encasement. That fascia is also a pec and every other muscle the shape of the muscle is 100 contingent
upon that fascial encasement that fascia is also a somatosensory organ it gives feedback into that
interoceptive system so you're getting as much it's as it's as it's as much efferent as there
is afferent activity going on right so the information exchange is is is equal we always
think of it like we're generating this thing centrally and driving this power outward. But the information we get back is just as valuable, if not more.
The stretching that you were showing me yesterday, it was more like just movement. It wasn't really
like stretching. It wasn't really like yoga or static stretch necessarily. Sounds like you
believe in all types of stretching. But when you get to the end of that punch,
if you throw your shoulder out further,
to me, that stretch feels a little bit like
some of the movement we did yesterday.
And what I noticed about some of the movement we did yesterday
and that movement there
is that it kind of reminds me of the stretch that you do
when you first wake up in the morning
and you kind of stretch and your body's sort of out of control
and it goes into its own little stretching thing. and then you like your calf muscle cramps up
or something do you ever have that shit where you like stretch your leg and it starts oh yeah
everything's shaking every single day yes you're like am i gonna come all over the place what's
going on here that's tone that's you're pulling on autonomic tone so wheelchair when i have a
wheelchair patients that are sitting in chairs and i get them to lay on their back on the floor and extend themselves, it's like the hip flexor is fighting back and creating this preservation.
I think we need to find more stretching.
What's it called?
What was that word you just used?
Autonomic.
Preterbation.
As far as the hip flexors.
That kind of stretching, like that stretching that you do in the morning
well that's the thing what are you what are you doing in the morning you're laying on you're
laying horizontal to gravity the same what we're talking about with that rolling earlier
you're essentially you're just you're orienting yourself that's a yoga thing you do in the
beginning of yoga class you're going to put these fingers as far to that side of the room and these
toes to that school just like in the middle of the day,
like when you're a little kid?
Have you reached for the stars and shit like that?
Usually in PE.
But sometimes just in class,
a teacher would,
if you had a cool teacher,
they might have you do some other shit
that's more than just learning history or whatever.
It's decompression.
It's just a decompression,
but also it's active elongation.
We forget that if i'm
slouching like this i can push the crown of my head upward right so there's a there's a like
my neck can almost crane away from the thorax like that there's so many different ways and there's
right so when i engage those muscles those are muscles that are creating decompression with my
makes everything else move your chest right so there's an active engagement.
So people think about tucking their chin,
they go, boop, they look down.
But the idea is it's this crown of the head
elevating against that vertical axis, right?
Against that straight zero degree north pole.
Kind of makes you feel like you're standing like an asshole.
But it feels amazing.
But it's not meant to be.
Well, here's the thing. T't seem what's wrong you mad so so guys come on the show before flex like that for the whole show literally whole so what is that position it's the top
it's the top of an inhalation yeah so how long do you hold it? As long as an inhale, right? As long as people are around.
Posture moves.
Posture is a movement.
It's a waveform, right?
So as I breathe in, I get taller.
As I breathe out, I get a little shorter, right?
And that's okay for us to allow that waveform to happen
and the experience of breathing through the body in a way where it is tight.
Your posture muscles and your
respiration muscles are actually kind of shared um shared functions right they have cross paths
so but that's the problem is that if the postures muscles are i'm out of touch with the way my
pelvis can be positioned and this and that then the link tension relationships in my upper body, in my diaphragm's attachment, in my lower ribs, I'm losing that sensation of that's the balance.
That's the alignment.
It's getting the sense of how this stacks up against gravity.
And then just it's not about being held.
Nothing should be held.
Everything should be have a slight yield to it, know a little give a little wiggle and i think
that's the that's the key and the awareness should be based off of the unstuckness if we feel stuck
the idea is to use the breath to that's typically how we release tension anyway you know andrew
hoberman talks about the physiologic sigh well what is that it's the body naturally cuing you to stand taller, to get more air, and to expand your thorax.
That's like God's gift into your nervous system.
It's like a button that's getting pushed due to your midbrain or your brainstem detecting the oxygen, carbon dioxide balance in your blood.
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You know what?
I know that you guys hate when I mentioned jujitsu.
You're like, shut the fuck up about jujitsu.
But this is why I think if you have the ability to sign up for jujitsu you're like shut the fuck up about jujitsu but this is why i think
like if you have the ability to sign up for jujitsu and just do it two or three times a week
whatever you can manage you should because i'm trying to rack my brain for something that allows
you with such just variable movement um you know if you have strength training in the gym you're
not going to get into a majority of these positions that you're getting to on the mats.
But when you're doing something like grappling or jujitsu or anything that allows you some type of movement in that fashion, you're getting into all those types of planes of movement that you're getting into the gym.
And then you're overreaching into all these different areas.
Like over time, if you're younger and if you're older, it'll just allow you to age better because you're doing things that you otherwise your body just would never do.
And then you lose the ability.
That's right.
You're 100 percent correct. And why yoga is really connects with people that do martial arts of any form, whether it's jujitsu, because I have jujitsu guys all the time that are slowly starting to the culture.
guys all the time that are slowly starting to the culture like I said now that you got Alan Belcher the credible you know uh highly respected warrior that everybody knows what he's got a black belt
in jiu-jitsu he's he's he learned he he would go to Thailand and teach them things that they were
uh and a lot of the guys from uh the Dagestanis and a lot of those Russian fighters, there's content of Allen teaching them those certain techniques on the cage and the certain –
and he's the authority in that world at a point where these guys – before these guys were even really doing it at a high level.
doing it at a high level not to say that um that it has it's it's not the way or it's not that he's like the source of it but the thing is he's always been involved with the advancement of martial arts
in his own way but he don't care about the credit or whatever he's just living his life he's living
his best life and um and even now when we're talking about and dealing with social media
uh the hardest thing to deal with is that there's
a balance between the effort and focus you put on becoming what you, what a champion is and
letting people into that world. And so, because there's a confliction when, if I'm self-promoting,
um, that it's energy that I'm taking away from self-growth in the same moment.
So it's a confliction.
There's a balance there you have to kind of find.
And not only that, there's authenticity barrier that is broken when you're trying to now formulate words and talk about things
versus like Bachi just being there to capture moments that are just kind of happening,
and we're just doing like what we're doing.
And those are the profound moments.
And then I can go back and look at footage and watch people's movement
and remember their mindsets, remember their emotional states,
and I can learn more about these things that are influencing that are deeper,
you know, these deeper influences.
But the idea is that there's a simplification, right?
So trying to take these things down to their most basic form
and then maybe somebody that's scared of getting punched in the face, right?
And that's why they're not getting into striking.
And now when I'm helping to engage people and help them find value in in fighting
in martial arts as a as a mechanism for health and training right because training is so good
for you the discipline and overcoming hard things and dude almost one out of three trainings especially
with wrestling i hit a point where i'm like i want to quit oh yeah yeah. And I have to literally, I'm like, I can't believe I still
have this feeling that I like want to tell them, hold on. And I'm like, no, no, like suck it up.
Like this is the moment. Right. And take a breath and work through it and just allow myself to pass
that thought. And, um, and I'm like, you're never immune to it. It's something you'll have to battle
and fight, but at least there's a method that you can confront yourself.
And you're putting yourself in that level of stress
where you can learn the truth about what you're telling yourself and what's real.
And I think those are—
Wrestling is grueling.
Wrestling is grueling.
And I'm careful about how much that I bite off,
but I'm sure I always make sure to bite off something.
And then that's the key.
It's the balance.
Because then if i you
do a wrestling practice and you're being competitive well usually every time i get competitive there's
a little tweak or there's a little something and then now you take the next morning you're this is
all a method too of thinking you have to we're training every day yeah so it's monday tuesday
wednesday thursday friday sometimes saturday and they're sparring on Saturdays hard. So all this has to be a method where we can do these things every single day.
They have a positive outcome in terms of the lymphatic drainage, active recovery elements,
and it's the first portion of every day.
But like I said, some of what gets put up is really what I feel like is more applicable
to the everyday person. Talking about like the stuff you put up is really uh what i feel like is more uh applicable to the everyday person talking about
like the stuff you put up on instagram the movement and the different flows and techniques
but the philosophy is based off of uh what i said earlier about we don't really condition flow
right it's something we don't condition but we all seek to attain and what i'm saying is that
this is there's a method to train to to train to help your body and your brain achieve states of flow, but it's a practice.
And it comes through focus of movements that, A, cross the midline, B, allow for lateral movement of the eyes, and C, can allow you a full expansion and compression of the breathing mechanism.
By the way, what would you describe flow as being like?
Because a lot of people may have never been in a state of flow with something.
So what would you describe it like?
So like we were talking about, Ben Patrick's talking about the mind muscle.
And a lot of those isolation to the spot in the body.
What flow is, it's the central nervous system in the body in its most efficient state where you're disconnected from the body in a way where you're, I'm going to grab that can.
I'm going to put it down.
And now there's this trust in that now I'm in a put it down. And now there's this trust in, in,
in the,
now I'm in a place of,
of witness.
That's the most efficient state.
And that's why I said the spiritual,
uh,
state of consciousness.
When we have spiritual experiences,
those are flow states that are legitimately,
um,
they are flow.
It's the same experience.
You don't have any inhibition of movement. Your body's just moving and it's doing what it knows how to do at its highest
level. It's like you're fully aware of your body and yet unaware of it at the exact same moment.
So there's a balance between your conscious thinking about the body, but then there's like
this faith. It's actually a faith that it's, it's there.
It's efficient neurologically. It's, it's, um, it's when you're, you're, you're not,
cause the idea is that if I, Oh, I'm in flow that stops it. Like the recognition of flow itself is
the quickest way to stop it. That's the most, right? Yeah. That, that, that is. Yeah. Right.
Yeah. So just think about that. So
what is recognizing flow? It's basically the part of your brain that, that writes a narrative
and that's telling a story. The one that's concerned about, um, the world as seen through
Mark looking at me versus me looking at Mark. And that's a part of now that's an opportunity to focus yourself in
and to detach this psychological thing that we've done from the fact we wanted our coaches
to be proud of us when we performed that drill.
And we stood there in line and we held these postures like Dr. Blee's has talked about.
A lot of these things that we, these traps that we fall into it's based
off of how we are it's all right I'll give you another analogy a 12 13 year
old girl in a high school classroom you know they are literally do not want to
be called on do not want to be seen they're collapsing into themselves and
their posture is a representation of their experience right and only that so it's a
but if you if you uh monitor their hormones right and that's that whole um world that's really well
documented understood with dr amy cuddy um doctor who amy dr amy cuddy yeah and she's was a huge
influence on me uh to just change the perspective and realize that, wow, we're dramatically influencing our hormone levels.
And what she does is she'll have people stand in powerful positions in front of a mirror, right, for two minutes.
And you get a 30% increase in testosterone.
By the way, guys, you remember that episode with Bedros where we literally asked him, hey, you know, up you have some bad thoughts what do you do he stands in front of a mirror i love myself
it's energetic you're activating the body but you're addressing these feelings yeah through
a practice you're not just no i feel bad let me just grab my keys and go to work
no you're saying no i'm not tolerating this.
Like, I'm more than this.
And these feelings I have aren't me.
Like, I'm who I want to be.
I'm making me right now.
And you visualize yourself in a powerful state.
And then all of a sudden you start to feel that.
And it might take two minutes, right?
That's like the thing even with those flows that we're talking about.
That two-minute interval is kind of for me a magic sticking point because we lose it.
So you're talking about like when athletes are back to the flow thing because you mentioned how athletes want to get into a state of flow but they never train anything to get into flow.
So when – if you can describe some of the things that you think help athletes get into flow, You're saying that they should be doing those for like two minutes?
That's the thing.
Counting is counterproductive to flow.
Yeah.
Reps, all this stuff, anything that's essentially a label, numbers, anything.
So that's the idea is that we're trying to condition a mind-body connection.
You're taking this really compound motion
in this really well-established neurologic pattern
that our ancestors, like the reason we have it
is because of the things that they did to survive, right?
They had to have their eyes in a position of observation.
That's why our spine needs to do what it does.
That's why the shoulder needs to move
because if it doesn't get out the way for this one to reach forward my eyes can't see behind
me so if i'm reaching that way and that shoulder's still there see i can only see you there yeah
but that's the idea it's like if we think about it in this context you're like okay it's just
this ancestral thought like my ancestors
through spears and in doing so they had to do this stuff so even though i'm a power lifter
my lat is a deceleration uh spring so its job is actually to absorb and decelerate my arm as it
propels itself through space and that fascial braking system it the lat's kind of one of the
primary braking systems that posterior chain anchors of one of the primary breaking systems that post your chain.
It anchors the pelvis to the shoulder.
So that's the purpose and function.
People have done some wild shit.
Like if you think about somebody shooting like a bow and arrow while they're riding a fucking horse.
It's like holy shit.
Like the rotation and you're the horse, you know, like that would be so fucking like, a lot of things that we've done in our past, it would be so difficult.
And that's what I feel.
Things that were probably worked on a lot because we probably were just very physical
every day.
And that's the thing.
That to me is more, that's me saying, like, that's actually my being.
That's what actually I was born with.
And the fact I can't do it means that I, that at some point I've lost it.
But what I learned is you haven't lost it.
It's actually neurolog lost it it's actually
neurologically it's just like code in a computer you just have the programming still in a place
called your basal ganglia that is a well it's basically a button you push and it has this giant
expression right of neural activity um that makes it really efficient right and that's through the
same thing with the winning it It's the reps, right?
And that's what's pushing that neurologic pattern
into a deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper place of expression
where now when the button gets pushed,
you get this really complex expression of movement,
but it comes from one button instead of six, right?
And that efficiency, that's built into itself.
So now I can use that pattern and that connection and that trust to that very simple neurologic efficiency.
And now I'm bringing it into a place where I can create perpetual movement and flow with a parabol or a Bulgarian bag, right?
Can you pull up some of that?
Because he has like a lot of stuff on his Instagram with the parabol.
There's some research too
that things of this
nature, and maybe you're aware of it, things of this nature
can really help a lot with anxiety, right?
It is the mechanism to address anxiety.
Like just going on something
like a swing, right? It is the mechanism
because like I said, animals,
every animal except for us
move their body and
do things to address their emotions.
So you can take a 20-pound dumbbell or one of these special balls and swing it around.
So he's a rookie.
So you don't have a lot of experience.
He's a rookie.
So I'm teaching.
No, I'm teaching.
But the thing is watch is from going from a complete novice and then look at it clean up.
Look at the length in the upper part of the arc, right?
And now he's getting more confident.
And now look at the right leg where he's posting,
controlling the whole movement with the grounded leg
as the body rotates and pivots around that.
Now what I'm doing here is I'm pulling the back leg a little bit,
but the focus is the front leg.
Thinking of the full extension.
Now he's moving great.
Look at that.
You're utilizing the weight and the momentum through this pattern
to allow the lat and that deep that breaking system
to totally uncoil to its full capacity without any resistance and so now you're programming
dynamically through this neurologic pattern instead of just now the hanging is still great
but the idea is that this is a way to get a really dynamic and complicated movement to happen that is really – it's wired in there for every human.
And it attaches to these – these are little –
That was really cool.
Yeah.
And so now that's conditioning the bicep.
And so we're working on the full elongation of the bicep.
It literally looks like the kettlebell is hanging there by a thread.
Right.
That's creepy.
So that's the idea is that we have, see the hand position stays the same.
The body moves around the fixed position of the hand.
And that's the common theme you'll see.
What I like, you know, with a lot of these things that you're showing us, and there's so many ways to train.
So I'm not going to say certain things are wrong.
And there's so many ways to train.
So I'm not going to say certain things are wrong.
But, you know, when we have a split, you know, and we do like biceps on one day, we do upper body on one day, lower body on the other.
I kind of feel like my upper and lower body are disconnected.
And I feel like that's some of the issues that I now have to work through because I didn't keep them connected during my power thing.
Because everything was linear.
Right. And now you're asking for this rotation.
But the thing with running is we're only in this mild, small range of rotation.
So I like the ideas with a lot of this is trying to say, okay, well, the torsion that
we create through the trunk and generate through there, the spine is meant to just like a rag that you wring out.
Yeah, wring out a towel, yeah.
And you wring out like that.
And that's actually the coupled motions of the spine
that give it its best function
that also address a lot of these joint derangements.
Because the joint derangement at that L4-5
is really because of the lack of contribution
of that upper thoracic or maybe some of that pelvic function.
You would say maybe some of that changes if you go from jogging to run running or sprinting.
It's good to know the very end.
So, for instance, like the Bulgarian bag, I can utilize the momentum.
Oh, it kind of got me there, right?
And my releasing to that position is what got me there.
Versus if I didn't have experience with that and I was at BS to move there, I'm never going to find that place unless I have overpressure, some external assistance or whatever.
You use some momentum.
Momentum, right?
Yeah.
So we're using momentum, timing, right?
Injuries occur because of poor timing and motor planning subconsciously, right? So if you look at the deficits after an ACL injury,
there's as many visual deficits as there is any muscular problem.
They now start using their eyes to plan and prepare movement, right?
And so if you take their eyes out of the picture, they're lost, right?
But now you've got to consider the value of addressing the conditioning of the eyes and putting the eyes in.
That's what everything's built off of in respect to the eyes.
And so there's a condition where I can take just you tracking your finger and using your eyes, and it creates perfect segmental motion of your spine.
So for me to address that derangement, the more I focus on saying, oh, we have this L5, let's go in there and really work on that derangement and push on the back.
I'm literally reinforcing the things that are causing you to focus on the area instead of recruiting and releasing and developing this pattern of motion where when it's done well, that's just a piece of the chain.
It just connects along with everything else. Instead of having that obstruction occur there,
the movement and the fact that I can recruit the rotation through the hips,
find the pivot points of the body, find the post points in the body,
see how it keeps my head back, right?
You came in at the perfect time because we've had a lot of other guests on
that kind of lead us to the spot we're in now.
We had Gary from the Human Garage and
we've had some other people come in. And Gary, you know, he was explaining some breathing,
like he had specific ways to breathe as you're going through, you know, some of these various
ranges of motion. But what I really love that we did. This is a real estate broker. He's not even
in a fight. I swear I have attorneys out here, high level guys. I have orthopedic surgeons. I like that. And this is all, none of this at this point I'm getting paid for.
This is separate from my business as a physical therapist. This is my pursuit to grow and learn.
And I want to learn with high performers and people that are open and vulnerable to growth
that I'm past the point of working with people where I have to convince them to help themselves.
that I'm past the point of working with people where I have to convince them to help themselves.
So at this point, my prime population at this stage,
now eventually when I get back into,
I don't want to limit what I'm doing
because I feel like I'm learning so much.
Like what we're doing here,
I feel like I'm going to leave here with so much growth
versus I feel like that growth
is a thing I don't want to compromise.
I was going to mention is, by having the whole entire body work cohesively together, you're incorporating the whole body all the way to the point where even when I was on a knee and I was up against the wall and I was moving my arm around in circular motion,
circular motion, I, even though like my feet weren't really part of the movement, cause I'm on one knee, my feet were moving around, my ankles were moving around, my knees were moving around.
There's a lot of stabilization going on in the stomach. And if you just try some of these
exercises, I encourage people to go to your Instagram, check out some of these videos and
just give some of these movements a shot. I think that people will quickly recognize,
oh, maybe some of that direct, you know, rotator cuff stuff just wasn't the ticket for me at the moment.
Not that that can't be an effective exercise, but if you think about the dysfunction that happened there, there's something that led to the front of the shoulder hurting.
And in normal cases, unless you did tear something right there, and even if you did tear something right there, it's probably from something else.
But the pain radiates there.
That's kind of just where it shows up.
And so we blame that spot.
But as we know from having other guests on the show, when you go to move that left arm up and you go to put it up overhead, that other things start to happen in your neck.
Other things start to happen in the sling pattern of your body and the opposite hip.
And the subacromial space, which is where the nerves are passing.
Because you can't make any space for that shoulder to move properly, right?
And now you create compression.
And now if there's fluid in there and I elevate, now the fluid and the fact that that motion itself is going to put pressure in that subacromial space.
fluid and the fact that that motion itself is going to put pressure in that subacromial space.
And now the fluid plus the elevation narrows that space. It pinches the subacromial nerve,
referred pain to the deltoid or to the anterior shoulder or the posterior shoulder.
So we hone in just right there.
Right. And now that it's, it's a, so it's an information. So it's an inflammatory condition, right?
So first, if we can get the fluid to, to, to process and move, now we can see when does the mechanics perpetuate that same sensation or not, or that tells us how much fluid and
how much of a, those are the things that we can control in some way.
Now you get the voodoo floss, right?
And you, you address trying to push fluid out of the joints,
try to even starve it of blood flow and oxygen.
And especially on the knees.
I love the voodoo floss on the knees so much.
Right on the kneecap?
Or do you go up and down?
I go below the knee about four inches, five inches,
and I go all the way above the knee four or five inches.
Because sometimes wrapping right around the joint. the knee four or five inches. Because sometimes wrapping
right around the joint. I want to compress
the joint. Okay, but you don't
wrap right around the kneecap necessarily.
The whole thing. Oh, you do? The whole thing, yes.
I don't want any gaps because then
fluid can escape through that crack.
I just didn't know it was safe for me
because I'm like, this feels sketchy sometimes.
You know, the band kind of digs into you and stuff.
And that's a part of... I'll do it that way stuff. And that's a part of that patella femoral joint.
And the fact is that you feel that pressure
and it may feel like it's giving a little tilt to that patella,
which is more like what you're perceiving.
But Kelly Starrett talks about it a lot.
You're trying to create shear forces.
And remember that the tissue operates, it glides and slides over itself.
So you have your epidermis and you have your dermis.
Well, the dermal layer is your lymphatic pathway and your veins are kind of moving through that space.
And that's what's pulling all the waste products and all the deoxygenated used blood out of the body, right?
And that's why all the veins are right here kind of close to the surface.
It's in the same trend.
But then now you think, what's below that?
You have your fascial layer, right?
That's the encasement of the muscle,
but it's also these fascial slings in this connective tissue.
That's what's holding.
That's why if I turn all my muscles off,
like I can still stay up and you see some of those guys
that are like cracked out on videos and stuff.
They're literally the fascia and connective tissue is what's holding their bodies because their
muscles are just done right so that's kind of uh the idea is those are like your last lines of
defense the ligaments connected tissue but when you get to the joints you have joint capsules
but you still have these these fascial things that are going on that are encasing these systems and
you have this fascial encasement and you have these long leaders that are passing through.
And you have nerves and blood vessels and you have all this stuff.
So everything needs to have its own mobility.
Your nerves.
You can wiggle that stuff around when you get into that voodoo band because it's a rubbery thing.
It's kind of got like a little tack to it.
And you can actually twist your knee gently.
Sheer forces. And you can twist it the other way and you can walk in it and stuff but it's healthy sheer
forces because it's forces that are really being applied to the between the epidermis and the fascia
and you're trying to create movement and separation there which is going to allow things to actually
process and move along kind of like that bruise you had yesterday right in? In those ground mobility activities, it's just like a rolling pin almost,
just kind of rolling as you're perpetually just focusing on the movement itself
and almost stopping thinking about the hip
and just actually working on just kind of opening the body.
All of a sudden, you're really doing some great work on that contusion
to where today it's not that bad.
It's processing along.
In a normal situation like that, it's processing along and a normal situation like that it's a two to three day window for that inflammation that inflammation spike that makes that hypersensitization
the hypersensitization is actually central that's expressed from your brain your spinal cord
and that's the kind of thing i was telling you about earlier the pain becomes a represent
represented in the mind right and now that representation in the mind has to be dealt with and addressed and it
expresses itself quickly so you got to think if i have pain somewhere that representation in the
mind is now obstructed right so let's just say instead of it being these these nice clean
connections i got this fuzz that's kind of obstructing and binding these things together so now only not only is my movement
impaired and disconnected the the idea is is that my sensation of this two separate items here
is also so i have to work on cleaning up the cookies and i have to clear the the cocks cock Koch. Koch. Koch. Cash. Clear the cash. Clear the cash.
Cash A.
You have to defrag.
Oh, dang.
Nice.
You know, you have to.
Well, yeah, it's Andrew's words, right?
Sorry.
Clear the cock.
Right?
You got to clear the cock.
Clear the cack.
Clear the cack.
And then you have to get rid of the cookies and you have to defrag.
Cocking cookies.
So I feel like from a general standpoint, that's really what we're doing.
We're just cleaning up the hard drive.
On that note, you just said cookies.
I'll buy myself a tasty pastry.
Delicious.
So yeah, I feel like that's the goal.
Neuroorthopedics is really the kind of foundation for me.
Neuroorthopedics?
Neuroorthopedics is kind of
the territory that we're trying to define and the work i'm doing here feeds back into what i'm doing
clinically and we have you know neolife uh we have um three operations now we're building a world
class um really great facility that's going to include a performance center and aquatic therapy
at our home base and then we're actually opening it for satellite right now it's just a matter of
some permits and things i'm curious man what got you thinking about a lot of this this way because
you know uh when people are probably going through school and even showing some of the
movements that you're doing there it looks like you made up a lot of those movements.
And that's a good thing because you, you, I don't know.
I know you got stuff from other people, but there's some things on your page that I'm like, I haven't seen somebody do that before.
Well, I think it's through your experience and I don't even, I feel like that's the thing
it's I've tried at times to try to like, uh, narrate where my thoughts come from.
And I think, uh, that's kind of difficult.
I could say, okay, well, you know,
you had functional movement systems with Greg Cook when I come out of school
that really helped just really draw some,
pull some things together for me in terms of, wow,
like you got to really train the nervous system here.
And these patterns of motion are connected. These are the this is the way right and then kelly starrett the supple leopard
now he took this and he he made it a little cooler like he made it a little more um you know it was
just like it it was more appropriate to like working with athletes of different kinds and
maybe even martial artists and then also thinking about yourself as your best experimental case.
Him as an athlete and me as an athlete, like the things that we're able to learn working side by side with these guys.
Like I'm doing everything that they're doing because I want to experience it with them.
I want to know the level of soreness that they're feeling that day.
And because also I want to make sure that they're not copping out of the work.
Because I'm like, look, if I'm going through it and I'm dealing with this, I'm a doctor,
I'm not a freaking professional athlete. So you need to be able to, to deal with this. This is more of a, let's just get through it. You know, there's some mornings you just got to show up
and then you got, once you're warmed up, you feel good. And that's a common thing with any
trainer that works with fighters. That's the most difficult part because they always feel good once
you get them warmed up. But you know, know they'll they'll definitely miss a lot of
training days based off of you know two three days in a row that fourth day it's like i can sleep in
you know it's fine and you know what if you're missing sleep then yeah you should sleep in
if you need to catch up and and not let sleep be a problem i can get that but um if it if that's not the issue and it's just soreness and
you don't like the way you feel when you wake up, then that means we need to get there and get
warmed up when you activate the body and get moving. And then now, once you've done that,
now make a determination. And if you say at that point that I'm still not feeling it, then yeah,
sit out. No problem. But we have information to guide us. And it's not based off of us speculating that
we're not, that it's the best thing for me right now, because I'm the one that's really trying to
spend time in that space of understanding what's best for you. And so even when you don't feel
like it, I can feel confident saying you need to rest or we need to go ahead and get that work in,
because there's a form of work that we can do that's going to make sure that that fifth day you're going to be optimized and ready to go on that.
So that fourth day can be more of that active recovery, that mobility work that we're doing.
That's appropriate any time, any day.
And the way I apply it clinically, because I don't have time to sit there and work with
people in cases, 12 visits over six weeks anymore.
So I need to make a huge impact that's going to stick and that's something that
they can really value and hang on to in 15 minutes, 20 minutes, and I might not ever see them again.
So, and if that's, that might be the only chance I have to impact them, but if I can plant one
little seed or give them one little tool, that's giving them the framework to just spend, and the
recommendation is just spend 10 minutes twice a day, like a child get on the floor and explore and just play with your kids on the
floor and work on the shoulder taps or the open books and get on your butt and support yourself
with your hands and and notice that wrist impingement it makes you want to stay away from
it but there's a point that you can put it that's actually okay. And so don't throw the baby out at the bathwater and say, oh, I feel pain there and now I can't do it.
Because the avoidance that we have, that's the stuff that we've lost awareness to.
We didn't realize that we can't put pressure through our hand there and how that's affecting the whole body.
And the natural use of the shoulder is to support your body while you're sitting.
And you watch in other countries, this is all, the orthopedic issues don't exist.
You know, you can walk into a room and see a 90-year-old woman sitting on the floor,
no problems, and getting off the floor, and they're not compensating,
they're not moving by straightening their legs and hinging upward,
like a lot of patients I deal with, you know, they still have to get on and off the toilet.
They still have to get in a bed, but we're laying on elevated soft surfaces all, you know, or we're sitting on elevated couches that have armrests that are shoving our shoulders into our body.
We're sitting in our cars resting like this,
and then we wonder why we have this trigger point in our levator scap insertion right but it's literally these
these ways we rest and and and we don't realize that we're actually slowly losing um parts of
ourselves so why do you like yoga some people have kind of said that they think that yoga is
even somewhat dangerous it's the hardest thing i've ever done uh that i've committed to and that i've like gotten outside of myself to
do because i was i think i had a i've always kind of dealt with the fear of or not a fear but i've
always been affected by people so like even growing up i could feel tension in my body based off my anxiety and it's
a thing i think we all kind of struggle with where i felt trapped in a way and i breathe really
poorly and i played football for 12 years and uh i played in college and um and so you kind of you
i didn't if i'd have known any of this how much it could have helped me. And watching myself on film, holding my shoulder blades.
The way you were breathing?
Yeah, just breathing vertically and no connection to my diaphragm.
And then also the anxiety I had to deal with, you know, going through school and being alone.
You know, I went to three different schools for years with nobody, with no support, nobody I knew.
And I was scared.
And there was a lot of fears that I dealt with and a lot of hard, hard things that I had to figure out how to deal with alone to cope just so I can get through it.
Because I already wrote these checks.
I already told these people back home what I'm fixing to do.
And for me, like, I just don't want to, I want to stick to my word
and I want to do what I set out to do. And I don't, and why it's because I grew up around those people
that wrote a lot of checks with their mouth and they didn't cash them with their ass. And I just,
and I didn't respect them. And I wanted people to truly respect me for what I did. And, um,
because people are always going to have opinions about about you that don't
really know things and and I realized that used to hurt me you know and but then I'm like things
are hurting me that are out of my influence so I don't have power and I want to have control here
and I want to be able to to feel like I can um be the governor of my own body and not be affected
I was on the city council for own body and not be affected.
I was on the city council for eight years, right?
So I got into local politics just to try to help my community.
But all of a sudden, now there's politics.
Well, it's just local government.
It's not really politics.
No, it really is.
It's almost harsher there than it is anywhere because now people have the right to say mean things.
And you're a public official you deal
with it right uh they have the right to to to make assumptions about you or the things you've done
and with no evidence to support it and it's almost like society no it's fine you know it's because
they picked that spot you know so they're signed up for it and so eight years was kind of like the point where
I'm like this is why term limit should be eight years because that's about the point where I feel
like my heart just can't take it anymore and once I let go of that that's right that was about two
and a half years ago that's whenever Alan was really you know like hey man I think I'm going
to really make a run for this so were you a a coach while you were in city council? Oh, I started my business.
So when I got out of school, it was in 2012, and I went home six months later.
I ran for city council because the guy that was doing it was not somebody.
I'm proud of where I come from.
Our city, we won a state championship my senior year.
We're proud of where we come from.
D'Abraville, Mississippi is, I'm not going to get emotional.
It's special because it's a place that, it's in between Biloxi.
And we're always considered like the stepbrothers to Biloxi, like people know about Biloxi.
But that attitude has always stuck with the tradition.
And we always have football teams that just are next level.
And they're not always blessed with athletes.
It's just hard.
We're just different.
Our parents are different.
The people in that community, the expectations, the names on the back of those jerseys, recycle, you know, generation to generation. And so there's like a, there's a, to be relevant,
you got to really push yourself. And you hear stories about all these people doing these things
and these, these feats on the football field or even fights outside of football, this and that.
And you think that's what being a man is, right? So, you know, from the, from the framework we had,
that was the pinnacle of success was, uh,'s never been done nobody's ever won a state championship so we were
16 17 year old kids with like we developed enough discipline and focus to even that our coach
our head coach left us my junior year after we lost in south state and we still had it in us
to come back with a brand new,
it was a ninth grade junior high coaching staff that came in and took over out of really necessity because they were all from that same school system.
And luckily they didn't, they just kind of let us do what we had to do.
And as 16th and 17th grade kids, we won a state championship.
And we overcame insurmountable odds and and developed ourselves in ways that
looking back are really exceptional um due to those circumstances because they were so
and most kids in that situation they're not going to say like the head coach left the junior year
right and then they were able to win say the senior year and if that was the case maybe some
like really like great coach came in but not to say nothing about the senior year and if that was the case maybe some like really like great
coach came in but not to say nothing about the coach that came in but he was just a junior high
coach that let everybody kind of do what we were already doing you know he didn't try to change
coaches in high school middle school they're just it's different yeah yeah but so we won state get a
scholarship to nickel state for football and so okay i'll pay for my school i'm going to be a
doctor right i'm going to do this i'm going to be a doctor right i'm
going to do this i'm going to be different i'm getting out of this town you know i'm going to
not to come back though like i want to get some skills and like get myself sorted out so i can
come back and so played four years there uh i even left because i didn't i still i my eligibility
was up for four years and then I still had a little school left.
So I went to Southern Miss, basically just a party for like a year.
Southern Miss is a party school.
Graduated with my undergrad, came home for a year
and I started working as a personal trainer at a local gym.
Just in the meantime, I was also volunteer coaching at a high school.
I was also working construction in the mornings.
That's what I would say in the first part of my day and then i started a thing called rock speed school where
it was like i'd go to local school and i speed and agility training with ladders and cones and
things like that and before i know it i had i had 10 kids in that class and so i had to add an hour
to that and then the moms of the kids were like hey hey, we'd like to do something like this to stay in shape.
So I trained the kids and then I had a class full of moms
and it was all like $100 worth of equipment
and it was like I'd go out to a public field.
But then I got into PT school,
so I had the client base I built at the gym
and then the kids and all that I had to kind of move along.
So I had a friend that I was like, look, man, just kind of come with me and check us out,
and I think you would be really good at this.
He's into fitness and health.
Okay, so about half my clients stuck with him.
We're like, yeah, we'd like to stay with him.
And now he just won his fifth state championship
as the powerlifting coach for Gulfport High School.
It's interesting that you were mentioning that.
You don't hear about powerlifting teams in high school.
Right.
His name's Logan Fallon, by the way,
and he'll go into the Hall of Fame in Mississippi
as the most winning powerlifting coach in history.
He's only 35 years old.
Wow.
Yeah, and he was working construction with me the most winning powerlifting coach in the history. He's only 35 years old. Wow.
Yeah, and he was working construction with me when I got accepted to PT school
and basically got introduced into this off of necessity
because I was leaving
and then found a passion and love and desire
and just took it and developed himself
and became this super dude.
But needless to say, I didn't want to leave that out because it's the super, it's a super dude, you know? And, uh, but needless to say, that's just, I didn't want to leave that out.
Cause it's very powerful that not a lot of people win one, much less five.
Um, and then, so I went to PT school in Jackson university, Mississippi.
And, um, that was really when I found my way.
As soon as I got into first kinesiology class and I started seeing these things, I'm like,
oh my God, this is, this is it.
First time I was there, excited to learn, you know, and just, just jacked up about it and I started seeing these things I'm like oh my god this is this is it first time they're excited to learn you know and just just jacked up about it and I could study and whereas
before I always kind of just got through it and um and so finished that that was tough that was
really hard because you're doing and like being away from home and Nichols for that time was tough
but then you go to Jackson and you're two and a half hours
away from home, but it's still, um, I don't have any support system there really. And there was a
lot of hard things that you got to go through. So that's really where I had to adapt the most.
And I think what helped me the most was all those times where I didn't have anybody to really turn
to that I was in a position where I had to complete the mission and, uh, and I had to figure it out. And part of what
I realized now as an adult is because of my grandmother, um, I was able to do it because when,
um, I didn't, her role for me was like, it was like, I could be a bitch. Like I could feel the
fear I had. I could do, I could, and that i'm hiding and i'm trying to act
like everything's fine everything's fine but i'm scared you know i'm anxious i got these scenes
going on and i think back to those conversations i had with her where i uh was vulnerable and just
said i'm scared i'm alone i'm broke i'm you know i'm you know crying, being that little baby, letting that inner child have its place.
And then within five minutes, I'm back.
You know, I'm confident.
I was ready to crush the world, you know.
And so those moments of vulnerability, I realized, were part of what was enabling me to become who I'm meant to be.
And I connected to that as a source of strength.
But also it wasn't easy.
I had to overcome a lot, but she had a way of letting this come out of me.
And I realized that that energetic exchange of me being allowed to be the victim
in this controlled manner allowed me to totally put that victim in its place for the rest of the time.
And obviously, as you get older, you don't need that as much.
But as an adolescent, you know, you look like a grown man, but you're still a baby inside.
Does this ever happen with athletes that you work with?
All the time.
Yeah. now in terms of using a lot of what my grandmother taught me in terms of just being just purely
compassionate and empowering through allowing me to be a little you know instead of expecting me to
hold it up and be together she was almost like it's okay you know and through that I found so
much strength and then um and then that's the strength I try to really share with people
is that you don't have to be a certain way you need to be honest with yourself about what you
feel and the quicker you can do that and you can allow people in your life to be that for you
that was so good for my grandmother too because now she's needed she's valuable she's important
she's 80 years old but yet her purpose is to is to keep me right right
emotionally she knew that and that confidence that she had and that and that vigor she had
that everybody talked about well i noticed it was because of who she was to people people depended
on her emotionally her phone rang all day every day with people calling about their problems and
the things that they were dealing with and going through. And then I noticed people.
Has anybody ever asked you how you're doing, Grandma?
No, not really.
And I'm just like, well, that didn't bother you?
No.
I'm just happy that I'm able to help, right, that they're utilizing me in this fashion.
And I was like, wow, you know, they caused me to look at things differently.
And I always noticed how everybody was always surprised about her graciousness
because she was unconditional.
And she truly loved unconditionally.
She never expected anything.
When she lent the money, she, you know, she wasn't lending.
She was giving it, you know.
And, well, you know, Grandma, you know they're not going to pay you back.
Yeah.
Yeah, so what, you know. And I'm like, wow, you know, grandma, you know, they're not going to pay you back. Yeah. Yeah.
So what, you know?
And I'm like, wow, you know, and as I get older, I realized that that's the way, you know, that's the, the way is to, is to love unconditionally and give unconditionally.
And yet, if you're expecting something and you're not training yourself to really release the conditions, in business,
you have to be conditional, right? Because it's a conditional exchange. It's a game.
Just like any game, you have to have rules. Relationally, personally, you have to operate
and practice unconditional love. That's for you. That's to help you. It's like if I love you
unconditionally and you don't take it well, well, when here and i'm on the plane i go home i'm proud of what i did so i'm i'm free you might have a thought when you're alone that
says man i didn't show a lot of gratitude right there now essentially so you're kind of a prisoner
for your actions not me i'm still good so that's the whole idea and then the things we take personal it's not really based off
of our beliefs it's based off of our tribal labels that we kind of grew up with or these things that
are ingrained in us based off of these these group think mentalities and so I found so much freedom
in my life by trying to realize which labels and group tribe mentalities or thinking I was trapped in
and realized that's where all my assumptions were tied. And the assumptions I made were the things
that were giving me shame and guilt later in creating this prison that I was having to live in,
even though it looked like everything was fine, you know, but it doesn't matter what it looks
like here. It doesn't matter. It matters what's going on here. And to get to the root of that is difficult because, to me, the things I'm doing with people, this is a platform.
As a physical therapist, that's not me.
That's just a part of my thing.
I'm a coach.
I'm a mentor.
I'm a podcaster.
I like to hang out and live a lifestyle with other people that are learning
and growing and and just vibe you know that's it and in doing so it takes the pressure off of me
it takes pressure off the people around me and i think maybe we we create conditions that are
conducive to um that are attractive and that we want to do more of, right?
And so it's the momentum, you know,
and realizing that when we're in a place that we're lost,
we lost the momentum.
We just lost it.
So we just need to kind of get back on that positive trend.
But also when we're in a low point and life hits us in the teeth,
don't rush out.
Sometimes you can stay there and learn so much um about what needs to happen next you know
and the people around you that aren't there when you do step backwards well maybe those are the
people that you need to consciously remove once things move upward right now that's that's where
the championship mindset lies too now that you've learned this information and those people have revealed themselves,
do you have the guts to now make a firmament of action in your future
and to make hard choices to remove people that have already shown you,
despite what they say, they've shown you that they won't be there when it matters,
and then rinse and repeat?
What you got, Andrew?
You were in the zone, so I didn't want to interrupt,
but the pen squeaking is pretty loud in the microphone.
Oh.
It's okay.
No worries.
But real quick, in regards to like the wingspan,
being able to add length there,
are you able to do the same thing with your legs?
Yes.
Because hanging out with matt winning um he was like kind of diagnosing me like just making me do a couple different things but he
was like oh your left leg is like three millimeters longer than your right um and then he talked about
like you can do like some orthotics or that sort of thing well you just need to know if it's
structural or if it's adaptive.
So what, as we were going into it, he's like, well, how long has your back been hurting?
And I'm like, well, we're creeping up on two decades.
And so he's like, okay, I'm going to assume that it's structural at that point if it's
been this long.
And that's an assumption, remember?
Yeah.
So technically the only way to really know is to measure.
Measure the long bones.
So he actually had recommended that as well.
And that's the only way you can make no assumptions.
And that's in case of recommended orthotics, I recommend that you know that you're sure
because this can have drastic changes, especially if it changes in the distance between your
heel and your hip because that's going to affect the positioning of your pelvis.
And the way your pelvis adapts, it rotates.
So to make itself shorter, it's going to anteriorly rotate.
To make itself longer, it's going to posteriorly rotate.
And they function independently.
So if you have one leg that's really long, you're going to get an anterior shift because
your body's trying to create an equal length, but it'll do so by creating some torsion here
at the hip to suck that leg up so
those are the things that you got to be aware of because if you correct the long bones and difference
where if you have the shorter side is going to posteriorly tilt to lengthen just like if you
were going to go heel strike to take a step your pelvis posteriorly tilts to kind of stretch that
leg out and get it in contact with the floor. So that's the biggest thing that you're thinking about in terms of addressing,
like with a heel lift, to correct that.
But then also if it's not at least what I've learned,
if it's not at least a centimeter variance,
then most of the time you're better off just trying to treat it through other means.
But if it's at least a centimeter, then that's typically where we'll add a heel lift and
we'll correct it.
But the biggest thing is to make sure that it's not a soft tissue adaptation.
Because sometimes you can have equal leg length and you can have an anterior shift of the
pelvis, which is going to suck that leg up.
Or you can have equal legs and you have a posterior shift and it's going to lengthen
that leg.
So those are the kind of the things you got to play around with.
We can talk about it and look at it.
Okay, cool.
And then so another thing I wanted to talk about was like so like if I can hear somebody drop a lot of weight in the gym
and I'm way over here all tense up and, my back will even start to feel pain.
Mark, somebody could push him and Seema could, like, get tackled and they'll kind of, like, laugh it off and it'll be funny.
Right.
If I, like, accidentally bump into a wall, my back lights up.
Yeah.
It is super sensitive.
Right.
So when it comes to, like mental side of like pain and everything,
how can you get somebody to come back from that? Because it's like, right for me, my whole bot,
like my whole being is like, okay, let's just try not to be in pain today. So with every movement,
my body is protecting my back. And the second the wind blows harder than I expect, I feel pain.
How can we start to reverse that to where it's like I don't know I can withstand something and be like oh I recognize that I got hit or I took a bad step all right but it shouldn't
fucking totally debilitate me for a week so I think first you gotta identify what's the enemy
or what are we really what are we really looking to confront here? Is it the back pain or is it the hypersensitization, right, and the reactivity of the central nervous system?
And so that's the thing that we got to parse out.
And then how much is the back pain causing an increased autonomic hypersensitivity and hyperawareness, right?
So that's the balance of your state versus the back pain itself and which came first chicken
or the egg you know so usually there's a bit of the natural state of your being that might be
that could be a superpower right but if you go in the wrong doctor's office they're going to tell
you that you have a deficit of hypersensitivity right right? And that's the conversation is making sure that while we're trying to address the back pain,
we're not also creating more of an issue in terms of your internal,
how you manage the internal self and your awareness of your state of excitability.
That's the key, right?
And then now the back pain's relationship to that is the next piece.
And so. Wait, can you explain the excitability part a little bit more?
Sure. All right. I'll use Mark, for example, because yesterday it's all pretty fresh with us with a sore hip.
His movement in his arms were were the most notable limitations.
Right. That weren't even attached or technically affected by the hip, right?
His head movement and his eye scanning was delayed.
Well, what the hell does that have to do with his hip?
Because he's in a state, the body's in a subconscious automatic state
of hyper-awareness and hypersensitivity triggered by this, right?
But you can see it not only in the walking.
There's something behind the eyes I can see.
There's something behind.
There's a difference in the way the pupils are dilating,
the way that the goosebumps on the skin or the vessels even expand
and contract the smooth muscles in the body.
The digestive system has a different state of tightness or looseness,
right? And so that's the part of what I'm talking about is just the basics of what we know about
fight or flight or rest and digest, right? And think about it as that's the background system.
And so your muscle tone, or at least 80% of it, is basically just monitored and governed by
your autonomic nervous system your skeletal
muscle right so like us just standing here well we're not thinking about it but we're up you know
and i'm we're pretty tall there's a lot of muscles having to work and be organized without any
attachment to your consciousness yes right so that's the systems that we're working on interfacing with and realizing, sorry, that
there's a, um, uh, a way in that we, that we thought to a world that was totally disconnected
because we, when now people that practice mindfulness and breath work, it's like, okay,
I can now, as I'm sitting here and I'm myself and I'm quiet, you get some of those same
benefits, but I'm like, man, I don't have enough time to sit there and meditate for two hours.
Like I need to get this stuff in, right?
And so what I've learned is through Wim Hof breathing and through a lot of these ground-based movements and just doing it on a daily basis
and now letting the pressure in the ground react to body, and then spending time in those spaces.
That's where I feel like I've learned more about this downregulation through my own experience,
right? And then learning as you kind of move and track yourself through space, because you take a
hypersensitive person, and I'm thinking about how can I downregulate them, and then once I get them
downregulated, then we'll talk about their back.
So now the gain on the amplifiers is just tuned up, right?
You notice that thing over there?
Well, he heard it and he heard it,
but his body didn't react to it, right?
So that thing is basically a part of your brainstem
that's reacting to a stimulus to address a predator.
And so that's, you're in a state of fight or
flight. And so you're, and that's fine. That's not a bad thing or good thing. Sometimes, like I said,
that can be a skill or a superpower as long as you're really aware of it and you can kind of
work with it, but it's not blocking it or stopping it or changing you. If that's how you are
naturally, like I said, lean into
the fact that there's a lot of abilities that you have that they don't have, right?
Or I don't have.
And that's the part of it that don't, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, right?
There's something about that that makes you special what you do.
But then there's a part of it that you have to balance out and really confront and spend
time with and be okay with
being a little extra hypersensitive, but also realizing these practices of breathing,
lateral scanning, and rotational movements can now get you to a place to where, okay,
now that I spent 15 minutes down regulating, now let's talk about and work on the back and maybe
do some more traditional core engagement
and physical therapy related things or more kind of really strengthening and harnessing
the pelvic girdle and the core to address the back pain in a place where now you've
gotten your emotions to a balanced state to where you're not overreacting to your own
body.
And now you can just spend time with it and learn about it
instead of waiting for the doctor or me or anybody else to tell you
and inform you on it because you can kind of,
now I can really feel these connections between here and here.
And when I breathe, I can feel this link tension relationship.
And you're building your somatosensory system.
And another finding from Andrew Huberman was that the insula of yoga practitioners was 50% larger.
And what is the insula?
It's helping us govern these states of awareness and giving us a firmer foundation to view the world that's not really over excessive or under excessive.
Some people's issues are the exact opposite.
They don't have that awareness, right?
And think about that end.
That sucks.
Wait, so why?
Because I don't remember if I've heard it or not,
but why is it that yoga practitioners specifically have an insula that's 50% bigger?
What causes that from doing yoga?
have an insula that's 50% bigger.
What causes that from doing yoga?
My theory, it's time under bound positions that are optimal.
So they're not compensated.
So you're bound in a position where essentially you're mechanically,
your feet aren't pivoted and moved in a weird way or everything's aligned.
Like kind of like when we were on the line earlier and we said second toe on the line and create that 90 degree space. Well, the disc, that's the, it's orientation. So you're just
kind of, you're orientating and now you're settling, you're altering, you're, you're
bound, binding yourself to where like Dr. Bliza, you have to breathe out of your back. You have
to breathe out of your oblique. You have to, cause you're cutting off sections of your lung capacity.
And then you'll notice that that's what's triggering panic
because even as long as you experience it,
the most seasoned yoga practitioner is experiencing moments in that practice
that every session their body's falling into panic.
I haven't done a yoga class in so long.
It's like, well, you're getting it through jiu-jitsu too.
So imagine your ability to stay calm
while somebody's choking you, right?
And the ability, even if they're in full,
let's say they're in full mount or in side control
where they got their whole ribs and body on you, right?
And they have you in like the head and shoulder control.
Alan destroyed me.
That's like as, that was my introduction to jiu-jitsu
was like high level black belt.
And so like, i've never rolled horrific
yeah like especially that guy well it's not because the thing is i've never gotten injured
rolling with a black belt well yeah i've only been injured rolling with white and blues yeah
you know because this is they know what they're doing so what i learned is too is it allowed me
to grow a lot faster because I was getting right into the
meat and potatoes and not having to learn through my own injuries and insufficiencies and by getting
choked out constantly I can really focus on him kind of putting me in horrible positions and
beating the crap out of me and me saying okay I don't want to do that anymore but also you're
having to really test yourself in those yoga practices the same thing you're kind of figuring
learning there it's the same principle and you're just trying to reach out into other aspects of your life and
carry that in because then you notice you're in a argument at work and all of a sudden okay like
this is the point where now that time and attention that stress and me adapting to that in my own
world can now spill out into this and that ability to just stop and take a breath and notice the shift before it gets into the pot spoiling over.
And those are the times where that same person is going to experience or say or do something, even if it's justified, that when they're alone, when they're in their own world,
they will experience shame or guilt or both.
And even if it's in the smallest sliver, right?
But again, that's the point of like, okay, now you take the yoga practitioner that has this maybe increased switchboard into their autonomic system.
And now in this moment, the fact is they didn't get caught in the weeds.
They get in their car and they go home and they feel great about themselves. And they're thinking about their kids and their wife and what's going to happen for dinner.
And so now that's what I'm saying.
You're taking the experience of that person just dramatically changed.
And now their mind is maintaining a healthy cycle and state and they're going to sleep good that night. No, these are the things I feel like we neglect and we forget that that little spot where we lost our temper
and we were a person that we're not trying to be, that's the thing that's really deconstructing the thing we're building.
And what I've noticed is every moment that I've, even in the most justified moments where I was really done wrong,
and a hundred people can be pulled and they can say, yeah, you were done wrong.
And I have an
emotional reaction i'm a prisoner of that emotional reaction and that's the thing that i look at and
say if if i can remove that the quality of my experience in my life is so much greater
in the long run and i also like honestly the the mental the mental approach that you take to looking
at yoga because uh if somebody
in the strength community if they're looking at yoga they're probably looking at it when it comes
specifically for the benefit of the tissues like power lifting exactly so like oh you're getting
in all those positions it's going to be beneficial for moving a barbell but it might be beneficial
for a lot of things outside of moving the heaviest load possible so It is. It's the mind.
And that's what we're training.
We're always training the mind.
But we're thinking about the context of the body and our goals with our bodies and what we want to do.
But we got to remember the limiting factor is the mind or the accelerating factor is
the mind.
And when you're talking about whether you're a high-level fighter that literally can get
knocked out like Kamaru Usman on national national television despite the fact that he's one of the greatest
champions to ever live and he can show up and and it's all gone he's not carrying none of that with
him and that's why he's a champ because he he he had a moment that most people could turn into a
career-changing moment because they oh how did i look oh man that's so i'm so ashamed you know like yeah but those are those are things that people
those that's what losers do you know they they they allow theirself to okay like we're all losers
sometimes right the winners are the biggest losers the ones that put themselves in positions to lose constantly right and they
probably take small losses constantly but how well do they do it you know can we just take it on the
chin and realize and even when we do get frustrated and angry an apology isn't for you or it's not for
them it's for you all right and forgiveness isn't for them it's for you these are all little things
that we don't think connect to our performance.
And they do.
Like those little unchecked things in our life and our relationships, they matter.
And I guess that's really what it comes down to because every moment's a practice, right?
The things that Andrew's talking about, you know, while he's sitting here behind his desk
and he gets overwhelmed with maybe somebody
texting him while this is going on and you almost probably feel some of the same sensations right
but this idea is okay what can i control and all you can do is what the next step is and that
elephant is not going to get any smaller by us thinking about it we got to pick up a spoon and
we can only fit one mouthful at a time
you know and we just got to start eating and um the quicker we can get it to it the better
you know an element of eating right now yeah
we're losing them right and the tragedy is seeing fighters that train and prepare so hard
and they skip this part.
And then they step in there and they go into the tunnel and then they lose.
And you don't get second chances.
Your record is so finite in fighting.
Like it isn't like football or like where you can lose the first four games a year and still win a Super Bowl, right?
Or more.
You can have a kind of crappy record and still
technically be a champion.
But again, coming from a sport, again,
where you can hide. Like, I can take a
playoff and the team can
hold me up. You can't do that
in fighting. Because if the moment
you're exposed, there's no hiding,
there's no deflecting, it's so honest.
And that's my attraction to it
is that I love the honesty.
And I like the deeper element of the game that can get played.
When I watch Anderson Silva and I see the freedom he operates with
and I'm thinking the efficiency and I'm thinking the balance
in his autonomic nervous system when everybody should be having
that hypersensitivity in there or whatever,
but that's the ones getting knocked out. It's the ones that are being, their hypersensitivity in there or whatever, but that's the ones getting knocked out.
It's the ones that are being, their hypersensitivity is getting exposed.
That hyperreflexivity is a thing that's getting preyed upon by a guy like Anderson.
And so I think that's the whole thing.
And who's using more energy, you know, Anderson, he can do that all day.
He can fight for two hours like that, you know, and he's in control.
And that's because it's not all about knocking people out.
It's about putting them under massive amounts of pressure and discomfort and putting them into, you're putting them into a deeper and deeper tunnel.
And the deeper you can get them into that tunnel, the better you got them, you know.
the deeper you can get them into that tunnel, the better you got them.
And the most beautiful thing to me is seeing a guy like Connor.
That's one of the people that I guess did it best and is showing a lot of – showing he's helped the sport grow so much, not just with what he's achieved,
but his presence.
He was one of the first people that really in that stand-up had this amazing
generalship and control of that space.
And then also he
can knock somebody out, knock them down
and they fall and he stands
there and says, I knocked you down.
Now you stand up. You know, instead
of rushing in and jumping on them and trying to
ground and pound. How many times have you seen somebody
get hurt where their legs don't even work and you see a
guy take them down and then now they're resting
in the guard.
I thought that Francis Ngannou.
I think it's Francis Ngannou. Yeah.
I think it's a Francis Ngannou versus God, who is that?
Just type in Francis Ngannou Savage Knockout.
There's this rough one.
Anyway, we'll pull it up.
But that's the idea is that now take that all as an analogy for life and think of every person is in a fight.
We're all in a type of fight.
We're all confronting fear.
I think this is loud.
Well, actually, this is Andre Olowski.
I lift the guy up off the ground, off the mat.
He's fighting another.
He's got so many like this.
Oh, yeah.
Well, yeah.
Just see him hammer fist these cats after he gets them down, man.
That's just, Jesus Christ.
I'll use, here's a.
Oh, this is done.
Ngannou Overeem.
Wait.
Oh.
Oh.
I mean, Jesus, he was already knocked out.
Yeah.
Oh, Jesus Christ.
The worst was Michael Bisbee.
Who was he fighting?
I just.
Gone.
He's gone.
That's Rock of Sockham Robots.
He was no longer in the room.
Yeah, his soul left.
Yeah.
Oh, fuck.
He wasn't on this planet.
It's hard to see.
And there's another part of this, right?
I'm a monster, okay?
There's a part of me that is, right?
And there's a part of me that is a devil.
That's a nasty individual, right?
And I know because that's a part of what I used and leaned into as a kid.
That was a part of what helped me, helped us win a state championship,
helped me develop this super thing that could get me through a lot of the fears I had.
So the thing is it's kids we
we channel and use the first time my seven-year-old he's like dad when i get mad i can i'm i can i'm
really good you know coming off the ball or whatever in football practice and i'm like yeah
i was like yeah that's powerful right it shows you that you can use that emotion and you now can do
something you couldn't do before and you could win
but what happens is if we don't have somebody having conversations with us now that that's the
way and so then you got these guys and guess what they can come in and use that emotion to fuel them
and to step in there with it and to make you the enemy and to have to charge themselves up in all
these weird ways and win up to a point until
they step across from the champion the champion mindset the guy that was that's doing it right
that's preparing his heart that doesn't need anger to fight you and you realize that that guy
is going to prey on you not because of the fact that he he's he's identifying that you're using your emotion and
he's going to accentuate it and he's going to push you to your limits emotionally where you can't
touch him you can't touch him it's like it's like you're it's just a game to him you know so it's
that's the part that's so cool is that you can think of it now let's say everything is a fight stress is the normal chaos
is the normal the structure we create we think you know that takes a lot of work to create
organization in the universe in general right because chaos is is kind of the constant so i
think that anything that we can lean into where we we lean into the natural order of nature, right?
And our connection to the way we've evolved from earth and just think of it in a less complicated fashion.
And I feel like a lot of the indigenous people or people, our ancestors per se,
they didn't have all the distractions and the information available to them.
They were able to access intuition
and wisdom that's far greater, you know?
And I think that our ability to pursue and to connect with ourselves and find information.
And again, we talked about the mushrooms, right?
And psilocybin, one of the most effective clinical drugs ever discovered, right?
LSD, psilocybin back in, you know, the early, I guess it was in the 70s, early 70s, as it
was introduced was basically they were like, hey, we came up with this thing.
And they said, if any of you psychologists out there want to participate, you know, we'll
send you some pure LSD basically.
And then they started kind of putting it into practice. And then the,
the, the, the outcomes from these cases are, are astronomical. Yeah. Some of the most successful
outcomes in, uh, mental health ever. Um, but again, um, politics and, and culture and all
these things, uh, then, you know, the Nixon administration kind of exonate everything. They put psilocybin as a schedule one drug and basically made it made any mind altering and opening substance the enemy to the state.
You know, in those cultural beliefs and that propaganda and the marketing and the things are built into our beliefs as we stand today.
are built into our beliefs as we stand today. Right. And people now that I know that their perception of what those things are is so far off from the truth, from the experiences that I've had
in as a practitioner, you know, I'm actually curious about this because we started the podcast
talking about weed, I think, but I've noticed that there's a lot of within jujitsu. There's a
lot of people who just roll
high. There's an old tournament called high rollers where it's like everyone just gets
wasted and not wasted. That's not, they get baked, they get baked. Um, but it's funny because their
ability to roll when you watch them roll, they're doing a lot of very complicated shit. Right. Um,
and some of them say that they roll better high than when they're
not right so what have you noticed working with the amount of fighters you do fighters that might
smoke before they they fight or smoke before they train is there do you think i mean it has been
researched but is there a benefit there yes it's dramatic and the guys that i work with that do
and again you're talking about there's a practice there's from a practitioner standpoint everybody's should be their own practitioner so we
should all investigate things with an open mind and spirit in terms of really
trying to gain a perspective of our own and so the use of earth medicines can be
used just like any other thing it could be used as a coping mechanism to deflect and deny or it can be used as a coping
mechanism to accept and embrace and um there's and also the anxiety that may perpetuate from smoking
a lot of times is eased from movement you know oh yeah right that's why people that may not like
smoking and sitting around around people and they might get real anxious.
But you if they smoke and go to the gym and get on a treadmill or they go do something like jujitsu that could be considered like a higher order activity.
But it's it's practiced in the experience and the connection with with that world is familiar with that person's body.
So, for instance, for them smoking, it's actually allowing them to stop thinking and to flow.
And if you notice, flow rolling is so much more productive where you're not really trying to finish.
You're really just trying to get little advancements, and then you kind of almost give up certain spots just to give them a chance. And that's a really ego-free, really nice mechanism to get better at jiu-jitsu without
really having.
But the problem is, is let's say you have a coach or instructor that's so focused on
their techniques and their systems that they're trying to force you into.
And you're getting all this feedback and cuing and all this stuff.
By the way, for those who don't do jiu-jitsu, when he says flow says flow rolling, sometimes people in jujitsu, they'll be like, let's flow roll. And what that means is like
you're now rolling with no intention of probably tapping them. Like you might go to an arm bar,
but then they'll flow to another movement from an arm bar. You'll let it go and they'll go to
something else. And they might go into a triangle, but then they'll let you come out of the triangle
and you just literally flow from movement to movement to movement so that's what flow rolling is it's enough time for you to realize that oh i'm in a
bad spot and then but at the same time you're like okay you felt it i felt okay let go and then you
move on and now you let the perpetual movement does so much man and that's the same thing we're
talking about in the conditioning of flow with our own movements it's just taking it down to a very
basic modality that um that's less complicated.
Like I said, a lot of people can smoke and get on that elliptical,
and they're just vibing and just loving life.
Oh, man, my joints feel good.
The lungs open and expand.
But what it's doing is it's acting on your endocannabinoid pathways,
which are all affecting your autonomic nervous system
and its connections to your deep midbrain, limb and brainstem uh reactions and stuff like that so it's another kind of way to but you don't need
weed to do that either you can do that with breath work so like the the breath work we do
is um is powerful man and it's and the thing is just like i talked you got to stick your hand out
i have to actively put my hand out to receive this gift.
This action of breath work, I have to sit down.
I have to actively breathe in a way where I'm focusing on efficiency.
And I'm learning that breath by breath.
Every rep is just I'm going to get a sliver better the next rep.
And I'm just tuned and connected to how I can build the momentum of this wave, this spinal wave, right?
This weird thing.
But every body, every human body, that's an essential primordial movement that we kind of disconnect from.
And I find that, you know, Ido Portal has a lot of that in his practice.
Yeah.
Right?
If you look up spinal waves, it's wild the way they can move and they can have waves in their spine.
I mean, that's what they call spinal waves.
So check this.
So Mark, stand square towards me.
There you go.
All right.
Now, just don't let my finger – hands to your side.
Don't let my finger touch your body.
Like keep – stay away. Move your body. Look at it. Don don't let me touch you so move away as i'm trying to move right there
like don't let me okay yeah so move see how you do that right that's a wave look yeah
see yeah when you oh it's just because i was looking at this oh yeah you found xp movement
yeah i don't know if this is what you were talking about but exactly those are spinal
waves but yeah this is the guy i was talking about those are just waves out of a different
position but he's guys fucking crazy this is a crawling guy right yeah he's been on all he's
been on all fours for like 600 plus days going to town i was like oh like what
are you doing bro but uh where's the one i wanted to show this dude is crazy i think it's just so
cool to see what the body can do when it starts to adapt right because like now he's he's literally
moving like an animal continuously just because he slowly worked on moving on all fours each and
every single day and he's playing yeah he's just being creative and that's the thing too you got
to think about what we compromise when we go in and use equipment and when we get on machines that
have predefined planes of motion it really it's not yeah we get good work or you can isolate
muscle groups or a certain function but you're also you're cutting
off the elements of your brain that are that give you inspiration and you need to put yourself in a
position to where your brain has to go a little deeper um for instance with that parable like
this thing can smash into my shin oh yeah and really hurt you There's consequences. And so I need to really focus and be skillful.
And oh yeah, that's another good one.
Yeah, when you look at Ido Portal,
if you ever find a video with Ido Portal.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
When you find a video of him,
he does a lot of the spinal wave stuff with a stick.
So he'll hold a stick to someone's body.
That's what I was doing.
So it's avoidance.
And so that's a trick that I learned from him
that I use to help people develop
these types of movements
because avoidance is a
where people even
I'm not thinking about where I can't move
I'm just thinking about avoiding
I'm sorry Andrew I've been making you
do so much this episode brother
Israel Adesanya highlights
because I think honestly this,
this kind of ties in also to what we're talking about.
When you see him,
when you see him avoid punches and stuff like his torso,
I mean,
his hips are in one place,
but he's,
you know,
and the same thing with Muhammad Ali.
It's,
it's a lot of those.
If you go to some of my training,
we do another movement.
I call it a tornado,
but from different angles,
we're looking,
we're looking to create a rotation right this way and then um it's a heliocentric uh
see if you can find one where he avoids uh it was um he was fighting martin vittori and he avoided
in their first fight and he avoided a head kick and he
he bent back
just like the Matrix
see this is like
this is an inhibited
movement right here
well see his opponents
in a state of
total reactivity
and
preservation
and that takedown
was total
this is all survival
his opponents
just trying to survive
yeah
and that's the goal
is just
create a situation
where all they're trying to do is survive and stay alive.
And that's whenever they're, you can, that's when they're the most vulnerable for everything.
That is crazy that like, it's just interesting how you're watching a fight and you can see those postures.
It's like.
Oh yeah, watch this.
There's a head kick that he pulls back on.
Jesus Christ. That movement right there but he
does it again good luck geez see how he gets into the head kick oh there it is wow
look at that that's sick but yeah but that's the thing it's adaptability and let's just say for him that's
all pretty it might be just genetic or his training he's probably kind of creating those
positions but even if you're not as easy if you're andrew behind the computer and and you think about
that motion of of rotation with extension.
And that's actually your spine.
If you look at like even from a couple motions of the McKinsey system or all these old PTs and chiropractors from back in the day, they already.
And that's why even whenever you're going to get your neck manipulated, they bring you into rotation, extension, side bending.
They're coupled motions of the spine
it's not just a linear movement it's it's combining all these elements together that
totally lock the spine because that's the the spine's designed to do so uh what we call
heliocentric rotations just like if you watch plants in slow motion they actually mirror the
sun and so again i think that's another down regulating movement
that you can use along with the breathing that uh that's another tool just another tool yeah
they're all just modalities and what different ways of stimulating and tricking the body to
divert attention to one focus of tracking an object and that simplicity now gets away from
all the complication of the movement because you
look at it like oh
wow but it's not
cuing it and not
it's just being able
to quickly get into
it and just let the
movement define
itself you know
take us on an
energy sure thing
thank you everybody
for checking out
today's episode
please drop us some
comments down below
let us know what you
guys think about
today's conversation
we got pretty deep
that was fucking
cool man thank you
so much yeah that
was fucking awesome so we want to hear what you guys think about today's conversation. We got pretty deep. That was fucking cool, man. Thank you so much. Yeah, that was fucking awesome.
So we want to hear what you guys have to say.
Please like today's episode and subscribe if you guys are not subscribed already.
Please follow the podcast at MB Power Project on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter.
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Robbie, where can people find you?
Movement underscore doc on Instagram.
A lot of cool stuff on your page.
Thank you so much.
What do you guys think of Nseema's
mustache?
I think I made him mad.
How'd you make me mad?
Because you had said he looked like um oh yeah yeah uh
lando calrissian which i found that as a compliment but you motherfucker
and i admitted i was like okay maybe it was a little racist on my part as whole the first the
first person i thought of that was black bald with a mustache tim hardaway and i was like yeah
you look like tim hardaway and i was like yeah you look like tim
hardaway and then he pulled him up and i'm like ah maybe i should have said michael jordan you
know like i think he would have been like i would have taken that yeah yeah so i switched my answer
he normally has like full beard going yeah if you remove if you remove the flavor saver it
takes a whole different person i like the flavor saver though it a whole different personality the flavor saver though it gets
creepy if you take this off though is what i'm saying oh man it's just funny hey yo you know
what's funny though i texted uh i texted you this is fucked up i texted my girl today because she
left the house before i shaved i was planning on shaving my whole face.
But I texted her, I know you're itching for the mustache to rub your...
Oh, God.
And then I was like, whoops, wrong person.
What'd she say?
She was like, dude, Seema, you must be joking.
It was so quick, too.
So you better be joking.
Oh, my God.
I'm at Mark Smiley Bell's strength is never weakness weakness never strength
catch you guys later bye we're out of here oh god