The Sevan Podcast - #490 - Nathaniel Nolan
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Stoked to have you, dude.
Yeah, excited to be on the show.
Bam, we're live.
Once we go live, up until we go live,
there's all this shit that I send the link to the right place,
which I didn't this morning.
I sent it to someone else. They're all, okay, I'll come on in 10 minutes i'm like oh sorry you're the wrong person dang and then i got a text from you you're like yo where's the link
and then i sent it what a goofball i am well earlier there than it is here so i figured
you guys might be i i did have the dog vomit in
the middle of the night other than that it was a perfect night i was up at four o'clock cleaning
up a little vomit little dog vomit always fun yeah do you have a do you have a dog i don't see
a dog in your um instagram no no dogs i have a cat uh and a girlfriend and a girlfriend yep one of each
do cats throw up in the middle of the night do you hear that like you're sleeping you're
uh if she does i don't catch it until the morning so
uh you ever uh you when you're dreaming do you ever dream you're on all four now
you ever have a dream like like you're do you ever dream you're on all four now you ever have a dream
like like you're like just cruising through the mall on all four uh you know what i don't actually
like ever remember my dreams so maybe um but uh i do get a lot of people commenting that that they
dream like that all the time uh personally i don't um how about have you ever tried any stuff
that you haven't told anyone about like when you're on all fours try like to pee on a fire hydrant or anything crazy like that nothing remotely dog
related at all no no uh you never tried you never tried eating out of a bowl on the ground
uh nope no no more than anyone else uh you know living just a normal bipedal life or like my kids
people under two do that shit. Yeah, yeah.
A lot of nieces and nephews, I see them doing that stuff.
But no, no.
I think that there's nothing more valuable in life than experimenting.
Like with your body. Like the guys who do the raw meat stuff, people who do the breath holding, just any kind of experimentation with your body, like the guys who do the raw meat stuff, uh, people who do the breath holding,
um, just any kind of experimentation with your body. I mean, I mean, within reason,
obviously lighting yourself on fire seems not like when you come back from, but I think what
you're doing is so amazing. Oh, thanks. Yeah. No, I'm a big fan of that stuff too. I'm a big fan of,
um, you know, seeing anybody that's try, try something that's
sort of outside the, outside the norm and, uh, and actually gives it an honest effort because,
you know, it lets us all get a little sneak peek into what that kind of lifestyle would be like.
So I'm, I'm totally on board for anybody trying anything wacky that might, you know,
yield some interesting results. Um, for those of you who don't know Nathaniel Nolan,
did I pronounce it all right? Right don't know Nathaniel Nolan, did I
pronounce it all right? Right. Yeah. Nathaniel Nolan has been experimenting for nearly a year,
um, spending time on all fours. What would you call that? That's like is quadrupedal. Is that?
No, um, it's not really quadrupedal. It's, I call it an all fours practice. Uh, as I it's,
it's sort of a umbrella term that captures all of my physical disciplines
that incorporate using all four lens, which is most of them, which is kind of the reason I
came up with the concept in the first place. Uh, and I, and I love that, but by the way,
we're going to open that door right there. There's something, um, there's a, uh, but first I want to
show something that I saw on 60 minutes from 2018 from australia have you seen that piece about the the
family that's on all four i've been tagged in that a few times there's a scientist and i use that
term very loosely who says the dumbest thing i've ever well not ever fucking heard i've heard two
years of absolute stupidity from people now but i want to
i want to play this and this is what sets people um like nathaniel uh just completely away from
just regular intelligent people nathaniel's like real intelligence and this is this is taught this
is taught intelligence what i'm about to show you guys here this is so this is uh this is this is this is uh pretty pathetic okay i want you to
i want you to hear this uh i don't know if he's i think they say he's a german scientist check this
out german scientists think the answer lies in the family's dna i think this is very novel because
it has never been described before that people are able to walk on therefore so
he didn't even know people were able to walk on all four.
He never thought of maybe like taking a suit off,
throwing on a pair of shorts and walk on all four.
Right. Yeah.
I mean, it's, this is just, and you're just like, Hey, I'm going to do it.
Right. I mean,
I think that we're capable of a lot more than people give themselves credit
for.
You can do pretty much anything you want.
But I mean, something like that, I mean, people are already doing it.
People do it all the time.
You go to a CrossFit class, you're going to be doing some bear crawl.
If you have a kid, if you have a healthy child, they're going to be crawling everywhere.
Exactly.
I mean, it's really straightforward. So honestly, the thing that I've been the most surprised by is people's confusion with the fact that people can do this. They're like, whoa, you can do this? And it's like, I bet you you have already done it before. I guarantee it.
whether there's a God or not. And it's fascinating to me that people just don't take the experimentation up on themselves. You can just lie down on the ground and try to use your will
on yourself. Try not to start with trying to do nothing. Don't scratch. Don't respond to any
sensation. Don't move. See if you can impose your will on yourself and stay perfectly still.
How about that? How about try to just do nothing and lie down and die and see
what's on the other side we never have to argue about anything you can just do shit this guy
didn't know he spent the time to say that sentence but he won't just get down on all four and just
give it a whirl it's easily verifiable yeah very very you can have a few buddies do it you can be
like hey am i really doing it that was as i got you, I've started dabbling in it a little bit.
Not a lot, but a little bit.
And I feel like there's an obsessive compulsive component to it where like, hey, did I if I stop and get on my knees, did I break the like if I'm trying to go a minute straight or two minutes straight and my knees touch, that's fine, right?
Or not fine.
In my opinion, that's perfectly
fine. So the whole thing with my all force practice is that it's not any one position.
It's not any specific movement. So the rules that you set for yourself, whenever you're creating
your own all force practice or any movement practice, uh, it's, it's, uh, it's totally up
to you. And so you can, you can set some really, uh, difficult parameters for
yourself. But for me, it's just showing up every day and putting my hands on the floor. Um, and
actually what my all force practice is, is it's an intuitive, um, way to modulate intensity. Um,
that's basically it. So if I show up and I'm able to do handstands and bear crawl and that stuff that day, that's perfectly fine.
If my wrists were too sore or I'm too tired, then I'm going to lower the bar quite a bit.
Give me an example or tell me why an all-fours practice aligns so well with that statement you just said.
It's an intuitive way to modulate intensity and then on top of that i i start when i heard about nose breathing like a year and a half ago i started doing all my
workouts like 99 of workouts with nose breathing to kind of help me do that i think i mean in the
back of my mind it was to sandbag right like oh i can just go everything slower but is that the
same thing nose breathing and walking on all fours in terms of, in terms
of fitting under this idea of an intuitive way to modulate intensity?
Uh, well, I, I'm not really sure I'm not done, you know, the, the nasal breathing I've seen,
you know, some videos come out about that.
Um, so I'm not really sure if they're in the kind of the same realm.
Um, it's more about, for me, it's just giving yourself the option to be able to do, um,
lower intensity work as well. So it's
giving you the full gambit of zero to full body weight or full body weight plus, um, and everything
in between. So it's not limiting yourself to specific progressions for a calisthenics practice.
It's not limiting yourself to gymnastics movements. It's not limiting yourself to the movements that
show up in my jujitsu practice. It's everything.
And so when I show up, if I need to lower the intensity, I can.
If I want to increase the intensity, I can.
But I'm not going to show up and say, this is exactly what I'm going to do.
That's where I've gotten into trouble in the past.
I feel like that's where a lot of people end up with pain.
That's where a lot of people end up with chronic injury is that they decide what they're going to do before they know what they're capable of doing. Okay. So what I'm
hearing is you're going to do, you plan on doing 10 minutes and that might be the first rule,
but within that, you're not going to make any like seriously hardcore rules. You're not like,
okay, today I'm going to go, I'm going to try something crazy. I'm going to go up and down
a flight of stairs on all four for 10 minutes, as many rounds as I can.
You wouldn't do that. You would just kind of feel it do one and kind of assess.
Exactly. That's how I, that's how I approach my training. That's how I approach the coaching that
I do for all of my clients, um, is everything is as intuitive as possible because especially,
um, as from a coach's perspective, I can only, um, give you
insight and, um, and instruction to a certain degree, um, based off of how you feel. A lot of
that has to come from yourself because I can't feel your body. So, um, whenever I'm coaching
people, I always let them know, like, you know, whatever you, whatever you feel is appropriate is probably what's
appropriate and, and being able to make calls and, and, uh, and decisions based off of that,
that, that ties into your knowledge base.
So that's where I come in as that resource.
But, um, whenever I show up for my training, I don't want to, I don't want to already have
that picked out in my head because I don't know, I don't know what my body's going to
be able to perform like, but the more you do it, the better idea you have of what that is. And the more you
can trust that intuition. Um, but outside of that training, would you, do you still do stuff like,
okay, I'm going to go out and run a 400 today and I'd like to beat my time, my previous time from
last week. Do you do that or? Yeah. Yeah. So I still have metrics. I still have goals and, um, I still do programming. Um,
but it's all, it all takes a backseat to, um, being able to listen to my body and being able to,
uh, pivot on a moment's notice. And so that's what my all force practice is,
is that it gives me that ability to be like, all right, well, I had the idea of doing one arm handstand training today, but maybe I'm not
feeling it for some reason. Maybe my shoulder's not feeling strong enough. Maybe I'm feeling
instability in my wrists and my elbows. And so today it's going to be something else. It's going
to be handstand training, or maybe it's going to be plants training, or maybe it's just going to be,
you know, bear crawl. It's going to be something else, uh, that helps me to get exposure to a similar position or something similar.
Um, but I'm not putting that, that, um, responsibility to complete said programming,
uh, because that's how you end up injured is, is putting yourself into a situation where
you don't meet the prerequisites on that day for that task.
And then you end up getting hurt. So yeah. And has been my guide since the very beginning. So
I let that be sort of the, what the thing that dictates what I'm going to be doing for the day.
What do you mean pain is your guide to avoid it?
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I don't, I don't really feel like I'm, uh, I'm, I'm not a,
exactly. Yeah. I don't, I don't really feel like I'm, uh, I'm, I'm not a, like a pro athlete. I'm not somebody that's making my money off of performance. Um, and so I don't have to feel
pain, uh, on a daily basis to be able to do my job. Um, I used to think that I had to do that,
um, coaching calisthenics, being a personal trainer. I used to think that, you know, you just had to kind of tough it out and it would go away
or you could kind of work around it.
But now I've realized that if you're feeling pain, that's information, that's your body
letting you know something's wrong there.
Something's not right.
Whether that means that the intensity is too high, the range is too much, or it's a combination
of the two.
But something needs to be changed on the spot, not the next session. whether that means that the intensity is too high, the range is too much, or it's a combination of the two. Uh,
but something needs to be changed on the spot and not the next session.
Um,
how old are you,
Nathaniel?
I'm 31.
And,
and,
uh,
and where are you?
Indiana.
In Carmel,
Indiana.
Yeah.
Have you ever been to Carmel,
California?
I have not.
I've never been to,
uh,
um, Denver's probably about as far West of it as I've ever been. Ohmel, California? I have not. I've never been to Denver.
Denver's probably about as far west of it as I've ever been.
Oh, no shit.
Yep.
Wow.
Do you have a car?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
I want to show a little video for those of you who haven't seen what he's doing.
Nathaniel has – have you crossed a million on TikTok?
Not quite. I'm at like 980, something like that.
Yeah. When I looked, you were at 980 and I found him through Instagram. This is,
I'm going to show you guys this video here. Your movement is crazy beautiful and it's hypnotic and it's so cool how far it's's come. It's 292 walking on all fours every day.
Here's me pretending to be Ziggler Monster for a second,
except I don't know anything about posing.
Even though it was pretty hot today,
I really wanted to do my training outside.
I started off with a slow trot,
trying my best to be fluid and intentional with my movements.
I did that for several laps.
Oh, this is so nice.
It felt pretty good, but I knew my strides could be longer.
I slowly started lengthening my strides, which looked a little choppy at first.
This is crazy.
But then I started staggering my hands, and by the end, it was feeling a lot smoother.
I'll definitely be working on running a lot more this summer.
Now, go get some XP.
And when you say go get some XP, that is your talk for, hey go have a life experience right go that's kind of
your motto exactly tell me how that um and i like this because this is all going along the line of
by the way when you say you're not a professional athlete i do want to say i i you are a um
what i would call a top tier human being you You, you never, you never walk into a Starbucks and
they're like, Oh, that dude's fitter than me. Like, like, like if that place catches on fire,
you could be in and out of there 300 times, um, before your average latte drinker, uh, gets out.
Right. Um, um, that qualifies as a professional athlete, but I do appreciate that.
um that qualifies as a professional athlete but i i do appreciate that yeah how much do you weigh um i i hover somewhere around like 150 160 oh you're that big holy shit and how tall are you
like five seven okay okay in some of the photos i'm like oh no what did you know i want this guy
can do this because he's so svelte. Like I was guessing maybe you were like way, way lighter.
Like I had no idea.
Wow.
So you're solid.
I guess.
Yeah.
What's the most you ever weighed in your life?
It's really been about that my whole adult life.
So my weight fluctuates, you know, 5 to 10 pounds on any given day.
But it's been that pretty much since
you know a year or two after high school started you know training and been kind of hovering around
that since then there's this um there's this uh idea out there of just grind like just grind grind
grind and i've always been a huge fan of that and then there's this other side that's slowly
coming up hey don't always grind stop enjoy life enjoy the journey then there's this other side that's slowly coming up. Hey, don't always grind, stop, enjoy life, enjoy the journey. And there's this kind of, I always have this tug of
war between the two, because for me, life really is about grinding. Like just get out there and
fucking get it. Stop fucking around. But I heard you explain it in this interview that I think
is what I've been trying to say. And maybe you can talk about a little bit.
You were doing an interview, you were doing a podcast
and you explained to the guy,
hey, I'm sitting on the floor right now.
And I am right.
Yeah, because this aligns with my goals
for other things I wanna do in my life.
So you're doing two things at once right now.
You're doing a podcast and sharing your journey,
but you're also working on your, uh, conditioning
and that's kind of, and that's kind of what I, what I think of as grinding is like not wasting
any time. It being, being efficient. Go ahead. Sorry. Yeah, no, I mean that, that ties into
my tagline getting XP. Um, and it comes from a background in, you being a nerd gaming and whenever you're playing games
you know you've got this limited amount of time to be able to do stuff so you really want to kind
of line up all the ways that you can be progressing your character progressing your game and
uh-oh battery oh someone called you oh let me your girlfriend wants to know where you are. You're late to pick her up.
And then you're in living your life as these two separate things. And they're not there.
They're one thing you're doing both all the time, whether you realize it or not.
And so a lot of people think, OK, well, I don't have time to train.
I've got to live a life or I don't have time to live a life.
I've got to train.
And no matter which thing you land on doing, you're already doing the other thing.
Right now, you're like you said, I'm I'm training.
I'm living my life.
I'm getting my message out there. I'm explaining what I'm doing, but I'm also getting some exposure conditioning. Whether or not you realize it, you're also doing that as well. Right now, you're in knee flexion, hip flexion. You're sitting in a chair, you are conditioning yourself to be good at that position. Everybody is constantly conditioning themselves to be good at the thing that they're
doing. So you're getting exposure to that. So whether you are intentionally doing it or not,
you are training. And so if you can kind of align what you're doing with what you want to be doing,
then you'll start to see results without having to set aside
a ton of time to be doing that right now we are grinding. Um, but what do you want to be spending
that experience on? What do you want to, what do you want that experience to be? Um, and instead
of having to set aside time to do that separately, marry that with the things that you want to be doing with your life. There's never homeostasis.
Right. Or there's constant homeostasis. Like, you know, everything's a balance. So
although things are constantly changing, I'm still constantly trying to have balance in this
moment in my life as well. Right. Yeah. I like that. No matter what you're doing,
you're conditioning yourself to do that thing. Right. Yeah. I like that. No, no matter what you're doing, you're conditioning yourself
to do that thing. Exactly. Uh, if, if you're complaining, you're conditioning yourself to
be a complainer. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, it's, it's just having that realization that you're
already training, you're already doing it. A lot of people are just training for things that they
don't give a shit about. Like they don't care to be good at the thing that they're getting better at, which is sitting in a chair or having a negative attitude or having limited range of motion is a really common one.
So people going through periods of inactivity, you're really conditioning yourself to have limited ranges of motion.
So you're lowering your mobility.
And that's something that's happening in the background. So you're lowering your mobility. And that is, that's something that's
happening in the background. So you're not staying the same, you are getting better and better at
having low mobility. And, and once you can start to change what you what you are doing on a daily
basis to be more aligned with your goals, then you'll realize that you have basically an infinite amount of time to train.
It's this sort of this invisible layer
that sits on top of the time
that you recognize throughout the day.
What's that Venn diagram gonna look like?
Like to get into this mindset,
like you have to have some amount of awareness
and then some amount of give a shitness, right?
And maybe there's a third one too, but you have to have some amount of awareness and then some amount of give a shitness, right? And maybe there's a third one too.
But you have to give a shit.
I think everybody –
Or do you just have to have awareness?
Sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, no, I think everybody gives a shit.
I think everybody wants to be a better version of themselves whether they admit it or not.
it or not. And if they don't admit it, then it's just them sort of, I think,
like being frustrated and kind of missing the point. And so they kind of give up. But I think if everybody realized that you're already changing, you're already making changes to yourself,
it doesn't seem so intimidating than to make a small alteration so that those changes are something that you're actually proud of, something that you actually want to happen.
There is this – I think words conduct so much of what we do.
And I feel surrounded by people who are witnessing a world that doesn't give a shit about words and the accuracy of words.
They don't realize the value of words. And basically, we're all just manipulating each other with words.
And so and people are being manipulated themselves by words.
They manipulate them. They allow it to happen to themselves. And it's kind of it's interesting to me that they allow it.
And I'm trying to tie that in with the fact that, I mean, you're suggesting that people
do want to be better versions of themselves.
And I like that.
In your field, I would say that the, so you had some, you had some wrist issues, right?
I would say the vast majority of people who wanted to address those wrist issues would
have done one of two things.
They would have gone to a physician
and gotten some sort of surgery. I think that's like, like one of the dumber things that like,
that's the dumb camp. Not that there aren't some smart people and some solutions in that direction,
but I think usually that's the dumb camp, right? They're looking for a solution outside of
themselves. Then there's this other group that thinks they're smart. This is like me. They would start addressing their nutrition. But you've done something like – you've done something completely else.
Right.
Which makes me think you're like Wile E. Coyote, super genius. Like, oh, yeah, shit, of course. Of course it's that way, the way Nathaniel is doing it.
Of course, it's that way, the way Nathaniel is doing it.
I do feel like it is sort of an of course situation because to me, it seems after having this realization, it seemed pretty obvious.
And it wasn't until I started my all fours practice and sort of run that experiment that
I really got to see the efficacy of that.
And so, like you said, there's multiple ways to approach any problem.
So you've got, let's just take wrist pain, for example.
Somebody gets surgery, which might be the answer, or addressing your diet, maybe that's
the answer.
But for me, I knew that, and it seemed really obvious, that if I wanted to be able to bear
all of my weight on my hands, right, I should be spending
some amount of time bearing my weight on my hands with like under a lower intensity. But that's just
not how a lot of people approach training. They don't walk in and they don't start on step one,
right? You walk into a gym, you try some heavy stuff. And then if it's too heavy, you kind of
work your way back from there. So I was like, okay, I need to start to change this ratio. And the way that I try to explain
it to people, especially my clients, when I'm first getting them started on it is imagine,
okay, we've all been sick, laid up in bed for a few days, right? And you've walked your entire
life, I'm guessing. I don't know that well, but I'm guessing you've been walking your whole life.
So you've been laid up in bed for three or or four days and you've barely done any walking you
get up and go to the bathroom and it's difficult right it's not to go to the bathroom but it's
difficult to walk there it's difficult to to move your body like it's it's achy it's sore
maybe you're tripping uh you know become more conscious of yourself walking like you've never
been that conscious of walking since you've been a baby.
Yeah. Or, you know, or you get out of bed and it's been two or three days since you got out of bed and you get a cramp, you strain a muscle.
All of those things are really, really common. And that's just after a few days of not doing something that you've done your life.
Right. Something that you're well conditioned for, well practiced at.
that you're well conditioned for well-practiced step. So if I wanted to then, uh, go and try to do that exact same thing, but with my hands, with my upper body, um, and I, and instead of having
done it my entire life, I've not done it my entire life. What, what, what can I expect the results to
be? Right. What am I expecting there? Um, and so I knew that strain and breakage. Exactly. I needed
to, you haven't done a plank in your entire life, but you go into a gym and someone says get into a handstand and you have your entire body weight on your wrist. But you but you haven't done a plank. Wow. I'm getting it right. I'm following you. Right. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, and I realized that I was like, how much and I I, at this point having this sort of aha moment,
I was like, okay, I already have a calisthenics practice. I already have a jujitsu practice. I
already, uh, and trying all of these high intensity things that I'm really interested in. And I don't
want to give those things up, but the amount of time that I'm spending on my hands overall in a
day or a week is, is very minimal, uh, in comparison to the amount of time that I'm not
doing that. Right. So I was like, I need to start to change that ratio a lot. And I can't do it by
spending more time in a handstand because my wrists are, I, uh, I'm in pain. So how,
how am I going to do it? And I got to start at zero. I got to start at the absolute smallest step possible and start
to accumulate time, exposure, experience, um, doing that thing. And then over time, as that
ratio starts to shift, hopefully, and this was my, my idea when I first started it, I'll be able to acclimate to that position. And that's what happened. Um, and I think that
if you start off as a kid, as an athlete, as a gymnast, um, you take that for granted.
Maybe you spend a lot of time, like in the gym, you spend a lot of time, uh, being coached and
groomed. So you spend a lot of time in those positions. But you have people that like me didn't start any of this high intensity bodyweight stuff until 20s. And some people in
their 30s or 40s. And then they are wondering why they're in pain. And it's it's obvious,
but it's not like it's obvious to me now from this perspective, it's not to them. And so that's
where I'm trying to sort of bridge that knowledge gap of like, this isn't some complex solution that requires like
tons of programming and bulletproofing. It just requires you spending more time doing the thing
that you want to be good at. I don't remember crawling as a child the only time i remember crawling is in
college um and it's like one in the morning and my bag of weeds empty and i'm like crawling around
on all four looking for like some crumbs of weed in the carpet or like behind the couch and shit
yeah i don't even smoke weed anymore so i've even lost that stimulus right um but also um i mean are you doing handstands are you doing uh advanced all right
and it's not even just handstands i don't want to get too focused on the the really far in spectrum
stuff like advanced calisthenics i get people coming to me like in the comment sections of
my videos every single day they're like i can't even do pushups. So like, what, what, what do I do there? And it's the same exact answer. You go your entire life
without putting weight on your hands. And then you put, I mean, even a pushup is 60% of your
body weight. You go from 0%. Oh, sorry. I never thought of it like that. 60%. Okay. Go on. Sorry.
You're jumping from zero to 60%. Oh, there's a lot of percentages in between zero and 60,
right? So that's a big jump. So of course you're going to probably experience some risk pain,
especially if you have mobility issues, if you, um, if you already are not meeting those
prerequisites. Um, and so you can address that same thing, but you've got to start back at zero and you also need to accumulate a lot more exposure than what you're going to get in a set, uh, five sets of 10.
What is the, for, for the people who are listening, what, what would be a, uh, a 30 day prescription?
I know which one you use, but for, and I think a lot of people who are probably listening, they have some sort of daily regimen already. I would guess the vast majority, but for someone who wanted to partake, who wanted to experiment. and see all the benefits that he's receiving.
And we'll get into some of them from this practice,
from spending some time on all four.
But what is the prescription?
Can you tell us?
Yeah.
A 30-day like, hey, I want to see what this guy Nathaniel is talking about.
So it could look a number of different ways.
Here's what I always start people off with.
And it's not a month.
It's a week.
Okay. Do a plank every single day for a week for different ways. Here's what I always start people off with. And it's not a month. It's a week. Okay. Do a plank every single day for a week for one minute, start there. And it doesn't have to be a fully unmodified plank. It can be. And by plank, I'm really being used loose with
the term. It just means put your hands on the floor and put some weight in your hands.
A hands plank, not the, not the form, but the hands. Cause that's what we're working. Okay.
I call it a, I just call it a plank. I don't even use the form because honestly,
it doesn't really factor into my, my conditioning. Um, but yeah, if you want to be able to put weight
on your hands in a significant way, you know, you've got to start small. So start with one
minute a day, uh, start in the version that you can do absolutely pain-free.
So whether that be, um, um, unmodified plank or a modified plank or shifting your hips backwards
and just kind of ending up in this tabletop position, you can go all the way back to it,
like a child's pose, yoga position and spend a minute there. And then the next day, do it again. And if you can, you know,
try to increase the intensity a little bit, but only up until you would feel pain. If you feel
pain, that's too much. And start there. And I promise that if you are experiencing pain,
if you're experiencing discomfort, give it a week and you will feel stronger,
you'll feel more comfortable, you'll feel more mobile in that position.
And then at that point, you can decide if you want to continue with just the plank or
if you want to add in some movement.
So the bear crawl, that's like, that's not what my all force practice is.
It's, it's so much more than that.
That that's like saying like a squat rack is a gym, right? That's one small aspect of it.
We're going to take a small break here while he responds to a call from his
mother. His mother just called,
wants to know why he's doing YouTube videos with strangers. Okay.
Nathaniel Nolan is back. All right. My bad. Sorry about that. No, it's,
it's, it's okay.
I actually don't know how to turn that off. Um, but yeah, so I would say start with a plank. You
don't have to like the, the challenge that I gave myself, that was, um, something that I felt,
I felt confident that I could do because I have an understanding of how to shift body weight and
how to modulate intensity already just from my background. Um, but I have a lot of people that will kind of just try to mimic
that. They'll try to replicate it and they're like, okay, well I'm on day nine and I'm starting
to kind of feel a little sore. Um, and it's like, okay, well don't try to press on through that.
Instead, shift your weight backwards. Okay. Only operate in the ranges that you can pain-free.
And I promise you that if you start to give your body more exposure to those ranges,
and you're also challenging yourself, that has to kind of be an aspect of it as well.
So you take it right up into that threshold before pain and you spend every day doing that
for a minute, you're going to improve at that.
The pain is going to start to recede.
And you're going to start to have better results whenever you do that.
The problem is, is that it's not something that can go alongside your regular training and it have those effects in the way that a lot of people think it would.
the way that a lot of people think it would.
So it's not like, I see a lot of programming and I see a lot of like little tips and stuff on socials
where people like bulletproof your wrists,
increase your mobility just by doing this exercise.
The thing is, is that if you don't currently
have the conditioning to be able to do a handstand
or even pushups, right?
Doing something else and then doing
that thing on the same day, it's not going to magically click or open something or, you know,
it's not going to, it's not going to get you there. It's got to be this slow, gradual process.
So I think a lot of people are afraid of regression. But regression is like your most
powerful tool for progression. It's, it's being able to take a step back that allows you to take steps forward.
Pushing forward when you are hitting a wall is what breaks you.
Yeah, regression is – I have that total aversion to it.
Yeah.
The one step backward really sucks.
It does.
Mentally.
To feel like you are losing, but you're not, you're not losing
progress, um, because life is pretty linear whenever it comes to training.
So, um, even when you're regressing, you are progressing, right?
You're still moving forward and you're still gaining every something from each one of those
sessions.
You're gaining sites, you're gaining mobility.
Um, even whenever you're taking those steps back you're workshopping things and this comes up a lot if you ever trained uh in martial arts at all then you'll realize that every time
you get hurt you end up actually coming out of it usually with more tools than you went into it with
because it forces you to rework shop uh rework, rework things that, you know, maybe you hadn't before because
you didn't need to. So taking steps back is such a powerful tool. Uh, I think it's something that
a lot of people don't, uh, don't really even consider being an option, but it is, it's a
really powerful tool that a lot of people miss out on. My, um, my son was injured doing some
jujitsu and, uh, uh it gave him he took six weeks
off like basically psychological six weeks he's from everything the injury there was like so
traumatic to him that he basically like was like fuck this i'm standing down so he would go to
tennis but he wouldn't really participate skateboarding wouldn't really participate
jiu-jitsu and after that six weeks he of, he snapped back into it and he started going hard again. But from just as a parent, my whole perspective changed because at first I was
always driving him to be better. And now like, I don't do any of that. I'm just like, I have the
satisfaction if he's in the game, you know what I mean? Like if he, if he's, if he's, if he's on
the mat, I'm happy. Oh good. He's that, and he's having fun. It really shifted everything. Being injured sucks.
Yeah, it does.
And honestly, like if you're injured, you're not making any progress at all.
If you're right.
Yeah.
Train the thing at all.
So before you get to that point where you're completely broken, regress back to a point
where you're working and you'll, you'll start to actually make progress in areas that you
didn't know you to actually make progress in areas that you didn't
know you needed to make progress. You'll start to make insights about the thing that
injured you in the first place. Um, and you'll come out of it a lot stronger and more well-rounded.
So after the seven days of plank, what happens next? What would be the next week?
So then at that point you can start to add in additional things. So for my clients,
generally they come to me because they want to learn some of the stuff that
they see me doing handstands.
So I'll start to show them some progressions,
um,
and calisthenics or,
uh,
whatever movements that they're trying to learn,
but they have to apply the tenants from the original week.
Right?
So for me,
I,
I lay those out for my clients every single time I see them as these are our training tenants and these are non-negotiable. They are set in stone, their laws. And that is if it hurts, don't do it. Right. Regress whenever you need to and show up every day if you can.
and show up every day if you can. So just do those three things. And then what you do,
as far as the movements, the programming, that stuff is all far less important once you apply these laws or these tenants. Because as long as you're showing up every day, as long as you are
challenging yourself and you're really trying, like you said, like your son kind of checked out
for a couple of weeks. Yeah, six weeks. He's like, fuck this.
Right. And sometimes you need that. You need a little step away, but as long as you're showing
up and you're challenging yourself, you're going to make progress and you'll make way more progress
showing up every day and challenging yourself than killing yourself one or two days a week,
or even three to five times a week. Um, and then taking
that time off because you have to don't ever force yourself to take a day off because of your
previous day's training. I try to set that as sort of the limit of what I'm going to do for the day
is I have to be able to train tomorrow. Um, what are the benefits? What are the things that you're
like, Holy shit, I can't believe this is going so well. What are like just the things you're just ecstatic about, about the practice? And you do now, you were going to quit at 30 days and you didn't. And now you're almost at a year and you do a minimum of 30 minutes every day. Is that true?
Right. Yeah.
Are you addicted?
Yeah. Are you addicted? Uh, yeah. I mean, I'm addicted to not being in pain for sure. I would say that, uh, that is an addiction I have because, um, the thought of going back to it, it's scary,
right? And it's not just the, the feeling of pain, it's the inability to do the things that I love.
So more than being addicted to my all fours practice, I am just, uh, addicted to all of my various
practices. And this is the gateway to being able to do those. This is what.
How, how about the fact of like the, the things that are, that have come from it, that you're,
um, that you're doing that maybe you're addicted to. So like, think of someone who started juggling
and you juggle three balls and then you juggle four balls, and now you're addicted, and you see that the world record is 15, but there's only one guy that can do it.
So you have all these things colliding. You have the discipline to publish every day, which in itself is a huge discipline and an addiction to someone's creative side.
You have the stimulus and now the support of your followers, which is accountability, responsibility, and then wanting to present and contribute to their life.
But then you also, going back directly to the juggling thing, you might be becoming addicted to finding new things to do.
And I show this. It's funny.
So last night when I was screwing around doing all fours in the garage'm like, and I have a balance beam in there that my kids work on. And I'm like, Oh, I wonder if this guy uses ever uses a balance beam. And of
course, like you're way beyond the balance beam. I saw you doing some nutty shit like this. This
is so great. And then it goes to this, which is a whole nother subject, which I really, really like to the push
pool. But, um, are, are you, that's what I meant by addicted. Are you addicted to just
exploring this all four practice now? Uh, yeah, I mean, I, I was addicted just because I have this
very, very playful relationship with it. Um, but I, I have to show up every day. That's a sort of
a goal I've set for myself.
And it's something that's given me a lot of success with making progress and all of my various practices. So I have to show up every day, but like I said, I, I, before deciding what I'm
going to do, I have to consult my tenants, right? So does this thing hurt? Am I ready to show up for
this thing today? What am I capable of today? Um, and so I have
to have a lot of options, right? Cause it can't just be handstand pushups every day. It can't
just be one arm handstand training every day. It can't be plants training every day. It can't be
jujitsu every day. Um, well, I mean, I mean, it could be, I guess, depends on how you think about
that, but, um, but I have to have an option. And then when I started giving myself
all of these various challenges,
I realized that some of them were like,
these are really good.
Like these are really powerful tools.
And so I play a whole lot,
but while I'm playing,
I'm collecting all of these really powerful training tools
that allow me to make um, make progress on my
other practices. So like you said, in that video right there, that's whenever I'm starting to kind
of really explore the push pull element, all force practice. Cause a lot of people see this
all force practice as mostly crawling, right? But it's not, it's being able to modulate intensity
using your other limbs. So here I am practicing, uh practicing one arm pull-up training, but I'm using the opposite side arm to modulate the intensity.
I'm also working on stabilizing on a single arm, but I'm using the opposite side arm to
modulate the intensity there too. So just by playing around, I've developed that tool.
As far as the balance step goes, I'm training so many things, like countless numbers of things, uh, by just jumping up onto
that beam. I mean, the risk stabilization, is that hard to do by the way? Are there some good
fail videos of that? Uh, for the jumping up on? Yeah. I mean, that's, that's, that's hard.
So you just did right there. The, I get a lot of exposure to things like that throughout my day.
So I do set aside the 30 minutes a day to make sure that I'm showing up.
That's just an accountability thing.
But throughout the rest of my day, I'm trying to get exposure to that.
And so if I see a handrail while we're out walking or just like a narrow, um, like a narrow, uh, curb or something like
that. I'm going to jump up on it for sure. I'm going to get a little bit of exposure because
I think back to whenever I was trying to do advanced calisthenics and the ratio of time
spent on my hands was off. So if I want to be able to have really great balance, I need to
change the ratio of how much I'm trying to balance throughout the day. So I'm,
I'm not just spending the 30 minutes practicing that I've, I've accumulated a lot of experience
practicing that, uh, just while I'm out, uh, operating my, my normal day-to-day stuff.
Um, obviously there are fails and stuff like that. I usually don't post those.
Um, but I want to, I want to see him. I just kind of popped up into that.
Uh, when, when you, how long were you doing this, um, before you started just cruising around in
public? Like there's some videos you have of like you being in the mall. How long were you like,
okay, I'm going to take this out on the road. Uh, I think, I think I've got stuff in season one. Oh yeah. What are
the seasons? What does that mean? 30 days, 30, okay. 30 days. And it's just a way for me to sort
of break up, um, sort of these chapters, uh, throughout my practice. So it's easy to say,
uh, season one, that's the first 30 days. I like it. Instead of having to remember every single little day,
I can kind of chunk that information.
And that,
that makes it easier for me to process,
to be able to talk about it,
to be able to reference and be able to,
to send people to certain areas to,
to watch.
Cause I get a lot of people like pen this day,
pen this day.
So I can just be like,
that's,
that's episode one of season five.
That's episode one of season one. And it's really easy for people to just go back and click on that and then pull up
the episode that they're looking for oh so you start taking and and when people see your movement
so beautiful now are people like it's kind of like there's like a moon walking component to it right
there's this people are used to seeing humans walk on all two and and dogs on four but now they're seeing you on four and it looks, you're doing it to make it look, it looks natural.
Do kids stop and stare and have fun or do you ever see people get on all four, like kids follow you or other playful humans?
One thing that I've noticed is that for the most part, people don't really, uh, people don't really stop that much throughout
their day. Like you could honestly like be on fire and yeah, they try and everyone's trying
to act cool and like, not look, I don't even think it's that people are just very absorbed
in what they're doing. Like a lot of people love to people watch and they're, you know,
we're kind of voyeuristic, um, by nature, but, um, as far as stopping participating even talking and questioning uh i don't i don't
get a lot of that um i'll get occasionally somebody will kind of look over and they see
somebody doing a handstand on a bit a park bench and they're like okay but like um but people
honking if you're if you were doing just cruising down the street knowing a honks, he goes, yeah, dude, or nothing? Nothing like that. No.
It's just that's – and I think that it's that level of sort of built-in anonymity that makes this so easy.
A lot of people are like, oh, I can't do that because I've got roommates or my – don't know what my parents would think.
Here's the secret.
They don't give a shit.
Like they don't care.
Right.
They don't care at all what you're doing.
Go talk to somebody about something that you're really interested in that they have no
frame of reference. Watch how quickly they zone out, right? Watch how they just, just don't give
a shit about it. And who's that to empower yourself. Okay. Nobody gives a shit. Go do the
thing that you want to do. Okay. Right. sitting around for people to give a shit about something, you're going to be waiting for the rest of your life. Very well said. Um, you ever, uh, you ever
have any injuries on the hands, uh, splinters, dog poop, chewing gum. So I do actually have an
interesting story about that. And, uh, I haven't posted about this. I wasn't actually sure because
the community guidelines on Tik TOK are a little strict and so i've had several videos taken down and lots of them be under review so i like what like
what would a all fours video have to be doing to be taken down not much i i remember i went to
gen con i was literally just doing like cartwheels and handstands in the hallway like a grown man
doing a cartwheel on the floor not even elevated elevated. And that got taken down. Um, so I've recently, sorry, sorry. What,
what, what's Gen Con and why, why can't you show grown men doing cartwheels?
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what, why you can't do it. Uh, Gen Con is, um, the biggest
gaming convention in the world and we actually have it here in Indy. Oh, that's right. Okay.
I saw that on your instagram okay yeah so um
so anyway i had a friend by the way who recently just had his like six posts taken down or an
acquaintance on facebook he's a guy who has lost you know hundreds of pounds and through crossfit
nutrition and uh and and he had his post taken down because he was celebrating weight loss it's
i was like holy shit yeah wow
algorithm that i think goes through and kind of just like will put things under review so i i see
this a lot i'm mutuals with obviously a lot of different creators and i see them complaining
about like about the algorithm and about um about the community guidelines and the violations and you can
complain about it, but everything that you do is a game, right? So you just got to learn how to play
the game. You got to learn the rules. Um, so I was struggling with that for a long time because,
you know, you'd see people doing like insane things and their videos would be left up and
then my videos would get taken down for something innocuous. And then I realized that if you put the
right disclaimers in there, I can pretty much do whatever I want so I don't really struggle with that too much anymore okay good on you yeah but you know
it's just like I said it's about learning how to play the game it's about acknowledging that it is
a game and that there are rules and that they're not you've not been taught them up front so you
need to you need to learn how to play the game like that's how games used to be before they were
all super automated and and there are like built-in tutorials and stuff you just had to like learn to play
um but we were talking about the injury sorry or stepping in something that's not kind to your hand
this was actually this was in season one so this was like day 13 i think i was like i'm gonna go
i'm gonna do so it's day i don't know the exact day. It was like day 13 or something.
And I was like, I'm going to do this outside on the sidewalk.
So, um, I'm spending 13 minutes just out walking around on the concrete and it feels fine.
Honestly, like it's not too bad.
If you go back and watch the episode, I'm not like, I'm not bitching about it too much.
Um, but I do get a cut on my hand.
And so it's just like a little, like a little blister or something.
It pops open. Anyways, I don't really think too much about it. Clean it up. do get a cut on my hand and so it's just like a little like a little blister or something it pops
open anyways i don't really think too much about it clean it up uh put a band-aid on but the uh
the wound like uh started to swell and it trapped a lot of the germs in inside of it like i couldn't
couldn't even open it up to so anyways it started to get worse uh i lanced it uh and at that point
like this arm big red line went oh nelly oh nelly my hand all the way up to my armpit and so like i
call my girlfriend i'm like whoa what the fuck's going on um and she's like you know you gotta go
to the hospital so i do and they like, you got sepsis. And
we're gonna like, this is like life threatening. So we're gonna have to put you on a bunch of
antibiotics. Luckily, I'd already had the episode done for that day. So they kept me overnight.
They had to like carve away some of that. And so if you go back and you watch my hand updates,
or you watch some of the videos that happen after day i think like 17 um you can see that i've got my hand wrapped up and then after i do take the wrap
off you can see i've got this huge sort of welt on my hand that's from where they they cut it open
would you have died if you wouldn't have gone to the hospital i heard that red line is like
is is not good oh i i would say i would say
i definitely probably would have died if i would have just did you have a fever uh yeah i i did and
they had they had to put me uh put a lot of antibiotics in me to fix that so um but i stayed
the night and then the next day they wanted to keep me again and i'm like i'm on day 17 i'm like
i gotta i gotta go so i was like oh oh nathaniel that's some tenant shit you broke one of the tenants
I did I broke one of the tenants
Day 17
And I got away with it
But I wouldn't recommend it
So I broke a tenant
That's because I was just
I had some momentum going
And I didn't want to
It felt like
I felt like I was cheating myself by not doing that day.
And again, this isn't something I would recommend. If you, if you're hurt, take the day off. Like,
I just wanted to show off and let you know that I was listening, that I knew the tenants.
Well done. Um, but yeah, so, uh, I wrapped it up and then I just switched to fists
for that duration of, okay. Okay.
And I was like, I'm still getting exposure.
I'm still,
I've still got another hand.
Right.
Um,
and it's my,
uh,
my less dominant hand.
So I wasn't that big of a deal.
Um,
but yeah,
so that was,
uh,
that was pretty crazy.
And I have like a bunch of footage from like the hospital and I never,
uh,
I never posted any of that.
So maybe that'll be like a super secret special episode that'll come out,
um,
on my Patreon later on or something like that.
You do have a Patreon.
Um,
I haven't launched it yet.
I've just been kind of putting it all together.
But,
um,
the problem with all of the content creation that people are asking for is
that it takes a lot of time. Oh, does asking for is that it takes a lot of time.
Oh, does it?
Yeah.
It takes a lot of time.
So, and it's just, that's not my job, right?
So I feel like if I have a Patreon and people are sort of supporting me putting out this content, then I'll have the time to be able to kind of set aside and allocate for that.
So I'll be launching that sometime before the end of the year, which is
the, I had a Patriot, I had a patron, um, showing my kids, uh, just like all the activities they do.
They do a lot of shit just all day, every day. And, uh, people were super supportive, but it was,
it was, it was, I could, it was unsustainable. Like you were saying, it's a, it's a, it's a
full-time job. Like if you want, if you want to honor the people who gave you the money,
like I was, I was struggling, like I wasn't giving them the value they deserve.
Right. So that's my thing is that if I'm going to be doing that, I want to make sure that I have sort of a schedule of content that's going to be released.
Um, and it'll be sort of special gated content, but it's not because I want to gatekeep.
It's just that if you do content creation, you realize that it is a lot of work.
It's a, it's a big time.
It's a big.
Yeah.
Consumes time.
Yeah.
This is the guy right here, by the way, this guy, big and flexy.
This is the guy who had a bunch.
I think what he's doing is the greatest contribution to humanity that you can do at this time and in where we are i think
that chronic disease is the lead the most world as greg glassman said the world's most vexing
problem i think that weight gain refined carbohydrates uh added sugars all that shit
is just done a cascade and a tsunami of fucking disease on humanity it's made it so people can't
even think right they can't even think clearly they're saying stupid shit and uh and and ending up in hospitals and, and, and they don't even have the capacity to take
care of themselves. That's where I'm at. And so when this guy who is obese as shit is like, Hey,
I did it. That's the role models we need. And he's saying, yeah, this guy had all his shit pulled
down off of Facebook showing his weight loss journey. And, uh, but you can promote weight
loss pills. It's fucking, and you can, and you can promote gast loss pills it's fucking and and you can and you
can promote gastro bypass and all that and i'm not against all that but but holy shit how about
just empowering people i mean and so that just goes back to like the game isn't fair right don't
don't complain about the game not being fair uh don't try to change the rules of the game just
learn how to play them. Right. Okay.
And, and that's how you, that's how you're going to be able to most efficiently get your message across. That's how you're going to be able to, you've got to play the game no matter what.
Right. Okay. Good advice. Good advice. You say that you, um, you dabbled, uh, you, I don't know if you're, you say you dabble in
jujitsu, but you have a, you're a Brown belt and you did it in 10 years. And that, and that's a,
that's a, that's a pretty good, uh, that's a healthy, that's a healthy pace. How often are
you doing that? Um, not as often as I'd like to tell you that. So right now I can only usually go
maybe one to three times a week. Um, I would love to be able to do jujitsu every day. It's just that,
um, it's, it doesn't fit into my schedule the same way. Luckily my, my son started recently,
so I get to kind of like teach him and, and work with him a little bit. So I get to kind of review
some of those things that helps to keep it kind of fresh in my head. But, um, it's it throughout
the years, it's, there's been sort of a wax and wane to, um,
how, how often I'm training.
So I would, I would say some people, you know, you can get your black belt faster than I
got my brown belt, um, for sure, but you just gotta be a lot more consistent.
Um, it just goes back to, if you're just showing up regularly, if you're resilient, if you'll
come back to something after, you know, a little little setback you can eventually get pretty much anywhere you
need to be so uh if if i if i had to um show up to jiu-jitsu every single day or if i had to show
up to class you know even just three times a week consistently though every single week from the
time i got my white ball until now,
it wouldn't have happened. Right. It's that ability to have a couple of layoffs and then come back to it and be resilient. That I think has allowed me to kind of stumble my way to
some proficiency in that. How old is your son? He's about to be 10. Holy cow. You had a kid
when you were 21. No. So that's right. My girlfriend's son, but.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
I was going to be like, man, you're off to the races.
Right now I'm a slow starter.
Yeah. Me too. I didn't, I didn't have my first kid till I was 43.
Yeah. You had to make sure you're ready.
I had to do something stupid. I did. I had to pull the goalie.
It took me 40, 40 years to pull the goalie. It took me 40 years to pull the goalie. How has the all-force practice affected your jiu-jitsu?
Jiu-jitsu is like havoc on your body.
It really is.
Jiu-jitsu, a lot of people are like,
oh, you do jiu-jitsu, you'll get fit.
You'll get fit out of necessity, right?
But you'll also, I've never heard a group of people complain about pain more than casual
or even just, you know, even professional jiu-jitsu players.
They're always, it's almost like a badge of honor, right?
Like, oh man, my back is constantly hurting, my knees.
I got everything taped up. Their fingers are constantly taped. Um, and so I don't want that experience for myself.
I'm not getting paid to do jujitsu. So the ability to perform it pain-free, the ability to
not have a sore back, to not have sore fingers, wrists, elbows, uh, that is, I mean, that is huge.
It's something that's hard to even see from the outside, but it is, it is an enormous
advantage, um, to be able to perform it pain-free.
Um, and then also just on top of that, if you go back in all of the videos where I'm
doing jujitsu, I am sort of highlighting what I've, uh, improved at.
And so you can see my movement is very, very similar to the all force type movements.
I mean, here, I'm just kind of showing myself get beat, but, um, that was just to make sure
that people saw both ends of the spectrum, but that's your, that's your instructor, right?
That, yeah, that's my instructor, Jared Loper. He's, um, he's a black belt out of Indy. He's
really talented. Um, uh, great practitioner, also just a super nice guy but yeah so i i've just noticed that uh in jujitsu
there's a concept known as scrambling um and it's basically like the positions between positions
that's where i've seen vast differences in how i move instead of like these linear transitions
from a to b there's all this open space where anything can happen.
And in that anything, I have intuition because of what I've been doing over the last year.
And it'll result in me being able to come out in dominant positions where normally I wouldn't be able to.
I was at a party in college, and I use the word college loosely, and I got drunk and I left my shoes there.
And I didn't – this is probably in the 90s.
And I didn't put shoes on, and I just never got another pair of shoes.
And I just – I didn't wear shoes for two years.
I was just barefoot for two years.
This was in Santa Barbara, California.
And after about a year, the bottom of my feet, I could do anything.
I could put my cigarettes out on them. I could step on attack in those two years.
The only thing that ever happened is when I was in Mexico, I did step on a dead puffer fish.
And in that, in that thing did cross into, uh, it, it broke the barrier of the layer of skin and my whole leg went numb.
But basically I could stand anywhere. I could stay like, it didn't broke the barrier of the layer of skin and my whole leg went numb, but basically
I could stand anywhere. I could stay like, it didn't matter how hot anything was. Like
my feet were just, it was nuts. Um, are your hands getting like that?
Oh yeah. So if you go back and you look at my hand updates, you can see like,
they don't look so dramatic in the video. I looked at the video. I just couldn't tell.
Is it just because it's all, um, even? even yeah so look at the bottom of your feet right now but you know at some point take a look
at them they don't really look that crazy right well i walk barefoot a lot but even still you know
you look at it smooth it's smooth but there's like a layer of something on it exactly yeah
it's really smooth like leather it doesn't look like a geode there's like a layer of something on it. Exactly. Yeah. It's really smooth. Like leather.
It doesn't look like a geode.
It's like leather.
Yeah.
So that's the difference is like you touch, touch like, um, like just like any part of
your body where it's doesn't get any sort of exposure to friction or impact and just
the difference in that compared to the bottom of your foot.
You've got like 60% more skin on the bottom of your foot than you do like anywhere else
on your body.
So no shit. That's true. What you just said. I think so. Yeah. Wow.
But it's, it's definitely, you know, it's a lot thicker and it's going to, you know,
obviously it's going to vary depending on how much you, uh, how much time you spend barefoot,
but, um, but yeah, so the skin is so much thicker. It's so much more conditioned. It's,
it's, um, it's just, like you said, it's more, it's like leather more conditioned it's it's um it's just like you said it's more
it's like leather and i think that's even how i describe it so whenever i i you know have my
calisthenics practices and even just from like lifting weights and stuff uh you'll get calluses
in in certain areas right the rest of your hand that just isn't getting exposure that that is all
sort of just merged into one big
okay it has chandaria yeah so like getting like you said you can't really see it too much
but like on my palms like here i have calluses i don't know i can't line this up yeah yeah
and here so like not just the like place where you conventionally get from your grip it's right
um and you you need that too.
If you're going to be doing a lot of handstands, we're going to be doing a lot of, you know,
moving around on your hands.
You're going to want that because otherwise you're going to end up in the hospital like
me after one, you know, short 13 minute walk on a sidewalk.
So, um, let, let, let's say you're a, um, uh, uh, a 30 year old man or woman.
You do CrossFit three to five days a week.
And I want to experience this.
Can I, would you say that a fair plan
is to just follow your plan?
Basically, maybe stop doing CrossFit for 30 days and walk on
all four one minute a day and add a minute every single day for 30 days? Or do you think that's
too aggressive even for like someone who's the fittest person at their local Starbucks? Like,
I'm the fittest person at my local Starbucks. And when I see that you did it, I'm like,
fuck, I can do that. So fit is such a, just a general term, right?
Right, right.
The thing is, is what are you trying to improve?
What are you trying to?
I want to have the experience of all four.
Let's say I don't even know what I want to improve.
I'm just like Forrest Gump.
I'm like, oh, I saw Nathaniel do that.
That looks fun.
Oh, I want to be able to move like that.
So my kids think I'm cool.
Like it's like shallow like that.
And you're experiencing, let's say no pain. Let's say you're. I have kids think I'm cool. Like it's like shallow like that. And you're experiencing,
let's say no pain. Let's say you're, I have lower back pain. Yeah. Let's say you're,
you're an exceptional CrossFitter and you, you, you make it all work for you. So it doesn't hurt.
Yeah. You don't have to get rid of that. You don't have to stop what you're already doing.
I stopped what I was doing. I stopped all of my other practices temporarily so I could see the
benefits of this.
Okay. Okay. You were really kind of doing a scientific study. You want it to be like,
okay, let's, let's look at this. I'm going to cut everything out of my diet except for peanut butter. Right. I wanted to, I wanted to knock out as many variables as possible so I
could see the true impact of doing this. And then I've slowly reintegrated all of my practices
for the most part, I still don't
really like lift weights the same way I did beforehand. Just because I've gained so much
strength that like, I've sort of almost surpassed where I was when I was lifting weights. So it's
like, when I do reintegrate those, I have to almost approach it differently. Um, but, uh, and also just, I realized how much more accessible my
all fours practices than going to the gym. I mean, it is literally like having a gym built into
the way that you move. Um, so yeah, I would just say like, don't, don't think about it as walking
around on all fours every day, because if you don't have, unless you have a really strong grasp on how to
modulate intensity. So if you already know how that works, then yeah, you can do that. And you
just apply those tenets that I already mentioned. But if you are just a layman and you're just
trying to give it a shot, I would say just start with having your hands on the floor. That's your
minimum. And what that what constitutes
your all-force practice at from that point on is totally based off of what you feel like you can
show up for that day it doesn't have to be crawling it can be sitting in that position
it can just be sitting with your hands on the floor it can be uh it can be you know plank it
can be but it can be also advanced stuff too. It just really, just really depends.
So the 30 day challenge, I've thought about that.
I've come back to it so many times because I do like it.
It's got sort of this, um, there's something about it that people are like, yes, this is
cool.
Like this is a challenge that I feel like I want to get into, but I don't want people
to misinterpret what I'm doing.
I'm not just doing consecutive bear
crawl the whole time. Um, there are a lot of times where I'm shifting my weight back. I'm
kind of sitting in like a perched position on my haunches. Um, or I'm, I rarely ever dropped to my
knees. Um, just because I knew it was cheating. I knew it was cheating. It's not cheating. I just
personally don't, because like I said, I've got this understanding of how to modulate intensity, but I also really enjoy
the, uh, dorsiflexion, the hip flexion, uh, even like the knee flexion. A lot of people
suffer from poor knee flexion, which isn't something you really think about because it's
what the knees do mainly. Um, but I like getting exposure to those positions as well. So I'm generally just going to
shift back into my toes or into the balls of my feet, but yeah, drop your knees if you want.
I just, when you start to set too many rules about what the movement has to look like,
that's when you start to get away from the, from the magic of what all force is.
I, I, yesterday I'd climbed up to a high spot and by a high spot, I probably like 30 inches off the ground. It was, it was a bunch of, um, you know, gymnastics mats and I'd climbed up there and to get down, I couldn't reach and get my hand down. Right. And I didn't want to make the leap for those couple inches and hurt my wrist. So that's why I had to, then I had to drop on my knee.
And that was, that was to reach down.
And that's what it's all about. It's you using your intuition, right?
You ask yourself, should I do this? And the answer is a resounding fuck. No.
Yeah. Yeah.
So you then made the correct call, right. To,
to make that adjustment so that you could accomplish that task, right.
You don't have to change what it is you're trying to do.
You just need to maybe take some changes to how you're accomplishing it.
And kind of made me think whenever you said that about something else, that's a side effect of my
all force practice. And that is the height of just standing or the height of just 30 inches,
right? When you're, you don't really think
about it a whole lot, but, um, if you were to think about falling from just the height of
standing and catching yourself on your hands, if I were to ask most anybody to do that, it would
be terrifying beyond being able to convince yourself to do it, do it. It might result in
something, but I don't, um, I don't really think about that anymore. Like the ground seems so much closer to me now.
And it's not because it is, it's because the consequences are so much smaller.
And that's the gap that you have to actually bridge is what are the consequences?
I know what the consequences are of me falling from that height now.
So there's no fear comes from a lack of understanding.
Fear comes from the unknown.
So because I've gone through and spent so much time in those positions, moving through these, these various movements and
these various ranges from these different heights and these different intensities, I don't have that
unknown any longer. I know what's going to happen. And so I don't fear that. And so I can trust my
body to be like, okay, I'm 30 inches up. If I jumped down there, what's going to happen? I'm going to be able to either catch myself or if I don't, I'll drop my
feet, but it's already all been done before in various ways. And, and so I don't have that,
that same relationship with distance, uh, that I, that I did before that most people have,
I can eliminate a lot of those fears and that's
really liberating and it gives you infinitely more options than you had before, even if you
had never even considered them options. When I started CrossFit, I was in my 30s
and I wanted to be able to do a muscle-up. So I focused on it for like a couple of years. And
once I started getting muscle-ups, I became addicted to them. How many strict,
and I was really into strict muscle ups and the whole world changed for me. I had never climbed,
I climbed more fences after I started CrossFit than I did in my entire youth. Like whenever I
just saw a fence or somewhere or something blocking me, going over shit just became nothing. The whole,
the whole landscape changed. And that's kind of what you're saying too, right?
Your whole perception of landscape changes because of your practice.
It becomes more available to you.
There's more options.
We operate our days with so many blinders on, so many limitations because we don't have – we haven't explored these things that our bodies are completely capable of.
Right. But because we haven't explored them, we just say, that's not an option. It's almost like
we're like, a lot of people are like Sims, right? Uh, like they're only going to walk in the paths
that are drawn for them, but right. Right. That's not how we were designed. And not to say that we
were intelligently designed, but like, that's not how our bodies, that's not all we're capable of like right right
move around there like this guy we started the show with on 60 minutes he's a fucking human
being like me and you and he didn't know it was possible to walk on all four like what
exactly that was what and i can't believe that even came out of your mouth it's yeah exactly
and it's like why why limit yourself to that, that really,
really limited perspective that, that, uh, having those blinders on, like just,
you know, get out and try things and move. And the more you do it, the more options you'll have. And that's, that's really why I don't try to give too many examples of what, uh, what you
should and shouldn't do in an all force practice. Just get out there and start to move around a
little bit. Obviously apply those tenants. Don'tours practice, just get out there and start to move around a little bit.
Obviously, apply those tenets.
Don't hurt yourself, right?
But you'll start to gain confidence and you'll start to learn things
about what your body can do
that it would take you a lifetime to read about.
If you were to read a list of things that you can do,
you're going to learn it way faster
just getting out there and doing it safely and cautiously,
but over time, becoming more and more confident
at those things. I'm going to show this, uh, I have a couple of videos here that
things that I've plucked from your Instagram.
And so you used to have this, this the old you right yep with wrist guards yeah i i had invested
a lot of money in like basically every type of wrist brace that was on the market um i tried
them all and the ones that i was using in that video are basically the most heavy duty ones you
can get they're called tiger paws they're used for uh they're like the only ones that are allowed to be used i think uh for olympic gymnasts um and so they have these like plastic braces in
them that actually like really support your wrist and even with using them i would still
experience some wrist pain but at least i'd be able to perform the movements. But the problem is, is that I'm still loading up all that intensity onto my,
my wrist.
Even if there is some support,
like I'm still getting,
I'm still getting exposure to that intensity and it's too much.
So I wasn't doing myself any favors by doing it.
And since starting my all force practice,
I have yet to wear any sort of support or braces or anything that I don't need anything like that.
And I'm in no pain at all instead of.
When I started CrossFit, I had really bad lower back pain.
And, of course, you know, the conventional wisdom was never carry anything in the frontal plane.
But as I started doing deadlifts and carrying things in the frontal plane and lifting up d-balls my back injuries went down significantly like all throughout my
20s and 30s my back would get injured doing the dumbest little things right throwing a frisbee
take taking a shit my back would go out right and then i started carrying stuff in the frontal
plane not crazy not not too crazy but it all it all it all like now i don't injure my back i still
have back pain but i don't injure it i'm not i'm not you know what i mean it's, it all, it all like now I don't injure my back. I still have back pain,
but I don't injure it. I'm not, I'm not, you know what I mean? It's it's I'm not like in bed for a
week. And it's kind of like what you did instead of running from it, you, you, you moved closer to
it. Yeah. It's like that Ben Patrick, that a knees over toes guy. It's the same. You got to
kind of poke into it a little bit. So I still apply that original tenet of, of trying to avoid
pain. Right. But that alone, you, like you said, you can't run from it. You also have to then
challenge yourself. Okay. If I'm going to avoid pain, I need to have a starting point. I need to
be healthy when you're healthy, when you're not hurting, start addressing it.
Right. Exactly. You need to start to experiment with that in small, small ways. And, and that's
the only way you're going to be able to build up conditioning. And a lot of people don't realize this, this is sort of like a
exclusive secret that you get, but look at my wrist extension. That's not good.
Right. Not even 90 degrees. Right. Okay. So I'd spent all this time trying to improve my wrist mobility and all of these little sort of routines, these programs to try to address all of these different things.
But instead, I just like I was like, I just need to spend more time on my hands.
So now I can jump from like my couch on into a handstand.
Yeah.
from like my couch on into a handstand. Yeah. And zero pain can hold myself in that position, then knock out a couple of handstand pushups before I cartwheel out of it and no problems at
all. And I never improved the actual ability to move my wrist into extension naturally.
What I did was I just gave myself conditioning to those ranges by slowly integrating
them. Yeah. Look at that. Does that look like somebody that has poor wrist mobility? No.
But I do something similar to that every day. So it doesn't cause me any pain at all because
even though I naturally can't move into that level of wrist extension,
while I am in that level of wrist extension, I've started from the absolute smallest amount of intensity and worked my way up to more than my body weight.
What kind of pants are those?
Those are my gi pants.
Oh, those are your gi pants. Okay.
This was after a class, and I was just like, hey guys, let's give this a shot.
That's actually one of my other coaches, Jacob. He's actually been my jujitsu coach since I very first started.
This is really cool. This is a, he has this label or he talks about it in here. I think
it's transitioning. This is something I'm going to start having my kids do. My kids love running
on all four. Um, but I'm going to have them start like walking and trotting and then transition
just seamlessly to all fours it's really
cool how about the other way how about going from do you do the other way too where you go from uh
trotting to up to bipedal up to i wish i had um i wish i had the the exact video this is where
a little bit more um categorization would be better but tiktok doesn't allow that with their
playlist but yeah i i have I do that as well.
So I, I don't just practice transitioning from my feet to my hands, but also the inverse
of that, because that plays into all of my physical practices, um, being able to jump
from my feet to my hands, but also once I'm in that all force position, transitioning
back to my feet.
And so one of the drills that I do, uh do pretty frequently is I'll start on my feet.
I'll take a couple of steps.
Then I will transition down to all fours.
Then I'll transition into a handstand and then from the handstand to all fours and then
back to my feet.
And I'll just run that back and forth until it starts to feel really super smooth.
Yeah, that's cool.
That means that at that point, I have that accessibility to be able to basically be in whatever position I need to given the situation.
So instead of my limitations dictating what I do, what I do is going to be dictated by my needs instead.
I fancy myself as a parenting expert, even though I'm not, but I tell everyone that I am. And one of the things that I profess, like I know everything, is that you should never teach your kids.
You should never promote your kids to walk.
They're going to spend their entire life walking.
There's no reason ever to encourage your child to walk.
What you should be supporting them in is their crawling.
And because crawling is something I think of it as the and i've written
about it in my instagram i think of crawling as the holy grail of fitness and it's lost you leave
it behind at the age of two and what a fucking shame it is because not only does it make you
the strong it's the movement that makes you stronger than any movement but it's also the
best one for the brain so it's like the the all encompassing, like Holy grail of exercise. And so when my kids, and there's all these things
that people do to teach their kids to crawl, right? They, they make, they try to grab them
with their hands. And there's like this goal among parents, like this bragging, my kid,
my kid started walking at nine months, like they're bragging. And I always kind of cringe.
And then there's these other parents. I don't know if you've seen this this yet but there's these kids that just never
crawl and they scoot and it's because parents it's i believe it's because parents carry their
kids too much so i never used a carrier with my child because if i i would always hold my child
and if he needed to be put down because i wasn't strong enough i got tired he had to go down
to the ground on the concrete anywhere at a coffee shop at a beer garden.
Fuck you. You're on the ground. And my kids were world class crawlers, insane crawlers.
So awesome. And now they're world class on their feet, too.
But there was this one thing that one of my kids, Avi, as he started getting towards the end of his crawling, he didn't crawl like this anymore.
He had shifted to this.
So when he would do speed crawling, he would do it like this.
Do you ever notice your hands turn in just intuitively?
And I was always tripped on that.
I'm like, wow, that's like.
I think that we get kind of locked into form.
People ask me about form all the time.
And I don't think that form is as important as of locked into form. People ask me about form all the time and don't
think that form is as important as people think it is. Okay. At the end of the day, it's a tool
to accomplish a specific task. Right. And so tools are intended to be used exclusively. Um, they're
just supposed to be used in, in combination with all of the rest of your tools. So if something
feels right, it probably is,
right? This is so off the beaten path of conventional fitness, right? And yet the form, right? Grab the lap pull down bar, make sure you're slightly in front of it. I mean,
you know, exactly our bodies move in many different ranges and so many different angles.
And so limiting yourself to just using a specific form can actually be a huge
detriment to your overall progress because you end up falling into these grooves. So again, this can
be a huge benefit to you if you're familiar with the concept of greasing the groove, right? Falling
into these patterns can really help to solidify and strengthen those patterns. But if you're
exclusively using them, then you're also letting everything else around it wither and die.
So use form as a tool to accomplish a goal, but make sure that it's not so dogmatic that you're missing out on everything else.
Do you ever notice yourself turn in like this? You know what? I generally –
He wouldn't get up on his feet either, by the way, unless it was on certain
surfaces. Like if it was, you know, he crawled like a kid on his knees, but kids will get up
in that position. If like you have, like, if you have them crawl on wet grass or, um, on, um, hot
sand or on, um, you know, rough surfaces, they will get up. They'll do what you do. Yeah. I
haven't personally experienced that too much as far as the intuition, uh, uh, internally
rotate and flare my elbows out like that.
But it does make me, um, remember there was a post by this creator steep gay.
Um, and he actually had a really viral video where he was like pushing himself from a pushup
position up to standing.
And he gave the tip of internally rotating, flaring your elbows out and pointing your
fingers for like that maximum
like explosive push. So maybe your son was sort of like, uh, kind of, um, yeah, eat into something
like that because, um, kids are so good at figuring out that path of least resistance and what really
works. Um, and then they're sort of taught how to move after that.
But we learn best by experience.
And then we also learn by watching.
So whenever you are talking about like teaching your kids to walk, but they're already going
to spend the rest of their life walking, they're already seeing people walk.
The best thing that you can do is show your kids other forms of movement.
So instead of teaching them how to do anything, right?
Kids aren't going to hear you say something and be like, ah, got it conceptually up here.
They're going to watch you do something and they're going to try to replicate that.
So just get down on all fours, start to crawl around.
They're going to figure out walking because they see everyone else doing it, right?
What they're not going to see is the the rest of uh what their
body is capable of because again there's these dogmatic ways of movement and we see that all over
um youtube now all over humanity that you people just literally will go watch skateboarding videos
or jujitsu videos and just sit there and watch them over and over and over and over and over
and then just be able to go into the gym and start executing on it.
Yeah, and that's how we learn best, and it's this sort of lost art.
All humans? Do all humans learn best like that?
I don't know.
By all, I mean let's say 90% or something.
Everybody.
Not the blind ones.
You learn about these different learning styles in school, right?
You know, visual, aural, and kinesthetic learning.
And it's like everybody is actually a combination of all of those things. But, but language itself is pretty unique to humans,
right? I mean, there are a couple other animals that that use it, but far and away, most,
most life forms learn, like how to operate by observing, right? And so you got to put it in
their path, you got to let them see it, you got to put it in their path. You got to let
them see it. You got to let them observe it and then try to replicate it. Um, that's something
that I've really learned, not just with kids, but also just even coaching adults. You can, I can
pick my words very carefully and then speak until I'm blue in the face, but it's not until they
actually see it and not just see me doing it, but see themselves doing it. So another, um,
this is kind of a soft tenant of my training philosophy is that you need to record yourself often and,
and then look back and see those things because it's probably not what you think it looks like.
Right. And you're going to glean a lot more insights by watching than you are from hearing.
There's no amount of someone telling you how to ride a bike that will teach you how to ride a
bike. Exactly. You have to get same with swimming. There's no amount of like telling you how to ride a bike that will teach you how to ride a bike.
Exactly.
You have to get – same with swimming.
There's no amount of – like if you don't know how to float, you have to get water time.
You have to get bike time. No one's just getting on a bike and riding away.
Exactly.
And you're not going – even if you get in there into the water and you start floating or you get on a bike and you start to ride, reading it out of a textbook is not to give you the same uh amount of information as just watching a person do it yeah you need massive information uh what
did you call it kinesthetic learning yeah i think that's like can you imagine that how much when
first time you get on a bike just the brain must be just going nuts the amount of input in in
balance and then now we do it like it's
fucking nothing, right? Like everyone, like once you're older, it's just like nothing.
Right, exactly. And so people don't understand like how much information is flying around
while they're doing things. You don't need to, uh, you don't need to beat a dead horse by
explaining it in a bazillion different ways. show them because you're conveying so much
information about the form, about the pacing, about the demeanor in which you're performing it.
And all of that is being absorbed and is going to result in learning it much faster than
formal instruction. Formal instruction has a time and place. It really helps you to overcome
certain barriers where you're getting kind of stuck not learning it intuitively. They definitely work best in combination with one another. But completely ignoring this sort of lead by example style of teaching is really putting a huge barrier in the way of being able to actually accomplish something and being able to teach it to someone else.
Anyone close to you started doing this practice? Did your girlfriend do it? Your parents, anyone? Um, so my, my girlfriend, uh, and my kids,
they all, they, they do versions of it, but my thing is that everybody should have their own
practice. So the reason that I specifically chose an all force practice is because I looked at all
of my current physical disciplines, my jujitsu, my, my, uh, all of my
strength conditioning, um, practices. And what I realized is that almost all of them have me
putting my hands on the floor or have me putting weight into my hands. So I, I looked at where all
of those cross sections intersected and it intersected with weight bearing on the hands.
And I determined that's what I needed to have as a daily practice. And that's the really the skill I needed to improve at. So whenever I'm
helping other people build their daily practices, I like to take into consideration what their goals
are, what they enjoy doing and what they're already doing. So their other physical disciplines,
their daily practices look different than mine. But also they're just not like um i guess on that same level of
discipline as me because you know they're kids and they just want to play which i want to encourage
more than having a strict lifestyle uh do you remember where you where you were when you came
up with this this idea like where you're like oh shit i'm gonna i'm gonna fuck with this all
force thing i think i was over i mean with any like crystallization like that, it's really the culmination of like lots of different times where you're kind of like having an idea.
It's all happening in the background.
But I think that the moment that it kind of clicked for me as far as a series to do on TikTok and something that I wanted to stick to sort of religiously.
TikTok and something that I wanted to stick to sort of religiously. Um, I was over at my buddy,
Stacy's house and, and we were training and, um, I was like, you were trained jujitsu or no, she's actually, she's my yoga instructor. And then I teach her calisthenics. And so
she's training. Um, but, uh, I was like, I really need to be spending more time on my hands at this
point. I was still struggling with the wrist pain. Um, and I was like, I need to be spending more time on my hands. At this point, I was still struggling with the wrist pain.
I was like, I need to be spending more time on my hands.
I'd seen this avenue for the journaling, which was this daily series.
I was like, what's something that nobody else is doing?
I've already tried all the things that everybody's doing.
I've already tried all of these risk conditioning programs Because I've already tried all the things that everybody's doing. I've already tried like all of these risk conditioning programs.
I've already tried all these mobility programs. They weren't working for me.
I need something that's unique.
And so that's just where I came up with the idea of any more total exposure.
And I need to be able to change the intensity at a moment's notice at any
point during that training.
And so it was pretty obvious at that point that there was really only one way
place where those two things intersected. And that was with that, um, with my bear crawl.
And within 24 hours you started within the idea of solidifying?
I think it was that day. Yeah.
And I'd like to hear that. So you didn't give yourself time to procrastinate. There's a bit of a gump component, forced gump. Okay, I'm just going to run. I'm going to do this. You weren't afraid, oh, what if I fail at day 15? Or you didn't start making excuses. I'll wait till after summer's over and do this. This will be a great indoor winter practice. You didn't start coming up with procrastinations or mental hurdles. the hurdles no those things those things will really really uh set you back is anything
any anything like that where you're like i'll wait until yeah just don't find it find that and that
actually that that flies in the face of of what uh of my all-fours practice in general the concept
behind it is don't wait don't wait start. Okay. Continue doing it and set yourself up to be able
to do it every single day. Um, because it's the waiting, it's the periods of inactivity that are
causing you to decondition to causing you to lose this ability that you already have, um, and getting
you further from being able to do it proficiently. So yeah, um, I was like, I just got to jump in,
see how it goes. There are no consequences. Back then I had like zero followers.
I didn't have anybody even watching.
In fact, the first week, the only comment I got on any of my videos is, why?
Why are you doing this?
And it was...
So I didn't have anything to prove to anybody.
I didn't have anything to prove to myself.
I was just doing it.
I was just seeing what would happen.
And I think a lot of people need to... Again, it goes back to nobody really gives a shit what you're doing, right? There's
an, there are an infinite amount of other things for things for people to look at,
get out there and start just doing the things that you need to do, the things that you want to do.
Don't let the barrier of perfection or rejection or fear get in the way because those things are always going to be
present. Just get out there and do it. And those things will start to dissipate very quickly.
Once you realize that nobody cares and that it's for your own good in the first place.
I had some guests who are, who are making fun of me. They were saying my 2k row time would be,
is 10 minutes. And they were just on here just busting on me.
And even a pretty slow 2K time is eight minutes, but it at least shows that you give a shit.
And so one of my friends just showed up at my house, and he goes, hey, get on your rower.
I'm like, fuck you.
I haven't been on the rower in years.
And he goes, no, I want to show people you rowing.
And this is last week, and he made a video, and I rowed, and I got a little under eight minutes.
And people just fucking loved it.
Yeah.
Like,
like I don't,
I don't know why.
There's nothing special about me rowing.
The time was fucking a 12 year old could beat me,
but,
but,
but people just loved the effort.
Like they called you out and I did it.
And it's,
and you're right.
No one gives a fuck like about the things that you think that they might
give a fuck about.
Right.
They definitely don't give a fuck about what you can't do that is something because nobody cares about that
and the other thing is that like you know a lot of people see the progress that i've had
and they're constantly asking me to do these little challenges and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, like I get more recognition, more praise just for what I have done than for what I might be able to
do. Um, and I like it how you've just stepped off into the unknown. That's, I mean, for, for me,
that's the essence of life. Can you, where can you step off onto the unknown and you've done it
safely and you're sharing it with society. It's so fun.
And that's fun is a big aspect of it.
You know, you've got to be able to show up and do something every day.
You've got to enjoy it. Like, like I said, you're not, there's no separation between training and life.
They are one in the same.
You are constantly living while you're training and you're constantly training while you're
living.
So, um, so I mean, you might as well, uh, have some fun with it because if not, if not, then what are you doing? You're wasting your time.
Let's say it's 1030 at night and you haven't done your practice. You're tired. Do you say, nope, nope, I'm going to do it. And you clear out some room in the living room and you get in your 30 minutes? Yeah, I've done that plenty of times. Generally, I like to get it done earlier if I can, because that means I'm going to get more done.
If I start earlier, I'll do my 30 minutes, but then I'm also going to be more primed and active throughout the day to be able to do more of those things.
You set a timer?
You set your iPhone to 30, 31 minutes and get at it?
I used to set a timer.
Now I'll just take a quick peek at the clock.
I used to set a timer. Now I'll just take a quick peek at the clock. I used to, to hold myself accountable. And now that it's so automated that it's so easy, I don't really feel like I have to
have a timer like that. In fact, now what I'll usually do, and this is what I would recommend
to people. And I love this concept. I don't know where I heard it originally, but set a minimum
amount of time to work to start with, and then eventually set a maximum amount of time. Oh, I've heard you talk about that too. Yeah.
So I'm a big fan of a maximum amount of time for a training session. Um, because it keeps you from
keeps you from fucking around. Right. If you go to the gym and you're like, I'm here for,
I'm here for an hour. Right. You'll, you'll find anything to fill that hour. Right. But if
you're like, all right, I've only got 20 minutes to work. You are going to be very, very efficient
with your work, right? Because you only have that to work with. Um, and then it also just keeps you
from doing things that you didn't intend to do originally things that are kind of outside the
realm of what it is that you were like, scroll your phone. Exactly. I don't, I don't play on my phone unless I decided that for that training session,
I wanted to explore what it would be like the relationship between like
playing a game and actually doing my training,
which I've had a couple sessions like that,
where I'm like maybe playing a,
a turn based card game online with friends and I'll just train,
uh,
between turns. And then the rest of
them, while I'm taking my turns, I'm just like sitting in like an all force position. Um,
but I don't waste my time while I'm training. I'm very present. Um, and, and I feel like I get way
more out of a small amount of time doing that than I do out of a large amount of time. Uh,
whenever I'm focused on filling the time?
During the middle of the day, I will do this thing called energy body. I'll lie down for a minimum of 20 minutes, and it's usually always 20 minutes, and I just take my, I try to move all my
attention and awareness into my body. And if I don't, if I have, let's say I have an hour to do
it, and I don't set the timer, I'll lie down and I'll fall asleep or I'll just, I just will fuck around.
You know what I mean?
I'll look at my phone, right?
But if I set the timer for 20 minutes, it's almost like my whole body knows, hey, you only have 20 minutes to fucking do this.
And I start to get like really, really high and experience a lot of stillness like right away.
Yeah.
The pressure of knowing, hey, you have limited time.
So, so I, I, I totally, uh, yeah, we get on that. Can I say that again? What'd you say?
I was going to say, we get lost in, um, the, the vastness of the time. Like we,
we have such a poor concept of, of time, both on, on the, both ends of the spectrum. Um,
that's another, like, even with life in general, like life is a limited amount of time, both on, on the, both ends of the spectrum. Um, that's another, like even with
life in general, like life is a limited amount of time, right? Like get out there and start doing
things now because it's ticking away. That's why I try to remind myself every day, like I'm going
to die because, um, otherwise you're like, you'll live like a, like an immortal and you'll end up
just kind of like loafing around and stuff like that. Because if you have an infinite amount of
time, then it kind of takes that pressure away. i want to read i want to read something to you like keep on my desk
when your parents are alive you might wish they behave different
when they're dead you will wish you behave different pretend your parents are dead
so you know like you get mad at your parents sometimes yeah but but yeah but when you're dead
you when they're dead you'll probably think that all those times that you could have just react
reacted differently to them instead of fucking fighting with them and i just keep reminding
myself of this yeah i keep this on my desk i'll imagine myself being dead a lot of time
did i get what i wanted to get done and and at the end of the day, like, uh, you know, um, life is the meaning in life is what you
give it.
So you, you make your own meaning, but, um, but at the, but you don't want to be looking
back from any point in your life and be, uh, wishing you had done something else.
So if you regret something right now, regret big swaths of time where you could have been
doing something else, start to make that change now. Uh, don't wait for it to happen down the
road because you're just going to be living in another moment there where you're regretting,
you know, these decisions. So, um, I'm not really big on, uh, um, like, uh, my life having a lot of inherent meaning,
but I do like to make sure that I'm not really focused on what I'm going to
look back and see more like what I'm looking back and seeing right now and
making sure that from a moment to moment basis,
I'm living the life that I want to be living and I'm doing the things that I
want to be living.
So a good thing to do is
to, to remind yourself that you are, uh, kind of a limited space here, uh, while you're, while you're
living and, and remind yourself that it's all going to end eventually. So it's very similar to
what you just said, except for you're just applying it to yourself. Do you have good habits?
I mean, that's relative. Um, I feel like For yourself, do you like your habits? I always think of life as just a bunch of habits,
and that I should always be just refining my habits, like my loops, like the plates I'm spinning.
Yeah. I feel like habits are, again, just a tool, like form. So not everything works with just
habits. Habits are useful, but not everything that with just habits. Habits are, um, useful, but not everything
that you need to do can be a habit. Right. Um, give me an example. Give me an example of that.
Yeah. Um, so there are certain things like, um, like, uh, organizing like my room. Like I don't really want to do that on a daily basis,
but I do want to have that. Um, I do want to have that space available to me to be able to do
whatever I want. So I don't necessarily think that it's ever going to be a habit for me to,
uh, go through and do that every day because I still have to make the conscious decision to do it. A habit is something that happens intuitively without thinking. So like if you've ever driven
anywhere and you weren't sure how you got there, that was a habit, right? That was,
you were fully automated in that. They're going to be sleeping on the same side of the bed every
night. Like last night I slept on the, on the side of the bed that wasn't the side I normally sleep
on. And I was like, Whoa, this is weird. This is cool.
Yeah.
I mean,
because my habits,
like that's my side.
I don't even know.
We,
I never talked to my wife.
That's my side.
That's your side.
Yeah.
But then this,
I just climbed into bed on the wrong side and I was just like,
well,
fuck it.
I'm staying here.
I'm too tired to move.
Right.
So if it doesn't happen automatically,
if it doesn't happen without thinking it,
it's not,
even if you do it every single day.
Oh,
oh. So you're consciously deciding on it, then it's not a habit. So, uh, oops. Um, so I don't think
that everything can be a habit that everything that I need to happen in my life, everything
that I want to happen in my life can't be a habit. Um, but habits are a powerful tool. It's just that habits generally tend to be the things that are, um, that are completely
automated. And so I can do certain things every single day and I still have to make the conscious
decision to do them every single day or I'm not going to get them done. Yeah. Um, when, when does
this, uh, this, is this, is this all thing now for – do you think this will be – from where you can see in your life at 31 years old, this is like now a part of your life forever?
I don't think that I see myself not having an all-fours practice as long as I want to continue with my other practices.
It's the knot that ties them all together and makes them all possible.
It's the bag that I carry all of my other disciplines in.
And so if I want to continue performing those things,
pain-free, continue making progress
on all of those things consistently
to not leave any of them behind.
And yeah, I feel like I will continue
my all-fours practice indefinitely.
Awesome.
Nathaniel, thanks for coming on.
Thanks for your hour and 41 minutes of time.
Yeah. Thanks for having me. It was great to get to clear up some stuff. And again,
it's just all about getting that information about what I'm doing out there. And so that
people are misinformed and, and, you know, I want people to use it for more good than harm. So.
Yeah, I think it's cool. It's, and it's so accessible it's and it's so accessible you've made it so accessible when
i watch the stuff that what's his name does uh the monkey guy i forget ito portal some of it
seems like inaccessible um just because it's like oh i want to do that and then i'm like
fuck that that looks like that's five years away but the stuff that you're doing is like
like i said there's that beautiful moonwalking component to it and dance component
to it. But, but I see, okay, I, I can just do this alone with no one laughing at me in my garage for
a couple of minutes every day. And I can start with the planks and I can start, and I can start
just really getting, uh, acclimated. And I think every single person who's a fitness guy could use this type of logic of baby steps.
From playing to even guys who can do 20 unbroken handstand pushups, this is probably a great practice for them.
Yeah, and like I said, I'm more concerned with day one than I am with day 300.
Day one is the most important day.
Because why? say that again?
Why is that? That, that, because it's because without day one, day 300 is never going to
happen. You can have a one, right? But you're only going to ever have a day 300 if you can have
a successful day one. And you can start that as many times as you want. And a lot of people think
that once you get past day one, that was it. That was day one.
Now, you know, I can't if I break from that, that that streak or if I break from that consistency that now, you know, I've got to adhere to day whatever I ended on.
No, start over again.
Day one is your most important day because it's what's going to get you to where you need to be.
Awesome.
All right, dude. Great meeting you. Thanks for coming on. Yeah's going to get you to where you need to be awesome all right dude uh great meeting you thanks for coming on yeah great to meet you too
may our paths cross again hopefully they do all right ciao
and the guy who walks on all fours is gone
i don't feel like myself this morning i don't know what's going on with me
not in a bad way.
Oh, darn it.
I wanted to, you know what I tried doing last night when I was prepping for this?
I wanted to ask him this.
I got on the air runner, the assault air runner, and I walked on all fours forward and backward on the assault runner.
I wanted to ask him if he had ever done that.
It's kind of cool.
Bear crawl on the assault runner.
You got to be careful, though.
You'll come off the front. You'll come off the front.
You'll come off the front.
That shit starts going too fast and you can't.
What did he say?
Modulate your intensity.
You'll come off the front.
Tomorrow.
Who do we have on tomorrow?
I was so well behaved in this podcast.
There was something awfully mature about him. mature than like most of my guests maybe that's what had me stumped
you woke up on the wrong side of the bed yes nice heidi i did wake up on the wrong side of the bed
uh and then when my dog vomited at 420
I moved to
another bed
the whole thing last night was just a mess
oh tomorrow we have Amy West on
that's awesome okay Dr. Amy West
I wonder if she goes by Dr. Amy West
filmmaker Amy West
DEI counsel Amy West
CrossFit spectacular I think
she's competing in Olympic weightlifting it'll be fun
to catch up with her
I had her on the CrossFit
podcast many many
many years ago and then on Saturday
we have Dalton Rasta
on Sunday I guess I'm going to do
on one of the days this weekend I'm going
to want to see if Andrew Hiller will come back on
for a Hiller fit review show,
man.
It's going to be gnarly this week.
So much fun shit with his,
uh,
cease and desist from yes.
Bull.
No,
well,
excuse me.
And then on Monday,
Oh,
then I need to do a live calling show.
My notes for,
um,
my notes are getting crazy.
So much fun stuff on Instagram these days.
And then on Monday, we have Matt Boudreaux.
We've had him on before.
He owns three of the Acton Academies.
These are schools that kids go to, K-12.
And then it looks like Tuesday,
Brian Friend is coming back on in the morning,
I'm guessing with James Hobart
to talk about CrossFit Games team competition.
Man, there's a lot of shit going on.
This next three weeks, four weeks is going to be weird.
It's going to be too much CrossFit for me.
Okay, time to go to the skate park.
I'll talk to you guys later.
Thanks for joining me.
Bye-bye. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.