The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1399 - Pavel Tsatsouline

00:00:03.000 All right.

00:00:04.000 Here we go.

00:00:05.000 What's up, man?

00:00:05.000 How are you?

00:00:06.000 Joe, great to be on your show.

00:00:08.000 It's a pleasure.

00:00:08.000 It's a pleasure to meet you and an honor.

00:00:10.000 I've been following your work for a long time, man.

00:00:12.000 I mean, I was first introduced to you and your methods by Steve Maxwell, who was a huge proponent of the kettlebell, and then I started getting into your videos.

00:00:22.000 A very smart coach, yeah.

00:00:22.000 Yeah, very good.

00:00:24.000 And I started getting into your videos, and I've read your books, and so for me, it's an honor.

00:00:29.000 My pleasure.

00:00:30.000 How long have you been teaching and practicing with kettlebells?

00:00:35.000 Since you're a little?

00:00:36.000 Something like that.

00:00:37.000 Medium.

00:00:38.000 It's kind of like baseball, you know.

00:00:40.000 It's a pretty common thing.

00:00:41.000 In Russia?

00:00:42.000 Yeah, it is.

00:00:43.000 Why didn't it catch on here until you came over here?

00:00:49.000 You know what?

00:00:50.000 I don't think people really tried.

00:00:52.000 I don't think people really understood that it would catch on.

00:00:55.000 And I did not think it would happen either.

00:00:57.000 So I'm sitting with my friend Marty Gallagher, having stakes years back.

00:01:02.000 Marty is a former coach for Powerlifting Team USA and coach of some top lifters.

00:01:08.000 And you were just trading old war stories, talking about stuff, and I told him about kettlebells.

00:01:12.000 He says, well, you've got to teach Americans how to do that.

00:01:16.000 And I said, Marty, you don't understand.

00:01:18.000 This stuff is too hard.

00:01:19.000 Nobody's going to want to do this.

00:01:20.000 And he said, you don't understand.

00:01:22.000 People want to do this.

00:01:24.000 And I wrote an article based on Marty's suggestion for Milo.

00:01:29.000 So Milo was a niche publication for strange guys who lift rocks and bend things and break things and so on and so forth.

00:01:40.000 So that was the start of it.

00:01:42.000 And after that, I told my publisher about it and he said, well, come on, let's just make kettlebells and teach people.

00:01:49.000 I told him the same thing.

00:01:50.000 You don't understand that people will not want to do this.

00:01:53.000 This is too hard.

00:01:55.000 But he convinced me and they convinced me and the rest is history.

00:01:58.000 Why did you think that it was popular in the Soviet Union but wouldn't be popular in America?

00:02:04.000 You know, this is something that you just see.

00:02:07.000 It's a very common thing though.

00:02:08.000 So you just see this, you don't think much about this.

00:02:13.000 Who knows?

00:02:15.000 Yeah, but it was popular over there.

00:02:17.000 Yeah.

00:02:17.000 Since at least 1700s or possibly before that.

00:02:23.000 But this country is so performance-oriented and so sports-oriented and so competitive.

00:02:28.000 Why wouldn't you think that that would be sort of a natural training modality?

00:02:32.000 They would immediately adopt it.

00:02:34.000 You got me there.

00:02:36.000 So you just assumed...

00:02:37.000 But in the U.S. some years back, decades before, some kettlebells were used by some old-time strongmen like Zig Klein, for example.

00:02:45.000 And there was a company named Milo, no relations to the magazine, Really?

00:02:50.000 What is this thing you're obsessed with Milo?

00:02:52.000 Oh, Milo's the guy who carried the calf.

00:02:57.000 So if you look...

00:02:59.000 Okay, the progressive overload is usually explained as this legend of Milo of Crotona.

00:03:05.000 So this guy started carrying a little calf on his shoulders, and he would carry the calf every day.

00:03:11.000 So the calf would grow, and eventually the guy became very strong.

00:03:15.000 So that's why that name is present in...

00:03:20.000 In the strength game.

00:03:21.000 So back then, today, it is just one of the finest publications on strength training, mostly niche things, again, like gripping.

00:03:28.000 I wonder if anyone's actually done that, like carry a calf.

00:03:30.000 It would not work.

00:03:32.000 Isn't it amazing that something can grow physically faster than you can keep lifting it?

00:03:39.000 Absolutely can.

00:03:40.000 But your typical training plan that people say, I'm going to have five pounds on my bench press today.

00:03:44.000 I'm going to do this every week.

00:03:47.000 And then by Christmas, I'll be the world champion.

00:03:49.000 And it just doesn't work.

00:03:51.000 So the rate of adaptation is such that your body just cannot do that.

00:03:54.000 And it's cyclical in nature.

00:03:56.000 So you have to...

00:03:57.000 To put it in the Milo terms, you have to, after you carry the calf for a while, it grows, you have to back off to a lighter calf and start building up again.

00:04:11.000 Why?

00:04:12.000 We do not know exactly.

00:04:14.000 So for some reason, that unidirectional adaptation, just in one, you know, we're getting stronger at the bench press or what have you, or carrying the calf.

00:04:23.000 It just cannot proceed indefinitely.

00:04:24.000 There's some fatigue of some endocrine mechanisms, some genetic mechanisms.

00:04:29.000 We do not know that.

00:04:31.000 But tactically, we do have tricks of the trade to beat that, to work around that.

00:04:39.000 And there's a number of ways of doing that.

00:04:43.000 The oldest way of doing that, and it's very smart, still very smart for a lot of people, They would call this, I think, possibly constant weight training or something like that.

00:04:57.000 But the Soviets described it as step loading.

00:05:00.000 So let's look at your typical beginner, somebody in the gym.

00:05:07.000 And so the person starts lifting whatever weight for whatever reps.

00:05:13.000 And the next week, let's say next week he has five pounds.

00:05:17.000 And he does it again and he does it again.

00:05:20.000 Well, the Soviets figured out that it's much better for him to stay at the same weight for several weeks and then make a bigger jump. 0.82

00:05:29.000 So what you're doing pretty much is you are making adaptations more stable.

00:05:36.000 And it just happens in the cellular levels.

00:05:38.000 Membranes become stronger and so on.

00:05:40.000 But old-timers just, they would say that you're solidifying the gains.

00:05:45.000 So the way that many old-timers trained... 0.94

00:05:48.000 Is they would just take the same weight, and they're staying with the same weight for a long time.

00:05:53.000 In the beginning it's challenging, and then it becomes kind of comfortable, that becomes almost easy, and they would jump up.

00:06:00.000 So that's just one way of doing it.

00:06:02.000 And today it's not unprecedented either.

00:06:04.000 If you look at Chris Sommer, he's a gymnastics coach.

00:06:08.000 He used that with gymnasts.

00:06:09.000 It's very common.

00:06:10.000 I use that tactic with my latest edition of my kettlebell, Simple and Sinister, because it's much more reliable than just progressive overload.

00:06:20.000 And also because psychologically, first of all, it weeds out the impatient people.

00:06:28.000 So you're told to stay with the same load for a while.

00:06:32.000 Some people automatically say, oh, forget it.

00:06:34.000 I cannot do that.

00:06:35.000 Well, I don't want these people following my stuff anyway.

00:06:38.000 And second, so you're staying with this weight or these reps for some time.

00:06:44.000 In the beginning, they challenge you.

00:06:47.000 And then some time goes by and suddenly they don't anymore.

00:06:49.000 So it just very much is a very clear sense of accomplishment.

00:06:54.000 So this is called step loading or using the old-timers terminology, the constant weight training.

00:07:03.000 If you look at the other ways of making progress, so another approach is called cycling.

00:07:11.000 And cycling, so the one that I just described, that would really be if we could artificially stop the growth of the calf, like, okay, stop growing for a while, which we can't.

00:07:23.000 But the cycling, this is where I mentioned earlier, this is where you go back to a lighter calf.

00:07:30.000 So the classic American powerlifting training template is cycling.

00:07:35.000 So the history of cycling is very interesting.

00:07:39.000 Again, what cycling is?

00:07:40.000 Cycling is in the simplest possible terms.

00:07:42.000 You take 12 weeks.

00:07:43.000 You start with light weights.

00:07:45.000 You build up until you go really heavy.

00:07:48.000 And that was the predominant strength training system in the 70s, in the 80s.

00:07:56.000 And that was the strength system behind the dominant American powerlifting team.

00:08:01.000 So lifters like Eddie Cohn, Kirk Kowalski, lifters like Dan Austin, who is...

00:08:10.000 Lamar Gant, whose deadlift records still stand decades after, they use this classic cycling.

00:08:17.000 So the classic cycling, you start with the moderately challenging load, then you keep proceeding, go heavier and heavier and heavier.

00:08:26.000 Then you compete, then you start over.

00:08:29.000 And to give you...

00:08:34.000 To give you a very simple tactic, that's something that your listeners can use in their training, whether they follow the cycling format or they do something else, is that Russian scientist's discovery that your endocrine system pretty much can take two weeks out of four of heavy loading.

00:08:56.000 That's just the way it is.

00:08:57.000 There are some exceptions, but forget exceptions.

00:09:01.000 Generally, just two weeks of heavy loading.

00:09:04.000 And if you look at the classic powerlifting cycles by, let's say, Marty Gallagher, so for four weeks you do sets of eight, four weeks sets of five, four weeks sets of three.

00:09:16.000 And in week one, you start out with a weight that's comfortable.

00:09:21.000 In week two, moderately challenging.

00:09:25.000 In week three, you repeat your previous PR for these reps.

00:09:31.000 And in week four, you set your new PR. And then you jump to the next rep count.

00:09:36.000 So as you see in this particular template, you have two weeks, two hard weeks of training out of the month.

00:09:44.000 And that's just one of the many ways of doing that.

00:09:48.000 Pardon me, I got distracted, so I wanted to talk about the history of cycling.

00:09:51.000 Yeah.

00:09:52.000 So Bill Starr, who is a huge name in the game, he was a former top weightlifter in the United States back in the 60s.

00:10:03.000 Later on, very successful coach, strength coach, and author.

00:10:07.000 The Strongest Shall Survive, his book on strength training for football, remains one of the best strength training books.

00:10:17.000 And Bill Starr recalls that American lifters started getting a whiff of some Russian periodized programs.

00:10:27.000 So what's periodization?

00:10:28.000 Periodization, the simplest terms, is planning your training according to certain principles to end at peak performance.

00:10:36.000 So that's just the really kind of a 50,000 level, 50,000 foot definition.

00:10:44.000 And they did not have their full information about how it was done, so they just decided to do exactly that.

00:10:50.000 And that was a very successful approach to strength training.

00:10:56.000 It does not necessarily work for everybody.

00:11:00.000 There are some reasons for that.

00:11:02.000 Mostly because of your sport competition, if you're an athlete.

00:11:05.000 But it's extremely effective, as was shown on the platform.

00:11:09.000 And finally, so first we discussed step cycling, step loading, which is constant training.

00:11:16.000 Second, we discussed Wave cycling, which is just cycling, right?

00:11:22.000 Wave loading.

00:11:23.000 And the third one would be the variable loading.

00:11:27.000 And variable loading is extremely unique.

00:11:30.000 It's unlike something else.

00:11:32.000 So here's how variable loading works.

00:11:35.000 In variable loading, you have certain load parameters.

00:11:41.000 Like, for example, you will know that...

00:11:45.000 Your average training weights will be 75% of your maximum.

00:11:49.000 You will know that you will perform, for example, 300 squats per month or whatever.

00:11:54.000 So these numbers are arrived at, experimentally, over decades.

00:12:00.000 And what variable loading does As opposed to the traditional methods, traditional progressive overload, is that the jump in volume, for example, from one training unit to another,

00:12:16.000 one day, one week, one month, and so on, it's at least 20%.

00:12:21.000 So the jumps are really high, really high.

00:12:25.000 The variable loading was developed by Professor Arkady Vorobyov, who was an Olympic weightlifting champion, and he was the premier sports scientist.

00:12:35.000 So he argued that in nature, most changes are discrete.

00:12:43.000 They're not gradual.

00:12:44.000 They're discrete.

00:12:45.000 So whatever adaptation takes place in your body, the same thing, whatever happens with many physical processes, chemical processes, and so on.

00:12:53.000 So He concluded that training has to be highly variable.

00:12:58.000 So you understand when I mean that it's a 20% minimal change, we call that delta 20 principle.

00:13:06.000 It doesn't mean it's constantly going up.

00:13:08.000 That's just not possible.

00:13:09.000 It goes up and down.

00:13:10.000 It just keeps whiplashing.

00:13:12.000 So if we use...

00:13:14.000 If we go back to the traditional cycling as an example, the traditional cycling, so it's a linear buildup, Back up a little.

00:13:24.000 Linear buildup.

00:13:25.000 Back up a little.

00:13:26.000 In contrast, variable overload, it's going crazy.

00:13:32.000 It's completely insane.

00:13:33.000 In fact, this is a little entertaining.

00:13:41.000 Experienced strength coaches, and especially people with some sort of a background in mathematics, They're able to dissect and analyze training plans from other coaches.

00:13:53.000 You can look at a plan.

00:13:55.000 You can take an experienced powerlifting coach, show him a program from another coach, and the coach will be able to tell whether this will work or not, who this will work for, and so on, and kind of figure out what's under the hood right there.

00:14:09.000 So there's a very clear pattern.

00:14:12.000 Variable overload.

00:14:13.000 So it's like a photograph.

00:14:15.000 It's very clear.

00:14:17.000 Variable overload, if you start analyzing the pattern, looking at the program.

00:14:21.000 So for example, Boris Sheikov, he's a former coach of Russian national powerlifting team.

00:14:29.000 So he took the Soviet Olympic weightlifting methodology and directly applied it to powerlifting.

00:14:38.000 So his plans have made their way to the west, and some lifters use them very successfully.

00:14:44.000 But whenever you try to read this plan and try to make any sense of that, it just drives you crazy.

00:14:49.000 Because you see, like, okay, here's a strain.

00:14:51.000 Here's a pattern.

00:14:51.000 It's going right here, and suddenly it's gone.

00:14:54.000 So if traditional cyclings, like clear photograph...

00:15:00.000 The variable overload makes me think of, remember in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, where the kid is looking at Seurat's painting, you know, all these dots right there.

00:15:15.000 So when you step away, you see something.

00:15:17.000 You start getting closer, just a whole bunch of dots.

00:15:19.000 It just disappears.

00:15:21.000 So what's the story behind that?

00:15:24.000 So the story is this.

00:15:26.000 This method, the Soviet Olympic weightlifting method, was developed over several decades by a number of coaches, by a number of scientists.

00:15:38.000 So it's a very much collaborative effort.

00:15:40.000 So Vorobyov was one for sure, Medvedev, Chernyak, a number of others.

00:15:45.000 And it was a very...

00:15:48.000 Before even dissecting this method, let me tell you how successful this method was.

00:15:58.000 You can look up the world weightlifting records in Olympic weightlifting.

00:16:03.000 You hear about all these different records set by this lifter, that lifter, and so on and so forth.

00:16:08.000 Few people realize that the International Weightlifting Federation has changed the weight classes two or three times since the 80s.

00:16:21.000 And the reason they did that is to erase the drug, the record set by the drug-taking athletes back then.

00:16:29.000 Of course, Joe, I'm very happy that as soon as they changed the weight classes, lifters stopped taking drugs like that.

00:16:36.000 So if you look at these records, kilo per kilo, pound per pound, And if you chart them, compare them to what they did then, to what they do today, you will find that while they did catch up in a few weight classes,

00:16:52.000 in about half of these classes, the records from the 80s still stand.

00:16:56.000 So, for example, what Yurik Varbanyan did in 1980, at 82 kilos, he totaled 400 kilos in the snatch and the clean and jerk.

00:17:08.000 That's never been done before.

00:17:09.000 And Yurik Varbanyan was a wiry guy.

00:17:11.000 He wouldn't have been taken for a lifter.

00:17:13.000 Just amazing.

00:17:15.000 So, first of all, the system still remains.

00:17:18.000 If we're just taking a very large, big picture, 50,000 foot look at strength, There are a great many ways of getting strong, some of them very good, some of them mediocre, some of them very bad.

00:17:32.000 But historically in lifting sports, the two systems that have been predominant are the Soviet weightlifting system and the American classic powerlifting system from the 70s and 80s.

00:17:45.000 So that was kind of a long detour to Before I tell you why this stuff that they figured out back in the 1960s, why it matters, just to say it still is the best.

00:17:56.000 It still rules.

00:17:57.000 So what they did was very empirical.

00:18:03.000 For example, when you're studying endurance, going into the cell, studying the biochemistry of the cell and the body, taking it apart, figuring out how this works is very helpful.

00:18:13.000 Very.

00:18:16.000 On the other hand, when you're dealing with strength, that approach has been not really effective.

00:18:23.000 So if we talk about muscle training, for example, hypertrophy, we still have no idea what the hell is going on.

00:18:29.000 So we know which buttons to push, but that's just empirical knowledge.

00:18:32.000 That's not the understanding of the cell.

00:18:36.000 So we really don't understand hypertrophy?

00:18:38.000 Really?

00:18:39.000 No, we do not.

00:18:40.000 Wow!

00:18:40.000 No.

00:18:41.000 And let's, I'll be happy to talk about this, but if you don't mind, let me just finish on this variable overload in the Soviet weightlifting system.

00:18:48.000 So, what they did, even though they also, you know, they cut the muscle, looked at that as well, just didn't learn as much.

00:18:55.000 But the coaches programmed particular loads for athletes, and watched what happened.

00:19:00.000 And then they watched how the athletes performed, and they watched how the top athletes performed.

00:19:07.000 And they looked for patterns.

00:19:09.000 And they were very open-minded.

00:19:10.000 So they're not thinking like, well, it's got to be just the heaviest weights will do that.

00:19:14.000 Or it's got to be the training to failure is going to do that.

00:19:17.000 It's not the case.

00:19:19.000 So just to give you an example of how enormous that undertaking was.

00:19:26.000 So typical strength training study is what?

00:19:29.000 Six weeks for some untrained college subjects.

00:19:32.000 You know, guys who are just on their phones.

00:19:35.000 Professor Medvedev, who is also world champion, he studied the training loads of top weightlifters only when they were successful in competition for four Olympic cycles.

00:19:48.000 Four.

00:19:49.000 So we're talking about 16 years, and then somebody else did it for another cycle.

00:19:53.000 And there are just some amazing patterns just emerged.

00:19:57.000 So for instance, I'm going to give you a rundown of what the patterns are.

00:20:03.000 There are certain optimal volumes, how much exercise you do.

00:20:07.000 There are certain optimal intensities.

00:20:10.000 So if you follow the variable overload method, the optimal intensity, so the average intensity would be about 75% of your max, which for most people would be probably somewhere like 8 reps or something you could do, maybe 10,

00:20:26.000 maybe 8. And You will see that about half of all the lifts that you do are about 75-80%.

00:20:36.000 Now, where do all the other lifts come in?

00:20:40.000 So there's a normal distribution.

00:20:42.000 So you'll find that 75-80% are on the top.

00:20:46.000 80-85% a little bit lower.

00:20:49.000 So the lighter weights, like 60%, are on the bottom.

00:20:54.000 And the heavy weights like 90% and higher are on the bottom as well.

00:20:58.000 So to figure it out, you just have to do most of your work with these average weights.

00:21:03.000 They're not so light, so you're going to respect them, but they're not so heavy that you have any question about performing lifting them correctly.

00:21:13.000 So, and then there's another aspect of intensity is just doing some heavier lifts, a very carefully measured number of heavy lifts in addition, like 90% or whatever, occasionally.

00:21:27.000 Then they figured out the proper volumes.

00:21:30.000 Just to give you an idea, if you're looking at, let's say, you know, you might be doing 30 reps of given exercise per session, what have you, although there's variability.

00:21:40.000 But then there's also something else that's very interesting, is the optimal number of repetitions with a given weight.

00:21:47.000 And this is what hurts people's heads.

00:21:51.000 If you look at the weights from 70% to 90%, The optimal number of repetitions are one-third to two-thirds of your maximum.

00:22:04.000 So let me give an example to the reader, to the listener.

00:22:07.000 Let's say that you're lifting a 10-rep max weight.

00:22:10.000 So you go all out as hard as possible.

00:22:13.000 You can do 10 reps.

00:22:16.000 In training, you should be doing three to six reps.

00:22:23.000 That's it.

00:22:24.000 That's the window.

00:22:26.000 And why is that?

00:22:28.000 And we have no idea.

00:22:29.000 But the scientists, like in this case, I think it was Matveev who was involved in that, the father of periodization.

00:22:36.000 I think he was one of the scientists.

00:22:38.000 They experimented with all sorts of rep ranges.

00:22:42.000 And they figured out that if the reps are too low, they're given a weight, you don't get stronger.

00:22:47.000 If the reps get too high, either the athlete gets hurt, or his technique is compromised, or he's just unable to perform the optimal volume.

00:22:57.000 So, pretty much, roughly, you're looking at doing about half of the reps you're capable of.

00:23:01.000 That's it.

00:23:03.000 And people can argue with this all they want.

00:23:07.000 Like, what's the science behind this?

00:23:08.000 There's no science.

00:23:09.000 We don't know.

00:23:09.000 The science is purely empirical.

00:23:11.000 This particular method is purely empirical.

00:23:14.000 It worked for decades.

00:23:16.000 It still does.

00:23:18.000 And that's one of the ways you can get strong.

00:23:20.000 So, in summary, we have We have step loading, which is where you stay with the same weight for a while, or the same reps, whatever, and then make a sudden jump.

00:23:34.000 That's the best way to train for beginners, usually.

00:23:38.000 We have wave loading, or cycling, which is where we build up, jump back, and build up again.

00:23:46.000 And we have variable loading, which is almost chaotic.

00:23:51.000 We're just constantly surprised the body with what we're throwing at it.

00:23:54.000 But we do that within very narrow parameters.

00:23:58.000 So this method was purely developed by studying winners.

00:24:04.000 And winners is where they finally took that.

00:24:08.000 But the studies were done at every level.

00:24:10.000 So, for example, coaches in the field would conduct something called pedagogical experiments, which is a study that's not quite as...

00:24:20.000 Not quite as scientifically solid, but it's still good enough.

00:24:24.000 So the first to test things out, lower level athletes.

00:24:27.000 And then we'll finally take it to higher level athletes.

00:24:29.000 So the things that I'm telling you about, they have been universally effective for athletes above the beginner level.

00:24:37.000 And of course, there are some subtle changes as you progress.

00:24:40.000 There are some subtleties.

00:24:42.000 Like for instance...

00:24:44.000 Notice that I said that you have to use some heavy lifts, like 90%, 95%.

00:24:48.000 But it has to be very surgical about how many.

00:24:51.000 So, for instance, beginners do none.

00:24:54.000 Advanced lifters need to do just some, but not many.

00:24:58.000 Intermediate lifters can do the most.

00:25:00.000 Or heavyweight lifters can do not as many.

00:25:02.000 Lighter ones can do more.

00:25:03.000 So there are some differences at different levels, but the principles fundamentally are the same.

00:25:10.000 And do these principles apply whether people are taking drugs or not?

00:25:14.000 Yes, they do.

00:25:15.000 The difference is, in fact, Verkashansky and Medvedev made a very strong case of that.

00:25:22.000 They used the Soviet euphemism for that was restoratives.

00:25:26.000 And they said, this is universal even with restoratives or not.

00:25:31.000 The difference for the drugs would be just that the volumes will be higher.

00:25:36.000 You'll be able to train more.

00:25:38.000 That's pretty much the difference.

00:25:39.000 But the body will still work the same way.

00:25:42.000 Now, these principles, have they caught on in the United States?

00:25:46.000 I mean, they've caught on with strong firsts.

00:25:49.000 I know you implement these and people teach these.

00:25:52.000 But is this something that's universally sort of accepted?

00:25:55.000 Or is it still something that people are cautiously curious about?

00:26:01.000 It's definitely not universal, in part because people don't know about it.

00:26:05.000 In part, you have to implement this correctly.

00:26:09.000 So right now, there's several areas where you would see that is...

00:26:15.000 Well, one, obviously, the Baryshekos powerlifting programs that have been imported here, but they're used by powerlifters.

00:26:22.000 The other is we have the program called Plan Strong, which is, again, this is a very faithful representation of the Soviet weightlifting system, but applied to general strength exercises like, you know, squats, deadlifts, and so on.

00:26:36.000 And the other thing what we also do, and this is what we do with the military and so on and so forth, we have some simple programs, very simple programs that are designed using this Delta 20 principle and using this optimal loads that they could just go out and use.

00:26:56.000 The nice thing is, unlike progressive overload, cycling, if something happens, you've got a problem.

00:27:02.000 Here there is some variability.

00:27:05.000 So, in summary, just say, no, it's not widely known.

00:27:08.000 It's not.

00:27:09.000 Let's fix it.

00:27:10.000 Yeah, let's fix it.

00:27:13.000 It makes sense.

00:27:14.000 And one of the things that I really like what you're saying about is completing the adaptation with your tendons and your ligaments and all these different things that oftentimes are injured when you're ramping up your weightlifting.

00:27:29.000 And you're trying to increase the amount of weight you carry.

00:27:32.000 So this principle of maintaining a similar weight for a long time allowing your body to complete that adaptation, that makes a lot of sense.

00:27:42.000 Adaptations need to be stable and it's not true just for strength training.

00:27:47.000 If you're looking at endurance as well, the adaptations in the mitochondria as well, you can get some acute adaptations, a very short term, like, oh, you know, bigger whatever, guns in six weeks, or faster 400 meters in six weeks.

00:27:59.000 Yes, you can do that.

00:28:01.000 But these adaptations are transient.

00:28:03.000 So it takes time for things to really get solidified.

00:28:07.000 And also, if you're more patient with your progression, as well, you're going to find that Your gains are much more stable if you take some time off, which is important for anybody.

00:28:19.000 You travel, you get sick, some other thing happens.

00:28:24.000 So if you've been training in a manner where you're not forcing yourself, in fact, this is one of the very important points that Soviet coaches would make that do not force adaptation.

00:28:39.000 David Rigard is probably the greatest weightlifter of all times.

00:28:43.000 So he's over 60 world records in several weight classes and just unbelievable athlete.

00:28:50.000 So he just made a point that do not force the strength development.

00:28:56.000 Do not force mass development.

00:28:58.000 That's another problem.

00:29:00.000 It's possible to build muscle fast, but it's not going to be necessarily a very quality muscle.

00:29:04.000 So yes, take your time and And this is interesting enough, Joe.

00:29:09.000 This is what old-timers understood.

00:29:12.000 I'm a fan of books by old-time strongmen.

00:29:17.000 Not all of them, of course, but some of them are just remarkable.

00:29:22.000 Earl Liederman, he was an American strongman and educator.

00:29:26.000 He wrote a book back in 1925 called The Seekers of Strength, and it's an awesome book.

00:29:33.000 So you read this book, and if you follow the directions in this book from 1925, you will get far superior results than for most pop fitness and strength programs.

00:29:45.000 Because people who had some sense, some common sense, they were able to again observe what's going on.

00:29:52.000 They were not driven by some slogan, oh, one more rep, whatever.

00:29:55.000 Yeah.

00:29:55.000 The one more rep thing is very embraced here in America with meatheads, which are my people.

00:30:05.000 The thing about it is that you think that mental toughness is going to push you past your limits or what your perceived limits are and that that's where the real strength comes.

00:30:17.000 That's where the real growth takes place.

00:30:19.000 That's a very valid point for you mentally, not physically.

00:30:26.000 Mentally, but periodically.

00:30:27.000 This is a very important point.

00:30:29.000 You have to push the body to the limit, whether in competition or in some other manner, but for a short period of time and not too often.

00:30:37.000 That's very important.

00:30:38.000 You know who Ronnie Coleman is, right?

00:30:40.000 Yeah.

00:30:41.000 Yeah, Ronnie Coleman, who was Mr. Olympia, just at one point in time, one of the most impressive and spectacular physiques on earth, is now so injured from all of his incredible lifts.

00:30:54.000 He was known for lifting enormous, enormous amounts of weight.

00:30:58.000 And, I mean, I think when they asked him about if we do anything different, because I think he's had...

00:31:04.000 I hope I'm not wrong, but I think more than 11 back surgeries over the last few years.

00:31:10.000 He's essentially herniated every single disc in his back, and a series of back operations has left him walking with crutches, and it's bad.

00:31:21.000 But this is...

00:31:23.000 The result of this sort of mindset of a champion, you know, that he was...

00:31:30.000 Joe, pardon me.

00:31:30.000 I'm going to interrupt you for a second.

00:31:32.000 The champion has that mindset on the platform.

00:31:36.000 The champion, whenever the champion is in the gym, he or she is going to approach this as a working man, pretty much.

00:31:44.000 This is the plan and this is what I do.

00:31:47.000 So you will find that absolutely in sports you have to be extremely tough, and you have to model some of that in training as well, but in a very, very careful, timed manner.

00:31:57.000 So, for instance, top lifters, top power lifters, they max twice a year at the Nationals and at the Worlds.

00:32:10.000 Meanwhile, they train hard, they push themselves, they do everything right, but they do not try to squeeze out one extra rep.

00:32:17.000 It just simply will not work.

00:32:19.000 It does not work.

00:32:20.000 I remember having a conversation with Andy Bolden.

00:32:23.000 Andy is the first man to deadlift 1,000 pounds and just a spectacular athlete.

00:32:30.000 If you watch Andy pull in competition, it's just unbelievable.

00:32:34.000 It's a thing of beauty.

00:32:36.000 And I just, Andy was telling me how some lifters he has seen that would just simply try to hang with others, better lifters in the gym, and try to repeat exactly what they do.

00:32:48.000 And that's what happens after that.

00:32:49.000 Nothing good happens from that.

00:32:51.000 You have to be tough when it's time.

00:32:54.000 In the gym, you have to do the plan.

00:32:57.000 And like, for example, let's talk about heavy lifting, just heavy singles, let's say.

00:33:07.000 If, I'm sure everybody who listens to your program has, at what point of their life, decided to up their bench press by going to a maximum once a week.

00:33:18.000 I'm sure everybody has.

00:33:19.000 I have, you have, everybody has.

00:33:21.000 So how long did it last?

00:33:24.000 Typically six weeks for a beginner, and an advanced lifter might tolerate two or three weeks, and that's about it.

00:33:31.000 So for whatever reasons, after that, you know, your nervous system starts burning out, your endocrine system can't keep up, and that's it.

00:33:40.000 So for that reason, before the competition, you might take like a 90% single or double, or something like that.

00:33:47.000 And if you look at the longevity of powerlifters, and if you look at longevity of the weightlifters of the Soviet school, it's very impressive.

00:33:57.000 I'll give you one great example.

00:33:59.000 So, well, David Rigard himself, who was the champion around, you know, in the 70s.

00:34:05.000 So he is probably pushing 70 right now, you know, lives in a farm, works on a farm.

00:34:11.000 But his coach, doing great, very healthy.

00:34:13.000 But his coach, that's an even more interesting story.

00:34:18.000 Rudolf Pluckfelder, he was probably the oldest to win the Olympics in weightlifting.

00:34:24.000 He was 36. And he worked in the mines in daytime and then trained hard.

00:34:31.000 So Plückfielder ethnically is German.

00:34:34.000 So one of the Germans living in the Soviet Union.

00:34:38.000 And eventually when the Soviet Union fell apart, Plückfielder immigrated to Germany.

00:34:44.000 And so a journalist came to visit him.

00:34:49.000 And so here's this really spry looking guy fooling around in the garden.

00:34:54.000 And the general is asking, pardon me, sir, may I speak to your dad?

00:34:57.000 So here's this guy who is almost 90 years old, who still looks about 30 years younger, who still does jump squats with 90 kilos for sets of 10. And this is an example.

00:35:11.000 So heavy weights don't have the same longevity, but that does not have anything to do with the training system that has to do with the fact the strain you put in your system by eating so much, just not so good.

00:35:24.000 But these guys have longevity.

00:35:25.000 If you also look at the powerlifters, most successful powerlifters, American powerlifters, Eddie Cohn competed for, if I'm not mistaken, about 30 years at the highest level, from a very lightweight class to a much heavier one.

00:35:42.000 And he stayed super healthy throughout.

00:35:44.000 He maybe had one injury.

00:35:48.000 And Eddie, right now, yours after retirement is very, very healthy.

00:35:52.000 So you will find that the mentality of saving this eye of the tiger for when it matters, as opposed to treating every training day as a competition, that makes a big difference for performance and for longevity.

00:36:06.000 It just battles the mindset of always do more, always push harder, always give more.

00:36:14.000 You're all, leave everything in the gym.

00:36:16.000 This is the mindset that people have been sort of indoctrinated into.

00:36:21.000 They think that hard work is what really matters.

00:36:24.000 Hard work does matter, but hard work can come in a lot of different, it can manifest itself differently.

00:36:30.000 Would that approach have worked with a guy like Ronnie Coleman because he's a bodybuilder?

00:36:34.000 So bodybuilders, obviously, you're not talking about competition in the sense of being able to lift a lot of weight.

00:36:39.000 You're talking about just mass, acquiring mass.

00:36:42.000 Well, you know, the bodybuilders from the older era, like Franco Colombo, very sad that...

00:36:52.000 Dr. Columba passed recently, but he was an exceptionally strong man, a very healthy man.

00:36:57.000 He died swimming.

00:36:59.000 Yeah, but it was a hard issue that has nothing to do with lifting.

00:37:02.000 So he was very healthy and very strong until the end.

00:37:05.000 And if you look at the guys of that generation, they're doing great.

00:37:09.000 And if you look at other bodybuilders, let's say bodybuilders who have some kind of a power bodybuilding approach, these guys have been around longer as well.

00:37:20.000 If you look at the old-timers again, Dave Draper, these guys...

00:37:23.000 Oh, Clarence Bass.

00:37:24.000 Do you know Clarence Bass?

00:37:25.000 Sure.

00:37:25.000 Okay.

00:37:26.000 Super shredded.

00:37:27.000 Clarence is a friend of mine, and Clarence is...

00:37:30.000 Well, let's put it this way.

00:37:31.000 He's not a spring chicken.

00:37:33.000 But he's got an absolutely spectacular physique.

00:37:36.000 He's still staying very strong.

00:37:38.000 Are there recent pictures of him?

00:37:39.000 Yeah.

00:37:40.000 How old is he now?

00:37:42.000 He's got to be in his 70s, right?

00:37:45.000 Pushing 80, possibly.

00:37:46.000 Yeah.

00:37:47.000 There he is.

00:37:49.000 Yep, that's Clarence.

00:37:50.000 He's awesome.

00:37:51.000 That guy's awesome.

00:37:52.000 That is crazy.

00:37:53.000 That picture of him lifting his shirt up with this complete grandpa face and just super jacked body.

00:38:00.000 That guy's incredible.

00:38:02.000 He knows how to push himself when you need to push himself.

00:38:06.000 Well, he's very, very intelligent, that guy.

00:38:09.000 But all top athletes and lifters are very intelligent.

00:38:13.000 There are some flukes, but they don't last long.

00:38:15.000 Right.

00:38:16.000 I see what you're saying.

00:38:16.000 Yeah.

00:38:17.000 For longevity, you sort of have to have that sort of intelligent approach.

00:38:21.000 So do you think a guy like Ronnie Coleman would be able to achieve the mass and the size and the way he was built with a different strategy?

00:38:31.000 I can speculate.

00:38:32.000 I don't know, but I can speculate.

00:38:34.000 But if you look at the muscle mass that have been achieved by heavyweight powerlifters, like Kurt Kowalski.

00:38:42.000 Look up that guy.

00:38:43.000 Kurt Kowalski.

00:38:45.000 K-A-R-W-O-S-K-I. So if you see that type of development achieved by heavyweight powerlifters, then I don't see why not.

00:38:58.000 And bodybuilders have their own additional techniques.

00:39:01.000 They still have to do their stuff for their separation and whatever it is that you do.

00:39:05.000 But I think there's a very good chance that you would have.

00:39:07.000 And if you look at the successful power, like Michael Hearn, for example, that's a very strong guy.

00:39:14.000 He's a power bodybuilder.

00:39:16.000 There we go.

00:39:17.000 There's Karwaski right there.

00:39:18.000 Jesus Christ. 1.00

00:39:19.000 Look at the size of that fucking guy. 1.00

00:39:24.000 Yeah, he looks like a body, but look at the size of his legs. 1.00

00:39:27.000 That is ridiculous. 0.98

00:39:29.000 Yeah, and that guy just would not fool around with Peck whatever deck and what have you. 0.96

00:39:37.000 Peck deck?

00:39:38.000 Yeah.

00:39:38.000 You say that disdainfully.

00:39:40.000 Is that a bad move?

00:39:42.000 What do you want me to say?

00:39:44.000 A lot of people don't understand what's wrong with it.

00:39:50.000 This is an interesting point of view.

00:39:52.000 There is a belief that machines are great for beginners because you don't have to control it, it's safer, and it's isolated, so on and so forth.

00:40:02.000 Really, machines have limited use for advanced lifters when they're injured or whenever they have to just really focus on something.

00:40:12.000 So it's possible.

00:40:13.000 It's possible to use a machine if you're really messed up, you can find some angle.

00:40:17.000 But a beginner starts doing leg presses, it's going to totally mess up its coordination.

00:40:23.000 It's not going to have the back strength.

00:40:24.000 It's not going to have its ab strength.

00:40:26.000 So machines are not necessarily bad.

00:40:29.000 So the pec deck might be okay for a bodybuilder looking for more cuts or for somebody recovering from an injury knowing exactly the angle to which to push.

00:40:40.000 But your typical person going to the gym has no business doing that.

00:40:43.000 None.

00:40:54.000 Yeah.

00:40:56.000 Absolutely.

00:40:57.000 Absolutely.

00:40:59.000 There are many reasons why, but that's one of them.

00:41:02.000 And non-glamorous moves, like Turkish get-up, which is one of the very best moves for jiu-jitsu.

00:41:08.000 It's just phenomenal for your stability, your core, and your ability to get out from under the bottom positions.

00:41:15.000 It's just a phenomenal workout.

00:41:18.000 But these principles of using the entire body with kettlebells, Using different parts of your body, using your legs, your core, your ab, all in one workout.

00:41:35.000 It's also so effective time-wise because you can get a spectacular workout in a very short amount of time.

00:41:44.000 You're correct, Joe.

00:41:45.000 Maybe this is a good time to discuss the benefits of kettlebells versus, let's say, barbells or bodyweight.

00:41:50.000 Sure.

00:41:50.000 That's a very good conversation.

00:41:51.000 That's a question people ask often.

00:41:54.000 Right.

00:41:54.000 So I would name these as three top modalities for people.

00:41:57.000 Yes, there are some other additional things, dumbbells and whatever, but usually they're secondary.

00:42:02.000 So what are the respective benefits of these different modalities?

00:42:08.000 The bodyweight is obviously accessible.

00:42:11.000 It's with you no matter where you go.

00:42:13.000 But interestingly enough, the body weight requires the most coaching.

00:42:16.000 So you have to, it's very subtle.

00:42:18.000 Like, for example, if you look at developing something, the gym is called the hollow position.

00:42:23.000 It takes a lot of coaching.

00:42:24.000 To perform correct, even pull-up or push-up, it's a lot of work.

00:42:28.000 One-legged squat, so on and so forth.

00:42:30.000 So it's great, but it just takes more time, more investment.

00:42:33.000 Also, the downside of the body weight would be you can't really train your lower back effectively.

00:42:39.000 And you have to turn your lower back to C on.

00:42:41.000 You just have to.

00:42:42.000 And whatever you do, back extensions, other stuff, neck bridges, it's not going to do for your back.

00:42:47.000 It just won't.

00:42:47.000 So bodyweight, great modality, but with these limitations.

00:42:53.000 The barbell, if you just love heavy stuff, it's awesome.

00:42:58.000 And it's just psychologically, it's extremely satisfying to have a deadlift, let's say, for some people, not for all.

00:43:05.000 Then, if you're looking forward to maximize your muscle mass, nobody has come up yet with anything other than the barbell.

00:43:12.000 So, you know, you start doing, you know, some repetition, deadlift, squats, so on.

00:43:16.000 So that's another reason.

00:43:18.000 But let's say you're playing football, right?

00:43:20.000 Yeah.

00:43:23.000 The problem with the barbell, first of all, is the learning curve.

00:43:28.000 It takes some time to learn it correctly.

00:43:30.000 It's not easy to master it, and it takes a lot of instruction.

00:43:36.000 In addition, the barbell is not forgiving.

00:43:41.000 So let's say that one of your shoulders is jacked up.

00:43:44.000 It's just not very forgiving because you just have to adjust yourself to the bar as opposed to make the implement adjust to yourself.

00:43:53.000 So this is where the kettlebell comes in.

00:43:55.000 First of all, the kettlebell, because it moves freely, it adjusts to your body, to your physiology, to your anatomy, I should say.

00:44:01.000 So it works quite well.

00:44:03.000 For example, Mark Rifkin, he's one of my top instructors.

00:44:07.000 He was...

00:44:08.000 Highly successful gymnast in the past and later on he was a coach for women's powerlifting national team and great powerlifter too.

00:44:15.000 So he cannot do bilateral exercises well because of the mileage he sustained.

00:44:22.000 He took a very bad landing as a gymnast, ruined his knee and then from there other things went bad back, whatever.

00:44:28.000 But he cannot do two arm swings.

00:44:32.000 Because it just messes him up.

00:44:34.000 But he can do one-arm swing, so the body compensates a little differently, and he can handle it.

00:44:39.000 So with the proper medical clearance, it's much easier to work around problems.

00:44:46.000 Then the offset center gravity, that's just a tremendous thing for your back.

00:44:51.000 I'm sorry, for your shoulder.

00:44:52.000 So the positions that put your shoulder in, you cannot do it with anything else.

00:44:57.000 But Obviously, you have the get-up, which is an amazing exercise.

00:45:01.000 You cannot do it as well with other implements.

00:45:04.000 But the ballistics, that's another unique benefit of the kettlebell.

00:45:09.000 Swings and snatches, exercises like that.

00:45:13.000 The benefits of these exercises are many.

00:45:17.000 First of all, ballistic loading, obviously, is part of sports, and it's a part of life.

00:45:23.000 Oftentimes, it's hard to do it safely.

00:45:26.000 Go ahead and start jumping.

00:45:29.000 Before somebody starts jumping correctly, jumping off boxes and so on and so forth, just even hopping across the floor, it requires some coaching.

00:45:39.000 It requires getting some strength.

00:45:41.000 It requires addressing some dysfunction and so on and so forth.

00:45:46.000 The kettlebell swing, for example, it's So many hard men with high mileage who are really banged up in so many different ways, their backs, their knees, their hips, they're able to do swings safely.

00:45:59.000 That's just remarkable.

00:46:02.000 And the ballistic contraction is very important.

00:46:04.000 So you have to run, you have to jump, you have to do things like that.

00:46:07.000 But it goes beyond that for your health, for your longevity.

00:46:12.000 So as we grow older, There's a loss of type 2 muscle fibers, so the strong ones, the fast twitch fibers.

00:46:25.000 And there are several problems with that.

00:46:27.000 First of all, they're metabolically needed for the body to be healthy, to process sugar, so on, so on and so forth.

00:46:34.000 Second is to deal with real life situations.

00:46:38.000 You know, like it's very unfortunate, some old person trips and breaks the hip.

00:46:42.000 It's terrible.

00:46:43.000 And oftentimes the reason is just weakness.

00:46:47.000 And we need these fast fibers because whenever you trip and you have this reflexive contraction, these fibers go online first.

00:46:57.000 So if you don't have them anymore, you've got massive problems, right?

00:47:00.000 So another reason is in type 2 fibers, there is mitochondrial degeneration takes place as you're older, much faster than others.

00:47:13.000 And if you don't take care of that, it's also aging.

00:47:17.000 So you've got to train these type 2 fibers.

00:47:19.000 And there are only two ways to train type 2 fibers.

00:47:22.000 It's heavy or fast.

00:47:24.000 So there's no third way.

00:47:26.000 So whenever people try to do some sort of a super slow this or Pilates that, whatever, it's not going to do it.

00:47:33.000 So you have to train heavy or you have to train fast if you want to stay young.

00:47:39.000 So are you completely against that kind of super slow training?

00:47:43.000 Not at all, but for totally different reasons.

00:47:47.000 There is, well obviously one reason is possibly somebody's injured, right?

00:47:52.000 Another reason is to develop your type 1 endurance fibers, hypertrophy for these fibers.

00:47:58.000 Why would you want to do that?

00:48:01.000 Well first of all, type 1 fibers, the downside of these fibers is they contract slower.

00:48:07.000 So obviously that's a downside for some sports, for some activities.

00:48:11.000 But they're also more efficient, which means it's plus for other sports, right?

00:48:16.000 So another positive here, they already come pre-equipped with mitochondria.

00:48:23.000 So mitochondria, that's where aerobic metabolism takes place. 0.98

00:48:27.000 And by building your type 1 fibers, you automatically get more endurance in addition to muscle mass and strength too.

00:48:37.000 Super slow work is good for that, but it has to be done correctly.

00:48:42.000 The proper methods were developed by Russian professor Viktor Siloyanov.

00:48:49.000 And so he developed this method.

00:48:51.000 I'm going to summarize it for you right now for your listeners.

00:48:53.000 That's something you can easily do yourself.

00:48:55.000 Well, easily is not the word.

00:48:56.000 Simply.

00:48:58.000 So the duration of a set is 30 to 60 seconds.

00:49:07.000 You have to select the range of motion where there's no stacking.

00:49:13.000 There's no support from your bones at all.

00:49:16.000 So, for example, if you were to do a squat, you go down below parallel, but not to the point where you're sitting on your calves.

00:49:25.000 And come up just a little above parallel and below again.

00:49:29.000 So just that most unpleasant, the most painful area.

00:49:34.000 If you're doing, let's say, push-ups for your chest, for example, you would almost brush the deck with your chest, come up about halfway, and come back down.

00:49:46.000 And the speed is very slow, so there's no momentum at all.

00:49:51.000 Now, it doesn't sound like anything new, but here's what's new.

00:49:54.000 Silyanov optimized the rest periods, and that's a big game changer.

00:50:01.000 Normally, when people train in this manner, bodybuilders and others, they just want to get more burn possible.

00:50:07.000 And by the way, the burn is awful.

00:50:09.000 And in this particular case, you want to train close to failure.

00:50:12.000 In this particular case, that's just a muscular training.

00:50:15.000 That's not strength training per se.

00:50:18.000 So they try to run from one set to the next.

00:50:21.000 So they'll do that, let's say, that 30-second set, then they will just, you know, rest for 30 seconds and do it again, completely hammer themselves.

00:50:28.000 The problem with that is even though we do not know the exact mechanisms of muscle growth, we do know that some lactic acid is needed, but too much lactic acid is destructive.

00:50:45.000 So what Selyanov did is he figured out is after this kind of set, you have to rest for 5 to 10 minutes.

00:50:52.000 And it sounds for people, it's a very hard mental thing to do.

00:50:55.000 So here I am going for this massive burn and I have to wait for 5 to 10 minutes.

00:51:02.000 But it's very simple.

00:51:03.000 You introduce another exercise in between.

00:51:06.000 So train twice a week.

00:51:10.000 Five to ten sets on the heavy day, eventually, once you build up to it.

00:51:16.000 And about one to three sets on the light day.

00:51:19.000 That's it.

00:51:19.000 Now, this is incorporating super slow techniques?

00:51:22.000 Yeah.

00:51:23.000 And who would this be good for?

00:51:25.000 Wrestlers.

00:51:26.000 For wrestlers, it's spectacular.

00:51:27.000 Yeah.

00:51:28.000 Because even though there are explosive elements there as well, but it's also very much there's that static element, static endurance.

00:51:34.000 And one of my strong first certified instructors, Roger from the UK, I had him follow this protocol before he and his crew rode across the Atlantic.

00:51:47.000 And he did much better after most people and was much happier, if you can be happier, rolling across the Atlantic.

00:51:53.000 So for rowing, for wrestling, for bodybuilding, for some people who cannot do anything else.

00:52:01.000 So that's a good protocol.

00:52:02.000 So this is essentially a muscular endurance protocol.

00:52:06.000 You know what?

00:52:07.000 It's both.

00:52:08.000 Because the muscle's getting bigger, and it will get stronger as well.

00:52:12.000 But it won't be faster.

00:52:13.000 It's not something you would incorporate with a boxer.

00:52:15.000 No, absolutely not.

00:52:17.000 No, definitely not.

00:52:18.000 Wrestler, yes.

00:52:20.000 MMA, you just have to use your judgment there.

00:52:22.000 Right, depending upon your style.

00:52:24.000 Now, it's so interesting hearing this big, long break in between exercises, because it makes sense.

00:52:34.000 It makes sense you would want the muscles to be fully recovered, because then they'd be able to do more work.

00:52:39.000 But that's so counterintuitive to what everybody promotes.

00:52:42.000 You go to a coach, you get a personal trainer or something like that, they just want to burn everybody out.

00:52:49.000 So come on, let's go, let's go, next exercise, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go.

00:52:53.000 Well, that's about feeling.

00:52:54.000 Yes.

00:52:55.000 That's about feeling and that's about time management possibly.

00:52:59.000 And not about results.

00:53:01.000 No.

00:53:01.000 And there are other ways to save time.

00:53:04.000 There are other ways of doing that.

00:53:05.000 Depending on your circumstances you can definitely find ways of doing that.

00:53:09.000 But you can fill in the time with other things.

00:53:12.000 Let's say you're doing this hypertrophy protocol.

00:53:17.000 And by the way, that's been used extensively by Russian national judo ensemble teams.

00:53:22.000 So you're doing some rows on the belt.

00:53:25.000 The guy's holding you up.

00:53:27.000 Then you walk around for a minute, you do the push-ups.

00:53:30.000 Then you walk around, you do something else.

00:53:32.000 So you're making good use of the time.

00:53:34.000 You're just not revisiting the same exercise.

00:53:36.000 So instead of taking 10 minutes in between any workout at all, you would take just a couple minutes in between and then do like push-ups and then do something that's non-related to that.

00:53:46.000 So think of it as a slow circuit.

00:53:49.000 Okay, slow circuit.

00:53:51.000 But then you'd go back to whatever it was that you were initially doing 10 minutes later.

00:53:56.000 Correct.

00:53:57.000 Yeah.

00:53:57.000 So those muscles are recovered, but physiologically, you're still getting this constant state of exercise, or at least fairly constant.

00:54:05.000 What's the lowest amount of break in between an exercise you recommend?

00:54:09.000 That would be, that's the guidelines, Selyanov's guidelines, about five minutes of the rest is active for the same exercise I'm talking about.

00:54:17.000 So active rest means you're moving.

00:54:18.000 You're not just sitting.

00:54:20.000 Jump rope, maybe.

00:54:21.000 Not necessarily.

00:54:22.000 This would be probably just walking around.

00:54:24.000 Maybe you could do some super easy shadowboxing or something or like footwork or something.

00:54:28.000 But I mean extremely, extremely easy.

00:54:30.000 So that facilitates the circulation.

00:54:32.000 Just do that.

00:54:34.000 And if it's passive, it's longer.

00:54:36.000 Wow.

00:54:38.000 It's, again, so counterintuitive to what most people call it.

00:54:42.000 Particularly something like CrossFit, right?

00:54:45.000 CrossFit is all about massive reps and doing the most that you possibly can and switching from one thing quickly to another thing.

00:54:53.000 How do you feel about that?

00:54:55.000 Joe, how about we take one minute till I get myself another tea and I'll address that.

00:55:00.000 Sound good?

00:55:00.000 Yeah, sure.

00:55:01.000 Thanks.

00:55:03.000 It's a good question, man.

00:55:04.000 Very good question.

00:55:05.000 Excellent question, Joe.

00:55:06.000 Thank you.

00:55:06.000 He's going to go get another tea.

00:55:08.000 Do you know how to do it?

00:55:09.000 No.

00:55:09.000 No idea.

00:55:10.000 All right.

00:55:11.000 Jamie will do it for you.

00:55:13.000 I have a cup here.

00:55:17.000 I think he's going to get you another cup, whether you like it or not.

00:55:21.000 This is not in the shot, is it?

00:55:23.000 It doesn't matter.

00:55:24.000 Okay.

00:55:25.000 It can be in the shot.

00:55:28.000 That...

00:55:30.000 All this stuff is so interesting because it's so obviously, I mean, it makes sense, but it's just not the method that anyone is accustomed to.

00:55:42.000 You know, you would be surprised that's not necessarily true.

00:55:47.000 If you look at the top coaches, if you look at top athletes who don't necessarily advertise what they're doing, That's not the case.

00:55:55.000 So it's more common now.

00:55:57.000 It's getting there.

00:55:59.000 Yeah.

00:56:00.000 Oh, sorry.

00:56:00.000 Let me do this.

00:56:02.000 Let me dump this in there.

00:56:06.000 Are you a tea fanatic?

00:56:07.000 No, I'm just a warm liquid fanatic.

00:56:12.000 My favorite warm liquid is canarino.

00:56:17.000 Italians make it. 0.99

00:56:18.000 It's like zest from lemon when you boil it.

00:56:22.000 Stuff is good.

00:56:23.000 Yeah?

00:56:23.000 Yeah.

00:56:24.000 Do you drink caffeine?

00:56:26.000 Yeah.

00:56:27.000 Yeah?

00:56:27.000 Occasionally?

00:56:28.000 No, twice a day, but just a very small amount.

00:56:31.000 Don't want to be running around buzzing.

00:56:34.000 Yeah, that's what I like.

00:56:36.000 You like buzzing?

00:56:37.000 Yeah.

00:56:37.000 That's good, man.

00:56:39.000 Keep buzzing.

00:56:41.000 So tell me about CrossFit.

00:56:44.000 So CrossFit, what is your question about CrossFit exactly?

00:56:46.000 The methods that they use, the sort of competition with Olympic-style lifts, doing it to maximum reps, doing it for speed.

00:56:56.000 Do you think that's a recipe for injury, or do you think it's a good modality if pursued correctly?

00:57:05.000 I'm going to start by saying that...

00:57:09.000 I like the fact that CrossFit gets people out, gets people training.

00:57:12.000 They have a great community.

00:57:14.000 People are very motivated.

00:57:16.000 I like the fact that they understand the concept of general physical preparation, which means you have to train multiple different qualities.

00:57:24.000 I would not go about it the way they do it, and let me explain to you why.

00:57:33.000 Let's talk about endurance.

00:57:35.000 There are different aspects to endurance.

00:57:41.000 There's cardio and there is the peripheral endurance in the muscles, muscular endurance.

00:57:49.000 First, let's discuss how we develop cardio.

00:57:52.000 Let's discuss how we develop endurance in the muscle.

00:57:57.000 The best, the healthiest way To develop your cardio is just steady state exercise.

00:58:04.000 Like running at a particular speed that's not too fast.

00:58:08.000 That's very simple.

00:58:09.000 That's the best way to develop cardio.

00:58:11.000 For most people it is.

00:58:13.000 For most people it is.

00:58:14.000 And so here's what's happening.

00:58:15.000 What's happening is the heart is stretching.

00:58:19.000 When you increase your heart rate up to a certain point, the heart starts stretching more.

00:58:24.000 And it stretches more and more.

00:58:26.000 So that increases the stroke volume.

00:58:27.000 So pretty much you get a bigger heart.

00:58:29.000 And that's good.

00:58:31.000 That works up to not quite 90% of heart rate.

00:58:38.000 When you start redlining your heart rate, when you start getting to 90% and higher, the heart does not have time to relax fully.

00:58:46.000 So it really pretty much is twitching.

00:58:48.000 So you're no longer really stretching that heart.

00:58:52.000 So you want to be training at...

00:58:56.000 The metabolic intensity, that's much lower.

00:58:59.000 Something we can pretty much sustain a conversation.

00:59:01.000 So like say you're running and talking to your body.

00:59:03.000 That's what you want to stay to develop endurance.

00:59:06.000 Well, to develop to stress your heart.

00:59:09.000 That's the basic method.

00:59:10.000 So that's one method.

00:59:12.000 So the second method is interval training.

00:59:14.000 And the interval training for the heart was developed by Germans decades ago. 0.94

00:59:20.000 And these guidelines still stand.

00:59:22.000 So here's what they figured out.

00:59:25.000 They figured out that your...

00:59:28.000 Well, we know that these various systems in your body have inertia.

00:59:34.000 So, for instance, notice that when you're running hard and you stopped, your heart's still beating hard, and then maybe 10 seconds after, there's a sudden drop right there.

00:59:44.000 So there's that inertia.

00:59:46.000 So the Germans figured out if you get your heart rate up to about 85-90%, which is...

00:59:51.000 It's hard, but it's still not maximal.

00:59:55.000 And then you switch to walking or jogging, so the heart is still beating, and so this extra volume of blood is moving, and it stretches the heart.

01:00:04.000 So it works really well.

01:00:06.000 So you can use the interval method as well, but it was found it's used best after a period of steady-state training.

01:00:20.000 It's very demanding on the body, and it's just...

01:00:24.000 It's too easy to have problems with the heart if you start using it prematurely.

01:00:29.000 Then there's also such a thing as high heart rate under heavy loads.

01:00:36.000 So in this particular case, we're talking about dynamic exercises.

01:00:39.000 So what's dynamic exercise?

01:00:41.000 Running, bicycling, skiing, even light kettlebell swings.

01:00:46.000 That's dynamic exercise.

01:00:48.000 When you start doing static exercise, let's say you're trying to do squats, heavy squats, to get your cardio, so to say.

01:00:55.000 That's not the best idea.

01:00:57.000 Because that interferes with the blood flow.

01:01:02.000 It's something called afterload versus preload.

01:01:05.000 The heart gets thicker instead of the heart gets stretched and bigger.

01:01:09.000 So it's not the optimal way to train the heart.

01:01:12.000 You can, again, the simple way you can use...

01:01:19.000 Dynamic exercise, an interval type training, or repeat training in this case, to train your heart is to do an exercise that's dynamic in nature to raise your heart rate to about, let's say, 80-90%,

01:01:35.000 which would be 80-90%, it would be where you can say maybe a couple words.

01:01:41.000 You're not dying yet.

01:01:43.000 You can still answer a question.

01:01:46.000 And then you just walk around.

01:01:48.000 And you do it again.

01:01:50.000 So that's a simple way of doing it.

01:01:51.000 How much time walking around?

01:01:52.000 That depends.

01:01:53.000 That totally depends on who you are.

01:01:55.000 Depends on how fast your heart rate drops back down?

01:01:58.000 And what do you want to, like, is there a number?

01:02:00.000 Do you want to keep it in the 140s, the 150s?

01:02:03.000 Is it dependent upon your age?

01:02:04.000 Okay.

01:02:04.000 In this particular case, you would drop it down.

01:02:07.000 The original guidelines were done for young people, those 120, 130 beats.

01:02:11.000 So you're talking about 60, 65%.

01:02:14.000 And pretty much if you're just looking at being able to pass the talk test, which means you can talk, you know, short sentences.

01:02:22.000 I can speak in short, something like that, right?

01:02:25.000 So for example, you do a set of tense swings, really powerful, with a kettlebell.

01:02:29.000 Walk around a little bit.

01:02:30.000 When you feel that you can speak again, you do it again, do it again.

01:02:33.000 So that's a simple way of doing that.

01:02:36.000 But...

01:02:37.000 The heart is only a very small part of endurance.

01:02:40.000 So we definitely need to do some cardio for our health, and athletes definitely need to do it for their performance.

01:02:47.000 But what we really need to focus on is we need mitochondria.

01:02:52.000 So mitochondria in the muscle cell.

01:02:56.000 So that's where energy is being converted aerobically, which means efficiently.

01:03:01.000 So if you look at The way your muscle uses energy.

01:03:08.000 So you will get this energy with food converted.

01:03:11.000 It goes down.

01:03:12.000 Eventually, the final currency, so to say, is something called ATP. But you only have it for a few seconds.

01:03:21.000 So it has to be reloaded.

01:03:24.000 So we have three main energy systems.

01:03:26.000 So we have the creatine phosphate system.

01:03:29.000 It's very powerful, but it only can go for just some seconds.

01:03:33.000 And it's clean burning.

01:03:35.000 We have aerobic system that's not powerful at all, but it's longer lasting.

01:03:39.000 And we have the glycolytic system that's kind of in between that dumps a lot of acid and other fatigue metabolites in there.

01:03:47.000 So what we want to do is we want to develop this mitochondria in our muscles.

01:03:54.000 It's easy to do in slow fibers and it's a little more involved in fast fibers.

01:04:00.000 I'll tell you how we can do that.

01:04:01.000 But it can be done.

01:04:02.000 So what we're looking for Instead of trying to trash the muscle with acid, we are trying to train in a way to produce less acid.

01:04:17.000 And then only before the competition, right before the competition, a couple of weeks out, you do a couple of smokers like that to get yourself used to that thing.

01:04:27.000 So the way we develop mitochondria, which means make your muscle oxidative, make your muscle enduring and not polluting, In slow fibers, it's simply moving right below an aerobic threshold.

01:04:42.000 So an aerobic threshold, it's that intensity at which you, you know, acid is accumulating just up to a certain point and stays in that steady state, and you can keep disposing of that for a while, for quite a while.

01:04:58.000 As soon as you go above it, very rapidly, you crash.

01:05:03.000 So Running right below the anaerobic threshold is the primary training method for endurance athletes.

01:05:15.000 And how do you know that you ran the threshold?

01:05:18.000 When you're failing the TOC test.

01:05:19.000 That's a simple way to do that.

01:05:21.000 And it's very interesting that endurance athletes, even though we're not necessarily well educated, they kind of tend to gravitate through that intensity.

01:05:31.000 And so what happens is we are producing just small amounts of acid.

01:05:36.000 And the body finally is able to, you know, produce less and less.

01:05:40.000 So that's how we train aerobic...

01:05:42.000 I'm sorry.

01:05:44.000 That's how we train mitochondria in slow fibers. 0.88

01:05:47.000 For fast fibers, it becomes something more interesting.

01:05:52.000 So the conditions...

01:05:55.000 The conditions for making the mitochondria be able to handle more traffic without producing as much acid...

01:06:06.000 Is push them just to the edge of acidosis, just to the edge, and do it over and over and over.

01:06:13.000 So, Professor Verkashansky, back in the 80s, that's the guy who invented plyometrics and so on.

01:06:20.000 So, he figured out, so here's what we do.

01:06:23.000 Imagine that you are sprinting, let's say you're sprinting for 5-7 seconds, and then you're just walking.

01:06:34.000 And you're sprinting again.

01:06:35.000 And you're just walking.

01:06:37.000 But you're doing that.

01:06:38.000 You're measuring your blood lactate.

01:06:41.000 And it still keeps below the threshold.

01:06:43.000 And you sustain that for, let's say, 40 minutes.

01:06:46.000 So think of this for a second.

01:06:47.000 So you're sprinting very intensely.

01:06:50.000 But you stop before you start burning.

01:06:53.000 You get to the point of just light muscular fatigue.

01:06:57.000 And you do it over and over and over.

01:07:00.000 So...

01:07:02.000 If we talk about the coaching terminology, it's repeat training versus interval training.

01:07:10.000 So what is interval training?

01:07:13.000 Pardon me, Joe, I have to take a step to the side.

01:07:16.000 So there are three types of rest periods between your sets, whether you're running, lifting, whatever.

01:07:21.000 So there's a stress period.

01:07:24.000 That means that you will have a harder time to do the same thing, or you will not be able to repeat it, right?

01:07:32.000 That's interval training.

01:07:33.000 There is the supercompensation period, which means if you wait extra long time, you'll perform even better.

01:07:41.000 Like, for example, if you do a set of pull-ups, wait for 15 minutes, you might be able to do more 15 minutes later.

01:07:49.000 And there is the ordinary period, which is just you'll be able to repeat it over and over.

01:07:53.000 So that's, in coaching speak, it's called repeat training.

01:07:56.000 Repeat versus interval.

01:07:58.000 So we're trying to sustain that same level of performance for 40 minutes, let's say.

01:08:03.000 So that's an example of how we develop mitochondria and fast-witch fibers.

01:08:09.000 And the same thing we can do with kettlebell swings, the same thing you can do working in a heavy bag and so on and so forth.

01:08:17.000 Now, CrossFit, to circle back around to that, what do they do that you feel, you said there's a lot of good things they do, they get people moving, they introduce people to all these different exercise routines.

01:08:29.000 What do you think they do wrong?

01:08:32.000 Joe, I don't want to pick on CrossFit.

01:08:34.000 This so-called metabolic conditioning has been around since 1975, at least, when Arthur Jones coined that term.

01:08:41.000 You know, the guy from Nautilus.

01:08:42.000 That's when people go through a circuit of machines going, you know, going one after the next.

01:08:48.000 And I'm sure it's been around even before that.

01:08:52.000 I would just do things totally different.

01:08:54.000 So there's no point in me trying to criticize a different system.

01:08:59.000 I'm just telling you this is what the science and experience says is how you should be doing it.

01:09:05.000 I think there are a lot of great people in CrossFit, and I just wish power to them.

01:09:10.000 You would just do it like what you're talking about, with longer rest periods, different sort of training approach?

01:09:19.000 Okay, let's say that you're training for the CrossFit Games.

01:09:22.000 Let's say that's your goal, right?

01:09:24.000 What you would do is name some CrossFit exercise.

01:09:30.000 Let's say wall ball, okay?

01:09:33.000 Let's say they throw the ball against the wall.

01:09:34.000 Good exercise.

01:09:36.000 You do this thing with this wall ball for 40 minutes like I told you.

01:09:40.000 And you can incorporate a second exercise in between.

01:09:45.000 Just in between.

01:09:45.000 Stick it in there.

01:09:46.000 So let's say you do a wall ball.

01:09:48.000 You throw this a few times.

01:09:50.000 Walk around.

01:09:51.000 You do a set of push-ups.

01:09:52.000 Let's say 5 to 10 reps.

01:09:55.000 And you do this for 40 minutes.

01:09:57.000 Why 40 minutes?

01:09:58.000 It doesn't always have to be 40 minutes.

01:10:01.000 But pretty much we know if you can sustain it for 40 minutes, it's not going to be overly glycolytic.

01:10:05.000 So we just kind of know that.

01:10:07.000 I'll give you another example.

01:10:08.000 Let's say burpees, right?

01:10:10.000 You can do a burpee, but time it in a way that you can keep doing burpees for 40 minutes.

01:10:18.000 So you do a rep, walk around.

01:10:21.000 Do a rep, walk around.

01:10:22.000 Or even break it up.

01:10:24.000 So you do these different CrossFit-specific, competition-specific exercises in this particular manner where you're able to sustain it again for 40 minutes.

01:10:33.000 Then, pardon me, closer to the competition, you start doing what in track is called peaking.

01:10:45.000 When you're running, let's say, 400 meters or 800 meters, athletes, when they train in the off-season, they train largely aerobically.

01:10:51.000 Even though their distances are shorter, they're still not trying to trash themselves.

01:10:56.000 But we do know that even if you develop your mitochondria, if you do it correctly, and suddenly you throw yourself in an acid bath, your body's going to be unpleasantly surprised.

01:11:09.000 So what you need to do is you need to model that.

01:11:13.000 So what's going to happen is A couple of weeks before the competition, once a week, you would pretty much do something similar to the competition, like a wad or whatever.

01:11:26.000 And this will accomplish several things.

01:11:30.000 One is it will upregulate your buffers.

01:11:34.000 So your body produces baking soda pretty much to cancel out the acid.

01:11:39.000 And it's a very rapid adaptation.

01:11:42.000 It's very easy to get.

01:11:43.000 Just two weeks, you got it.

01:11:46.000 And in addition, you also upregulate your glycolytic enzymes, which you also want for competition.

01:11:52.000 And again, they're very quick to develop, very quick to lose as well.

01:11:57.000 So finally, there is such a thing as heart and respiration rate modeling, which pretty much means that you're going to be sucking wind, and if you're not used to sucking wind, it's not going to feel good.

01:12:10.000 Your diaphragm is going to spasm and not so good.

01:12:15.000 The purpose of peaking is to get yourself in kind of a simulated competition situation where the acid is high enough to make your body adapt to it, which adapts fast, and to make yourself comfortable with high heart rates and breathing.

01:12:35.000 So that's the summary.

01:12:36.000 That's pretty much how track athletes train for middle distance. 0.54

01:12:40.000 What do you do now?

01:12:41.000 First of all, how old are you?

01:12:43.000 20. You look great.

01:12:45.000 Thanks.

01:12:47.000 Thank you.

01:12:48.000 Great haircut too.

01:12:49.000 Thank you.

01:12:49.000 Yeah.

01:12:50.000 I like it.

01:12:51.000 How old are you really?

01:12:53.000 I'm working on being 20, Joe.

01:12:55.000 Let's stick with that.

01:12:55.000 Working on going back?

01:12:56.000 Yeah.

01:12:57.000 I'm 52. Are you older than me?

01:12:59.000 I'm working.

01:13:00.000 We're both working on going back.

01:13:02.000 How about we stick with that?

01:13:04.000 I don't want to be judged by some of my age.

01:13:06.000 I understand.

01:13:08.000 How often do you train these days?

01:13:10.000 How often do I train?

01:13:12.000 Almost every day.

01:13:13.000 Almost every day.

01:13:14.000 Just doing something differently?

01:13:15.000 Yeah, doing something differently.

01:13:16.000 Mostly kettlebells?

01:13:18.000 Mostly kettlebells.

01:13:20.000 For the last several years with, I suppose, last several months, we're kind of experimental doing something else.

01:13:26.000 But for the last several years, pretty much it's been nothing but swings and dips, just one of my protocols.

01:13:33.000 It's a very particular anti-glycolytic protocol.

01:13:36.000 Anti-glycolytic means, well, the kind of thing we just discussed.

01:13:40.000 Just swings and dips?

01:13:41.000 Yep.

01:13:42.000 Why that combination?

01:13:45.000 Trying to be minimalist, pretty much, and trying to cover as much base as possible.

01:13:50.000 Also trying to do things that my body likes.

01:13:55.000 But the swings are...

01:13:57.000 I would argue that the swing is the most beneficial exercise anybody can do.

01:14:02.000 Because you will, again, your training power...

01:14:05.000 You're training your fast fibers.

01:14:06.000 You're developing mitochondria in the fast fibers.

01:14:10.000 You are training your connective tissues.

01:14:13.000 And, you know, you're getting your cardio as well.

01:14:15.000 It's not, you know, it's not focused on that but you have that side effect.

01:14:20.000 The dip is, you know, kind of covers what's been missing.

01:14:25.000 I like the idea of very minimalist general strength protocols that just have pretty much a hip hinge and a press.

01:14:33.000 That's a preference.

01:14:35.000 What about chin-ups or things along those lines?

01:14:37.000 Sure, it's great.

01:14:38.000 I'll do them sometime.

01:14:39.000 But you will find, to your surprise, that if you do swings powerfully and if you do dips or push-ups powerfully, chances are you're not going to lose your chin-ups.

01:14:47.000 Really?

01:14:48.000 Chances are, for most people.

01:14:50.000 So here's something to keep in mind.

01:14:52.000 What is general training versus specific training?

01:14:56.000 So in Russian sports science, there is a concept of general training versus special training.

01:15:01.000 Special means sports specific, pretty much.

01:15:04.000 So the general training can be strength, can be something else, gives you foundation for everything else.

01:15:10.000 And it's characterized by a high degree of carryover.

01:15:14.000 So for example, if you decide to do barbell squats, you know for a fact that you're gonna jump higher, you're gonna run faster, you're gonna hit harder, and so on and so forth.

01:15:26.000 If you decide to go leg extensions, you can be sure that you're going to get better at leg extensions.

01:15:32.000 That's it.

01:15:33.000 So general exercises are the ones that are fairly simple to perform and give you the greatest possible carryover.

01:15:41.000 So that's what you do.

01:15:42.000 And then after that, you start adding your more specific stuff.

01:15:45.000 So let's say that you want to increase the number of chin-ups you want to do.

01:15:49.000 Well, you've got to do chin-ups. 0.88

01:15:50.000 So that's a specific practice.

01:15:53.000 Absolutely.

01:15:54.000 So chin-ups are great.

01:15:56.000 One of the things that I noticed that I thought was really weird was when I started doing kettlebells, things that I wasn't doing, I got stronger at.

01:16:03.000 I wasn't doing dips for a long time.

01:16:06.000 I didn't do them for months and months, and I was just doing kettlebells.

01:16:10.000 I was just doing cleans, presses, snatches, swings, a bunch of different squat protocols, overhead squats.

01:16:17.000 My dip went through the roof.

01:16:19.000 Awesome, dude.

01:16:19.000 But it was so strange.

01:16:21.000 We call this the what-the-hell effect.

01:16:23.000 So that type of carryover, some of it we can't understand, some of it we can't explain, some of it we can't.

01:16:30.000 But yeah, we've had the kettlebell swing, for example, increase the performance of world champion powerlifters and top marathon runners at the same time.

01:16:38.000 It's a very bizarre thing.

01:16:39.000 And again, some of it I can decipher, some of it I can't, but hey, we'll take it, right?

01:16:44.000 What do you think is going on there, if you had to guess?

01:16:46.000 Because...

01:16:47.000 Okay, so it's a number of different things.

01:16:50.000 One is the type of breathing patterns that we use, for example, for endurance.

01:17:00.000 That helps strengthen endurance.

01:17:03.000 So we use this pressurized breathing that increases your strength on exhalation, so that pretty much increases your strength at any kind of exertion, whether it's punching or lifting.

01:17:14.000 And at the same time, we are also training our muscles, that inspiration muscles, inhalation muscles as well.

01:17:22.000 And so developing these muscles is really important for your performance.

01:17:26.000 So that's just one of the aspects.

01:17:28.000 Another aspect is the...

01:17:32.000 Well, this is kind of interesting.

01:17:34.000 Mr. Haney was a coach for Donnie Thompson.

01:17:38.000 Donnie Thompson, he broke the 3,000-pound total record in powerlifting some years back.

01:17:45.000 So I'd known Donnie for some time, so Donnie kept hurting his back and his deadlift was stuck.

01:17:52.000 So we met.

01:17:53.000 I showed him some kettlebell stuff.

01:17:55.000 He started doing that, invented a couple of cool things of his own as well.

01:18:00.000 So nine months later, he added about 70 pounds to his deadlift, 100 pounds to his bench press, set the total record.

01:18:07.000 And what his coach said, interestingly, he said, kettlebells work the muscles without killing them.

01:18:13.000 So it's kind of interesting.

01:18:15.000 So it appears to be that the particular stimulus that you have...

01:18:22.000 There's always a positive and there's always a negative when you're training, right?

01:18:26.000 So there's something good that's happening.

01:18:27.000 It's also something that's holding you back.

01:18:29.000 You have to recover.

01:18:31.000 So it seems to be that nature of whatever things that happens within the muscle is positive more than negative.

01:18:37.000 And I think part of it is very well-dosed ballistic loading.

01:18:43.000 The body adapts to it extremely, extremely well.

01:18:46.000 Part of it has to do with the particular training protocols we have because we produce the right amount of acid but not too much acid.

01:18:56.000 A lot of trainees in the kind of a pop fitness world, they're just enamored with burn.

01:19:03.000 Like, oh, go for the burn.

01:19:05.000 Fred Hadfield, Dr. Fred Hadfield had a great line.

01:19:08.000 So Hadfield was the first lifter to squat a thousand pounds in competition.

01:19:12.000 And he was just a brilliant sports scientist, brilliant coach.

01:19:15.000 He said, do you like burn?

01:19:18.000 Light a match.

01:19:19.000 And so people are just enamored with the burn.

01:19:23.000 So again, the loading protocols we have is such that you have the right amount of that stimulation, not excessive.

01:19:29.000 Because what happens, you have too much lactic acid.

01:19:31.000 Right.

01:19:32.000 Here's what happens.

01:19:34.000 Well, many, many things happen.

01:19:35.000 We don't have the time to discuss this on the show, but most of them are really rather negative.

01:19:40.000 Some positive, most of them rather negative.

01:19:42.000 But, for sure, it makes you more sore.

01:19:48.000 For sure.

01:19:50.000 People like to say, well, soreness is just caused by eccentric loading, and that's it.

01:19:55.000 It has nothing to do with lactic acid.

01:19:56.000 Well, eccentric loading does contribute to that, absolutely, but acid does as well.

01:20:01.000 It doesn't literally burn holes in your muscle, but it does stimulate lysosomes, something that kind of eats up defective components of the cell to function.

01:20:10.000 And you also have this spike of free radicals, and so that free radicals damage cell membranes as well.

01:20:17.000 So, with what we do, we try to, and plus there's other stuff happening, like body starts producing ammonia, which is toxic, and depletes your ATP. So all those things start going, they're really sideways.

01:20:30.000 So I think the nature of what you do with kettlebells, especially if you use the correct protocol, is you just optimize this metabolic environment to get exactly what you want.

01:20:43.000 But there are some other things too, like in your case for pressing and for dips, I challenge anybody to find a pressing exercise that's biomechanically more perfect for the shoulder than the kettlebell military press.

01:20:56.000 It's perfect.

01:20:57.000 Range of motion is perfect.

01:20:58.000 Great stretch, great contraction, just absolutely perfect.

01:21:03.000 So some of which we get, some we don't, but hey, what the hell effects will take it, right?

01:21:07.000 So what do you spend your time doing these days?

01:21:10.000 Do you spend your time teaching seminars, coaching people, writing books?

01:21:17.000 All of the above.

01:21:21.000 I am staying, I'm working on, I teach some special events for Strong First, which is my company, the School of Strength.

01:21:30.000 So I teach seminars like Strong Endurances, I Can Win and so on.

01:21:33.000 I write books and I do some consulting.

01:21:39.000 But what I really am trying to do is I'm trying to build Strong First, you know, the School of Strength.

01:21:43.000 My vision is that More people want to become stronger and strength will become cool.

01:21:53.000 Strength will become important.

01:21:55.000 And I'd like to see that across decades really.

01:21:59.000 Do you think strength is cool now?

01:22:02.000 Among a small portion of the population.

01:22:05.000 Do you think that can actually change?

01:22:07.000 I hope so.

01:22:08.000 I don't know.

01:22:09.000 I hope so.

01:22:09.000 Why would it change?

01:22:11.000 Well, we're working at it.

01:22:12.000 Maybe you'll do something about it.

01:22:13.000 Who knows?

01:22:14.000 But, you know, a friend of mine said something interesting, a friend John.

01:22:18.000 He said, today, you have this very small, among young people, very small fraction of the population.

01:22:24.000 These super tough guys who are just competing in MMA and so on.

01:22:28.000 These daredevils doing extreme sports and so on.

01:22:32.000 And you have the...

01:22:34.000 Huge majority are just sitting doing this or they go and do their little Pilates thing or whatever they do, their little interval session.

01:22:43.000 And I just think society at large needs more just regular tough guys, you know, like the old farmer or somebody like that.

01:22:50.000 And I think that that needs to be more broad.

01:22:55.000 And people need to understand that I hate this word fitness.

01:22:58.000 I just hate that.

01:22:59.000 Because it conjures up images of just all sorts of weird equipment and weird exercises and foam rollers and all that stuff, you know?

01:23:07.000 You don't like foam rollers?

01:23:09.000 It's not that I don't like foam rollers.

01:23:12.000 It's a tool just like everything else.

01:23:14.000 Here's a problem.

01:23:15.000 A guy comes in.

01:23:16.000 He spends 45 minutes on some fancy, he calls it movement prep.

01:23:21.000 What the hell is movement prep?

01:23:23.000 And he's sitting around rolling his butt in the foam roller and then he does some other weird voodoo and... 0.70

01:23:29.000 You know, if he's injured and if he got a prescription from his physical therapist or doctor, power to you, buddy.

01:23:35.000 But if not, and then finally he's going to spend 10 minutes doing some little nonsense, get his heart rate up, and between sets he's going to be updating his profile or whatever.

01:23:46.000 So the foam roller, it's got a place.

01:23:49.000 I'm even going to tell you, even doing any of the corrective work, something that you need to do, you should even separate it from your training.

01:23:57.000 Don't dishonor the lifting platform by throwing a foam roller on it.

01:24:01.000 Just do it somewhere else.

01:24:03.000 Really?

01:24:03.000 Yeah.

01:24:04.000 Don't dishonor?

01:24:05.000 Don't.

01:24:07.000 I thought it was just a natural thing to sort of work the kinks out.

01:24:11.000 Fine.

01:24:11.000 Go work them out.

01:24:12.000 Just do it somewhere else.

01:24:13.000 Just don't do it by the platform, man.

01:24:15.000 And don't ever step over a barbell.

01:24:17.000 That's the most disrespectful thing you can do.

01:24:19.000 Really?

01:24:19.000 Absolutely.

01:24:20.000 You can't step over a barbell?

01:24:21.000 No.

01:24:22.000 In Russia, you'd get beaten up and thrown out of the gym.

01:24:24.000 They beat you up?

01:24:24.000 Absolutely.

01:24:25.000 That seems excessive.

01:24:26.000 You gotta respect it, Ben.

01:24:27.000 No, you do.

01:24:29.000 Stepping over a barbell is disrespectful?

01:24:31.000 Disrespectful.

01:24:31.000 You have to go around it.

01:24:32.000 Of course.

01:24:33.000 Yes.

01:24:34.000 How do I not know this?

01:24:35.000 Well, now you do.

01:24:36.000 I'm trying to think what I do.

01:24:39.000 I'm sure I've stepped over barbells.

01:24:41.000 It will get you.

01:24:41.000 Nobody ever taught me that a barbell will get you?

01:24:43.000 Yeah, it will.

01:24:44.000 Really?

01:24:45.000 Oh, okay.

01:24:46.000 I didn't know.

01:24:48.000 When you see gyms like mine that have all this equipment, all these different things, do you look at that as like that's excessive or unnecessary?

01:24:58.000 Joe, that depends.

01:24:59.000 That all depends on the circumstances.

01:25:01.000 We're talking about CrossFit.

01:25:02.000 Generally, like we talked about CrossFit early, I think CrossFit gyms, I love CrossFit gyms.

01:25:07.000 I mean, they have a few things I think are not necessary, but not so many.

01:25:11.000 But they have a lot of great stuff.

01:25:13.000 High pull-up bars and platforms and so on and so forth.

01:25:15.000 Those are essentials.

01:25:16.000 But then beyond that is just whatever you add for yourself.

01:25:20.000 And without knowing your training needs, your background, I can't evaluate you, Jim.

01:25:28.000 But I can tell you that most people have too much stuff.

01:25:32.000 And that becomes a problem of choices.

01:25:34.000 So you come in, you have this and this and that, so what are you going to do?

01:25:38.000 You're just confused.

01:25:39.000 What is it called?

01:25:40.000 The paradox of choice or something like that.

01:25:42.000 Yes, yes.

01:25:43.000 Now, what about injuries?

01:25:46.000 How often do you get injured from this kind of exercise?

01:25:50.000 I've had a number of injuries in my life, older contact injuries, like fractures and things like that.

01:25:55.000 They're not from lifting.

01:25:58.000 From lifting, things were old tweaks.

01:26:00.000 All of them were tweaks.

01:26:02.000 But, you know, tearing ligaments by falling and things like that.

01:26:07.000 So you've never had issues with tendinitis?

01:26:11.000 Yeah, I've had some of that.

01:26:12.000 Some of that.

01:26:13.000 Training pull-ups too heavy and things like that.

01:26:15.000 Things happen.

01:26:16.000 What do you do to combat that?

01:26:17.000 That's exactly what I got mine from.

01:26:19.000 Sure.

01:26:21.000 Well, first of all, provided in the absence of medical restrictions, you just work around things.

01:26:26.000 So you find things to do that work the area without aggravating it.

01:26:32.000 That's kind of the age-old prescription for what you want to do.

01:26:37.000 But I'm telling you that a lot of things we do are allowing a lot of people to get back in the game, people who have been really injured before.

01:26:47.000 And I can tell you that the techniques we use, the strong first kettlebell techniques and some other techniques, we have supporters amongst top healthcare professionals, people like Professor Stuart McGill, who is a top spine biomechanist in the world and who works with The elite of athletes and also the most broken down people.

01:27:07.000 Greg Cook, who's a top physical therapist, people like that.

01:27:10.000 So we have a very good track record of keeping people healthy.

01:27:14.000 I like this old expression from George, the Russian Lion Hackenschmidt, strength cannot be divorced from health.

01:27:23.000 I think that's a great line.

01:27:24.000 That's a great line.

01:27:26.000 I specifically have something with my bicep tendon.

01:27:29.000 I think I got it from two things.

01:27:30.000 I got it from training, doing a lot of chin-ups, but also from archery.

01:27:34.000 Because in archery, you're extending as you're drawing back at the same time, and this particular muscle gets overworked.

01:27:40.000 Well, I have Dr. Mark Chang.

01:27:43.000 I know Dr. Mark Chang.

01:27:44.000 I'll help Doc check you out.

01:27:45.000 Yeah, I'll talk to him.

01:27:48.000 What about your diet?

01:27:50.000 I'm an enemy of nutrition.

01:27:51.000 I didn't know anything about it.

01:27:52.000 An enemy of nutrition?

01:27:54.000 I hate it, man.

01:27:54.000 What do you mean?

01:27:57.000 It's such a confusing thing.

01:27:59.000 I'm telling you, in training, it's really kind of funny about training.

01:28:02.000 In training, I do my thing, you do your thing, he does his thing, but it's cool.

01:28:07.000 In nutrition, it's the only way.

01:28:10.000 And there are so many different variables that it's very hard to keep track of.

01:28:17.000 So I just feel sorry for people in that field.

01:28:19.000 I really do.

01:28:21.000 It's an awful thing.

01:28:22.000 You have to constantly be reading papers.

01:28:24.000 You have to constantly be studying.

01:28:26.000 And it's still hopeless.

01:28:28.000 Yes.

01:28:28.000 It's just really hopeless.

01:28:30.000 The body is a complex system, but I think this particular silo is worse than others.

01:28:37.000 It's just so nonlinear and it's just so difficult to figure this out.

01:28:40.000 Biological variability is so confusing too.

01:28:42.000 With one person, the diet would be optimal. 0.55

01:28:44.000 The other person, it would be terrible.

01:28:46.000 You know, I think what we should do is focus, whether it's in diet or in training, we should try to focus on things that are more universal.

01:28:54.000 So, for example, in terms of longevity, Dr. Nick Lane, who's a mitochondrial researcher, he made a very interesting point.

01:29:02.000 He said, right now, for longevity, so many efforts are directed at the genetic engineering, manipulation, whatever, fooling around, trying to make this really, really customized.

01:29:15.000 And he said, you know what's really interesting?

01:29:16.000 Why don't we try to focus on something that's been known to work not just for any individual, it works for pretty much every species, which is mitochondrial health.

01:29:27.000 And he says that if we find a way of extending the lifespan to 130 years old, He's pretty sure it's going to come from mitochondrial health.

01:29:37.000 And the stimuli for mitochondrial health are pretty much well known.

01:29:43.000 Well, there may be some more down the road, but now we do know.

01:29:46.000 So, for example, in terms of Nutrition, that's fasting.

01:29:52.000 In terms of exercise, it is both aerobic steady-state exercise and that type of work for fast fibers that I told you about, anti-glycolytic training.

01:30:03.000 And there's cold.

01:30:07.000 So those are the stimuli, the primary stimuli for the mitochondria.

01:30:12.000 So probably for nutrition, the same thing.

01:30:14.000 They should look for more things that work for everybody.

01:30:17.000 And then kind of on the margins, try to fool around with customization.

01:30:22.000 What about you personally?

01:30:24.000 What kind of diet do you follow?

01:30:26.000 Back some years ago, I met a very interesting gent, Ori Hoffmeckler, and he introduced me to his so-called warrior diet.

01:30:36.000 And I was not interested in any kind of a diet, any kind of a body comp changes.

01:30:39.000 I'm just not into that kind of thing.

01:30:41.000 But what attracted me is efficiency.

01:30:43.000 He said, just eat once a day.

01:30:45.000 And I thought, sure, I'll try.

01:30:47.000 And this was long before the current intermittent fasting craze has begun.

01:30:54.000 So I don't think Ori is getting quite the credit he deserves.

01:30:57.000 So I pretty much just eat a large dinner and don't worry about it.

01:31:01.000 Do you snack at all during the day or anything?

01:31:03.000 Nothing.

01:31:03.000 It kills me, man.

01:31:04.000 Really?

01:31:04.000 Yeah.

01:31:05.000 And this has always been the case with you?

01:31:07.000 No.

01:31:07.000 If you snack, it kills you or as you get older?

01:31:09.000 No.

01:31:09.000 Since I started this way of eating.

01:31:11.000 So your body's acclimated to this one large meal.

01:31:14.000 Yeah.

01:31:14.000 It did.

01:31:15.000 It did.

01:31:15.000 And I just feel great when I do that.

01:31:17.000 You've got to slam a lot of calories down in one meal though, right?

01:31:20.000 Yeah.

01:31:20.000 What do you eat?

01:31:21.000 Steak.

01:31:21.000 Mostly.

01:31:22.000 Of course.

01:31:24.000 No chicken.

01:31:25.000 Just say no to chicken.

01:31:26.000 Say no to chicken?

01:31:27.000 Just say no.

01:31:28.000 Why?

01:31:28.000 What's wrong with chicken?

01:31:29.000 It's just lame.

01:31:29.000 I don't like it.

01:31:33.000 What don't you like about it?

01:31:34.000 The taste or what it stands for?

01:31:36.000 It's a weak bird.

01:31:37.000 It is a weak bird.

01:31:39.000 Can't even fly.

01:31:40.000 Just say no, Joe.

01:31:41.000 Helpless against coyotes.

01:31:42.000 Just say no to chicken.

01:31:43.000 Really?

01:31:43.000 Yeah.

01:31:44.000 Wow.

01:31:45.000 What about fish?

01:31:47.000 Well, my wife makes me. 1.00

01:31:49.000 I'll eat it.

01:31:50.000 Not out of choice.

01:31:52.000 But mostly meat.

01:31:54.000 Yeah.

01:31:55.000 But you understand what I'm telling you is just personal choices, not professional recommendations.

01:32:00.000 Totally out of my wheelhouse.

01:32:02.000 But what about vegetables?

01:32:06.000 Vegetables are just kind of a necessary evil.

01:32:09.000 I do eat them.

01:32:11.000 What's necessary about them?

01:32:12.000 You know, this is an interesting point.

01:32:14.000 Same Doc, Nick Lane...

01:32:17.000 Did some research and summarized some other research.

01:32:20.000 Like, why are fruit and vegetables good for you?

01:32:24.000 And the party line is the antioxidants.

01:32:27.000 And they almost convincingly concluded that's not the case.

01:32:32.000 Because if you just try to isolate antioxidants, just give it to people, they don't have the same effect.

01:32:40.000 So the current theory, and it's very likely it's true, is the plant toxins...

01:32:50.000 Pretty much promote hormesis. 0.73

01:32:52.000 Hormesis is pretty much resistance against stuff.

01:32:54.000 So it's pretty much mild doses of poison that you take to make yourself stronger.

01:32:59.000 So that's most likely what these things are good for.

01:33:06.000 But anytime you hear about antioxidants, this, antioxidants, that, it's unless they're prescribed by a doctor to a particular patient, a patient, antioxidant supplementation might even cause cancer.

01:33:19.000 So there's studies in that.

01:33:20.000 Yeah.

01:33:20.000 That's just not something to shotgun or go to the pharmacy, buy all this stuff.

01:33:24.000 No.

01:33:24.000 You should know exactly what you're taking them for.

01:33:28.000 You should gather a recommendation prescription from your doctor.

01:33:32.000 That is correct.

01:33:33.000 Do you know anybody that follows a carnivore diet?

01:33:36.000 What's a carnivore diet?

01:33:37.000 A carnivore diet is very recent.

01:33:39.000 Within the last few years, people are eating only animal products.

01:33:43.000 And the great benefit that some people have had is people with autoimmune issues like skin conditions, eczema, things along those lines, it seems to cure it up.

01:33:53.000 People with severe arthritis, it's...

01:33:56.000 I mean, by cutting out all plant foods...

01:34:01.000 Completely.

01:34:02.000 Some people with autoimmune issues have found great results.

01:34:07.000 Some people have found great results with depression, but it's extremely controversial.

01:34:13.000 It's also ideologically troubling for some people.

01:34:16.000 Some people don't want you to eat meat at all, so if you're eating only meat, this is terrible, you're sending a bad message.

01:34:24.000 You think that's funny?

01:34:25.000 Okay, it sounds like a fun diet, man.

01:34:27.000 It sounds awesome.

01:34:28.000 But I'm completely unqualified to comment on that.

01:34:31.000 Right.

01:34:31.000 But would you be interested in trying it?

01:34:34.000 Would I be interested in trying it?

01:34:36.000 When I see some more research on that, I might.

01:34:39.000 Not that I'm a fan of vegetables or anything, so I would consider it.

01:34:43.000 You say vegetables with disdain. 0.92

01:34:45.000 You say vegetables like cowards. 0.97

01:34:47.000 It's a necessary evil. 0.85

01:34:49.000 You understand certain things.

01:34:50.000 It's like your foam roller, Joe.

01:34:52.000 You just do it.

01:34:53.000 You don't enjoy it.

01:34:54.000 That thing next to you, the Tim Tam, that's what I use instead of a foam roller.

01:34:58.000 That jackhammer right underneath the tripod, that's...

01:35:02.000 That was invented by MMA coach Farah Sahabi.

01:35:05.000 Okay.

01:35:06.000 Cool.

01:35:07.000 More effective.

01:35:08.000 So that's better than vegetables.

01:35:09.000 Oh, quick, too.

01:35:10.000 Better than vegetables?

01:35:11.000 I don't know.

01:35:11.000 But better than foam rower.

01:35:13.000 I think so.

01:35:14.000 But that's what I'm saying.

01:35:15.000 For a guy like you that talks about vegetables with such disdain, I would think that...

01:35:20.000 But it's a necessary evil, you understand?

01:35:22.000 But is it?

01:35:22.000 This is the thing.

01:35:23.000 I'm not sure it is.

01:35:24.000 Based on the current...

01:35:25.000 Well, the docs will tell you all this stuff about fiber and this and that.

01:35:28.000 That's supposedly good.

01:35:29.000 And again, that's not my specialty.

01:35:31.000 Right.

01:35:31.000 But this other point about hormesis, which is, again, building up your resistance.

01:35:36.000 Yes.

01:35:36.000 Resilience to things.

01:35:38.000 So it's very possible vegetables are evil, and the small doses of this evil make us stronger.

01:35:44.000 Small doses.

01:35:45.000 A little tiny, like a quarter of your plate.

01:35:48.000 Yeah, well, it should be more probably.

01:35:50.000 Probably.

01:35:50.000 I don't know.

01:35:52.000 It's just a funny subject with you.

01:35:54.000 You have an interesting relationship.

01:35:56.000 I told you, I'm an enemy of nutrition.

01:35:57.000 I hate it.

01:35:58.000 I just really hate it.

01:35:59.000 I have a sympathy, deep sympathy for people who are in that line of work.

01:36:05.000 Now, do you supplement with multivitamins or creatine or anything along those lines?

01:36:09.000 No, I don't.

01:36:10.000 And, you know, creatine is definitely, supplementation is not my specialty either, but I can tell you creatine is one of those supplements that definitely has been tested extensively.

01:36:18.000 And while not for everybody, it does work well.

01:36:20.000 Yes, it's also been proven as a nootropic, which I think is fascinating.

01:36:25.000 It's very possible.

01:36:25.000 It enhances cognitive performance.

01:36:27.000 Again, I don't have cognitive performance.

01:36:31.000 You don't have any cognitive performance?

01:36:32.000 I don't have any, so not my thing.

01:36:35.000 What about vitamins?

01:36:36.000 Do you take any vitamins?

01:36:37.000 No.

01:36:38.000 There's no evidence.

01:36:39.000 And again, if you would get a prescription from your doc that you're short on this, then you should.

01:36:45.000 This is essentially not your wheelhouse.

01:36:47.000 Absolutely not.

01:36:48.000 What about sleep?

01:36:50.000 I'm a big fan.

01:36:51.000 How much do you get?

01:36:52.000 I get a lot more than most people would.

01:36:54.000 I try to get nine hours.

01:36:56.000 Oh, great.

01:36:57.000 I'm convinced, based on the research that I've seen, that that is very important.

01:37:03.000 Yeah, I'm convinced of that as well.

01:37:04.000 I find a big difference in my performance, both mental and physical, when I have a lot of sleep.

01:37:09.000 But what disturbs me, we have this guy on, Dr. Matthew Walker, who studies sleep extensively.

01:37:17.000 He's a sleep expert, and he There's a direct correlation between a bunch of diseases and people not getting sleep.

01:37:23.000 Heart attacks.

01:37:24.000 You know, heart attacks jump up some number worldwide, something in the neighborhood of 20-plus percent when they do daylight savings time and people lose an hour of sleep. 1.00

01:37:36.000 Well, that's the most idiotic idea. 1.00

01:37:38.000 I hope that goes away. 1.00

01:37:39.000 I hope it goes away, too. 1.00

01:37:40.000 I was just in Arizona, and one of the first things I said to them on stage, I was like, I'm so happy that you guys don't follow this stupid shit. 1.00

01:37:48.000 It's so dumb. 1.00

01:37:49.000 Like, oh, we jump forward. 0.99

01:37:50.000 We move back.

01:37:51.000 We do this.

01:37:52.000 Oh, it's very cute.

01:37:53.000 Yeah.

01:37:54.000 The time is the time.

01:37:55.000 If it's dark out early, then it's dark out early.

01:37:58.000 Why is that so troubling for people?

01:38:00.000 And I think I've read somewhere that messes up the cows.

01:38:02.000 If they start milking the cows at an hour later or earlier, the cows are all unhappy.

01:38:06.000 Everybody's fine.

01:38:07.000 What have you.

01:38:08.000 Well, it increases heart attacks, something in the neighborhood of 20 plus percent.

01:38:12.000 And then when you gain an hour sleep, there's a subsequent decrease in heart rate, heart attacks rather.

01:38:20.000 That's very similar as well.

01:38:21.000 Somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 percent.

01:38:23.000 Well, the point I think is this, that we're all very busy.

01:38:27.000 There's a lot of stuff going on.

01:38:28.000 Everybody has limited bandwidth.

01:38:30.000 But trying to save on sleep, that's not the right place.

01:38:33.000 I completely agree.

01:38:36.000 Now what about, do you do anything to recover like cryotherapy or any of those things, ice baths?

01:38:42.000 Right now, no, because it's just not logistically, not very convenient.

01:38:48.000 But yeah, I used to cut a hole in the ice and go dipping in there when I lived in cold places, and I've done things like that.

01:38:54.000 Russia has a long history of a practice called tempering, and that goes back, I don't know, centuries, which is pretty much cold exposure.

01:39:03.000 They figured out that does promote your non-specific resistance to a lot of things.

01:39:08.000 Colds and so on and so forth.

01:39:10.000 And more recent studies, they found out that pretty much increases your resistance also.

01:39:15.000 So free radical damage and so on.

01:39:22.000 So cold is really good.

01:39:23.000 Definitely is really good if you have a chance to do that.

01:39:28.000 Other things that are very good if they're used correctly is hypoxia, hypercapnia, pretty much breathing less but doing it in the correct manner.

01:39:39.000 But there's something that you need to keep in mind when you start getting really fancy in all these different recovery modalities, all these different supplements and massages and whatever, whatever.

01:39:49.000 That was also, I believe, Professor Vorobyov who made a point of that, that accelerating the recovery, first of all, accelerating the rate of adaptation is just not normal.

01:40:00.000 And again, it's going to be less stable.

01:40:02.000 And second, that just makes your body less able to handle it by itself.

01:40:06.000 So it's like spoiling yourself with it.

01:40:09.000 I think, so again, not my specialty, but I think it should be used judiciously.

01:40:15.000 And I also think that too many people are starting to get into the fancy cryotherapy this or fancy supplement or machine that before they've just taken care of basics.

01:40:26.000 So what are the basics if you're, let's say that you are, okay, for an athlete or for a normal person.

01:40:33.000 So what are the basics for health for a normal person?

01:40:37.000 Obviously, we discussed earlier, you want to have type 2 fibers and mitochondria in them when you're older.

01:40:42.000 So that means you've got to lift heavier fast.

01:40:45.000 There's no other way.

01:40:46.000 There's no third way.

01:40:48.000 And you just have to find exercises that your body can tolerate.

01:40:52.000 The next thing is, obviously, you have to do something for your heart.

01:40:55.000 It's not that much.

01:40:57.000 So whatever lame government guidelines are out there, usually that will suffice for that.

01:41:02.000 Then today we know about sleep, obviously.

01:41:05.000 And today we also know about other ways of promoting this overall resilience.

01:41:13.000 And again, things like cold.

01:41:15.000 Things like vegetables.

01:41:22.000 But strength for the athlete.

01:41:25.000 So I guess if you get your diet you're eating, and again, what is the correct eating?

01:41:31.000 I have no clue, but I tell you what, there is probably a couple of things that most experts would agree on.

01:41:37.000 They'll probably tell you, lay off the sugar and eat some green vegetables, whatever.

01:41:42.000 Probably everybody except for those carnivore guys will agree on that.

01:41:46.000 So get your nutrition dialed in, get your sleep dialed in, then get strong.

01:41:52.000 So I named my organization Strong First because that's the primary quality.

01:41:56.000 So Professor Matveyev, he made a point that that's the mother of all qualities.

01:42:02.000 Upon the foundation of strength, you build endurance, you build speed, you build power, you build resilience, everything.

01:42:08.000 So, get strong.

01:42:10.000 Have your joint mobility in order.

01:42:13.000 Have some amounts of endurance.

01:42:15.000 The minimum, if you just do it for health.

01:42:18.000 Again, those government guidelines are enough.

01:42:20.000 More if your sport requires that.

01:42:22.000 Then, get great coaching.

01:42:26.000 And then when you're almost a contender, then you can start fooling around with all the, you know, additional stuff on the periphery.

01:42:32.000 And those things are really, first of all, they're really expensive.

01:42:35.000 Second of all, some of these modalities.

01:42:39.000 But second of all, you know, you might get some, a microscopic fraction of a percent of improvement to your performance.

01:42:46.000 And if you're training for the Olympics, it's absolutely worth it.

01:42:49.000 But if you're not, you got to consider the point of diminishing returns.

01:42:53.000 So like what are you doing with your life?

01:42:55.000 What are you spending your time on?

01:42:57.000 And the point of diminishing returns happens in everything.

01:43:01.000 So it's again, if you just want to be healthy, You don't want to hammer away in just one thing.

01:43:08.000 Like, oh, I just want to build up my deadlift to its highest level.

01:43:11.000 Or I just want to run the fastest 5k.

01:43:14.000 You train your deadlift.

01:43:16.000 You do some running.

01:43:18.000 You eat healthy.

01:43:19.000 Maybe you add some cold exposure.

01:43:21.000 Maybe you add some hypoxia.

01:43:23.000 Maybe you eat your vegetables.

01:43:24.000 So adding each successive thing, you get to the point of diminishing returns.

01:43:29.000 But if you decide to be a specialist, you still have to do the general work.

01:43:34.000 What about sauna?

01:43:35.000 Great.

01:43:36.000 You use it?

01:43:37.000 Mm-hmm.

01:43:39.000 Sauna is great for a lot of different reasons.

01:43:41.000 Right now, normally they just talk about things like microcirculation, which is all good.

01:43:45.000 Heat shock proteins, which is all very good.

01:43:48.000 But there's also something else.

01:43:52.000 There is a very interesting phenomenon that is called RMED. What does it stand for?

01:43:59.000 Something about acute relaxation reaction to stress.

01:44:05.000 I don't recall the acronym exactly how it goes.

01:44:09.000 So hypothermia, heat is amongst the stimulus, hypoxia as well, that allows you to develop a reaction in your body that in response to stress you're going to be more relaxed.

01:44:22.000 So this is kind of an interesting thing.

01:44:24.000 So it's definitely a healthy thing, definitely.

01:44:28.000 Well, listen, man, we've taken up a lot of your time, and I appreciate you very much, and I appreciate all the work that you've done.

01:44:33.000 And like I said, I've been a big fan for a long time.

01:44:36.000 My pleasure, Jim.

01:44:36.000 Thank you.

01:44:36.000 If someone wants to find a gym that follows your protocols, where's the best way?

01:44:42.000 Go to strongfirst.com.

01:44:45.000 First is spelled out.

01:44:46.000 And we do have a director of accredited gyms in the U.S. and elsewhere, and also our certified instructors as well.

01:44:54.000 And your most recent book...

01:44:57.000 My most recent book is The Quick and the Dead, Total Training for the Advanced Minimalists, but that is for the Advanced Minimalists.

01:45:06.000 So I presume that's not for the majority of listeners.

01:45:09.000 So I also, about the same time, came out with an updated edition of my Kettlebell Simple and Sinister, and that, I firmly believe, is the book for most people, whether it's Grandma Betty or Ranger Joe,

01:45:24.000 to train on, to get started on.

01:45:27.000 Alright, beautiful.

01:45:28.000 Well, thank you very much.

01:45:28.000 Thank you, Joe.

01:45:29.000 Appreciate it, sir.

01:45:29.000 Thank you.

01:45:30.000 Alright, bye everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - December 12, 2019

Joe Rogan Experience #1399 - Pavel Tsatsouline

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