In Moderation
Providing health, nutrition and fitness advice in moderate amounts to help you live your best life.
Rob: Co-host of the podcast "In Moderation" and fitness enthusiast. Rob has a background in exercise science and is passionate about helping others achieve their health and fitness goals. He brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to the show, providing valuable insights on topics such as calories, metabolism, and weight loss.
Liam: Co-host of the podcast "In Moderation" and new father. Liam has a background in nutrition and is dedicated to promoting a balanced and sustainable approach to health and wellness. With his witty and sarcastic style, Liam adds a unique flavor to the show, making it both informative and entertaining.
In Moderation
Spider-Man Inspiration to Home Fitness: XPFitness Journey to Fun and Functional Movement
What happens when you mix the agility of Spider-Man with the practicality of home workouts? Meet Nathaniel Nolan, a.k.a. XP Movement from TikTok, who shares his inspiring transformation from traditional weightlifting to exploring diverse movement disciplines like calisthenics, breakdancing, jujitsu, and even skateboarding—all at the age of 33. Nathaniel discusses his evolution, drawing inspiration from fictional heroes to push the limits of physical fitness while keeping it safe and fun. This lively conversation also navigates the trials of parenting, including the challenge of keeping language clean around children, adding a humorous twist to his journey.
Can you stay fit without a gym membership or a dedicated workout space? Discover practical tips to make the most of minimal space by incorporating exercises into your daily life, even if it's just a yoga mat's worth. Nathaniel emphasizes the effectiveness of functional movements, like push-ups using walls or countertops, squats from your couch, and other ingenious ways to integrate fitness into everyday routines. Learn how adjusting exercise intensity can prepare your central nervous system for peak performance, much like switching gears on a bicycle to handle varying terrains.
Uncover the secrets to developing a training program that works for you. Nathaniel advocates for personalized coaching that listens and adapts to individual needs, encouraging exploration over rigid routines. He shares the importance of balancing intensity with understanding one's body, celebrating consistent success without chasing failure. From learning through the experiences of others to seamlessly incorporating movement into daily life, Nathaniel challenges traditional fitness norms with a "more is more" approach, offering a fresh perspective on achieving fitness goals with joy and creativity.
You can find XPMovement
https://www.tiktok.com/@xpmovement?lang=en
https://www.instagram.com/annualnathaniel/?hl=en
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Welcome to In Moderation, where I'm being mimicked by this troll beside me.
Speaker 2:I'm not a troll.
Speaker 1:But our actual guest here is XP Movement, if you'd like to introduce yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, xp Movement on TikTok. My name is Nathaniel Nolan, I'm a movement coach and I actually have a lot of different disciplines, so that's kind of the umbrella term that I put it under. But yeah, it's, I make training content, so that's really the long and short of it.
Speaker 1:And you kind of look like you're becoming like Spider-Man the way you're just able to move.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I would say that's one of my inspirations is is, uh, spider-man and fictional characters, that's. I mean, that's how, um any any discipline has progressed is. Somebody imagines up something fake and then people start kind of plugging away at it and trying to figure it out.
Speaker 3:So definitely model life imitate, life imitates art. All that good stuff. So don't you do. Do you do more like calisthenics?
Speaker 2:yeah, so pretty much everything in the movement field, um, I'm open to. So I do calisthenics, uh break dancing, uh jujitsu. I just started skateboarding as a 33 year old, so I also, um do a lot of stuff that I'm probably too old to.
Speaker 3:How many times have you hurt yourself?
Speaker 2:already doing that Well more than I can count.
Speaker 3:Do you hurt yourself more with trying to skateboard or with everything else? Because it seems like it kind of no, no.
Speaker 2:By far. Skateboarding is much more dangerous than anything else that I do. Yeah, actually, everything you would see on my TikToks where I'm like doing handstand jumps from a platform to like the floor from two or three feet up, uh, all of that stuff is really super safe. I've never, ever, get hurt in the gym. In fact, I've been doing this walking on my hand series for the last three years and I've had zero injuries in three years yeah, wow, yeah, I find it really it's kind of interesting.
Speaker 3:People will see a video of someone doing something what they perceive as crazy in a gym or you know some type of something and you're like, actually no, you know, I I bust my toe on the fucking uh coffee table a lot more than I actually hurt myself doing some sort of like exercise, like that's actually like, if you know what you're doing, it's actually the problem. The reason people hurt themselves often in this gym is because they have no fucking clue what they're doing.
Speaker 1:Right, they get in there they look at the little picture on the machine.
Speaker 3:They're like this goes there, so I just kind of throw it there. Is that how that works? And you know, once you actually start to learn a little bit, it's not your the likelihood you're going to get hurt as long as you have a little.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say my sessions are probably my, like, safest periods throughout the day, because it's where I'm the most focused. I usually I'm very klutzy because I'm a very distracted person, so if I'm not training, then my mind's elsewhere and I will end up like stubbing my toe or, you know, falling and hitting my knee on something. But when I'm training, that's when I'm actually like, focused on my movements. I'm very present.
Speaker 1:so yeah, somehow I get away with doing a bunch of crazy stuff and never get hurt. What's your favorite swear word when you stub your toe?
Speaker 2:oh, that's a good question um, I have a daughter that's about to turn two, so all of my swear words have been converted to like pseudo swear words. So I use a lot of like little kid terms like I'm, like, oh, heckums, and stuff like that, like I yeah, so I kind of lost a lot of my curse words at this point, and they've been replaced with the uh, the baby versions that's cute, that's really cute I'm going full bore my daughter's swearing.
Speaker 3:As soon as she talks, I swear, her first words are gonna be fuck, shit and all everything else like I I'm pretty sure her first words are gonna be fuck you, dad, you ain't sleeping. Okay, that was too it's listen we can. We all agree that it is very funny when you see a small child go shit after they drop something like that is like peak comedy right there. I will never not right.
Speaker 2:Well, that's the reason I'm trying to keep my daughter from cursing, because then it's just going to continue to reinforce itself as I laugh at her letting out curse words.
Speaker 3:Yes, oh, no, 100. I'm gonna be a terrible parent. That's basically what I'm trying to say. It's like it's gonna it's it's gonna be bad, but you know what? Uh, you know, it depends. Everything it's all in the eye of the beholder. So, basically, what I'm saying is do whatever you want.
Speaker 2:If you have to try to be the worst parent, then you've already failed at that, because you're trying.
Speaker 3:So what got you into? Like the, you know the movement, the calisthenics and that sort of stuff? I, you know I always find that interesting. I definitely consider myself more of like you know I enjoy going to the gym and lifting weights. But you know, I myself more of like you know, I enjoy going to the gym and lifting weights.
Speaker 2:But uh, you know, I, I think there's there's a, there's a strong group of people that really enjoy just like I'm just gonna use my body and that's it why uh, well, I mean it was kind of a slow, gradual, uh migration from traditional training over to more less traditional stuff and more body weight stuff, um, because I did used to do just traditional weight lifting and bodybuilding, um, and then I started learning how to do handstands, like I don't know, it's like probably 12, 13 years ago, and so that was my introduction into it.
Speaker 2:I was like I just want to be able to do that because, yeah, I mean, it's just like you just see something you're like that looks cool, and I think that's what everybody needs is like that sort of little entry point, just something to be interested in. And then, over the years, as I've added more skills to my tableau of things that I'm able to do it's more options. It's just going to help to kind of inform what you choose whenever you decide, hey, I'm going to go work out in so, and then also skill-based movements like calisthenics, uh, hand balancing stuff like that. They are really super accessible so you don't have to go to the gym if you don't want to, like I used to go to the gym to work on handstands. Then I realized like I don't need to do that to get my training and just save myself that drive to and from. Yeah, well, that's. That's the challenge. Right is to not to not do that.
Speaker 3:And then I was just gonna say like that is what I was hoping you touch on, because for so many people I think the a big impediment to them. Working out is like okay, so it takes me. All right, I gotta get ready, get all my shit, let me get in the car, let me drive to the gym, you know, let me put my stuff away and I start working out. By the time all that's happened let's just say 20 minutes has gone by. Then you have to leave the gym, go back home. Let's say that's 40 minutes every time you want to go to the gym. Even if you're going to gym three days a week over the course of a year I fuck, I 365 days, I. It would take me five hours to do that math. But let's just say it's a lot of time wasted just driving, moving, going back and forth. And if you can remove that barrier, I think for a lot of people that would get them more interested or at least more willing to try something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, even just blending it in, and that's actually what my whole training philosophy is built around. My method, which is the XP method, is taking that amount of exposure that you're getting at the gym that you're going to the gym for, and then focusing on just that and it's like okay, well, instead of thinking about it, as I have to go to the gym to get this exposure, there are limitless, countless ways I can get that. So, because, just like you were talking about, how much time do you spend in a year driving to and from the gym, and then also how much added to that, how much time do you spend in a year driving to and from the gym, and then also, how much added to that, how much time do you spend getting dressed to go to the gym, getting undressed?
Speaker 3:Right, exactly, Putting your shit away. You got to pay for the gym. You have to. There's all these things. You're dealing with people there. You're watching Joey Swole and you're like, oh shit, everyone at the gym sucks ass, Like I don't want to be in that environment. I don't necessarily have anything against the gym?
Speaker 2:inherently, I do like to. I think that the idea of having a dedicated place to go and use equipment and just kind of have your mindset be on training is good, but I think that it's all the other little things, even like when you're at the gym. Like I'm going to set aside an hour to go to the gym, Okay, well, in that hour I can only do so much in an hour. So like if I say I wanted to spend 30 minutes on my hands, which is something that I've done for over a thousand days consecutively now, every single day it's been 30 minutes on my hand Okay, If I go to the gym for an hour, I'm not going to be able to spend 30 minutes of that hour on my hands being super, duper productive, um, in the same way that I would be able to if I were to break up that 30 minutes all throughout the day.
Speaker 2:So what happens is we go to the gym a lot of times. We just spend a good portion of it resting. So it's like you're at a location that you drove to to do nothing for a portion of that. Yeah, and that's actually why I started taking all of the goals, the things that I'm wanting to work on in the gym and trying to boil them down to how much time I'm actually spending getting exposure to this thing. So let's just take bicep curls, for example. Say you're working on your pool day and through all of the exercises that you do for that, so you do like six different exercises, five sets of each one of them for 10 reps each or something like that. Right, how much time do you think you actually spend with your elbow loaded under, like in loaded flexion? That all boils down to like two, three minutes total across that hour that you spend it's pretty sad, like I listen this again coming from someone who loves the gym.
Speaker 3:I go there all the time but, like you, you go there, you do a lift, you sit there, then you check your facebook and you look at your ex brenda, who's doing so much better than you, like fucking bitch, damn it. Like you know, my life sucks. Why is? Why is everyone else doing better than me? And then you hate lift more, which hey, listen, that works. Don't get me wrong, but the nice thing about being at home is you can actually do something. And then you're like oh shit, let me put that away, let me fucking load the dishwasher my dog just threw up because they were eating a bunch of stuff outside that I told them not to, but they don't speak English still fuckers. So you know, I think having just being able to work out at home gives you more opportunity to do things like? And do you have like a dedicated space at your house where you kind of have like just a little area where you're like?
Speaker 2:this is kind of where I do most of my, I've got like basically converted my den into a home gym, so've got it's mostly just open floor spaces like my main requirement. I just need to be able to have like a little bit of space to train. But I also have like weights and pull-up bars, which I think that that is if I was ever going to recommend. Just one piece of equipment for every single person to have is like something to be able to hang all of your body weight from. But yeah, other than that, I mean I have a home gym but I do my training like all throughout the house I I'm doing okay, yeah, what would you recommend for someone?
Speaker 3:they don't have the space for a home gym. You know they're just trying to get something done. You know, like, how can they make do with what?
Speaker 2:yeah, I I get that question a lot because people see my videos and they're like, well, I don't have a whole room dedicated to this and, honestly, like a lot of people because when they're first getting started on something feel kind of insecure.
Speaker 2:They don't even want to do it in an open, shared space where their family can watch them. So I was just telling people like you can get started in the space of a yoga mat. I mean, if you're doing something like handstands, push-ups, any sort of calisthenic movements, like you're not going to occupy more space than your body's length and width most of the time, so you really don't need a lot of space. And it's really just about like figuring out what it is that you're trying to do. If it's weight bearing on your hands, like the stuff that I work on, well, you can do that whether you have a lot of space or a little bit of space, and then also, you don't even need to have floor space at all. I I I like to point out that you know you can use countertops, tabletops, the wall. There's so many ways to train that a lot of people don't consider.
Speaker 3:I think most people have at least some open space on the floor. If you look at and watch an episode of Hoarders, there's maybe a few people that don't. Even they have a pathway. I think that you could probably get something done For most people. You have something.
Speaker 3:Listen, here's what I would recommend and then you tell me how my recommendations are, from decent to total dog shit. I would say, for someone who's trying to get just a decent workout with body weights let's say they have no equipment whatsoever you can get a lot done with that. I would say, focus on three. So there's kind of like three major movements. I would say there's some. There's some type of pushing exercise, some type of pulling exercise and some type of you know leg exercise. So take the legs.
Speaker 3:Squats are just the easiest things, like you know. I think even if you can't do just like a full, deep squat on your own, just sitting on the couch, sit back up If you're like, really, if you are new to training, you're you can grow muscle from doing damn little things Because you're just so untrained. So if you can sit down on the couch and then stand back up, I don't care if you're watching your favorite show. You could be watching fucking Love Island or one of those other shows that I can't stand. Watch whatever the hell you want, but as long as you're doing, just do something. Just sit down on the couch and stand back up and then, if you can graduate to just doing, you know, squats on your own. Maybe you have something in your house Like you can. Once you graduate past that you hold something heavy. You know, I don't know a two liter thing of water.
Speaker 2:You know I don't know, yeah, your dog, exactly. Yeah, I mean you're just describing, yeah, progressive overload and honestly it's, it's it's easier to do it, I think, the way you're describing, than to go into the gym and try to think about these abstract exercises that are then going to need to be reconverted back into those normal functional movements that you're talking about, like standing up and sitting down from the couch is actually more functionally useful than being able to squat 400 pounds, because you do it a lot more often.
Speaker 3:And I think for most people, right, that's just what they want to do. They just want to be able to do daily, you know, activities and just be, you know, somewhat physically fit.
Speaker 2:Yeah honestly, the yeah. The more you abstract it, the less functional it actually is, because you're removing it from the function itself. That's why I always tell people you don't really need a big program to start off. Just think about the functions that you want to improve at and then find an accessible way to do those things. And then what you're describing by standing up and sitting down at the couch and doing it in front of the TV is something, a concept that I call free XP, and I actually think that it is the greatest pool of exposure that you can actually get throughout your day, like there's. You can do a lot more with simple activities like that, like genuinely. You can fit in a lot more of that than you could ever program or set aside time for for sessions.
Speaker 3:So a lot of people get confused with the gym, like a program, what are these exercises? I don't know. And I think this is a great place to get started. Like okay, so then you take your pushing exercise, like okay, I can't. Many people tell me like, oh, I can't do a push up, that's totally fine. You don't even start off with. You know, you see these. Listen, it's cool to watch someone on TikTok do like a one-handed push-up.
Speaker 3:I tried that, shit, it's fucking hard. Listen, I'm going to blame it on me being tall. I'm six foot three. That's the problem. It's not because I'm weak, that's not why at all. So I would start exactly. Who the hell's named Sally anymore? Pick a real George, a stupid George. Do you know? George Foreman named all his kids George, every one of them, even his daughter. Fucking weird man. But anyway, um, so I would start with like pushing against a wall. So you, so you stand back from a wall. You, you know you lean against the wall, you push forward and back from the wall. You start there. Then maybe you can graduate to doing push-ups on your knees. Then maybe to you know, full push-ups. And then you know, you put your feet on the couch, decline push-ups slowly, just, you know, kind of raising the bar, if you will, and making it a little and, like you said, progressive overload. For anyone that doesn't know, that's just kind of making shit harder, like you. But you do something when it's hard.
Speaker 2:When it becomes easier, you do something that's a little bit harder, whether that's doing more reps or adding more weight or, you know, graduating from pushing against the wall to pushing against the ground yeah, but I think that I think the problem that a lot of people have is that they don't even consider those lower intensity options, like putting your hands on the wall, putting your hands on the arm of the couch to do your pushups, or a platform like that. Yes, a lot of times people think of the, the traditional version of the exercise, that they're shown as square one. So they're like a regular pushup on your toes, like starting from a hand plank position. That's square one. And then I have to move forward from there.
Speaker 2:And there's so many people that like that middle of the road for them, like they need to start way, way before that, and the progression, and and they, they don't even consider it an option. And it's because, like so many people online are showing exercises that are so much harder. And then they're like well, just try this or to get to this, do these exercises. And it's like if you're untrained, then, just like you were saying, literally any bit of movement is going to be, it's going to be going to cause.
Speaker 3:Put on your favorite music, your favorite show, make it a cozy cardio situation. We just go back and listen to that episode, whatever, and then I would say like it's a little bit more difficult to do some type of pulling exercise at home. Now, like you were saying, if you have something you can hang from, like a lot of people I'd say most people probably couldn't even do. If, especially if you're on train doing a pull up right off the bat, that's going to be pretty hard right, you're on train doing a pull-up right off the bat.
Speaker 3:That's gonna be pretty hard, right? Um, so, yeah, so, and that's totally fine. I think a lot of people like I can't do a pull-up, fuck it whatever, I give up. So instead I mean it is a little bit tougher, I would say to do just like a straight body weight exercise. There's some like kind of interesting ones you can look up, but uh, we've talked about this before.
Speaker 3:I highly suggest, if you're going to work out at home, invest in some bands. They're like 20 30 bucks, you know. You get a set of them you can attach a band to. They usually have things that will go over, like the door frame, like that little fucking satchel thing on the back. You close the door, it sits against the door and then you can pull against the band and just doing some type of pulling where you know you start away from your body and you pull into your body. You don't. It doesn't have to be fucking complicated. Keep it basic. You know, oh, after about 10 reps of those, I'm tired. Perfect, you did a good job. Do that a few times and you know, consistently over the course of weeks and months, you will get stronger.
Speaker 2:Sounds like you're speaking from a bad experience.
Speaker 3:Wait, did you like pull up from the door? Did you like? Did you hang on to the door and pull yourself up from there? Why are people dumb?
Speaker 2:I wouldn't even trust the hinges, to be honest I know like I don't.
Speaker 3:So there's like those pull-up bars. I'm sure everyone listening is probably seeing those where you just like hook it around the door frame. Even that's like sketch. I've seen some people like hanging upside down looking for a neck injury, but just hanging on the door.
Speaker 2:I actually trust my, my, my door frame bar. I've had it for like 15 years and it's like one of the really cheap. It's under $20 like on amazon, that kind. Yeah, and if you watch my more recent videos I'm like constantly hanging upside down on it. But I would never recommend somebody do that. It just really comes down to like everything that you um do is going to have some risk associated with it.
Speaker 2:But yeah, and then also pull-ups are another example of like people thinking that the traditional version of the exercise is square one. Like like they know they can't do a pull up but they still see that as sort of a basic beginner exercise. So they're like, oh shit, I just got to play a little bit of catch up and then that's where I'll start and it's like, really you should set that as more of a like moderate or long-term goal and then try to build up to it and just like it's like if you were gonna try to learn handstand push-ups, for example, you probably wouldn't start with a lower intensity version of a handstand push-up like a band assisted version of it. That would be silly to to to incorporate so much equipment when you can just do a regular pike push-up or just a regular push-up, like a lot of people don't realize that you can just you can literally just grab a doorframe and then just just do rows on the door and then progress that up.
Speaker 3:There you go. Yeah, I like that, literally, I like that a lot. Yeah, something sturdy.
Speaker 2:A wall or something like that, that's not going to crumble under your weight.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I will say like those. Uh, if you do have a gym like planet, fitness is playing to, fitness is always have these. You know the assistant machine underrated. I think that's such a fucking phenomenal machine and I think people get kind of like ego and like I got to put it, the lowest setting possible or what you know, or the highest, whatever the most gives you the most or the least resistance. But I think even for someone who can do pull-ups, that's a great machine. It kind of keeps you steady and you're not swinging.
Speaker 3:You know, we all see, you know, and because you want to do more pull-ups so you end up fucking kipping yeah, more like basically try and get more pull-ups and then you're throwing your body around and like I, so like if you have an assistive pull machine at your gym.
Speaker 2:That thing I I've I'm actually like a big proponent of uh, of like rpe5, strength work and stuff that's like much lower intensity, like doing like zone two cardio.
Speaker 2:But for strength work is is really, really useful for, for, for prepping your uh, your cns, and also just like normalizing the activity.
Speaker 2:If all of my pull-up work is under high intensity load, then whenever I go to do some extended, moderate intensity pulling it's not going to feel as comfortable, so it's like good to mix in, even if you can do a full body weight pull up uh, to be able to blend in the lower intensity options.
Speaker 2:And the example I always give is like it's like riding a bike, like if you're riding a bike, you're not like well, I've been riding bike for three months now, so now I only use six gear, like no, like no, you always use all of the gears at all times. It just really depends on where you're riding. And that's kind of how I structure my training too. Like I wake up in the morning and I do like rpe one, two and three stuff all throughout the morning and then I'll kind of fluctuate back and forth between the, the options or the versions of the movements that I do, depending on how my body is feeling just like how I would adjust the gears on a bike depending on if I'm like hitting a hill or if I'm just feeling tired or something yeah, let me just translate for people who are like what the fuck?
Speaker 3:uh, rpe, correct me wrong rating of received exertion. So you know you have one to ten or ten being like, oh shit, I feel like I'm gonna die. Or you have kind of the opposite, which is RIR reps in reserve, which is how many reps you'd have left basically in the tank. So if you did, if it was a 9, that means you could have done one more if you really tried. Both of these just are kind of ways for people to sort of quantify how difficult it was yeah, it's like what we have to do that.
Speaker 3:So like an rpe, yeah, like an rpe five is something that's like not super difficult, like it wasn't you can have a conversation but it was yeah, yeah, so you're, you're working, so you are exercising yourself, and I think people have the idea that you have to have an rpe of 10 or an rir of zero where, like, you have to just go all out, which you really don't again, especially if you're new to like exercising. Just pushing yourself a little bit will get you there and, like you said, prepping your CNS, your central nervous system, basically just getting your brain ready for what's going on, just because when you start working out, like you just don't really know much and like you, know, it's.
Speaker 2:you're figuring it all out, so this is just kind of letting your body know hey, this is kind of what's going on and we're gonna get yeah, and I also think it's like uh, well, I was gonna say I think it's like important to be constantly cutting down on periods of inactivity, like for lower body stuff. We have like that walking as this thing to break up these periods of inactivity. So it's like maybe I'm only going to squat heavy once or twice a week, or maybe I'll squat heavy four times a week, right, but then that still leaves like three days where I'm not squatting heavy. What's happening with my lower body in those days? Well, if it was just like any other muscle group, it'd just be completely static. Well, then I would need like this extended warm-up and cool down and it would just be like going from from uh, no activity to maximal activity. Instead we have this, this thing, we have walking and locomotion that constantly keeps our, our cns primed, keeps those muscles warmed up, keeps blood flow going to those areas, synovial fluid going to those joints, and that way, whenever we're going to do our heavy squats or any of our lower body work, we've already sort of primed ourselves. But we don't have those those walking type activities with pulling, we don't have those walking type activities with pushing, bearing weight on our hands, bearing weight on our upper body at all.
Speaker 2:And so a lot of times people are going from like four or five days or more of not performing that activity to doing the most intense version of that activity that they're capable of doing, and they're wondering why they're feeling sore or achy for four or five days afterwards.
Speaker 2:And they actually need those four or five days. It's because you're coming off a period of a long period of inactivity, considering like that you're not doing that intensity that you're working at and you don't even have a lighter version of it to kind of keep your body prepped, and and so it's just kind of common sense that you would not have the best results from that. And the example I always like to use is like, imagine if you didn't have walking right. Imagine if, like, all right, I'm going to improve my squats, but I'm going to treat it the same way I treat everything else, so I'm not going to walk, unless I'm only going to walk to the squat rack and then back to my bed, like, how do you think that those squat sets are going to feel? Or maybe, maybe not even squatting, maybe it's a different lower body activity, like sprinting right. You lay in bed like like Charlie's grandparents from from Willy Wonka up until it's time to sprint.
Speaker 3:And then all in the same bed too, like they couldn't get a nut, like all you really just all I that's got to stink so bad in there. Anyway, I think it was for company, right, they wanted the company boy, how do you get it on in like a space like that? You just like we got to keep it real quiet I don't know.
Speaker 2:It really depends on on how close you are to those people, um, but yeah, so anyway, it's like yeah, imagine, imagine you lay in bed for for five days straight. Imagine that the feeling of atrophy. Have you ever just been sick for a few days? And your body's like tingling because you just you just need to get up and move around. Or you've been sitting in a car for like five hours straight.
Speaker 2:You need to get up and stretch your legs right, like your body wants those, that that exposure, it wants that, uh, that like dos, dosage of light intensity activity or exposure to that activity or lighter version of it, blended in with the high intensity work, and it helps to kind of regulate how your body handles that. And then also it gives you a good idea of going up into that activity, if it's a good idea in the first place. Like, imagine you didn't walk and you go straight to the squat rack, like you're not really going into it with a lot of information about how your lower body is, your lower body's condition. At that point You're basically just guessing, and that's what a lot of people do with handstands, which is the reason I developed my walking on my hands every day. Concept is that people will train it as hard as they can. They'll train handstands until their hands and hands and wrists are sore, and then they'll wait until that goes away and then train it again, like four or five days later.
Speaker 3:Um, and it's like you're just begging for an injury and I think it's really interesting because it's an interesting concept, because you do need rest time. Obviously, if you're trying to build muscle right, like you need to, you know you need to progressively overload, you need to stress the muscle, whatever, and you need to give it time to heal. But also I do like what you're saying. It's like you don't want to just leave it completely inactive, like when somebody gets an injury right A lot of times like oh, just rest it, don't move it, and it's like that's not really a great idea. You don't want to just have it not move at all.
Speaker 3:You just don't want to stress it out to where you're adding more damage.
Speaker 2:You want to keep it moving.
Speaker 3:You want to keep blood flow to the area.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean atrophy starts pretty quickly and honestly, like I mean just think about it like walking.
Speaker 2:Like it's like if I did a heavy squat day, I'm not going to rest by just not allowing myself to be on my feet for four or five days in a row, like that's.
Speaker 2:That's not how you rest. Rest is something that it's really just about, like I said, using the gears of the bike to scale back the intensity and find the appropriate usage for that function in the meantime. And then, like I said, it keeps your body prepped, but it, more importantly, it gives you an up-to-date evaluation of how your body will respond to some version of that activity. So if it's like you know just going back to the lower body example you go for a walk and your knee is kind of bothering, you, well, probably shouldn't load 300 pounds on top of that bar and then do some squats on that knee. That's giving you that information ahead of time, some foreshadowing, so you don't make that mistake. That's giving you that information ahead of time, some foreshadowing, so you don't make that mistake. When you take out those lower intensity versions of those movements, you're going into the higher intensity versions of it blind, because you don't have an up-to-date evaluation.
Speaker 3:Your evaluation is based off of what you did several days ago, which is not accurate, right. So I'm kind of curious, then, like you know, how else can you like kind of keep your upper body like oh, you know what I would go with shake weight? That just leaves a lot of jokes in there. You know, like you imagine you're sitting around your house like you're a friend over and you're like hold on, you just bust out a shake weight and you're just you know I was gonna, I was doing my shake weight over here, if that's what you guys were wondering, what this was yeah, that's, I know I assumed that, but like I was leaving that for the watchers on youtube to be like what the fuck's going on over there?
Speaker 3:you know that's just ripe for comedy, and then you get some laughter in there and, as we say, that's always important. So, guys, uh, shake weight is now endorsed by in moderation, because funny that's because funny because it's funny. I mean, yeah, I don't really.
Speaker 2:I mean, I don't think that there would be anything negative associated with doing a shake weight or something like that, but I don't, I don't really. I can't immediately attach that to any functions that I am currently trying to improve. I mean, what is it?
Speaker 3:It's just like I mean, you know. So how can we keep our like upper body then kind of more, you know, active throughout the day?
Speaker 2:oh, yeah, yeah, oh. And I was gonna say, and then also the other thing about adding in that variety is that you're gonna run into areas that you didn't even realize aren't quite up to the same level as the like ranges or the areas that you're using in those traditional lifts. Like, if I do a bench press, it's not going to necessarily work all the same things that I'm going to do during bear crawl because I'm moving along a lot of different planes. So if I try to translate my bench press to jujitsu, well, that's going to work as I move along that very specific plane, that as soon as I start to operate outside of that, then I'm back to being as weak as I was, you know, before.
Speaker 2:I started progressing that push exercise in the first place. So you've got to kind of. It also gives you an opportunity to explore, like kind of your weakest areas, but with those low intensity options it's not so scary that you just straight up avoid them. You're like, okay, well, that was hard, but now I have a way to kind of pick at it and in doing so I start to kind of shave away at those weaknesses that I wasn't even aware of before. And that translates tremendously to being able to actually use those abilities in a different setting.
Speaker 3:And I think all this stuff is kind of like you know it's well and good, you know you got like, oh, we can try this, and that I think we can't just leave out. It's fun, like I think that's the thing. Like, honestly, with a lot of people I always just get the like how do I like find the motivation to exercise? I guess, right, like that's. I think this is the biggest problem for most people, right, they just don't find the motivation, they don't find it fun, they find it boring. All that good stuff and they're just like, you know, I'm just not going to do it and I, you know, finding something that's just you know, more fun for you. I think, like trying to do the handstands or whatever, like just, you know, it's just, it's, it's interesting, it's different, it's just something else, instead of going to the gym and go, I pick things up and put them down. You know what I'm saying, keep it fun, yeah, yeah, all right, thank you.
Speaker 2:Oh shit, it's been 40 minutes yeah is it?
Speaker 3:has it been that long?
Speaker 2:but I mean, I, I joke around that the stuff that I, my methodology is, is common sense. Like it's a common sense approach, like if you want to get better at something, do that thing and find an accessible way to do it. Like you say it out loud oh duh, but I, but I was training just like you described a second ago. Like that's how I was training.
Speaker 2:Whenever I first got started, I would go to the gym, I pick something up a number of of times, I look at my muscles in the mirror and I go home and, um and honestly, like if that is fun for you, just like you were saying, liam, like that is, that is a great way to train. Like you don't have to change anything about that. You don't need to start to like seek out functional or or like, uh, less traditional forms of training for it to be fun or effective, if you like going to the gym and lifting weights. But it's like just figuring out a way to gamify it. I think progressive overload in itself sort of like already adds gaming mechanics to any style of training. Because there's this, yeah, there's this level system kind of built into it.
Speaker 2:But other than that, like I mean, you're you're sort of like constantly managing and competing with with yourself. So if it's like going to the gym and lifting weights like then you have this previous safe state and you're working on trying to make progress in the game, that that could be just as fun as anything else. I actually really enjoy lifting weights. It's just that I've just found something that I genuinely enjoy more. That's just actually more related to the things that I need my physicality for.
Speaker 3:But so let me ask you then, just for someone who's like, okay, I'm interested, but I have no fucking clue where to start, what would you tell people? You know, just kind of like day one, what would you so?
Speaker 2:generally like I try not to tell people what to do until I get to know them, just because that's that. I think that that is something that all coaches should kind of adopt is listen before you start talking. So many coaches are just ready to be like here's your prescription, I know best, and it's like you don't. You don't know best. Yeah, exactly, and I honestly like, even through like, the height of my virality on social media is like I never released a program that I didn't sort of like sherpa people through personally, because I don't want to hand somebody something that they are going to be able to misuse. So I think that programs are something that I think should be handled with a professional or with somebody that is knowledgeable. I mean, you can do it yourself, you can program for yourself and you can manage programs on your own. But I think it's something that it requires a lot of nuance, and the way I like to describe it is, I think, of programs as like a roadmap, so it's like here's a list of directions. So it's like somebody's like oh well, how do I get to the mall? I can't just hand you a list of directions of how to get to the mall from A to B, because who knows where you're starting from. A is here, right. So I think that if I handed you a program that's supposed to get you from like zero to handstand, right, well, I don't really know what your zero is and it may not be appropriate. Maybe you're somewhere else along that line. So I think it's better for people to give people some even though it can be a little bit less tidy are some paradigms and some different principles that they can work with that aren't super prescriptive, that give them the ability to kind of play around. So I usually give people some very, very simple exposure objectives in the beginning, like, okay, again, there has to be some element of knowing what they want to do. I can't just give somebody a program based on zero information, but let's say they wanted to be able to like.
Speaker 2:A lot of people are like I want to do the things that I see in your videos. Okay, that's the starting point. I know you want to be able to walk on your hands. You first should ask yourself how much do I spend on my, how much time do I spend on my hands already, right Before I even start adding anything in, ask yourself that question and figure out how much you spend, how much time you spend on your hands you may be spending more or less than you think and then from there, take that amount of exposure and decide what is my goal exposure.
Speaker 2:So if I'm spending, let's say, zero minutes on my hands a day, then I would probably start off by saying I want you to try to spend one minute bearing weight on your hands every single day.
Speaker 2:And then, instead of giving you the prescription of how to do that, I would give you an array of options that then you can choose from, just like the gears on the bike, but they would all probably be really low intensity options and allow you to do that for a week or so, and then in doing so, you build up a lot more confidence and autonomy.
Speaker 2:Wielding that, those, those programming elements, and then eventually it becomes a program. Then if I were to say here is your list of activities that you have to do. I want you to do, you know, a minute plank every day. I want you to do this many squats, blah, blah, blah If I'm doing that, then I'm already taking from you some of the critical thinking that is actually required for long term success with training. So I don't really like to give people programs, even simple ones, until I've talked to them, and then even then, I usually like to start people off with parameters and objectives instead of a program. So it's like I'm going to try to do this thing within these boundaries, to the best of your ability, and in doing so you're going to develop a better understanding of the thing that you're actually trying to improve at.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because that really, of course we always talk about constantly. You know everyone's different, everyone starts at a different place. But you know, one thing I will just say for people is, you know, if it's challenging for you, that's usually a pretty good start. If you're like, hey, this is, you know, if it's challenging for you, that's usually a pretty good start. If you're like, hey, this is, you know, somewhat difficult, I can do it, but you know it's not easy, that's a great because for a lot of people.
Speaker 2:They just don't even go a step further and say it should be easy. I think that, because I mean, lots of things are hard, I would say that there are more things that you can't do. Them that you can do there's a lot right, and I am I'm speaking for myself because even at this point in my training there, there's the the like on the spectrum of things I can and can't do. Like, the stuff that I can't do is, you know, far beyond what I can, um, but I always tell people like, start with what and and spend most of your time in things that are comfortable and easy and then only occasionally push into that challenge level, because what you want to do is try to normalize the activity that you're trying to get better at. I know this actually rubs people the wrong way a lot of the time whenever I'm first introducing this concept, because we have this notion where things have to be challenging to see progress. But in reality that's not how it works.
Speaker 2:Like you, you developed and you taught yourself how to walk and it wasn't like this, this. Every day I'm going, I'm trying to do one more step than yesterday. No, you, just over time, over a long period of time, you develop the ability to walk and you never thought about it. It wasn't hard, it was comfortable and easy, and you did what you can. And look to where you are now. Now you don't even think about it and you are great at walking. I don't even never seen you walk before in my life, but I'm just going to go ahead and assume for this purpose that you are pretty good at it. You built that ability without putting in a bunch of effort. You don't need to do that. You don't like, like I said, like adding in all of these lower intensity, low rpe options. It gradually drags the whole system forward, and so now I do things like handstand push-ups, jumping into my like into a handstand uh, pistol squats, one-arm chin-ups, all of that stuff, and I train at low intensities every single day, without long extended periods of rest, because these are just normalized activities for me.
Speaker 2:So it's not about like going out and seeking what's challenging. I like to seek what's challenging, to then put a pin in it and put a marker on it, and then I scale back a whole lot and I gradually climb up to that challenge level instead of every day just like taking a stab at it, because that's how you end up getting injured, that's how you end up getting um, like derailed for any number of reasons, like you get burned out, you get distracted, you you know whatever. So instead it's like every day, without, without fail and without question. I will be doing this thing, and if I do it every single day and this is actually my training principle if I can find a way to practice something every single day without making things worse, I will improve and and that's it's. It's just the universal truth. If you do something all the time and you and you're not getting worse at it, you'll get better.
Speaker 2:So you don't need to necessarily seek out the challenge level. You just seek out the function itself and you find accessible ways to do it. And it's like you taught yourself to walk, you taught yourself to talk, you taught yourself how to do all to drink from a can. Nobody showed you that. You didn't train for that. It used to be too heavy for you. It used to be. The coordination used to be too challenging. But look, you're doing it now and look, you're doing it great, you're doing a great job. You haven't spilled a drop? Yeah, you haven't. I think you never you haven't hit failure at all on any of those can lifts um yeah, I think it's an interesting concept and I I I do like it.
Speaker 3:What I will say is I think, like you said, though, you do have to occasionally challenge yourself a little bit, because you can stay in the same place forever. You could just be like I'm just doing the same thing, and if you never uh, you know push yourself even a little, you most likely just stay where you are, like let's take the walking, for example my daughter's starting to walk. She falls down all the time, like it it is. I would say it looks challenging to her to walk around, but she is figuring it out. She is getting better at it by doing it over and over, but I wouldn't say it's easy for her. It's just slowly getting more. It's slowly getting more easy as she continues to do it.
Speaker 3:But I like what you're saying in that you do the same thing every day and it doesn't have to be this super challenging thing. I think we've kind of lost the idea of, like you know, so many people think you have to challenge yourself to the point where yeah, like I was saying earlier, where you like you have to have an RPE of 10 or an RIR of zero. You have to push yourself all out, which is absolutely not true. But I think you know doing a little bit, like we say each day, adds up over time. I just think you do have to at some point say okay, I'm going to try this thing and, like we say, progressive overload has to be there, sure.
Speaker 2:Exactly, yeah, and I think that's how you keep the challenge leveled down, like, for your example, with your kid, like her walking, although in your mind you're like as a, as a masterful adult walker who is, you know, really got a lot of experience on her.
Speaker 2:You're looking at her and you're like man, she's really struggling, but in her eyes she's just doing the thing that she does every day. She's never experienced walking better than she's walked before. So to her she's not like she's not putting everything in the tank into this walking session, no, she's just doing her normal thing. So for me it's like people see me doing yeah, so, um, so people see me doing the stuff that I'm doing and they think like, oh well, yeah, the gap between our abilities would require a significant amount of effort for you to close that gap quickly, right, but if you can just, like you were saying, rob, by adding one step, so instead of jumping from 5,000 to 10,000, you can just stroll from where you are to where I am, you might not like the timeline too much, it might be a lot longer.
Speaker 3:I think that right, progressive overloading, you have to push yourself a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the challenge level is where a lot of people get screwed up and they think that it has to be perceived as challenging, and it really doesn't. It just needs to be a little bit more advanced. And I don't want to say challenging, because that is a subjective term. I like to use other terms that are right. It just has to be progressive. Yeah, it's just a little bit more than what you were doing. It can literally feel the same. Like I said, I train every single day, so my training kind of I mean it fluctuates in difficulty depending on what I want to work on. I never train so hard that I can't train the next day, so I'm always but I'm sure, like you walking on your hands, you have fallen over.
Speaker 3:I just don't consider falling over to be that hard, like it's just.
Speaker 2:It's just, that's a performance thing. Like it, I, if I fall over it didn't take more or less effort to do it, it's just that. That was just the result of it. As my balance improves, then I can just do it for longer, but it doesn't become any harder or easier. That's just the results of what I can do and again, that's what I'm talking about. That can progress and that, and that way it becomes more challenging. So, like I, I see somebody that's doing, trying to do a handstand pushup when they can't even do a regular push.
Speaker 2:I'm like, oh, that person's really challenging themselves, but really what they're doing is they're just trying to perform something that they can't do. So, yeah, and, and that's that's why I I think that it's that's why it's better to, instead of giving somebody a prescribed movement or a prescription in any way, give them the options for them to be able to fluctuate through, so that way they can then settle hi, baby, settle into the option that feels right for them that day and actually doesn't exceed that challenge level. And, like I said, over time, people don't realize this, but you will gradually work your way up from where you are to where you want to be, it just doesn't happen in a straight line. I think that when you, when you try to straighten that line out through effort, that is where you'll see like, okay, if I, I gotta go in and really put my all into this, so that way next time I'm I'm not here, I'm here.
Speaker 2:But really it kind of happens in a spiral when you're training, very like, look at all pro athletes and they, most of them, train on a daily basis and it's this fluctuation of high, slightly higher intensity work to slightly lower intensity work and it's just I'm constantly spiraling my way up. So that way, even the lower intensity work on this day is still higher than the higher intensity work on this day, but it never, it never needs to go to an RPE 10. I don't, I truly. And that that is where, again, I think that this, this, this, that that particular paradigm kind of rubs people the wrong way, because we have this sense of you get results from hard work, but I just don't see hard work as squeezing effort of trying to do the exercise. I see hard work as managing a complex system over a long period of time and it takes a lot of nuance.
Speaker 3:I was just talking about it earlier. You know everyone's different and what I find interesting about it is because I, I, there's nothing in this world for me like there is going to the gym and pushing a hard set as just to failure as far as I can go, and there's just this moment afterwards where I'm just like I'm a little dizzy you know I lack of oxygen to the brain, where I'm just like I'm a little dizzy, you know I lack of oxygen to the brain, where I'm just kind of looking around like, oh shit, like I love that feeling, you know it's just pushing myself as hard as I as I can. And that's what, honestly, like brings me back. If you told me I go to the gym, you all right, liam, go to the gym and do an RPE five, where you just kind of like you, you do the weight, you set it down, you're like, oh okay, like that's, that wasn't that hard. I would not want to go to the gym, yeah like that I love.
Speaker 3:I love to just like all out and I'm just fucking exhausted. There's no way I could have ever done another rep if you had said here's a million dollars new other to another rep, I wouldn't be able to. I love that, but a lot of people they hate that more than anything. That's what they hate about the gym.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so it's just everyone's different it for sure, and I think that, honestly, what you're describing that really push yourself to the limits I think that that is its own sort of style of training that should be reserved for when you have become extremely informed about the activity that you're doing. So not not just on a technical, not just from a technical standpoint of how to perform the activity, also from understanding how your body is going to respond to that activity. Like, say, you were like we've all probably I'm just going to speak for you guys but uh, we've probably all taken time away from training at points in our life and then come back to training and it's like, okay, well, I remember I used to push myself really hard, so these first few weeks are going to suck, but I'm just used to push myself really hard, so these first few weeks are gonna suck, but I'm just gonna push myself really hard, and then your joints hurt really bad or you get injured in some way. Your body literally cannot, like it can't process that much stress because you're just not as up to date with that activity. So I think that, honestly, like being able to push yourself the way that you're describing successfully and not injure yourself or not cause some sort of major setback. It requires that sort of slow buildup, that spiral of I'm. I'm not only building up my technical understanding of this activity but I'm also building up my understanding of how my body is going to respond to it, and that in itself is up to date and and in doing so I have built a trust, um in myself and in myself performing this activity, that this is now an acceptable or something that I can accept, the thing to do, that that that's successful and doesn't cause those those major setbacks. But I think that using a lot of people see that and think that is an appropriate sole method of training and I just truly disagree with it.
Speaker 2:I don't think that throwing yourself up against a wall by itself is a very wise training practice, because I think that you really do need those steps up to it to prevent major setbacks like injury. You can get away with it. To prevent major setbacks like injury, like you can. You can get away with it. You can just be on a cycle of injuries and and get a little bit hurt and then heal from it, and a lot of athletes go their whole career and they do that, that that exact thing, but you are going to pay the price for it in some way or another and it's going to, overall, it's going to impact your results and so like.
Speaker 2:So I think that, although that is perfectly fine and I and I do push myself, like I push myself in the way that you describe occasionally, but I don't see that as my uh, my sole form of training. In fact, I don't even see that as a like a very big component of my training. It's really that is what I'm training for. That's what I'm trying to be able to do, like what you're describing of being able to push yourself in the gym to where you know you've got no reps left. That's what I want to be able to do on the mats and jiu-jitsu. I want to be able to push myself to those limits without getting hurt.
Speaker 2:Um, but I don't. I don't train my body to do that by doing it. I don't train my body to do that by going in and training as hard as possible in the gym to get better at training as hard as possible. All of my other training is those softer versions of it is making sure that my body can respond to an easier version. First, that the responses that I make in response to that information and that stimulus are the appropriate ones, and so that I'm not going to just incur some immediate injury from making a bonehead move or something you know. There's all sorts of information that you are gathering about the activity and about how your body responds to it, leading up to that performance. So I think that what you're describing is almost like the sport aspect of lifting and the fact that I am preparing myself for this single performance.
Speaker 3:That will come with some risk, um, but when you're in sports like you, just kind of okay that risk, but I wouldn't consider that to be um, a sustainable training practice is is just pushing, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly I would say for for people listening, like you really have to think about you know, I'm trying to think how to describe this like try, you know, you know one of these angles, if you will try, you know, some form of exercise and then really take stock in how you feel at the end of the day and what you enjoyed and what you didn't enjoy, like, oh, I hated that part of it. I enjoyed that part of it because when I started working out, like I worked out like I think I was just like, okay, I'm going to start working out and I worked out every day, sometimes like twice a day which smart decision? Probably not, but that's what I did. And I found the pushing myself to failure is what, like, I enjoyed the most. So that's what I kept, having me coming back and kept doing it over time and I saw results from that.
Speaker 3:You can see results from a lot of things. I'm not saying you have to do what I did, but find and so for. But for some people that's what they dislike the most. You know're like, actually what I enjoyed was just, you know, being able to be at home and listen to, you know, my favorite music, and I was, I don't know dancing or I was. You know I use this or that or whatever it was and like I enjoyed that aspect of it and you, you have to just kind of dial in and find what you, if, if not enjoyed, hated the least.
Speaker 3:Let me put it. Maybe I just put it that way.
Speaker 2:I definitely think that that is an effective approach is to kind of like again, path of least resistance. What do I hate the least but I think that they're out there for everyone is some sport aspect of movement that they can apply and it can just be lifting, like you said, like, or you know, it doesn't have to be lifting, it could be P90X or whatever. But, like you know, I want to show up and I want to perform well doing this thing. I want, I want to feel good about myself and my performance afterwards. You don't.
Speaker 2:You're not just feeling good because you pushed yourself and just because, um, because of the endorphins and stuff that from moving your body, you're also feeling good because you feel good about what you just did. There is a psychological component to it, Right, so, yeah, exactly. And so, like the people who don't like that, they're not getting that same reward from from from doing it that you are. But there is something out there that will, and that is actually what I'm constantly looking for with my own clients, and that's the reason I don't like to prescribe things early on is because I don't want to stifle that uh for them. I want them to find the thing, because it can be anything.
Speaker 3:It's really like it I'd like to think there is something.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I really do want to like to think it's true and and like I mean I've worked with you know, hundreds of people and and everybody has something that they will change it from exercise to play and and for, and that's what happens in the gym, even when you're lifting. It's like now I'm playing because again I'm seeing that game mechanic, I'm I'm seeing, I'm seeing between, between the lines and I'm seeing this. It's almost like operating with like uh, ar, uh, you know what I mean like it's like there's like this filter over what I'm doing. That's now it's fun, like now it is. It's it's different activity and and it's invisible to everybody else that can't see it, because we all have things that we see other people do and we're just like what the fuck? Like that does not look fun at all, but but but they see it and and everybody has something like that. And when you can plug into that thing, then you don't need to worry about motivation, you don't need to worry about, like reminding yourself to train, you don't really all of those things become just irrelevant because the play aspect of it like turn a kid loose on a playground and they're not going to be like well, how many times should I run up the slide? Or how many, how many reps of climbing this ladder, yeah, yeah, that's sorry they don't have to ask because they just know it's six. But yeah, they just go out and they do it intuitively until they've had enough and then they're thinking about doing it again afterwards and they can't wait to do it. And you know, it can be lifting weights, it can be walking on your hands, but it literally can be anything.
Speaker 2:And that's why on my channel I show so many different like different hobbies that I do because I'm trying to show people that it's not so many people are like will you just program me walking on my hand so I can be you? And it's like you're not going to be me because there's so much complexity that's gone into my progress and training over the years. But also look at all these other cool options. They're all. They all work the same. It can be skateboarding, like I added in skateboarding because I needed a lower body fun option to train. I I most of my lower body training from free exposure to pistol squats. So every time I stand up or sit down, I do a pistol squat. Um, but I needed something that was going to give me a little bit more exposure throughout the day and I wasn't doing enough standing and sitting. So I was like I need something that's going to give me like 30 minutes at a time. So I picked skateboarding.
Speaker 2:But it also could have been, you know, it could have been anything. It could have been dancing, it could have been a different martial art wrestling you know any martial art. You're gonna have to stand with your knees bent and in doing so I'm building that function. That then translates to all the other areas that that function is required. So by working on my skateboarding, I go out and I train for an hour. I'm not thinking about this as a lower body strength activity. This is just skateboarding and in. So then, whenever I go to stand in my wrestling stance for the hour long open mat. Now it's easy for me because I'm just regularly spending an hour with my knees bent doing skateboarding. Because you have to do. It is for them. I want them to find it, but I want them to have a sort of like a little bit of guidance in figuring it out and then, once they figure it out, how to turn that play activity into sort of a structured practice I think that's the oh 100.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, my stuff started as wanting to build up my hand balancing and my conditioning for that, but then then I've really just come to really enjoy quadrupedal movement and walk. I think that's my kid, but yeah, just.
Speaker 3:Mine's finally sleeping for once in a while. But you know, that is the goal for everyone, right Is to find something that they enjoy. And I love what you said there. Like, every time I stand up, I'll do a pistol squat or something like that. I love that for enjoy. And I love what you said there Like, every time I stand up, I'll do a pistol squad or something like that. I listen, I love that for you. I hate that for me. I hate that idea of just like every once in a while, throughout the day, I do this. No, no, no, no For me. For me, I need to get fucking dialed in. I go to the gym and I these, these weights and I just I enjoy that thoroughly. And you know, I'll still try and stay active throughout the other day doing things, but I'm not like, oh, I'm just gonna do one of this or one of that, I that I don't like that idea. And so you have to just kind of find, like this, that, that avenue that works for you and it becomes not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you definitely have to find what's for you, but I will say that I am getting more exposure outside of the gym doing the same function than you are getting inside the gym. Just statistically, I spend 23, 24 times more time outside of the gym than you do in the gym on any given day. So it's just that. It's. It's just not even a fair comparison. So that's what I noticed is that and that's the reason that I stopped training my pistol squats in the gym and I started training them with standing and sitting up, standing and sitting from the floor is that I'm getting significantly more reps doing it that way.
Speaker 3:I get way, way, way more exposure because but I think you would agree with me though that if you're in order to say progressive overload, right, like, so, like if I'm doing, but if I'm doing like a set of squats to to failure, I need to do that less frequently than someone who's just doing them like one here, one, yeah, exactly yeah, I I really never, ever take I can't even remember the last time I took a set of pistol squats to failure.
Speaker 2:Because the thing is I don't want that function to fail.
Speaker 2:I want to be able to stand up on one leg and count on it to always work, because I need to be able to trust my abilities. So, like things like hanging, posting weight on my hands, my be able to my ability to squat. I don't even want to know what the limits of that are, because I want to know that I can push it to wherever I need it to go and that there is a huge cushion of ability that is keeping me from hitting failure, so that way I never have to interface with it, because if I'm doing wrestling or jujitsu or skateboarding and I fail that rep, well, now there's going to be a much bigger consequence than the rep being over. Now there's going to be somebody on top of me or I'm going to be on the ground bleeding. Yeah, there's going to be something like that, and so I really don't even want to take it to failure in that sense, because I don't want to fail that function. I want it to be so normalized. And it becomes much more apparent with things like hanging, because if I were to fail, I will fall and bust my head open. So whenever you see me doing things like hanging upside down for things like skin the cat or being like hanging upside down on my um, my pull up, my little door frame pull-up bar.
Speaker 2:If I, if I took that to failure, if that was a regular thing, then I mean I wouldn't be able to do the things that I'm able to do on it.
Speaker 2:I'm only able to because I trust that that failure is so far beyond what I'm actually trying to do that I never actually have to interface with it and and I can just trust my abilities and in doing so you actually get a lot more of a deeper understanding of how those abilities work, because you're operating within the boundaries of how they work much more frequently. So something like a pull-up or a pistol squat to me is just walking now and in fact even doing a handstand, is just standing up. For me now it's not something that I think of as like something that I take to failure, because do you take standing to failure like it's just something that I do and I I never push it to its limits because exactly, yeah, right. So I mean I come out of handstand, but I also sit down off of my feet occasionally as well no, I mean, I'm listen, I, I just think it's just different.
Speaker 3:Basically, methodologies where, like, I'm not going to fail on just doing one pull-up at any point because I, yeah, just you know, I, I, yeah, I'll do a set of pull-ups to absolute failure, but it wouldn't be just like throughout the day if I did a pull-up, I would just fail on it. Like I think it's just oh yeah for sure, for me it's just that.
Speaker 2:I don't want to spend too much time failing, like I don't want a lot more from winning than losing, and I think that the the old adage that you know you win or you lose, uh, or sorry, you, you, you win or you learn is is really just kind of like um, like a way to sort of um make ourselves feel better, because I think winning, if you think about it like this, like this, take any subject and, before you know anything, just saying that's not the right direction, but you're not shedding any light on much light on what the actual correct direction to walk through that room is. When you have success, it immediately spotlights oh, this is a path through this room. So I try to succeed all the time. So that way, I'm constantly finding paths through this activity, whether it's walking on my hands, jujitsu, skateboarding or whatever, these are all viable, successful paths.
Speaker 2:Whenever I fail something, I'm hitting a brick wall. I'm just basically all I learned from that is don't go that direction. It doesn't provide any additional information on where I should be going other than not there, and so I try to constantly be succeeding when I'm working, because well, and also I'm I'm I'm really focusing on skill-based movements too. So, although there's a lot of skill in weightlifting, like it's, it's not I wouldn't say as complex as an activity as something like break dancing or skateboarding or jujitsu or something like that. But when you get into in calisthenics included like I think that when you are constantly failing you're you're really seeing what doesn't work, but when you're constantly succeeding, you're lighting up that room much faster because you're seeing all of the viable paths that you can then practice that.
Speaker 3:And when you have those, then you can practice more often I see For me I prefer that I love to fail Because for me that's how I learned. I love to fail. I love because for me that's how I learned. Like that's. I love to fail because that shows me it doesn't, it doesn't work. I love because, like you said no, you're correct in that like what lifting weights is very basic and so you, if it starts here, it goes here, that's it right, like it's not complex at all, but like going to failure. That shows me where failure is.
Speaker 3:If I just go into the gym, right, okay, let's, I go to the gym, I do one bench press, one done, that's it. I never. I don't know where failure is. I don't know how much I can do. Could I do 12 reps? Could I do 20? I don't know. The only way for me to know is to push myself at least close to that limit, if not all the way to that, to that limit. And so, like don't who doesn't love to succeed? But, but I think you know you can, you obviously learn for both of them, but I would, I enjoy. Like you know, like was Edison, I learned a thousand ways to not make a light bulb. So then eventually you learn one way to make it. I mean, he stole all his inventions and fuck that guy.
Speaker 2:He was an asshole, but the point is, you know, I was going to say it's stealing is, honestly, that is the that's. That's just choosing the success approach. You're taking somebody else's success and they're like OK, well, there's where the light is in the room, right.
Speaker 3:Right, that's it. That's a success right there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'm a I'm a big, I'm a big proponent of stealing because, honestly, I mean that's that is the benefit of being a human being, is that?
Speaker 2:right yeah, no single human is all that smart, but like we are so intelligent because we pass down, you know, we have generational we have generational knowledge, yeah and so it's like as I'm, as I'm working, like I can, I can do trial and error and and take all of those failures and use those, like in Minesweeper, as the Xs to not click on the adjacent squares right, but wouldn't it be nicer if I could just see what's underneath all of those squares, like if I already knew? Then I don't even have to run into all of those walls, I just navigate through it, like with jujitsu, like jujitsu-.
Speaker 3:But you are in that sense learning from other people's failures.
Speaker 2:I just don't want to have to be, the one to do that because, like you'll only be, you'll only have one lifetime to make enough failures to make progress. But yeah, right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, a hundred percent.
Speaker 2:And with and with my training practices, I'm actually kind of like pioneering a lot of the stuff that I'm doing and so I don't have time to make a thousand failures to carve out this path. I actually just need to find all of the avenues that are accessible, because I don't have time to I don't have a whole lifetime to figure this out and viable paths are now so I can pass on and shed that light for someone else so they can build on it themselves. As a coach, it's not my job to just be good at stuff. It's also my job to be able to show people how they can get there as well. So I don't want to just bump into the wall and be like, don't go that direction. Instead, I want to be like hey, you could go here, you could go here.
Speaker 3:These are all not show options, but these are viable paths to success. Right, Exactly yeah we were saying that all along. It's just like they're just different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I honestly I think that, like all training methods are valid. It's just that you're going to have varying degrees of effectiveness, um and, and I think that there's just so many factors that go into any training method that there's not going to be one specific thing. That's just better or worse. It's all a nebulous of trying to find a system that works for you because it's, you know, it's not. You're not just working to failure and I'm not just not working to failure. There's a whole lot more that goes into both of those training methods than than just that. That's very reductionist. In fact, I would say that there's probably more similarities to our training styles than differences, just because we're both human beings who are training with human bodies.
Speaker 3:I think we can both agree that it's just like it's just doing the thing that you have found. And for so many people, what ha? What happens? You know, they start training, it works. Like, whatever the fuck they're doing, it works. And then they get bored of it. They get tired of it, they don't like it anymore. Something happens, bored of it, they get tired of it, they don't like it anymore. Something happens, they stop doing it. That's the problem, right there. It's just finding, like you said with the uh. You know you people ask you for like a plan, and that I get that with diet, where people are like just give me, just give me the things to eat. No, no, just tell me what exactly to eat and what amounts.
Speaker 2:And I'm like that, like that's not how right because you could give them something that might be like I would won't say objectively good, because, again, like, there's not everything is allergic to strawberries and you give them like 20 strawberries a day and then they're, like you know, like there's more that goes into it than that. Like, also, are those things palatable enough for them to eat every day and not go into a deep depression from eating disgusting food to them every single day, because that's going to have a big impact on it too? So, yeah, it's. I think that that that social and psychological element to your training, all of those things are just important, just as important as the actual movements methodology itself.
Speaker 2:Even if not more important, and that's why, whenever I'm working with people, like I actually have to go through this whole like rebirth period with them where I'm introducing my concept because, just like how, right now you're kind of like, like not struggling to understand the concept, but struggling maybe to to see it in the exact same way that I see it, but from the same level of of just getting it like I like and loving it like my training style, because you're just not as intimately, um, uh, familiar with it. But yeah, like I, I, I have to go through this whole sort of rebirth period whenever I'm working with clients to introduce that. This is even an acceptable avenue, because it's not about me trying to implement or not trying to like superimpose my training style onto them. It's just to show them that this is a viable option.
Speaker 2:If you don't want to go through this injury cycle all the time, you can just, instead of jumping up the stairs, you can just walk up the ramp really super slowly, and occasionally you're gonna have to walk back down the ramp and there's going to be a lot that goes into it, right, but it's this different approach and it is so different that a lot of times people really does it kind of like it. It feels it feels wrong, like they're like. Oh, I'm not so. So that's the reason I'm such a proponent of it isn't necessarily because I think it's the only viable method, it's just that, the one that I have to argue the most for, because yeah yeah, yeah, there's, it's infinite.
Speaker 2:Like I mean, I don't even think that you have to work out at all.
Speaker 2:I think that once you establish a practice and you and you define what that practice is like me walking on my hands then you don't need to actually set aside any time to do it.
Speaker 2:Like I was saying, this concept that I call free xp, free exposure it's, it's truly the greatest pull of exposure to any physical function that you can possibly get, because, again, you're just spending most of your time not in the gym, not working out. So, like, say something like I want to, like, go back to my, my pistol squat example. That can be applied to anything. It doesn't have to be something as advanced as a pistol squat Like if, like you wanted to say, I don't want to go to the the gym, but I also don't want to do p90x in my living room and I also don't want to do yoga and I don't want to do any of that shit right, but I do want to be able to, you know, bend down and pick up my kids, or I want to be able to garden for an extended period of time and that's what most people want.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's like take a snapshot of what that function is that you want to do. I want to be able to, to be able to, to be able to kneel in my garden for a half hour without my knees feeling like they're going to explode, and then you can dose a version of that into your daily life without having to actually set aside time to train that thing in a session, because, honestly, like sitting in a kneeling position to practice that and actually setting aside time to it for it, that sounds horrible, that sounds so boring and dumb and I like I just like nobody would ever find the time to do it. But you can sit there and watch TV in a modified version of your gardening position and if you do that over a long enough period of time, the gap between how you feel and how you want to feel will slowly start to close. And you didn't have stuff to set aside any time to do it. You didn't actually have to think about it as training. You didn't have to think about it as a game. You just altered activities that you're already doing, and that's the reason I call it free exposure or free XP is because there's no time cost for it. You're taking an activity that you're already doing and you're modifying it to contribute to your practice, whatever that thing that is that you've defined, whether it be squatting or posting on your hands, I mean, it can literally be anything. It can be a skill-based thing, it can be, you know, whatever. But finding a way to take the activities that you're already doing and then and swap them out for a version of that thing you don't actually need to train at all because you're practicing that thing Um, it's kind of more like, uh, you're reorganizing your life as opposed to adding anything additional into it.
Speaker 2:Um, and it doesn't, and it doesn't have to be something like the pistol squat example where you know you're like I don't want to have to dose that out throughout the day. It can be something much more passive than that. Even for something like pistol squats, you can just take, like, what are the components of a pistol squat? I need to have hip, knee and ankle compression. I need to be able to hold myself in that position on one foot. So if I can just sit in any version of that like this I know you guys can't see me too well because I'm wearing black pants, but right now I'm now working on my pistol squad, right, and in fact I can prove it because this foot is not touching anything, right.
Speaker 2:And so something passive like this, like sitting here having a conversation, it doesn't have to be like, oh, I'm attaching it to a movement and now I'm just just guising exercise as as a mundane movement. I'm actually this is just how I would be sitting. I'm just making a slight modification to contribute to the components of the function, like a pistol squat that I want to, and then over time that will straight up just unlock that skill I didn't have to set aside. Oh, yeah, I forgot, we might just have that's a perfect example. And then and then him telling you to do it again, that sort of guising exercise as a mundane activity.
Speaker 2:But if you can find a semi-comfortable way to do that and you don't, you're not no longer even thinking about the butterfly stretch. At that point it's no longer taking up any space in your schedule or in your mind and you are making improvements on that skill. So in that way it's like the. And then at the beginning it's like oh, I'm only improving one thing. But if you layer those practices over time and like right now I have many different practices, I'm constantly improving at things when I'm not even aware of it, like I'm not even thinking about it, because all of my activities have been reorganized to contribute to slowly gravitate towards those various physical practices and I actually don't ever really set aside time to train outside of maybe like 20 or 30 minutes of just whatever I feel like a day.
Speaker 2:I really I don't set aside training for my handstand practices, I don't set aside training for my pistol squats for one arm, chin ups and I think even hearing that kind of rubs people the wrong way sometimes because they worked so hard and they work so hard to maintain that skill and like, like you, you don't have to do that. You don't have to do that. It's is a. There is a way to do it without, without putting all of that effort behind it, not only to gain it but then to maintain that skill Because you know it's strength and flexibility.
Speaker 2:Aren't these permanent attributes that you get? Once you unlock them? They go away just as quickly as you get them. Them, they go away just as quickly as you get them. So if you're not swapping out some of your activities for a version of that, then the time that you spent getting it well, you'll just have to continue perpetuating that time as long as you want to continue having that skill, and I don't actually want to have a reliance on working out anyways. I don't want to have to be like, well, if I don't make this time, I lose my abilities. That's scary. I would rather the maintenance of the abilities just be built into how I live my life.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that just goes to show everybody has you know the method that they like, and after this I'm probably right now going to grab some food and go to the gym. So let the method that they like and after this I'm probably right now going to grab some food and go to the gym so, uh, let us know again where people can find you so they can learn all all of uh some.
Speaker 2:So, uh, xp movement on Tik TOK, annual Nathaniel on Instagram. Xp movement on YouTube Um, and then I also have a guide coming out for walking on your hands, and it's pretty much the same methodology that I have disclosed with you guys today. It's basically the paradigms, parameters and principles that I've kind of laid out for you guys. That, um, I go into my method and then also a uh, an entire chapter on loading options for your hands, ranging from it's a level-based system, ranging from level zero to level 10, all the way from putting your hands on the wall up to jumping into handstand push-ups.
Speaker 2:So, um, the pre-sale for that is actually going to be starting tomorrow, and you can find that on the bio of any of my social medias awesome yeah, yeah, it's, and it kind of gamifies the whole process too, because you can just kind of plug in wherever you're at and there will always be an accessible option there for you I'm just waiting for more technology.
Speaker 3:So you know, you got the vrs now.
Speaker 2:That's great, but one day it'll just be like glasses and then fucking I mean, at a certain point you're just gonna plug nodes into your muscles and then they'll just kind kind of grow and learn the skills automatically, like in the Matrix.
Speaker 3:When do they start implanting things? Are you guys going to hop right on board or are you going to wait a while to make sure they work? I'm kind of right on board immediately, like, oh, you want to inject something so I can play a game. Fuck, yeah, let's go. I'm thinking about metal legs is fucking dope. That's pretty cool. I want, I want, you know, I'll take whatever. Like you know, whatever the the gaming stuff is, yeah, that's, let's go. That sounds fun. I don't have to remember my card because you forget your wallet. You have to pay out and pay. Like, let me just like, fucking, let me just pay with that shit. I got the chip right here. I'm good, let's go. I'm all about technology. I fucking love technology. A lot of people are scared now. Now, now, let's go bring it. Let's go exactly is that better is two elbows.
Speaker 2:Is two elbows better than one more? I think you're just. I think actually that's. That's one of my, uh, one of my go-to catchphrases whenever I'm talking about getting exposure. I'm always telling people more is more, so that's another, that that's another adage that I don't agree with is less is more, because it's not true.
Speaker 3:Win all the time. More is more and always win. And always win.
Speaker 2:You're a pro. You're a pro, hey, and you worked really hard for that skill. I love that, hey.
Speaker 3:you're awesome, hey, and I'm glad that it was eye-opening for you, because usually when I'm talking it's eye-closing for people so as they fall asleep no, I think a lot of people already kind of have confirmation bias where they believe, like for me, you know, like I believe that, oh, just lifting weights to failure is the only way and that's it. It's like. No, I think there's lots of methods.
Speaker 2:Oh, no, I was just saying I bore people to sleep. When I go on a tirade, yeah no, I'm glowing now. That's going to be with me for weeks. I'm going to actually think that I have some sort of value now.
Speaker 3:That's funny. That's funny. Don't be your worst. Don't be your worst.
