Mark Bell's Power Project - What EVERYONE Gets WRONG About Caffeine - Andy Triana || MBPP Ep. 1047

Episode Date: March 20, 2024

In episode 1047, Andy Triana AKA Go Super Brain, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about how what we might be getting wrong with Follow Andy on IG: https://www.instagram.com/gosuperbrain/   Official Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw   Special perks for our listeners below!   👟 BEST LOOKING AND FUNCTIONING BAREFOOT SHOES 🦶 ➢https://vivobarefoot.com/powerproject   🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save up to 25% off your Build a Box ➢ Piedmontese Beef: https://www.CPBeef.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150   🩸 Get your BLOODWORK Done! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel, and use code POWERPROJECT for 10% off any lab!   Sleep Better and TAPE YOUR MOUTH (Comfortable Mouth Tape) 🤐 ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject to receive a year supply of Hostage Tape and Nose Strips for less than $1 a night!   🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!   Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained:      ➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!   ➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!   Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject   FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell   Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ UNTAPPED Program - https://shor.by/untapped ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en   Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz   #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

Getting energy from putting out more energy. I thought it was energy in, energy out. So it's not as simple as energy up or down oftentimes. You want to maybe have your dose of caffeine, do something physical, and that'll allow you to use that caffeine in a better fashion. Everything that goes on norepinephrine-wise

when you go for a short run will make your caffeine work better. Do a physical activity upon waking. Would that be maybe similar to something like a strategy instead of a cup of coffee? Yeah, that's a great one, especially for people where creativity, focus, or speech are really important. The reason why they drink the coffee is so that it will give them, or they have caffeine, is so that'll give them the motivation to get going. So, I'm not motivated to wake up at six o'clock in the morning to run. To be honest, no one is.

Power Project family, we've had some amazing guests on this podcast like Kurt Angle, Tom Segura, Andrew Hooperman, and we want to be able to have more amazing guests on this podcast, and you can help it grow by leaving us a quick rating and review on Spotify and iTunes. If you're listening to the podcast, just go ahead and give us a review. Let us know how you dig it and help the podcast grow so we can keep growing with y'all and bring you amazing information. Enjoy the show. What's going on over there, Superbrain? You look a little leaner than last time you were here. A little bit leaner. I've enjoyed a life change when it comes to fitness recently. Business has been booming and I've been exploring a lot of different avenues to help people and doing a lot of cool stuff and traveling quite a bit for maybe

the second or third year in a row. And sometimes when life changes, like your, your goals do too. It wasn't really feasible for me at the moment to keep pursuing strong, man. I had a couple injuries back to back to back. And I just like saw the writing on the wall. You know, if you swing a hammer at a nail and your thumb gets in the way, are you mad at the hammer? Are you mad at your thumb? Are you mad at the nail?

You know, so I had everybody else except for yourself, this goddamn thing. I kind of felt like that for a sec. I was like, you know, I don't have the time to work out for three hours and do everything else I want to do. And for a minute I was like, well, I won't do anything at all, or I'll just do it when I can. And that's not the right choice either. So nowadays I'm doing like, uh, some daily eight minute runs, but that's, that's all I limit myself to at the moment, just for some support there cognitively. And it really helps early in the morning. Yeah. I go for eight minutes, you know maybe it's a nerdy thing, but the creatine kinase recycling process takes eight minutes to recycle.

Doesn't sound nerdy. Andrew was talking about that. Yeah. Me and the gym bro the other day,. Andrew was talking about that earlier today. Yeah, me and the gym bro the other day were just talking about that specific thing. Your eight minute cycle. Yeah, I get it. I get it. But I was like, you know, if we can recycle phosphocreatine in eight minutes

and it's something that's defined, there's got to be a benefit to doing as little as that when it comes to a small bout of easy aerobic work. So I did that to give me a little more energy in the mornings because I found myself over relying on caffeine at times on the road and realizing how quickly caffeine tolerance changes and how quickly it doesn't serve you. And I was like, wow, it's crazy how much fitness levels and like just being aerobically active made caffeine work better. And then magically I needed even less. and like just being aerobically active made caffeine work better. And then magically I needed even less.

And all these like kind of little changes in my lifestyle led me to, you know what, I'm going to try to get shredded at the moment. Like personally, you know, because I might, I only go on Instagram when I poop sometimes nowadays. So it's funny, I'm not on social media, but I crave that little bit of discipline. It's something I can do while traveling. I'm playing a lot more golf and it's like a life change at the moment. You know, I

totally plan on coming back to strength sports sometime soon, but it's just not fitting right now. And I've enjoyed like the change of pace. Cause I was in a strong man for like eight straight years, nine straight years. Wow. Getting energy from putting out more energy. I thought it was energy in energy out. Like, how does that work? Like, honestly, like, it was energy in, energy out. Like, how does that work? Like, honestly, like, how does it work? Like you go for a run and it, all of us have experienced this. A lot of people listening to the show have probably experienced this before. What's happening inside the body when we get this energy moving and we get the system moving, how does that help us feel more energetic? So it's not as simple as energy up or down oftentimes. What people realize

is like, here's a funny joke. Let's say I hooked you up to an IV of insulin and dextrose and like morphine and you went to sleep. Best comedian we've ever had on the show. Sorry, Tom Segura. In theory, you'd have the most ATP yielding opportunities because we directly gave you some insulin, glucose, amino acids, and we put you to sleep, right? You would think you'd have the most, but obviously when you woke up from that, you know, somewhat medically induced coma, you wouldn't feel great in case you were aggy. Yeah. In case you were wondering, but why sometimes after a little bit of physical fitness fitness or if you miss breakfast or lunch and you're super focused, you actually feel better oftentimes. And it has to do with the fact that energy as a whole when it comes to ATP being managed is really motion of electrons and enzymes.

And we know that cells in general will always function at higher rates as heat begins to increase. And that's just one small factor. Heat, you know, has nothing to do with any of the other science stuff I mentioned. Just getting acutely warm can alter and will alter enzymatic function. So even just getting up and doing something as simple as like just hitting a punching bag or you can even like, like, you know, anything can be physical fitness. It doesn't even need to be necessarily logical for you to potentially have an enzymatic and metabolic response that allows you to go through these ATP shuttling pathways and recycling pathways quicker. And also then you feel better because feeling good is something I always separate from therapeutically enhancing someone's life when we talk about getting better. Because what feels good to you

might be different than to you. I recently worked with someone who is really, really well-known swing coach and he wanted just to feel better. And his definition of feeling good was actually different than what I assumed it was for him. So when I made recommendations because he said he wanted to get healthier and feel calmer,

he didn't feel quote unquote good when he was calm. He felt good when he was sympathetic and hyped up. When you say he didn't feel good when he was calm, what do you mean? It's not that he didn't feel good when he was calm. He felt normal, right? And he wanted to. But when he said he wanted to feel good at work, he actually meant he wanted to be hyped up and a little sweaty and very social and euphoric. Okay.

Right? up and a little sweaty and very social and euphoric. Right? So what the definition of feeling good for you in general versus this moment is something that must be separated than what you need therapeutically. So maybe we see that your homocysteine is a little off smelly. And one of the best ways to deal with homocysteine is through creatine work, really. And you're like, oh, I hate creatine work. It's like, all right, maybe we'll find another way to do creatine work that's more fun for you but it must be done therapeutically so you say creatine

work what do you mean specifically so creatine work you know we have the just try to stay a little closer to the microphone just pull it close to you like just yeah just pull the whole base there you go sorry guys i might be going backwards with technology um but you know we have our phosphagen system where creatine exists. We have our glycolytic system and we have our aerobic and beta oxidative systems. So what I mean by creatine work is any type of activity that's exclusively existing in that phosphagen system. Gotcha. And a lot of times in the context of a workout, you've had me do these before, it looks like exercising with not a with, uh, not a lot

of rest. The intensity isn't really high. Um, and you're also not working the failure. You're, you're getting shy of failure and you're basically just kind of getting close to like a pump, right? Yeah. So in a lot of ways, cause the cool thing about pump, it's just blood and nourishment going somewhere. So you can technically get a pump doing anything, right? Whether it's beta oxidative, glycolytic or phosphagen work. But here we're looking at short bursts of activity followed by slightly longer bouts of rest than the burst. So even if you're only working for eight seconds, maybe you'll take 24 seconds or more off. So if you're doing deadlifts, this might look like 20 sets of one with 50% of your one rep max and like 30 to 45 seconds rest.

But you could also do this with med ball throws. And the reason I like creatine work as a whole is not just like, I think it has a really powerful argument for preventing neurodegenerative decline over time, but more importantly, it's got the broadest bandwidth for creativity. Like I said, you could just punch in a random direction. I tell people who like live in the woods, like screw a med ball, pick up a rock. And it's like, all right, this is a random direction I tell people who like live in the woods like screw a med ball pick up a rock and it's like alright this is a heavy rock I will do heavy rock things with this and then this is a light rock and I'll do light rock things with this

it doesn't have to be as rigid as going to the gym and like doing a two and a half percent increase in intensity you know sure that might be increasing the load which will correlate with creatine kinase in that scenario but it doesn't have to be that rigid. As long as you produce large amounts of force quickly and have a more timed rest than the time you participated in,

you could easily be in that creatine phosphate world. You could probably easily do this on a walk. My favorite thing to do on walks or jogs with people is to break it up every two, four or eight minutes with a throw, you know, time four minutes on a jog and throw something and then jog four minutes back and then throw something else and just do that. And if you don't have something to throw, I suppose you could get down, do some explosive pushups or jump. Yeah, jump, be creative, punch something, kick something, you know, like allow yourself to expand the physical horizons and the world you exist in. So many of us who lift only exist in like the sagittal plane of flexion and extension, but we have a transverse plane and a frontal plane to exist in as well. Have you noticed a body comp changes when doing stuff like that?

Yeah, it's funny. I'm leaning out differently. I'm noticing more that like my arms and legs and non-visceral areas are leaning out a lot quicker this way but my viscera like my belly you know is leaning out slightly slower and I noticed when I was lifting a lot more weights because I'm still lifting weights I'm just doing it more frequently

in smaller bursts so the total fatigue and damage is lower you stole that from us, by the way. Yeah, I did. I really did. But that being said, when I was lifting harder with more damage more often, I noticed it was way easier to keep my midsection leaner. And I think it's just by the nature of when I was doing more damage, I was eating a lot

more carbs. And we know that insulin sensitivity and how you manage cortisol and all those things tend to correlate with belly fat. And I don't think it's that even I have higher cortisol levels or whatever you can make up for having a slightly more belly fat now that I'm doing different activity. It's that you get what you put in. So if you do activities that promote X, you'll get X resultant. And I find that lifting weights when you induce damage is the best thing you can do to promote insulin sensitivity. So right now, maybe I'll do like four to six working sets per session of like bodybuilding style lifting when I do that stuff, rather than the 20 I was doing before. 20. Yeah. And the difference in results is not that one's better or worse, that they're just

sheerly different. What you gain from four to six sets of what might be your typical glycolytic bodybuilding stuff is way different than doing 20. And it's not per exercise, like in that whole session, just doing a couple of things real quick has a different value. But in my opinion, it's still tremendous. And I'm seeing it in this phase of my life right now. When I was doing strongman stuff, my cognitive health, ability to be creative, memory, speech weren't nearly this good. And it makes sense. I was doing a lot of physical body damage, but life has shifted for me now. And my brain is doing a lot more work. So I need to do things that promote my cognitive capacity, fitness, and wellness. That makes me wonder what your definition of good was, because I think you were here when you were doing some of that stuff and you were still sharp as fuck. So like, well, like what has, what has managed to improve? I mean, I know you notice it, but how, how do you notice it? Cause you've always been able to communicate things very clearly so that people can understand. Thank you. I mean, it's, it's easy to showcase yourself on a podcast, right? Like if like, you know, ADCC, like that day, you're probably disgustingly filthy and you're probably

just mostly as good the other days of the year, but it's easy to peak, you know, you get on a podcast, I'm going to make sure I feel incredible, but it's more so that my ability to be focused for hours has gone up tremendously, um, without the need for like a break or seeing that decline in ability to be focused. And like the days of the week I can be dialed have gone up as well. And more creativity I've noticed from you. Yeah, exactly. And sometimes it's part of work. You know, I've just been put in scenarios where you have small confines to work in and we expect results really fast. So I've just gotten more creative by nature,

but I think before like a flight would mess me up a lot or, you know, I'm coming off a three-week work trip right now. I go home after this tomorrow and I still feel great. And I've been traveling for three weeks. Um, and I'm sure it was a sports tournament, but I've still been working every single day. Um, and that's what it's really improved. And we were talking a little bit in the gym earlier about like physical energy versus mental energy. And you're saying, yeah, you know, like I have been traveling and you know, this happens and that happens and you get sidetracked and it can kind of lower the way that you feel, but you can just push through that. And then your, your physical energy will probably supplement your mental energy and so forth.

Yeah, you can't escape the synergy of the human body. And I think I keep seeing that in so many different lights. But it's funny. I've been on the phone for a couple hours in a row, was out all day doing the work I do on the field with sports athletes. And then I would get to the hotel room at like 7 p.m. at night. And it was very easy for the first year of me doing it. Say, oh, I'm just going to eat some food and go to sleep and like wake up groggy and not even sleep that well. And then whether it's 7 p.m. at night or six o'clock in the morning, the benefit I've

been able to derive cognitively and even mood wise from like 20 minutes of well-done resistance training or 20 minutes of this, or even that eight minute jog, even promising to myself, I'll do one of those things per day without talking about body fat or health. My, my brain's just way better. I want to ask you because earlier you were mentioning something about caffeine and the way you were dealing with it. What was it that changed? And what were you speaking of then, if you remember? Yeah. So like, think about it this way, you know, you start out with like your one cup of coffee and then you get stressed, you got some work and you're, I'm going to have a little more

to get the same effect. And there's nothing wrong with that. But what I want out of any supplement, drug, you know, whatever compound, whatever word makes you feel comfortable, even though they're all the same, right? Suddenly you say drug, people get weirded out. People also try to tell you that melatonin is drug-free sleep when you're literally taking an oral ligand or hormone and doing the same thing as its natural production when it's the definition of a drug whatever my point is it's like when you take caffeine even if you take more ideally when you increase dose of something you want it to

work better and have the same lasting effects, right? Logically so. So I would take more caffeine and I wouldn't work better and it would be like shorter in duration. And everyone's experienced that before, but I'm just in a position in life where that's unacceptable. And I was like, what the hell, man? Like, why is this happening? You know, I wasn't abusing it saying I was taking the bunch every day. It was just when I needed, but it just wasn't working as well. And then I didn't necessarily, this wasn't why I did that eight minute jog. I did it to lose a little weight, a little faster and stuff and just feel better. But suddenly all of a sudden caffeine got more

potent. I started taking less of it. And it's this synergy between the lipase enzymes and everything that goes on norepinephrine wise, when you go for a short run, will make your caffeine work better. Because when we take caffeine, we do have norepinephrine-wise when you go for a short run will make your caffeine work better. Because when we take caffeine, we do have norepinephrine that flows into the blood and all the stuff that you guys already know about. But what makes that stuff effective is very correlative with aerobic exercise, in fact. So rather than drinking a coffee and then immediately sitting down to try to get to work, you want to maybe have your dose of caffeine, do something physical, and that'll allow you to use that caffeine in a better fashion. Yeah. And it's also just from a philosophical perspective, if caffeine's your ace card that you're relying on, you can't be keep playing it

and then just play it and do nothing with it. So like, let's say, you know, everyone like loves to crave a coffee when you wake up or a monster or like kind of whatever your thing is. And it's awesome to sip on it, go slow and get on the computer slow, let it hit you. But then all of a sudden, like I said, over time, it doesn't work the same in another. So like I challenged myself and other people to do the eight minute run or do like whatever your goal is, do 10 minutes of arms if you want to get huge arms

or like whatever it is, do a physical activity upon waking, even do it fasted or without fasted, that doesn't matter. Then shower or cool down and then decide if you still need that caffeine. Cause there's nothing wrong with using it, but maybe delay it two or three hours. So it actually gets you through that 1 PM rush. And even philosophically, if you take something at 8 AM and it works at 8 AM, why is re-upping it at 1 PM your first move? Even not knowing anything about supplements or science, it just seems like a bad, like not a logical idea.

8 a.m. is so different than 1 p.m. in your workday. Why are you doing the same thing again? Well, because it worked once. So that means it will work again, right? Yeah. And then it's like, oh, I'm just going to swing the hammer harder. Yeah. So for people who do find themselves in that situation where they just need to, first off,

they don't find out they can get things done without it because I think for me personally, that's a weird place to be where you don't feel like you can get good work done or you don't feel motivated without caffeine. have some exercise scientists talking about caffeine. You always get reference to the positive studies and all these studies that talk about how it's good for Alzheimer's, how it's good for cognitive performance, how if you take a certain dosage, it's not bad for you, but people find themselves being literally dependent on it to perform. What should they think about? Well, first you need to ask yourself, why is my toolbox so small? Whenever I work with a pro athlete, the first thing I ask them is gun to your head. You have to get as good as you can in one week. What do you do? And they, they always have one answer. It's like, okay, you can't do that. What's next? And they're like, uh,

uh, so it's the same thing here. Gun to your head. You have three hours to feel as good as possible. What do you do? Drink a coffee out of coffee. What do you do next? You only have one tool in your toolbox and you keep swinging the hammer and you're upset that it's not working. So a lot of times, like you guys know me, I love supplements and it can help people with that. I have tons of supplements that work, but it's an introspective issue. You only know enough about yourself to say that caffeine is the only thing that can help you. And you don't even know what that good is for you feeling good enough to say, Oh, I think this similar supplement can work, or I can go for a jog. And that also helps people

find one tool that works, holds onto it forever. And then when it stops working, they blame the tool and not themselves. You could use a walk. You could use a run. You could use a lift. You could use the sun. You could use a cold plunge you could use a red light right there's a yeah hot option anything it's it's pretty much anything that aligns with what you want half the times people don't even know what they want they're just like well i've just always drank a monster before work and then like i said i just did two but why do you only have one tool to accomplish something that's important to you you have multiple ways to get to the gym you have multiple ways to get home from work right things that are important you, you develop backup systems and if then decisions for.

You know, if you want to get lean, maybe you don't have every meal cooked, but you know where the next meal is coming from, right? Or, you know, like if I go to the restaurant or the gas station and they don't have muscle milks, I'm going to go cashews instead. Or, you know, things that matter, we always intrinsically create layers for. And then people wonder why it doesn't work when they don't have those layers for something that they care about. I wonder too, we have such an association with waking up and having a coffee. And then what happens when you wake up and you have a coffee and you're not really doing much? What's the coffee for? I think is an important thing to – I'm not saying you're not doing anything by being on the computer,

but you aren't actually physically engaged in anything that challenging. Yeah, I think that's what it is. The people don't have these questions or answers they ask themselves because, you know, the thing that's awesome and not awesome about research is based on the context and how it's posed, you can make anything true. I can make an argument for only drinking caffeine when you're lazy, and I can make an argument for only drinking caffeine when you're lazy, and I can make an argument for only drinking caffeine when you're active, and they can both be accurate. That's sometimes the problem with when we look at research where we're putting a supplement in a Petri dish with a single or two-celled organism.

It's like, oh, well, there's no context. So if you're lazy on Sundays and you fast most of the day, I would probably slam some coffee. It'll help you support some of the laziness that you're paying off on Sunday because the rest of the day you work pretty hard. It'll help reduce the appetite and all that stuff. And good for you, slam it on Sundays. But then you use that same ace card tomorrow to go to the gym and suddenly you have diminished returns. So it's like asking yourself, like, what is good for me? And how do I want to tackle that is really at the central premise. And when I've asked people, whether they're CEOs or whatever it is, these questions, they end up with better intuition and better decision-making. And I haven't even given them like a consultation or a plan or an approach yet. So it's really philosophical that I've noticed why people can't get where they're going. Power Project Family Foot Health is something that we talk about all the time on the podcast, and that's why we love Vivo Barefoot Shoes. But we love them not just because they are flat, flexible, and wide, but also they don't look bad. They look actually really, really good.

These are their new boots. These are their Modus trainers for in the gym. These are some of their casual shoes. But when you look at a lot of barefoot shoes, some people get turned off because they don't want to wear those shoes outside. And that's understandable. That's very understandable. But with Vivo, these shoes look so good, and they're so good for your feet that they're almost a no-brainer. So, well, they are a no-brainer. Andrew, how can they get some of these kicks? Yes, you guys got to head over to VivoBarefoot.com dot com slash power project and you guys will receive 15 percent off your order.

Again, vivo barefoot dot com slash power project links in the description as well as the podcast show notes. How about for like the like the cognitive benefits? Because I've noticed that for me, like if I I don't drink monsters anymore, but like when I would have one before a podcast, I felt like I was a little bit more engaged in the conversation. Like words came to me way quicker. That's like the biggest thing for me is like the, like the verbal side of things with caffeine. And for me personally, I've noticed that like, it just helps me like articulate words way better. And then also like when I'm working on stuff, I just feel like I can kind of zone in a little bit better as opposed to when I don't have that caffeine. Yeah. So a supplement that'd be really similar in that specific and the wonderful thing that I can do to help amplify people and really anyone, any coach or whoever tells you that they can just give

you an answer without knowing what that good or why is for you is kind of just making something up and making assumptions. But what Andrew experiences with the verbal response oftentimes have to do with serotonin and the pars reticula and compacta portions of the substantia nigra. So Subroxy is the patent for Oroxylin A, O-R-O-X-Y-L-I-N hyphen capital A is the botanical extract there. Works really, really well on these subparts of the substantia nigra, the pars compacta and reticulata. And those are going to give you those like speech and euphoric socializing like effects of caffeine. But maybe, and a lot of times I also ask people, when do you notice these effects? Because what we see with caffeine, same with Adderalls and Vyvanse's is the norepinephrine

serotonin and dopamine effects come at different times so if you notice that like after an hour or two of caffeine you like those benefits better than the immediate rush of caffeine because there is that immediate rush even though everyone will swear that it takes 45 minutes to reach peak plasma but it's everything happens at different rates, right? So the first couple of seconds, we have a mouth-based microbiome and bacteria do a lot more for communication and chemical signaling than they do for actual bacteria stuff, I guess. Maybe people don't view it that way, but it's the chemical signaling and the communication that occurs when coffee or anything hits your tongue and mouth that makes the immediate responses happen.

And then an hour or two later, what you might feel then is coming from a different mechanism. The drill that we just did, standing on one foot, having a conversation, trying to be descriptive of something and catching the ball and throwing it back and forth and stuff. Would that be maybe similar to something like a strategy instead of a cup of coffee? Yeah, that's a great one, especially for people where creativity, focus or speech are really important. And on the flip side, skill sports. I learned this through speaking and working with some golfers that oftentimes the disparity between practice, and this applies to fighters as well, I need to get higher? Like, what does that mean, performance anxiety? And what I look at performance anxiety in any sport as, it's a disparity between decision-making and executive function

and your sensory motor physical body being active. So sometimes notice it when your heart rate's really high, you make poor decisions or really low. There's this constant association and de-association between your thinking and that stuff with the excitement from your spinal cord and sensory motor cortex. So sometimes you want to be dumb and you don't want them associated. And sometimes you do want them associated. If you're doing BJJ, golf, or any other high skill, fine motor sport, the association is quite important, but maybe you're running an Ironman where you're probably going to poop yourself at one point and

still be able to run. That's a good thing in part of the sport, but you want that de-associated. You don't want to have a thought executive process that kicks on because it's going to talk you out of stuff. You need to be relatively numb executive wise to be able to run for like four days and poop yourself and still get across the line. It's really impressive, but people in sports need to be aware of these things. Do I want this paired up and matched up or do I not? Athletes call it their feelings or their feels. And even beyond that, you have to know if you can trust it. So a lot of times when I talk to athletes about working on the feels that they want, and whether it's, you know, football, baseball, et cetera, et cetera, it's like, show me your

feelings are true. I'm going to put you in a glycolytic desaturated, heavy breathing state, and I'm going to take your biomarkers and I'm going to read them and you're going to tell me how hard it was and what you felt. So maybe you're like, oh my God, that was the hardest thing I've ever done. And I saw a heart rate of 105 and your SpO2 was still 96. It's like, okay, I can't trust your feeling of difficulty, but maybe it was like your skill and you're like, oh man, that was perfect.

I like absolutely flushed that or that was the perfect combo. And like, that guy was submitted as textbook as it could be in four seconds flat then you're like that felt perfect and i saw that now i can trust that but maybe you did something horrible and you're like bro you see that and that's like yeah yeah suddenly you can't trust that feeling the same way right and that's why communication is so important the same way if you get into an argument with your significant other it's important to not ignore the moments after where you're both calm and can talk about it. Even though it might be awkward, you still need to talk about it. And the same way an athlete or anyone I consult with, I find a language between us is very important. So when you say,

Andy, that sucked, it was really hard. I know what that means. And when you tell me I'm hungry, I also know what that means. People think hunger is just I'm hungry, I also know what that means. People think hunger is just like a thing, but I, you know, I'm hungry all the time for a donut or something delicious. Right. I'm sure Mark is too, but that doesn't mean like that hunger is something that you need to listen to. Do you find that it's like pretty interesting when you're dealing with high level athletes, how much of the basics you have to still probably communicate with them about? Yes and no. Because sometimes I see people with incredible intuition

and it occurs on like the professional side too. Sometimes I'll talk to people who have their, you know, CEOs or politicians have their life basically perfect and they're missing a few details. Then I see something where it's like, oh my God, like how did you get here, bro? Even you being here today is impressive to me you know so it seems it's usually an extremist scenario it whether it's an elite level athlete or you know billion dollar ceo or whatever it ends up

being at the moment and everyone else i work with everybody you know i think you actually are responsible for clint darden sending norman kel, who's some guy in Egypt my way, who I don't charge a dollar. And we're supporting him with Parkinson's at the moment. We, me, I'm trying to help him through some stuff, you know, not medically, just by talking about little brain games and drills and things I do with him to improve his quality of life. But we just emailed and chatted for a little bit first to create that language. And I think having communication within yourself, within your coach or your consultant or whoever you use is super important. I think people are way too quick to tell me how much to take, tell me what to do right away. And there's none of that stuff is accurate. If you don't have the context, you know,

in the previous episodes, we talked about blood work, right? It's like that Ferrari with the spinning rims in the picture. You've taken an isolated snapshot of something that's constantly moving at a high rate. How can I know any of that is useful without knowing what you did and who you are in the last three months of your life and the stress you're going through? And that stuff is very doable. In fact, creating context to blood work, you know, as we've spoken about in the past is really, really a doable thing. No, I know you know so much about different supplements and the way they act with the body, but when it comes to you personally throughout your day, are you doing multiple drills before you get ready for certain activities because of what you know? Are you doing certain things

before you have to get into deep learning, certain types of drills before working out? Do you have just these things that you're constantly doing? Maybe not constantly, but I definitely practice what I preach in the sense of like, if I know this gets you dialed, sure. I know the science, but I know it because I did it too. And like, I'm doing it. So like something simple as like, you know, what I've been doing recently, if I have a lot of work, especially to do in the morning or a lot of phone calls, I'll wake up fasted. I'll do a little bit of Kratom, a little bit of carnitine choline, and a little bit of sodium sucinate. And I'll go for my eight minute run.

I come back. I immediately, the first thing I do is get on my back and do a respiratory drill to now control for blood pressure and all the vasoconstricting dilation changes that might happen with running. I remember I did that run for my brain. I didn't do it for my waistline necessarily. So I do that respiration drill to shift gears. Then I usually take like a cold shower. I'll start it warm and stuff and on cold. Cause it also helps me not sweat. I'm a sweater. I'm not just doing it for the cold benefits. I'm also a realist. Like you don't have to do all the trendy stuff to like be healthy. You can be healthy, being as boring as you want to be, or as trendy as you want to be. So that's just what I do. I'll smell bad when I sweat often and I won't be sweating and smelly all day, even though I'm just home. So I end on cold.

I have my ultra super smelly shake and I get to work. And if I get, go through all that stuff and get to work and I'm not dialed, then I have a vision drill I'll do. And then I get to work. And then it goes even a little deeper than that. Like, let's say I get to work and I'm not dialed, then I have a vision drill I'll do. And then I get to work. And then it goes even a little deeper than that. Like, let's say I get to work and I'm like, man, I feel energized, but my speech is off or I feel not creative. I'll do something that's different where it's like, man, my brain's working, but I'm just slow now, you know? And even a little bit of nourishment goes into that.

Like maybe I get back from the run and I'm like just boiling hot. I'll add a little more fat to my super smelly shake. But if I get back and I'm like, dude, I'm still not hungry. I probably push that shake back 30, 45 minutes. The hell's in the super smelly shake? You don't share it? Don't say it, super brain. No, I haven't talked about it before.

It's just a iced coffee with a steak shake, some creatine, and I guess whatever the hell else you want to throw in there. Oh, okay. So what I throw in my super smelly shake is I do – But it becomes a thing after a while. You start scooping stuff in and you get excited. So I go scoop a Keto Pro, scoop a steak shake. I do – I have a creatine Pico 2 mushroom blend I add to it. I do C8 MCT oil, usually about 10 to 14 milliliters.

And then I do grass-fed half and half. And I just mix all that up. Oh, it's so good. So, so good. And me and Mark just have a joke about it. It's like too good. Probably going to have the feds show up to my door after this for talking about it in public. It's highly addictive.

It's highly effective and it's just one of those things that's super smelly shake you also mentioned kratom in the stack and kratom is something that like whenever we mention it there are people in the comment section that go crazy they're like oh it's super addictive it's bad for you and then some people are like it's been great for me i dig this stuff but what are your thoughts on kratom and its use? So, you know, we already talked about all the individual uses and what you want to get out of it. What I get out of Kratom specifically is similar to what Andrew said with the caffeine, even though they're different drugs. Kratom makes me more likely to talk. It makes me a little more social and it allows me to, in a speech manner, go a little faster. I don't always want that, but I've noticed if I have a lot of work to do in the morning,

the Kratom with the run and the carnitine and the sodium sucinate all just like really, really go together. It's also super easy. It's like, you know, this much stuff in a tiny little insulin syringe. It's all super easy to get. Oh, you shoot the Kratom? No, no, no. I'm saying the carnitine and stuff. Like that's a tiny little insulin syringe. It's all super easy to get. None of it. You shoot the Kratom. No, no, no. I'm saying the carnitine and stuff like that's like a tiny little insulin syringe.

The Kratom is like a tiny little pill. You know what I mean? I was like, Oh my gosh, I'm missing out. Okay. Let's get into the level. It's just like an easy morning thing. When I have that type of work, it's like tiny little insulin syringe or the carnitine take, I use the slow press tabs. I'll take like two or three of them sometimes when I want that effect for talking and a lot of work in the morning. And it's just mint. Like it works really, really well. Yeah. When we were talking about like my situation with caffeine, as you were explaining, I'm like, oh yeah, that's all the reasons why I like Kratom as well. Because all that stuff like is really zoning in on work.

And then also like the verbal communication skills just go like way through the roof yeah so what you actually extrapolate from that like imagine a venn diagram like what are the similarities and differences between kratom and caffeine and they both give me the same effect because i don't get the social effect from caffeine um but the point is it's likely not norepinephrine driving up your socializing, Andrew. It's likely more dopaminergic and GABA-related effects because they do exist on a complex continuum together. But that combination of effects being driven through kratom and through caffeine together are giving you that. So that's what – it makes sense. And I think far too often people just think of it as a kitchen sink. And then because you're thinking of it philosophically incorrect as a kitchen sink, you're missing out on the important details and what it's telling you.

Because I don't take Kratom every day. In fact, I've noticed if I have to read, be creative, or like really detail-oriented, I don't like Kratom as much because I'm already going fast enough for those things. So it makes me too fast. And Kratom reduces my appetite, which I don't care about if I'm reading and, like, doing random creative work. But I actually kind of want appetite reduction if I'm going to be on the phone for the next four or five hours, like, doing varied calls and stuff. So it also, like, fits the bill. Yeah, you were saying you think Kratom can be addictive mainly because of like what it does for you slash to you and not necessarily just like this need to like have it. Yeah, there are totally addictive compounds that drive up biochemical dependencies. And I don't believe that mechanism occurs with caffeine. So for example, they've shown that Ambien's not addictive, but people get hardcore addicted to Ambien.

And it's because it's the philosophical, phenomenological aspect of it. No matter how excited I am, I could take a pill, fall asleep, wake up, nothing ever happened. We've also been fed and told the lie that sleep is just lay down, eight straight hours, wake up, and anytime you wake up to pee, it's bad for you. And if you don't sleep eight hours perfectly every night, you're unhealthy. That's not how sleep works anyway, but it's just so easy to get addicted to something that works every time you have no contraindications or side effects with, and it's easy to get your hands around. Why do you think people are addicted to alcohol? It's funny when you talk about alcohol to most people, they're like, oh, I don't really even

like this stuff. And even if they love it, it's more so you like how it makes you feel. You can get it for $5 down the street at any time time no one will judge you for it because it's legal and whatever and seen socially like uh acceptable but no one's gonna like take a shot of ever clearing that oh that was good you know what i mean like you like what it does to you you like the accessibility the convenience and the cultural association and label that it comes with, but you don't like the actual compound. And I find it really hard. Maybe it's biased,

but whenever you phrase it like that to people, it's like, well, well, do you really like drinking then still? And it's way less people I've noticed and talked to. Cause I talked to so many people. I've noticed way less people enjoy drinking when you put it in that context.

And it's still fine to not really enjoy it and do it anyway. Like most things in adult life, you don't like and have to do it anyway. There's no judgment there, but it just begets the question, like, why am I doing this? Actually, it's fine to have a drink and hate it, I guess, with like your friends and a social experiment and scenario. It's totally cool. But do you really like it? You have to ask that question.

Does it make me feel good? All these other things. And you see them through different lights. I think when you step back. For, I'm kind of curious for your run in the morning, because we kind of mentioned having other tools than, than caffeine in the morning. Do you, uh, do you find that you need to kind of amp yourself up for that? Because I think about some people when it comes to the reason why they drink the coffee is so that it will give them, or they have caffeine is so that'll give them the motivation to get going. So it'll give them the motivation to do the morning run, to do the physical activity. And when some people start trying to, let's say, substitute things or get that out of part of their routine, they then have

brain fog, or they then don't feel that they have the motivation to do the things that would push them in the right direction. So if someone feels like that, that they don't, like without it, they don't have that motivation, how can they, what tools can they use to, over time, develop that level of motivation in the morning? I think the inherent problem that people have is they think they're going to be motivated for everything. I think the inherent problem that people have is they think they're going to be motivated for everything. We are going to neurochemically derive the feeling of motivation for something that is either novel, you're likely to fail or suck at, or it's dangerous. So people are like, I'm not motivated to wake up at 6 o'clock in the morning to run. To be honest, no one is.

Like you don't have the neurochemistry available upon waking to be excited for that run, but you know it's good for you and do it anyway. That being said, I don't take the creative for the motivation in that moment. I take it because I want to do these speaking and phone call stuff I have to do. So when people ask for motivation, I asked them, why do you want the motivation? Like, oh, cause it makes it easier and it feels good. But is it that hard to walk out the door when you're highly likely to be successful at something? The best thing you can do is be mindful. And I've said that before. And I think a lot of people agree with that.

So if that is true, then why would you be motivated to go for an eight minute run? Right. You're 99.9% going to be successful. The only thing that can go wrong is you have a heart attack somewhere around minutes two to four. Right. So as long as you bypass the little risk of heart attack, pulmonary embolism, and stroke,

you're going to be successful at this. It's eight minutes. You can jog for eight minutes. So why would I need excess neurochemistry and motivation to do that? The problem is, and I don't want to sound like a broken record, you're going back to that habit of, do I feel good? So if you're looking at that motivation, you expect to be motivated every day, then you're going to wake up on a day, you feel like crap and you're going to be, oh, I definitely can't do it today. I'm not motivated. But if you never think there's a need or demand for motivation, it's not a factor. You're not expecting it to be there. Now, if you told me you were about to do something really important and you didn't feel nervousness, anxiety, motivation, ambition, whatever connotation

you slap onto those neurotransmitters, they're the same. That's a problem I have then. But if you're not excited to do something you normally do, like it's, it's, it's normal. In fact, like how often you're like, Oh, I'm going to poop. Like it's like, it's, it happens all the time every now and then. Right. But it's a good one. If you can feel, yeah, but it's not often, right. Even though you do it all the time, like you got to wipe. It's just something I got to do. I would love to be able to volitionally control this, but I can't. And I accept that. A constant thing that's been beneficial for all of our health has been intaking enough protein, but also intaking quality protein. And that's

why we've been partnering with Good Life Proteins for years now. Good Life not only sells Piedmontese beef, which is our favorite beef. And the main reason why it's our favorite is because they have cuts of meat that have higher fat content, like their ribeyes and their chuck eyes, but they also have cuts of meat like their flat iron. Andrew, what's the macros on the flat iron? Yeah, dude. So the flat iron has 23 grams of protein, only two grams of fat, but check this out. Their grass-fed sirloin essentially has no fat and 27 grams of protein. There we go. So whether you're dieting and you want lower fat cuts or higher fat cuts, that's there.

But you can also get yourself chicken. You can get yourself fish. You can get yourself scallops. You can get yourself all types of different meats. And I really suggest going to Good Life and venturing in and maybe playing around with your proteins. I mean, going back to the red meat, there's picanha. All kinds of stuff. There's chorizo sausage.

There's maple bacon. That stuff's incredible. The maple bacon is so good. The maple bacon is really good. Yo, my girl put those in these bell peppers with steak and chicken. Oh, my God. It was so good. But either way, guys, protein is

essential. And the Good Life is the place where you can get all of your high quality proteins. So Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, you can head over to goodlifeproteins.com and enter promo code POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your entire order. Links in the description, as well as the podcast show notes. I think, you know, our motives and motivation, you know, they're multi-layered, you know, you forget that you didn't sleep well the night before. And like, you know, our motives and motivation, you know, they're multi-layered. You know, you forget that you didn't sleep well the night before and like, you know, there's so many factors to it. It's not just do I feel motivated, you know? And even if you are well-rested and well-fed, you still might not feel motivated. But the likelihood that you'll do it is probably increased a lot if you're taking care of yourself and you're taking care of some of the basics. Yeah, I agree because a lot of time the basics are like those sheer

little aspects that are just good enough to get by. Like, you know, it's like the common cold and foodborne illness or debilitating because like you can't do your basics. Like, oh, I'm mouth breathing all day. My heart rate's high. My throat hurts. It's like, yeah, obviously you're fine to get by, but it's like kind of quality of life debilitating. The same thing, foodborne illness. Like you puke for a day, you have diarrhea for a day, whatever. And it lasts like a few days of getting back on track,

even though it was a small aspect of things. So it's almost like these buoys of consistency and objectivity that we can latch onto that are our habits and the things that we discipline ourselves and condition ourselves to do are like your trampoline, if you will, for motivation. So you can't expect to be motivated if you're mega lazy, have no consistent habits and never really give yourself like that trampoline opportunity to bounce off of. It's not that you're being hyper rigid because your habits don't need to be like,

take this at 15 minutes and take this at 30 minutes. It could be as simple as like, you know, I just hit the punching bag until I breathe heavy and then move on. Or, you know, it's the brain and personalities kind of do this for you, right? Like, do I like shit shower shave or shower shit shave? And like, you know what I mean? Like you, you, you already do that. You just got to know yourself well enough to then arm yourself with supplements, physical activity, and food that match up with it to get the results in life you want. How important is it to, you know, have some sort of mindful practice or meditation? You know, you have prescribed this for me before, where just, you're like, just lay down and just breathe. And I, you know, you have prescribed this for me before where just you're like,

just lay down and just breathe. And, you know, I just do this drill and breathe, you know, in and out for, I don't know, 10 or so. And I just would repeat this like breathing protocol that you sent me. How important do you think that can be for some people? It's funny. And this is like one of my Andy jokes, like the furthest you can get into the future is anticipatory secretion of insulin and salivary

amylase. And this happens in minutes. My point is humans are not future creatures. We have no cortex in our brain to predict the future. And no part of us can anticipate and go forward very, very far besides like a little hormone in your pancreas we call insulin and salivary amylase, an enzyme in your mouth. So there's nothing about us that's good at predicting the future really besides a few minutes. And we can even talk about what is anxiety. It's like an inability to handle all the electricity in your brain that's attempting to recruit something that doesn't exist oftentimes. So when we talk about like, you know, how do we handle or change or make something, you know, how do I turn myself into what I want to turn myself into?

It starts out by understanding what are you involved in currently and how do I handle those things? And you kind of move on from there quite often. And asking these questions are the first things you have to do before you get into layering habits for motivation and all that stuff. If you can't figure out what is the stress I'm imposing on myself and how do I combat that stress, you'll never make it out of square one. I wanted to ask you about like, if you were to get like one bad night of sleep, whatever that is for you, how long can that like linger? You know, because we've heard about sleep debt and whether or not that's true, I don't know. But it just seems like when I go really hard for like, I don't know,

like two weeks straight, it almost doesn't matter how much sleep I get. Like the motivation in the morning is just completely gone. I'm just kind of like on autopilot, but I'm curious, like, does that like affect carry over and does it linger on for like days or potentially weeks? It can, depending on the type of stress you impose, which is kind of the ambiguous, but most important part of what I just talked about. So kind of what we said about caffeine and Kratom for you, it's like, Hey man, I can handle less hours of sleep, but all of a sudden it's a mood thing for me. And even more sleep doesn't improve. It's like, ah, that has to do with your glia. Lion's mane is the trick for that. So what we see is if you have a psychosocial problem, then the benefits you can gain from sleep are different than maybe if you

have like a muscle damage problem, like I'm in the gym hard and causing a lot of myotrauma, the benefits of sleep will be different for you, obviously, than someone who has a psychosocial issue. So let's say we talk about maybe like you said, mood, right? Psychosocial health has more to do with glial restoration while you're sleeping, whereas deep sleep is mega important for your immune system when muscle damage is high. Deep sleep is something that can certainly have like a sleep debt-like phenomenon, just like these glial cells can. When we are excessively sympathetic, we have leftover calcium ions in the glutamate neuron sections of our brain and where they exist, and that'll impede you from being as excited. And we can handle getting these calcium ions dealt with while we sleep via glia.

And that's going to be a psychosocial connection from sleep. Whereas, like I said, deep sleep is going to be much more correlative with lymphatic changes and immunoglobulin changes that happen at night. And that's the benefit you're going to derive or hope to derive if it's a muscle damage thing. So when you talk about how do I improve my sleep for X, that for X is by far the most important thing to ask yourself. So if it's for psychosocial health, making sure you get to bed in the proper environment might be more important than total hours. Whereas total hours per week is going to be something I really care about for professional

athletes, for people who have a lot of muscle damage and stuff like that. You can get away with four to six hours of mediocre sleep if you are trying to just feel good in the morning and talk. But if you're getting four to six hours of sleep and you're trying to change a motor pattern or get better at skills, you're definitely screwed. Let me ask you this then, when it does come to total sleep architecture, because I know you deal with people as individuals. But what are specific things that you would suggest? Maybe what type of food they should eat before they sleep or how long they should separate food from sleep, any type of supplementation, any type of last time during the day you want to have caffeine, if that's going to have an effect,

what are general suggestions you'd have there? Yeah. When it comes to nighttime, it's really important to allow your habits and what you do to shift along with that. Because a lot of aspects of biology have dual roles, like AM and PM roles, if you will. Even though we don't have AM and PM in the brain, it's like a light temperature associated phenomenon, ionically associated phenomenon. A lot of things change with light and the time of day that being said at nighttime and this is why we see a lot of especially in the research is coming more and more prevalent even though it's been out for a long time what shift work can do to you it takes 20 years of consistent and consecutive shift work to alter your circadian rhythm that's how strongly our body defends this whereas imagine there's no other adaptation where it took off the 20-year game you know it might be like a five-year game a one-year game a two-year

game but no adaptations otherwise are a 20-year game so when it comes to sleep the number one recommendation i can give people is be prepared to go to sleep don't just like up day's over i'm gonna lay down now yeah You know what I mean? Let your habits change. And that layered process begins from there. So maybe if your habits change and you still don't sleep well, well, maybe have you noticed that like you're sweaty? Maybe like you said, you're eating too much. You start chipping away at things that align with what you want. So maybe you realize you don't sleep well because you're uncomfortable. So, well, maybe is this discomfort coming from a large bolus of protein I ate right before bed?

Or is it temperature? And as you kind of search within yourself, you see how to solve these problems intuitively. Now, that being said, I think gentle cold exposure at night, not extreme cold exposure at a cold plunge. Gentle cold exposure at night, as well as moonlight exposure is an awesome bang for your buck. That's pretty much free in almost all places of the world. I think getting in, whether it be some type of direct source of DHA, but more importantly,

having a large, yeah. Like the omega-3. Fish oil. Yep. Okay. Versus like EPA specifically. That could be super specific.

But I think more importantly and beyond that, having a bolus of essential fatty acids at some point at night is really important for being able to sleep. Because when we sleep, we are primarily using fatty acids. And you don't want all of them to have to come from within you. No pun intended. The Novo Lipogenesis is not a convenience system. It's the deriving of fatty acids internally without having to eat them or get them from dietary needs. It's a compensatory or ultimately supportive system. It's not meant to be, oh, I can just not worry about eating now. Because eating is something that's sometimes contraindicated pre-bed.

But a lot of times we all know that you could eat a ton before bed and that's the best thing for falling asleep. So it again comes down to what am I looking to gain from this? If you notice that eating causes temperature-based discomfort pre-bed, drop protein, make it something cold, or maybe reduce the amount, or maybe eat sooner. So when we talk about sleep, I'm also a big fan of having some type of GABA supplementation. People love to say it doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier and all this stuff, but that's not the point. The ingestion and having GABA go through your viscera and your gut actually changes genes, time gene proteins epigenetically in the viscera

to let the upstairs, if you will, your brain have a better idea that it's nighttime. Because what's funny is, yeah, it doesn't cross the blood brain barrier, but we still see people get sleepy and have positive sleep-related effects. We've even seen that high doses of oral GABA pre-bed can increase natural growth hormone production. GPC in the morning can do this as well. Saffron, especially in women in the morning, can promote sleep at nighttime and all these other things. So as you start peeling back the layers of maybe I sleep all right, but I wake up like crap in the morning is so different than I wake up like crap in the morning because I don't sleep all right. And I just think people are too quick to look for a supplement. There's a million supplements out there. And the reason there's a million supplements is because there's a million

different types of problems and way to solve them. That doesn't mean you need to try every single anabolic steroid and every single product in GNC just to see like how you respond because it's going to change. So it's more important to know more about yourself and just have an objective viewpoint of what's going on and then use that as like a barrier to find the supplements and to find whatever you need. Whenever I've taken GABA, I yawn a lot and I've even like, it's forced me, like I forget to breathe even. Like it's weird. So I don't take it anymore, but it was weird. Like I would take it and I would start yawning because I wasn't breathing anymore. It was really strange. I don't know what was going on there. Yeah. So the clock proteins are probably a potent up regulator of feeling sleepy in you, which means that the poor sleep that you may experience has to do with the rest of your body,

not knowing it's nighttime. Only Andrew knows it's nighttime, but biology doesn't think it's nighttime. Bam. Yeah. For people that have trouble with sleep, have you noticed anything else help like a nap or just some sort of meditative practice or is there something that someone can do, I guess, to amplify their rest? Yeah, absolutely. And I think oftentimes it has to do with not getting ready to rest. Like I said, way too often people just hop in bed. And I've seen so many people sleep better by just having a two minute span. You don't even have to meditate.

Just have two minutes between shutting off the TV and laying down in the room. Shut off the lights and just sit on the corner of your bed for a minute or two and then go and sleep. Because it's funny. Sometimes people are looking for like a supplement. I remember one time someone had blood pressure issues at a gym I was working out at. And I was like, Hey, do you want to just meditate and do this stuff? And he said, Andy, I asked you because

I want drugs and the real science. And I laughed to myself. I was like, Oh my bad. I guess oxygen's not real science. Um, but my point is you can get a huge resultant from something as small as sitting on the edge of your bed for two minutes and falling asleep. And sometimes you do need the supplement and that huge resultant is still available. But I think far too often people correlate pharmaceuticals with big resultants and meditation with small resultants. Where I've seen people who are taking more pharmaceuticals than Pfizer and get tremendous results from nasal breathing on a walk. And I've seen people that do all the nasal breathing, they meditate, they do yoga, they spend time grounding and their blood work is still crap. And I think ultimately it comes to like this integrative point between holistic and science. You need to be human enough and

scientifically supplemented enough in 2024. Because like, let's say, you know, you want to increase your vitamin D through the sun and stuff. Well, vitamin K is pretty important as well. And so are some other vitamins. And then let's say you, again, want to see that vitamin D score rise in your blood work and you could only eat whole foods. You're going to have to eat a lot of spinach to get the vitamin K and the folate and all the stuff you need. So there's no reason to not supplement.

The same way is there's no reason to not meditate. It all comes down to like this kind of balancing act that you have within yourself. If you take caffeine and your heart rate's 104, but you feel sleepy, just go outside and do something and stimulate yourself. You feel sleepy because you've been sitting here like for four hours and your body's awake. Your heart rate's 104. You're sympathetic. That caffeine is working. You know what I mean?

But you're phenomenologically tired because you're bored and just go get some sunlight. And all of a sudden that caffeine that's in your blood actively working will feel like it's working. I do not want us to glaze over the things you mentioned about like the habits and meditation, but you did mention GABA and there are probably people on Amazon right now as I am that are like, okay, well, you know, what's the dosage on this? And, you know, and along with that, cause I've never used GABA, but I'm curious about it now. Is this something that one would want to use each night before going to sleep, or is it something they would use on occasion or specific situations?

Great question. I think everyone should ask these questions and you need to ask yourself, am I looking for an acute effect or a chronic change? Maybe Andrew notices that it happens every time and that most of the time he feels like my body's kind of off and isn't good at figuring out what time it is. Take a low dose of GABA in that scenario every night pre-bed and allow this like training adaptive like effect to ensue and then stop. And oftentimes if you made proper adaptive change, you should be able to maintain like 80% of it for a little bit arbitrarily. Whereas maybe you're just off because like you took a flight, there was jet lag and like you had a coffee at 2 p.m. and you never do that. Then you just need it acutely. I think the other problem is people are like, oh, this works for me. It's my new stack. I do this forever now until it

doesn't work. You know what I mean? It's a question you always have to ask yourself, you know, acute or chronic. It's funny. I think never people don't expect to get that answer from me. They can't just give me the drug. I know you know drugs and stuff, but it's like, well, it's not going to work for you. Like just because I'm giving you the advice doesn't mean it's funny. I think never, people don't expect to get that answer from me. They can't just give me the drug. I know, you know, drugs and stuff, but it's like, well, it's not going to work for you. Like, just because I'm giving you the advice doesn't mean it's magic. Like it's more so it's like, well, what do you want to feel? Like I said earlier about that guy, he, his definition of feeling good was not in alignment with what I thought his definition of feeling good was. So when I was saying, take some ashwagandha, even though the ashwagandha worked and it was great for cortisol and his blood work, that's not what he was looking for.

So ultimately it wasn't going to work and so on and so forth. You know, you got to know that little bit about yourself to even make the supplement legitimate for you. Is it normal to not be able to like lay down without completely passing out or in a more like realistic scenario for people like like i can't watch a movie all the way through because i'll end up falling asleep almost no matter what it is is that good bad normal is there like some issues there no totally normal and by the way i forgot to say 200 to 400 milligrams of gaba is a great way to start um you can like especially because things come at different doses, right? Real quick. The four digit doses, like one to three grams is quite a lot and will feel funky,

but that was what the pharmaceutical research showed can increase natural growth hormone. Now also remember, we don't follow pharmaceutical research all the time with doses because one, we're not diseased rats. We have rat models to implicate disease. So the Tudka dose that helped the nephrons and the pancreatic islet cells of diseased rats will never relate to you because you're not a rat with dialysis in the kidneys. So you don't need 2,500 milligrams of Tudka. You can gain similar benefits from a tenth of that dose. Logically so. you can gain similar benefits from a 10th of that dose, logically so. That being said, when we look at someone's ability to now,

like I was answering Andrew's question, like fall asleep and stuff, your PONS is a part of your brain that takes data all day long and auto-regulates your needs for sleep. That's why when you use your Whoop, your Oura Ring, Omega Wave, whatever Garmin product you use, your sleep's different every night. mega wave, whatever Garmin product you use, your sleep's different every night. And that's why I'm, I love the fact that there's algorithms for HRV and sleep nowadays, because it helps put a lot of things in perspective, but you're not going to sleep the same every single night, nor should you. The point is it changes. So algorithmically, the number doesn't mean to me as much as the concept, but let's say you did, let's say you went and walked like a 20-mile hike. I would want to see over the next

few days a good amount of deep sleep. And if I don't, I'm not cool with that. Whereas if you did very minimal long, low, and slow activity, I don't care to see quite as much deep sleep in you. When we go through REM sleep, oftentimes we're ameliorating noradrenergic inhibition. And it's a fancy word for me and it's resensitizing ourselves to adrenalines. So if you're not gassing out on your adrenaline-like hormones, or maybe you have a really healthy diet and you actually recycle all these neurotransmitters more optimally than let's say a normal person on your own,

your need for REM sleep can actually decrease. And then that again goes back to, well, what we gain from REM sleep might further correlate with the psychosocial aspects, whereas the benefits and demands for deep sleep might further correlate with like myology south of the neck. And that also helps you interpret those scores and stuff as well. So let's say you maybe haven't had an emotionally or adrenaline taxing life recently. You know, you might not be getting a ton of REM sleep and that's okay. So it's also a fallacy that you're going to lay down and sleep for eight

hours every single night. You know, there might be times where you need more and there might be times where a little less is okay. It's going to be different every single night. Like there's no workout that's ever exactly the same, even if you follow the same protocol. Shifting gears a little bit, being somebody that was in Strongman for years, what do you think is some of the reasons why the deadlift has like exploded in such a crazy way? You know, people, you know, pulling over a thousand pounds. It wasn't that long ago that we saw, you know, Andy Bolton and a couple other guys kind of chipping away at like a thousand pounds.

And then now you got guys lifting 1100 pounds. And now you're seeing like some young athletes doing these sumo deadlifts and they're lifting eight, 900, and again, a thousand pounds. What do you think is some of the reason for some of that? I think skill and the individualization of skill has come a long way. You know, when I was introduced to lifting, I was told that we all use the same technique. Unless you're somehow mega, mega tall or mega, mega short. Or a pussy. Yes, exactly.

The same technique applies for everyone. Whereas imagine a conventional deadlifter pulling the slack with short arms versus long arms. I have short arms and it's so easy for me to pull slack because I have to, because my arms are short. If not, I don't reach the bar. Whereas if you have long arms, pulling slack is going to be tough for you. So when we now open our minds to that, if you're a conventional deadlifter with long arms, widen your grip a little bit and you'll be really strong because now you're in a position to pull the slack, engage your obliques and your trunk and this stuff. Whereas I can use a super narrow grip and do that. And if you walked

into the gym and saw someone with really long arms and a wider grip back in the day, what are you doing? You snatch deadlift in, you got to do this and whatever, right? Same thing with sumo. We see people with like the frog style sumo is what I think the kids are calling it these days. There's a moderate stance with narrow hands, all super ultra wide, the external rotation of the foot. We can squat wide with straight feet, wide without feet, blah, blah, blah. And I think people, one, being open to these changes and two, really, really dialing in skill. I think previously we just looked at like total range of motion, speed and position at the end ranges were the variables. But now it's like, are you a slow off the floor or fast? When you get to this position, where are you?

And I think people are just so much more in depth into lifting being a sport and skill. Because it's funny when I look at other sports like fighting, wrestling, golf, it's the opposite. They're so skill-driven that they're archaic and other stuff. And it's funny. I think lifting and strength sports, especially due to CrossFit, has just gotten the bar really high as far as the knowledge and science behind it as well as people's disciplined participation. Yeah, lifting is very rarely like drilled.

You're not like, I'm going to do these sets and reps as practice. I don't think we think about it as a practice. It's like, no, I have to lift this amount of weight and this amount of weight needs to get me stronger. But what if the intent for that particular day is just to lift the weight a little bit better? Yeah. And people don't think about success as how you did it. They just think of the rep went up and then people on game, they are, dude, I don't know why my technique didn went up. And then people on game, they are, dude, I don't know why my technique didn't work. It's like, well, in reality, sure,

maybe you did 50 reps over your five by 10, but 42 of them were one technique. Then you had seven misses that technique-wise were totally different from the other seven or the other 42 or whatever it was, 40, I forget what I said, but you see my point, right? Whereas if you did all 50 with the exact same exact same technique or set one was wide, set two was narrow and you switch that up, you're actually going to get a very different response sensory motor wise. And the technique is going to change differently than

the muscle fibers. You did 50 reps worth of damage to your hamstrings, but you did that at four different leverage points. So the hamstring might store glycogen in the same manner, but if you go to recruit that for max load or for reps, you're going to have a motor learning struggle. Do you think that with some of these movements like the squat and the deadlift, that there's an upper limit that one should have for longevity? And what I mean is some people, they just continue pushing and pushing and pushing.

These movements cause them to get injured. And then at some point, they just stop doing them all together. But if you can just do a certain amount, that could be an amount you could do to your 60, 70, 80, and it'll cause no drawbacks. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I think there's one thing that all lifters miss out on is the fact that life tells you what to do, not you. Kind of like what I said to start this show.

I was getting hurt. My hours in the day that were available were declining. I was traveling more, and the injuries kind of subsequently went up with that. So it was just been wrong for me to say, keep doing it. And it's not the deadlifts fault. And you know, it's not really my biceps fault either that tore. It's actually my fault for doing all that stuff. So there's no motor pattern.

That's not right for you. You're usually it's user error. So, like I said, let's now go devoid of that life thing. Like it's not the right time in life. Just don't make it happen. But let's say you're actually participating and you don't have to worry about that. It's just, you can't be focused on one goal for too long because when we, let's say we drive up glycogen synthase, the enzyme that allows you to store glucose and convert it into glycogen, the cytoplasm. Let's say we were trying to drive that up forever via X, like high rep squats.

At a certain point, you will not be able to do increasingly more high rep squats to only impact glycogen synthase the way you want. Eventually, you'll have to do something else. And I think far too often people miss out on that. Like I've been focusing on building my bench for the last 30 years straight. Bad idea. Maybe at some point work on building your fitness so you can handle more work sets. Then maybe work on your technique and your acceleration. Then maybe work on your, you know, triceps and get them jacked so that they can have

enough glycogen to do this and so on and so forth. You can still have this overarching goal of having the biggest bench 30 years from now, but it's not going to be the same plan along the way. And I think giving people like credit or nobility and doing something like that, not wrong per se. And the fact that it's wrong, but you're not actually promoting them to get better. You know what I mean? It's not noble to beat yourself over the head and get less results and it not work. It's still do it. In fact, it's, it's, it's, it's ignorant is what it is. You know what I mean? So let's say you were like this three by three program always made me stronger and the results diminished and diminished and diminished. You need to step back and recognize

maybe I need to be in good enough shape to do four sets of three to get my hamstrings bigger because I'm not in good enough shape to recover to do that fourth set currently. And even though it might seem like a roundabout way, that's how epigenetics work. And that's how adaptation works. It's oftentimes novelty and then compounding effects

that make something change. But then, you know, realize it's kind of a spectrum. So once you do something novel, you get a ton of response. Then you compound that for a while and you keep getting responses and it flat lines. Then you need another dose of novelty to continue that progress curve over time. And I think that's a really big thing people miss out on there. My deadlift is only going to get stronger if I lift heavy. And that's only true if you're prepared to lift heavy and have all your other bases covered. level, you can eat 5,000 calories and not build muscle because your body's completely reliant

on using dietary macronutrients for fuel and not reliant on moving energy and molecules and substrates endogenously. If you're someone that's taking supplements or vitamins or anything to help move the needle in terms of your health, how do you know you really need them? And the reason why I'm asking you how do you know is because many people don't know their levels of their testosterone, their vitamin D, all these other labs like their thyroid, and they're taking these supplements to help them function at peak performance. But that's why we've partnered with Merrick Health for such a long time now, because you can get yourself different lab panels like the Power Project panel, which is a comprehensive set of labs to help you figure out what your different levels are.

And when you do figure out what your levels are, you'll be able to work with a patient care coordinator that will give you suggestions as far as nutrition optimization, supplementation, or if you're someone who's a candidate and it's necessary, hormonal optimization to help move you in the right direction so you're not playing guesswork with your body. Also, if you've already gotten your lab work done, but you just want to get a checkup, we also have a checkup panel that's made so that you can check up and make sure that everything is moving in the right direction if you've already gotten comprehensive lab work done. This is something super important that I've done for myself. I've had my mom work with Merrick. We've all worked with Merrick. Just to make sure that we're all moving in the right direction and we're not playing guesswork with our body. Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, that's over at merrickhealth.com slash powerproject. And at checkout,

enter promo code powerproject to save 10% off any one of these panels or any lab on the entire website links in the description as well as the podcast show notes when it comes to like you know some of the technique i find it interesting you brought that up because i'm thinking when you were saying like some guys will go wider and they almost look like they're doing like a snatch grip deadlift that's the exact technique that you saw hapthor using the exact same technique you saw. Brian Shaw using. And they have a wide, it's interesting because they do have a wide stance, but they're also like 1,000 feet tall.

But they have super long arms, right? So they're able to kind of pull the slack out of the weight, get that bar to bend. Some of the bars have been slightly different over the years too, and so maybe that's a contributing factor. But a lot of the big lifts that are going on in the deadlift, a lot of them seem to be sumo and or utilizing that like kind of wider stance technique. Yeah, it's a leverage thing, you know. So your force is going to be limited by the positions you get into.

So if you're a really small, compact person, you might be able to benefit from using small ranges of motion. But what I think that's logical, correct? But what I learned the hard way in strong man was I was, especially early in my career, I was still a teenager. I was shorter than a lot of the guys on car deadlift. And my range of motion was so small. I actually couldn't get tight. And I was really bad at car deadlift until I got a little bit taller because everyone thinks, oh, the range of motion is so small, but you know, what creates power is tension. You know, what creates tension, length and shortening and adjusted levers. So it's actually

way harder to lift 1200 pounds, like a little bit from here than to lift a thousand pounds from a little bit lower because of that tension I can create. And I think that's one of the things that people don't realize. If you have long arms, you need to be in a different position to create the same tension than someone like me who has quite short arms. And then you start looking at, well, how explosive are your hamstrings naturally? And does your deadlift rely on type two A fibers explosively in that hamstring or do you pull slow and we actually want to work on the type 1 fibers that allow you to grind through the lift slow and that's the thing that i think changed with training people know like not to interrupt you like oh i need hamstring

curls to be stronger i need copenhagen's to be strong and do this they realize that this muscle needs this type of support for the bigger picture. What is the big difference between those individuals that you see, they pull deadlifts and they're just explosive and quick versus the individuals who can pull the same loads, but they, it seems that it's just much slower and it's grindier for them. So there's the physics answer and the nervous system answer. The physics answer is that there's different frictional forces and points of easiest motion in a lift throughout its range

of motion. So there is that aspect. But it's also, are you someone who's extremely neurologically excited and producing a surplus of electricity so you have that bountiness? Or are you someone who's producing just enough? It's like Jeremy Avila and

Taylor Woolham. They're both bouncy people. And it makes sense that they end up lifting that way. And then what we see with muscles is bionuclear domains change with age. Also makes sense that lifters in the master's class are grindier.

And that also makes sense why the 16-year-old kids are always the ones bouncing off of walls and going down super fast in a squat and getting stapled there. Whereas you watch like a master's lifter on the way down, you're like, dude, he's never coming up. He might not even make it all the way down. He's going so slow. But then he comes up at the same speed. It's like a 12-second lift.

It's like, well, that makes sense. He's got type 1 muscle fibers predominantly, and he's got less opportunity to produce that much electrical juice and cholinergic excitement. So for him, that's fast. You know, it's relative to what? I'm also curious about this when it comes to tension, because a part of being able to have a good deadlift is obviously taking slack out of the bar, creating a good amount of tension and moving the load, right? But when it comes to these movements and learning how to create tension with big amounts of load, but then a sport like golf, sport like jujitsu, skill-based sports where you are moving fast and you're moving well, but you don't want to have a massive amount of tension in the system. Sometimes you see that

individuals who go too down deep, the rabbit hole of barbell movements and all that tension, who go too down deep, the rabbit hole of barbell movements and all that tension, it seeps into the way they move, where they end up being too tight and they end up not moving well. So how do you balance that? If you're an athlete in a sport that you have to move well with tension in the right spots, while you're also trying to develop strength and potentially muscle, et cetera. It's funny, earlier today when we were in the gym, this isn't directly answer it, but it gets me on the topic of it. We were talking about, he was saying everyone wants to look like Enzima, but if you look at the things that Enzima likes to do, the sports he participates in and the exercise and things he do, it doesn't, it makes a lot of sense that you're shredded, right? You're doing things that involve a lot of beta oxidation,

long hours of participation, sunlight, and all this other stuff and excess amounts of motion in multiple planes. Those things will get you shredded. And then it makes sense. If your goal is to squat a thousand pounds, you love eating a ton of food and you do minimal movement, it makes sense that again, you'll struggle to lean out. So I think the problem people have when it comes to, am I getting stronger or am I getting tighter and all that? Cause I was told growing up, like, don't get your shoulders big for baseball cause it'll reduce your throwing distance. And I've heard guys that's,

I've heard people in golf say like, if you swing, uh, like a certain speed and then you lift, it's going to make you slower. Or if you use like a heavier club back in the day, they said it'd make you faster, but now a heavier club to make you slower. Or if you use a heavier club back in the day, they said it'd make you faster, but now a heavier club will make you slower because strength will make you slow. And the problem is language and communication, understanding demands. So getting to your question, let's say you do BJJ and you get someone in a mint rear naked choke, you have your actual forearm on their neck, Their chin's not in the way and they break out of it. It's like, dude, you got to get stronger. Like, how did you not choke that guy

out? There's a problem. Guess who's going to be doing some isometric preacher curls in the gym tomorrow. But let's say it's the opposite. Let's say it's like, you're trying to choke this guy out and like you're squeezing the center of his face and like you're sideways and squirming. I hope you stop lifting. I hope you never step back in the gym. I hope you go for a run and throw med balls and swim and like learn to do a cartwheel. And I think that like instant people want a response. Tell me how many sets. Tell me how many days to go to the gym, Andy.

Well, dude, I don't know what you suck at. And furthermore, I haven't seen you compensate. So let's say like it was now you said the golf. Let's say you swing 115 miles an hour and you're swinging as hard as I can. I want more. Well, can you have an opportunity to even swing faster than that in the first place? Do you have fibers that can accelerate and decelerate that much force? Or is it something where maybe you don't have the fuel systems?

Because oftentimes people are stronger than they realize or can produce more force than they realize, but they don't get that motivation excitement. And what we talked about earlier, what blunts motivation is poor basics, habits, and sleeping. So maybe you have the strength capabilities, but you're not recovered enough. Maybe you have the strength capabilities, but you have a elastic problem whereas let's say you saw a gymnast right everyone knows that gymnasts are often hyper flexible and they have back pain what are you going to tell them you'll probably tell them to do some crunches to do some abs to get their muscles and their belly stronger and that will reduce their back pain it It makes sense, right? They're

hyperflexible. I'm going to get them back to this imaginary midline. Now let's say when Mark was 330, he came into you and told you he had back pain. Would you look at that guy and be like, yeah, let's get you tighter. Let's get these abs firing. Let's get those hip flexors strengthened. Mark's got enough of that. Let's do the opposite, Mark. You know, let's try to get you more noodle-like. So imagine it as like the seesaw effect in anything. Where are you on the seesaw? And 9.5 to 9.9 times out of 10, any metaphorical seesaw alignment will balance things out. describes that temperature, pressure, concentration, and one or two other chemical properties are going to experience this seesaw reciprocal like pushing on each other when it comes to the yield and their products. So what that means to us in real life is if your goal is fat loss, let's say, and you've been pushing the gas on calories down, down, down, down, down, down, what is the opposite

seesaw thing that's weighed against? Your ability to recycle energy and be healthy devoid of food. So if you can't fast and feel better, guess who's not going to be really good at losing fat in the first place? And all of a sudden people are like, I keep reducing my calories. I'm taking Clen and all the fat burners at GNC and I poop water and pills exclusively and I don't have abs yet. Well, you know, the problem is when you're doing all these things, you're burning liver glycogen and you're not actually liberating fat from adipocytes

or maybe you are, but they're not staying liberated. That fat you liberated is going through a process down the line, packed into VLDL and back to where it started eventually as well. So there's these things, these balancing acts that people don't realize. And it goes back to the hammer analogy. If you're trying to get stronger for BJJ and you could squat 800 pounds, it's not going to be a strength issue. But we see people in sports who are like, I'm trying to get X and I'm already good at X, but it's not improving. who are like, I'm trying to get X and I'm already good at X, but it's not improving.

We see guys who can leg press a thousand pounds, but can't squat that much. And we see guys who have bomb hamstrings and can't deadlift that much. The same way in golf, you can see these little guys swinging at 120 to 130 miles an hour. And I promise you he's nowhere near as strong as, you know, realistically anyone here. But when you put the club in his hands, he might be the strongest guy on the planet relatively. So it's because that seesaw is aligned in these people. For some of these people, have you seen something like, you know, simple lifts in the gym, deadlifting, benching, squatting? Have you seen it help their golf game? Some of them, yeah.

And some of them I don't have to do anything. Because they don't need it. And it's funny. I see it in a lot of stuff. It's not just golf. I see it in all the other sports. People tell, oftentimes, I see them tell basketball players or football players that they have to get into the gym. And a lot of times in football, you have to be in the gym just because of the team you're a part of.

But there's a lot of these guys that don't need it. And subsequently, there's a lot of guys that need more of it. need it. And subsequently, there's a lot of guys that need more of it. And I think that's ultimately why we see a lot of college athletes struggling to transition to pros when their life gets put into their own hands, because everything's been told and done for them and they have no individuality. And then when they get into a position, whether it's pro sports or business, when you graduate college, you have no opportunity to kind of know yourself from the guy next to you. And it's kind of just like a crapshoot to see if things work out for you. Have you ever seen some of the clips? People were getting all excited and fired up around the

Superbowl with Christian McCaffrey training. You know, you, you brought up like not everybody needs the gym and I'm thinking of like the clips I saw of him. So many things weren't in the gym. Yeah. And it's probably a lot of other things. I mean, assuming, you know, everyone's like on the same page there.

It's probably like, dude, this guy's strong all the time. How many more squats do we need to get you faster? And that's a question I combat all the time. Andy, I want to get faster. What do I do with squats?

It's like, well, do you have a strength deficit? Are you strong enough to sprint the speed you want to sprint? Similar to what I said prior, are you strong enough to even hold someone in that perfect technique to rear naked choke? Because a lot of times it might just be learning how to apply specific tension. You could squeeze a basketball and learn how to do that. But again, that's predicated on your biceps being strong enough in the first place and you knowing how to do the techniques. So it's so easy to get caught up into how much do I need to squat to be faster and all this stuff, instead of looking at like

this seesaw, I kind of imaginarily set up for you. So if you want to get faster and you can't squat 225, I promise squatting 225 will make you faster. But if you're at that same speed and you're squatting 405 or 500, the return on squatting is probably going to diminish. And when it comes to like, you know, something like golf, one of the big injuries that they run into, one of the major issues is they have a lot of lower back issues, right? How do you address some of that? Again, I'm sure it's highly

individual depending on what, you know, this person has or that person has, but maybe somebody listening, like what are maybe some good fundamentals that they can check or do to assist with having a little bit better back with their golf swing? Ironically for golf pain, back pain specifically, I've noticed it's oftentimes that people don't have like what we call it the deep core arbitrarily, transverse abdominis, internal obliques, partly serratus anterior as well. They don't have these muscles in good enough work capacity shape to handle how much they're participating. And ultimately, it ends up taking the slack, like weird tendons, ligaments, bones to keep up with the speed they're producing that often. And they're playing almost every day, you said.

Exactly. But I see this in a lot of other sports. People are like, I have back pain due to X. And in sports, most of the time people are as strong as they need or stronger, I've noticed, even if they don't realize it. And it doesn't have to be barbell strength. But oftentimes I see it as a two-pronged approach. Do you have back pain because you're not aware enough of your body or do you have back pain because you can't let go and desensitize your body to the world around you? So in general, if you have back pain, you have two options in my mind. You can either

start meditating and see if that helps. Or like I talked to NSEMA earlier, you could do the McGill big three and see if that helps. It's not that one is better or the right answer. You can have back pain because you don't have a rib and pelvis association and just like any strength, I call it being dumb in the belly, or you can have back pain because you're so tight all the time that you never get out of a certain position. So oftentimes I think we can find more information by what helps us and hurts us rather than Googling an answer. So it's like, Hey, like I said about Andrew, what does creative and caffeine having the same social effect on you tell you about you rather than saying, I can only drink coffee and only coffee will do this for me. It's like, well, what do you learn about yourself by knowing that? Do you, um, when it

comes to the back pain thing, cause we've seen like you, you mentioned like the meditation aspect of things. Some athletes don't have an ability to like breathe into their diaphragm or they, they naturally breathe shallow a lot. I see that a lot in like lifters, but do you notice that at all with some of the athletes you work with or because they're at the pro level, that's usually not something many of them deal with? I think the biggest thing is feet. A lot of basketball players

have back pain because of their feet. Your feet are the sensory hub for recruiting muscle fibers in your legs and trunk. Meaning, imagine you had to do a deadlift with clogs, like wooden Swedish clogs versus like vibrams. It's like, yeah, you guys are laughing,

but like, what's the difference? What if I equated it for height and it didn't cause a deficit? What can you not do? I can't squeeze my feet. And when you squeeze your feet, muscles turn on. So oftentimes, especially in basketball, their feet are enormous.

They're always wearing tight basketball shoes. There's so much lateral movement and cutting that they get something i call cleat foot even though you don't wear cleats in basketball it's the same thing your foot becomes like formed to the thing it kind of looks like a six inch subway sandwich roll yes right and it's horrible and all of a sudden you're like my back hurts my belly's tight my neck hurts and then you go to the doctor oh it's sciatica. Do the sciatica drills. It doesn't do shit for you. And all you had to do was roll out your feet and learn how to ground and squeeze and recruit your adductors.

And the back pain disappears. Now, imagine having cleat foot being 6'7", jumping and landing on hardwood floors in basketball shoes hundreds of times. No wonder you have back pain. Same thing goes for football and knee pain and cleats and golf. Anyone who wears cleats, even think about wrestling. Obviously, you don't have to wear shoes in BJJ, but I'm sure you wrestled in high school. What are those shoes shaped like?

They're like these little tubes and they're tight. And your coach, everyone tells you to tie them tight. Sure, of course, your shoe wear should be tied tight, but your shoe wear should be made to protect and even support the force vectors that you put in the ground, not the other way around. So if you're playing golf as a right or left-handed golfer, the vectors on your feet are exactly different. If you're 6'7 and landing from the rim, the vectors impacting your feet are different. If you're playing football and you're accelerating straight, it's different than running around someone. And we see this actually sprinters who are in blocks, their shoes are incredibly well

made, but it doesn't seem to bleed out to other industries the same way. Sprinting shoes are designed incredibly well to the sprinter's foot as it's applied to the track. But oftentimes we only see that maybe like the aerodynamics of the foot in football are accounted for, but not as much as the cleat and the vectors applied to the force in the ground. Do you think anything about football cleats should change? Because I've actually heard Mark mention this before. Actually, I'll let you mention it. You mentioned like the cutting aspects of why cleats might be the way they are well yeah they might be the way they are like uh it might be a little smaller underneath the foot you know due to like you know somebody

trying to make a cut and trying to move a certain way maybe if the rubber uh fits completely underneath the foot maybe it would make the ankle slide around a little bit more it's the only thing i can think of i think all the cleats and shoes need to be remade. Honestly, I think they're all horrible. And I think it's because again, they're looking at how can I, like, I think, you know, there's nothing wrong in my opinion with like wearing the hokas just to walk around. But if you're trying to do that for sports, I think they're the worst possible shoe you could pick because I don't want my shoe to always absorb forces.

shoe you could pick because I don't want my shoe to always absorb forces. And now I really want my shoe to help facilitate the forces I'm producing. And that's why we see the spikes are made in a certain shape and angle in sprinting shoes, but the spikes in golf cleats, they call them hob knobs or knobs for short or whatever, versus football cleats versus baseball cleats, they call them hob knobs or knobs for short or whatever versus football cleats versus baseball cleats. They're all different and they're not designed to promote the forces you put into the ground. They're just designed to either like accept, you know, or absorb or somewhat arbitrarily random, or they're just meant to give you grip and friction when half the time, that's not even the goal.

You produce friction with your own foot. I don't need a spike to produce friction as much. I need the spike to help protect me and support me as I go through motion. You know what the best thing for friction is? Stopping. Standing. Not moving is the best thing to produce friction. But if you're moving, I don't need support with friction.

It's such a weird thing that the shoes don't fit. These cleats, they don't fit. And a company like Hoka and some of these other companies, they decided to stack up a ton of rubber underneath your foot. What is interesting about that is that most shoes don't even fit in the first place. So it's like, why are we looking underneath the shoe and not looking at like how the shoe is made? Like the shoe is a shoe shape and not a foot shape. It doesn't accommodate a foot. It's like, that would be square one. Let's start with square one, accommodate somebody's foot. And it's just interesting to me that just about anybody can go to a store and just purchase shoes that somebody is wearing on a basketball court that's getting paid $30 million a year. That's wild.

I understand like some of these companies sometimes might make maybe customized or something for some of these guys. But for the most part, it's the same shoe, which that's crazy because just some 10-year-old kid is going to be like walking to fifth grade. Like in these fancy cool shoes that this guy is getting paid $30 million. It just doesn't seem to make any sense to me. Yeah, I know certain companies, Nike will send out like slightly different ones to certain people. But more importantly, like you said, it just needs to be viewed at entirely differently. When your foot rotates and produces force, you shouldn't have a side of the cleat that stops your pinky toe from being able to roll. You should have a cleat that allows you to roll up to a certain point and stops and so on and so forth.

And, you know, let's say it's a sport where maybe it's a hammer throwing where you're coming this way. The outside of the cleat needs to be made differently than the inside of the cleat to support the side you're rotating to and towards. Wow. Dude, let me ask this because you've worked with a lot of field sport athletes. So what have you done for them? Because I think one reason why athletes don't make that shift is because maybe when they start using other types of shoes, it might feel uncomfortable maybe because their feet are a little bit weak, right? So what do you do for these athletes to help improve the health of their feet for whatever shoe they're having to stick it into? Yeah. Cause obviously, and sometimes it's like you signed a deal, you know, I just got to wear these shoes. It's, it's, it's money. Of course, there's no issues there. And the better answer is how do I fix my feet so I can use the cleats

better until someone makes a better cleat, right? So the first thing I would say is start with rolling out the bottoms of your feet with a golf ball. Don't use a tennis ball. Don't use a baseball or softball. They're too big. Golf balls are the right density and surface area. And you're going to trace your foot like a pizza slice where the five toes are a crust and the tip of the pizza slice is the center of your heel. And you're going to trace that slice of pizza clockwise and counterclockwise a bunch of times. And you're gonna feel some little crunchies. You might feel your medial arch is different than the longitudinal or the transverse arch, right? The crust and the opposite side, but you'll learn about your foot and you'll get at least a sheep that can gain more sensory information. Then if

you're a linear speed athlete or someone that moves forward, what you want to be able to do is recruit the right muscles in your feet through forward and backward translation. So like we said earlier, don't just let your knees drop forward. Your foot produces a force that shortens your distal hamstring and allows your quad to lengthen, which lets your knee translate forward. That is proper forward motion and translation of the knee. And obviously going backwards is the opposite. So can your foot apply the forces into the ground that even produce the motion you want? Or are you just doing that motion and twisting and running forward because you know you're supposed to? And then suddenly things click on and the back pain turns off. You know what your multifidi and low back are not supposed to do?

What is the multifidi first before you continue? Multifidi is slightly more superficial and more towards the middle of the back. Okay. But it's like superficial. So it's a muscle that can be explosive. In general, the closer to the surface a muscle is, the more type two and explosive it's going to be. And the closer it is to the bone, the more likely it is to be a type one fiber.

Got it. it's going to be. And the closer it is to the bone, the more likely it is to be a type one fiber. That being said, you know what that group is horrible at? Rotating. But what a lot of people do, rotate with their lower back. And what is squatting at the hips? There is rotation, not in the sense of this way rotation, but hips. Do you think it's only straight back that your femur goes into internal rotation? It's actually a slight rotation, circumduction. Same as collarbones when you go overhead. They aren't just a wing. They're actually slightly rotating posteriorly as you go up over your head. It makes sense. So why do people have really bad low back pain when they squat and then they do glute work and their back feels better? Well, one, your glutes are rotational muscles and two, you're now able to produce equal and opposite gluteal forces that allow you to go up and down. And if those forces are, you know, not symmetrical or they're just not on, again,

you're going to end up using something wrong like a multifidi or like a lower back that is not meant to do rotational forces. I've been saying that forever. I've been saying you need to protect your back by using your butt. Yep. But it makes sense, right? And then people see the outcome and they're, oh, it worked. But ultimately the glutes are going to be turned on by the feet. So let's say you do hip bridges, your back pain goes away, but you squat and it comes back. What did you not learn to do? Authentically use your glutes through foot recruitment. So you might find out that activating the glutes turns off the sensory motor action of substance P being secreted into the neuromuscular junction and causing pain, but you didn't learn to squat pain-free.

Did it just drive you nuts that sometimes in Strongman, somebody was just naturally just stronger than you when you had all this knowledge? You know what I mean? Like he's got all this knowledge in his head of how to do this and how to do that. And then sometimes someone just comes along and they just kick your ass. It didn't bother me. I was going through a tough time in life when I was competing in Strongman. But what bothered me the most was mistakes.

And that's how I learned so much about skill sports. Cause I would be like, dude, like, how was I not able to do this? And what would bother me as someone that not like bother like your strategy or something in a given event. Yes. So I knew a lot of times I had the biology for it. I'm strong enough. I have the creatine for this. I'm in good enough shape, but it just wouldn't happen. And that's how I was like, wow, like how did that dude know to do that? How is his technique so good? How did you know that the sandbag was going to wobble that way? Or that like being here was better than being here. And I started to realize, cause like we would all love to believe it's science. And I think a lot of times trainers negatively do that, that they're, oh, as long as

you're compliant to the plan, it'll work. Or as long as you squat, your butt will be bigger. Like, yeah, they always say it's biology, but it's not always biology because if it was the person with the most creatine kinase on the planet would be the strongest, but you could take a ton of steroids and have a huge creatine kinase number and still be weaker than the natural person next to you. And that kind of goes back to what I was saying, like strength and speed and all these things are all just words that float on your brain's ability to participate. So the strength and speed of anything don't matter if you can't participate and get into the positions and do the motion and all that stuff. And I think far, far too often people get stuck in a notion of if I have pain or if I want to make a change, it's just more, but oftentimes doing less or doing something

different is going to be better for you to making change and progress than just swinging that hammer again, because it's like that novelty effect. Even let's say, you know, for a fact, you're getting bigger doing this program, but now your stomach hurts and your heart rates higher and you you're getting more sore even though you should be getting less sore it's like wow your immune system was limiting you in that hypertrophy so you can either keep slamming your finger with that hammer or you can make a roundabout worry about your immune system and come back to hypertrophy you're the man super brain i was gonna ask something really really quick um it for like

the feet feet feet topic specifically um because we've talked about it a bunch too but even still to this day people don't really want to explore that because it hurts already and so like the thought is like more cushion and more you know more soft cushiness because that hurts less and now you're saying you want me to do what with a golf ball? Like, that sounds like it's going to be the most painful thing ever. Um, and you can use maybe some examples with some elite level athletes. Cause I'd imagine they're like, nah, bro, I'm good. I've been doing this my whole life and look where I'm at. I think I'm okay there. Um, maybe something like that, but also for your average person who's like, like, no,

like it hurts too much and you want me to hurt it more? That doesn't make any sense. Because remember, and I think we talked about this in one of the other episodes, but maybe not, pain is not reactive. Pain is an anticipatory safety signal, meaning if you continue something bad will happen, it doesn't always mean that something bad has already happened. So in that scenario with the foot pain and it hurts, if it hurts too much, maybe switch

to grounding for a week or two and then go outside and just be barefoot for a little bit. And what I think is a huge little hack to grounding is having at least two environments. It's not, in my opinion, just effective enough to just go sit and do grass, try to get on grass and then concrete even, or grass and rocks, especially when it comes to this foot aspect thing, because our feet are meant to gain different informations and like absorb and relay afferent and efferently different information strategies and signals. So give it different things. Most people have two types of environments very close to them without thinking about it. If you live in the city or any type of city,

you have concrete and you have rocks. Even though they're the same, the concrete will be smooth and flat and you can just go next to a bunch of rocks and stand on rocks. And that is a great way to start. But ultimately, just like anything, the obstacle is usually the way, you know, shout out Ryan Holliday, right? It's Ryan. I don't know why I always call him Ron, but Ryan Holliday gives us a lot of insight as well as David Goggins and all these other wonderful Stoics who pursue challenges. And it's relative to pain as well when it comes to pain management, that going through

it makes it better. It'll only be like crazy scary that first time. And then if you do it again in six hours, it'll be a little less than that. And then over time and time and time, it'll get better. Like when Mark talks about like your AM go start with three minutes, then you could do a fourth minute. Then all of a sudden you'll be like, dude, this isn't so bad. I can walk for fucking 10 minutes. I'm good, dude. Then all of a sudden that walk i think i can jog a little bit and you know what i mean it just kind of starts to build on that and i think that's

the real thing with like foot and knee pain i can see uh back pain it's so debilitating i've blown out my back before it's like dude that's so scary i just never want it to happen andrew's back was horrible a couple years ago right but like you realized like well i could be subservient to this and be horrible forever and be scared of it or i can at least like gain a chance to get it better. We did talk a little bit about the steak shake a little bit earlier. You mind sharing with people some of your findings with this amino acid profile of the steak shake? Yeah. So I'm working on a patent at the moment that I'm not finished submitting yet, but very close, where I use a method of putting amino acid profiles per 100 grams of protein on a slope regression line and

determining the functionality of muscle protein synthesis versus other cascades that occur. Because when you take in a bunch of protein, let's say whether it's 10 grams, 40 grams, anywhere in between, you're going to spend some time in muscle protein synthesis or just protein synthesis, DNA synthesis as a whole, nitrogenously making new stuff. And then at a certain point, you're going to run out of a certain amino acid and everyone's going to go on and do their own thing elsewhere. Now, along my patent research, I looked at the amino acid profiles of many, many, many protein items. What I noticed was the Steak Shake had the best relationship as far as the separation of the amino acids.

So we looked at 18 amino acids, and that's what's typical in an American amino acid profile, 18. in an American amino acid profile, 18. Of the 21 amino acids, only 20 are really looked at and 18 of those are really looked at in dietary foods. That being said, the distribution of the 18 amino acids that we looked at in Steak Shake are going to produce the best muscle protein synthesis time versus any other protein that I looked at. I looked at gold

standard, I looked at hydrolyzed whey, I looked at casein. And what we noticed was it's not, because now there's two factors in protein synthesis. It's how much and how long. I'm talking about how long. We're very, very well versed in the fact that hydrolyzed casein and hydrolyzed whey are the best at how much, meaning how many amino acids and how quickly is this being uptaken in the plasma through the intestinal border and all that stuff. But I'm talking about how long, oops, how long are you spending in here? The length of time spent is dependent on rate limiting amino acids and a couple other factors. And that is what I looked at in my research. And that's why I noticed that Steak Shake, in theory,

should have the best, the most amount of time spent in muscle protein synthesis per scoop rather than other 25-gram scoops of protein. Superbrain, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it. Amazing having you here. And for everybody that's listening, you get to hear Superbrain TV coming to you soon from the Power Project. Strength is never a weakness.

Weakness is never a strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.