Pavel Tsatsouline on the Science of Strength and the Art of Physical Performance | Tim Ferriss Show

I want to eat pulp if you don't mind just tell me about it we had for breakfast this morning as a soundcheck soundcheck breakfast coffee this altitude I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking when I also personal question now it is soon I must - Eric organism living tissue over metal endoskeleton so thank you for supporting the sponsors this show 99designs which is your one-stop shop for all things graphic design related go to 99designs comm forward slash tim to see the projects that I've put up including the mock-ups and drafts of the book cover for the 4-hour body as always you can subscribe to this podcast on iTunes and you can find all of the links and resources from this episode as well as every other episode by going to four hour work week comm forward slash podcast spell it all out or you can go to four hour work week calm and just click on podcast feedback if you have feedback I would love your thoughts anything at all who you'd like to see on this show ping me on twitter at ste Ferris that's Twitter comm /tf ER Riss or on facebook at facebook.com forward slash Tim Ferriss with two R's and two S's hello ladies and gentlemen this is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show where of course I try to deconstruct world-class performers whether they be billionaire investors chess prodigies athletes and everything in between to pull apart tease out the tactics and tools and resources that you can use and this episode was a real treat I had so much fun with this it was easily one of the most enlightening and lucid conversations about physical training I've ever had and we covered everything meaning strength flexibility endurance and beyond and my guest is none other than Pavel Tatsu Lyn and yes that is how you say it he is chairman of strong first Inc and was born in minks not in Pink's Minsk I always have so much trouble saying that not that I say it that much USSR former USSR which is now part of Belarus in 1980s he was a physical training instructor for spent in US that's also another one I want to miss pronounce always it's not Spetsnaz spent NAS the elite Soviet Special Forces units Pawel is now subject matter expert to the US Marine Corps u.s. Secret Service and the u.s. Navy SEALs and he is also perhaps you know this or not he is widely credited with introducing the kettle bell to the United States the ubiquitous kettle bell which is called kettle ball by almost everyone maybe that should be changed make things easier in any case over the last several years Pawel has become a friend of mine I'm honored to call him a friend and his input was critical to the success and many of the experiments of the 4-hour body whether you have heard of him or not stick with this interview prepared to have your mind blown and I really don't say that lightly you're going to enjoy this and you will have a lot to take notes on and there will of course be tons in the show notes at 4-hour workweek comm forward slash podcast but without further ado here we go please meet Pavel tattooin Pavel welcome to the show Begich it I'm so thrilled to have you and I thought we would start with the the answer to a question that I ask all of my guests which is how do you pronounce your name properly above all said Sulu SOT suelen and that's right and you'd mentioned before we came on what you tell people at Starbucks if you order coffee and what is that it just has to be Pablo coffee for Pablo there's no other way and I really admired your work and expertise and also just your method of teaching quite frankly for so many years and I was having trouble piecing together how we first came in contact of course I was well aware of your work prior to us having us having any direct contact but how do you recall how we how we came to know each other yes I did Tim as you I'm a big fan of simplicity in my life and different aspects of my life and 4-hour workweek really resonated with me and at that point I remember writing an article and I entitled that article Ferris Bueller's Day at the gym yes and I said you that article is submitted for blah that's right that's right okay and that that really set a cascade of events in motion and I became very very fascinated I mean of course like a lot of people I think I was initially exposed to you as the strength trainer who used the word comrade a lot and really hadn't hadn't delved into a lot of the details of your strength training specifically which will of course get into and I guess there are two questions I'd love to ask but the first is what do people consider you the people who know you well what do they consider you world class at Tim I have been able to take very complex subjects take them apart and put them back together in a matter that's very simple that can be delivered to regular people without losing the essence of what these of the systems so I'm talking about specifically serious strength training I'm talking about both programming and I'm talking about what I would refer to as the body language of strength and can you explain for people who are perhaps not not inductees into the world of strength training yet what do you mean by programming programming planning your training you go from A to B you want to add 50 pounds to deadlift this is what you do and unfortunately the world of programming is very confused well the whole world of fitness is very confused and again what I attempt to do is to bring principle-based training so when you understand the principles applications or many applications are easy right and I think that's where I feel such a such a degree of kinship with what you try to do with these subjects because of course whether I succeed or fail and sometimes I do both that's very much what I try to do with the subjects that I tend to obsess on and for those who are familiar with your background you've worked with many different types of athletes and also Special Forces and so on would you mind just giving a little bit of background on your your bonafide so to speak some of your your your background as it relates to to training certain I used to be a PT training instructor physical training instructor for Spetsnaz the Soviet Special Forces and my education is in sport science and I did over the years trained a number of high-end units in the West I've been a subject matter to us Marine Corps to the US Secret Service to US Navy SEALs and others and my methods are used officially by some very high-end military and counter-terrorist units in two countries that are main allies of the United States what I do pardon me I'm sorry no it's just mymy brain errupted with something nonsensical please continue so so what I do is I take methods that perform very well in very rugged environments and I take this methods and I apply it to other environments so if somebody decides I just want to change my life I want to get stronger I want to have a better game of tennis I want to succeed in a given sport I take these same methods that have been tested by operators at war and I bring these people the same methods in debt just to to to drill into that because I've seen the many I'm sure at this point thousands of photographs that are sent to you by deployed troops overseas or people in Special Forces of their kettlebells or or they're they're they're they're rigged the rigged gyms with you know a sort of makeshift pull-up bars and whatnot what what is it that you have to keep in mind when you're designing or why have why of your methods had such appeal for elite military what what are the things that you've considered perhaps that other people have not for those types of trainees Walton Plutarch who said thousands of years ago that they trained of a soldier and the training of an athlete is radically different that an athlete has the luxury of pampered lifestyle and the soldier doesn't so this is pretty much the difference so what you want to do is you want to build the training that becomes in the words of one of my favorite authors Nassim Taleb anti fragile is the type of training training that thrives on very harsh environment that's really robust in these different environments and that's pretty much the difference how do we do that we have to strip all the non-essentials down pretty much what you do in your work with different business with lifestyle and so on and once we get down to the things that really matter and we apply them then everything suddenly becomes very simple have you spent any time with nothing no I have not oh I am I'm looking forward to oh I should I should introduce you guys at some point he's he's exactly what you see is what you get if you've read his books and I think you guys would really hit it off the the you know the what you just said brought to mind a a conversation that I had with a friend of mine who was formerly Navy SEAL and now he's doing things that he can't tell me about not that he could tell me much about what he did before but he and actually not to be named but and now that now that I think of it you introduced us I was going Victoire Victor yes Victor amazing guy and Victor is is the most efficient trash compactor I've ever seen in my life he he can eat anything and make fuel out of it and he was he was criticizing in a very good-natured way some of his colleagues because he said well you know you know some of the guys that diet that I work with out in the field you know some of them are the bodybuilder types and they get really grumpy if they can't have their protein shake every two or three hours he's said I view it as a real competitive and practical advantage that I can I can consume anything and then go for a 30 40 50 mile run well in Victor 40 strength also that gentleman is exceptional both in his strength in his indoor but for his strengths he relies on the nervous system not so much in the muscle tip and again that's what so this is what's so different you can if you look at a typical person and how do we get it stronger let's say that you have a four-cylinder engine and what the person would do is they would make that you know six-cylinder engine but before you're firing in to now you're firing in three but if instead what you do is you learn to fire in all four so there are ways of training a nervous system to engage your capacity so much more fully and if you look at high level performers at night body weight in some fields let's say a very high level martial artist somebody very skinny breaking a stack of boards or very skinny guy like Lamar can't deadlifting five times his body weight so this is so much about the concentration of mental force and for your listeners I could give a very simple example how you can use you can do that on your gym let's say that you perform try to the simplest exercise possible try to the dumbbell curl or barbell curl because I know you're sissies out there you'll do that and so let's say that you're going through your curls and things are suddenly started to get tougher so when they suddenly start to get tougher I want you to just crush the dumbbell or the barbell or the kettlebell whatever it is that you're curling just white knuckle white knuckle pressure and what you will see is you're going to definitely going to be able to get several more repetitions out I'm going to give you two more techniques in addition once you have practiced that then on the next set in addition to crushing the bar and the way up also contract your glutes as tight as possible like somebody's going to kick you in the butt very very tense you're just like crunchy will not and at the same time tighten your abs as if somebody's going to kick you which you know somebody might so if you do that if you do these three things if you contract your glutes contract your abs contract your grip everything that should do absolutely everything is going to be greatly amplified and this is just a small example of the skills of strength that I do teach and and we're gonna we're gonna dig really deeply into this because I I have personally reached a point where I want to return to the training of a an athlete who's trying to optimize relative strength as opposed to just packing on slabs and pounds of muscle which quite frankly just my frame and my joints and my entire system is is finding aggravating to sustain just the the full time eating and other vult die immediate and that's what gets me oh god it's the worst ah especially as someone who has depending on how you look at it like the most acute form of conditioned like body dysmorphia or orthorexia possible through buta decade of wrestling it's my eating habits are really astonishing sort of like a German Shepherd is like broken into the pantry and eating sticks of butter on more than more than a few occasions but the the question I wanted to ask you uh next is what are the biggest misconceptions that people have about Pavel tot suelen and I am training myself to say taht suelen because I've heard everyone say Tatsu lean so I'm trying to correct that but what are the biggest misconceptions that people have about you well Tim they call me the kettlebell guy I think only the father of the kettlebell which I appreciate very much I did introduce together my business partner I did introduce the kettlebell to the West and right now the kettlebell has become a mainstream but what I'm really all about it's above the principles the underlining principles of strength training the underlying principles of power generation and it doesn't really matter what modality you use whether you use a kettlebell the barbell your body weight whether your arm rest and fighting lifting rocks it really doesn't matter so I am NOT about the kettlebell I am about the principles that make it strong what I have done is I have reverse engineered the way the strongest people move naturally and I have brought it to the people I've shown to people how to move in this manner and how to shave off years and if not decades after trying to progress to much higher level you've worked with some incredible strength athletes would you mind mentioning some of them and some of them we've caught co-authored books with but who were some of the strength athletes that you've collab or strength trainers that you've collaborated with Andy Bolton Andy Bolton he is the first person to deadlift or thousand pounds he is a he's an amazing athlete he's a very very smart trainer so Andy bolt and I we have written a book together called the deadly dynamite and the reason Andy and I have written this project together is again and he's very smart trainer and his particular style of deadlift looks exactly like the kettlebell swing that I teach so it's again that fit of the body language I have written a book called easy strength with Dan John Dan John is a strange coach extraordinaire you would really love interview and Dan on the show because he's a beast Dan is and who's so again he just gets past the fluff he gets to the things that matter and Dan does not try to impress you then tries to get the results so then and I carburation collaboration with Dan over the years we have taught each other a lot and our views and strengths are very similar even though they are colored in some way so that's why we have written this book called the easy strength and so easy strength was about making yourself strong for your sport not making lifting your priority that's what easy strength is about and out just since you brought it up what are some of the things that you've you've what would be an example or examples of things you've learned from dan dan has a terrific concept of the quadrants the four quadrants on one grid you're going to see the level of development the level on the other one you're going to see the level of specialization it's really quite hard to explain that over over audio but if you look out type in Dan John and one said it's a terrific concept so what that allows you to do is it allows you to place yourself today in the particular quadrant according to your status according to your goals and select the correct type of training for yourself that alone is going to save years of preparation for you so that's just one of the many things then and I have exchanged these little tactical tidbits and details over the years and I highly recommend Dan Jones work to anybody anybody was an athlete or anybody who thinks of himself or herself as an athlete and I'd love to you I want to personally give a few examples of just how quickly or how significantly you can shave off what people assume is required to make massive gains you introduced me to Barry Ross in Los Angeles and the that became the effortless superhuman chapter in the 4-hour body and I was able to put I'd have to say it it must have been between 100 and 150 pounds on my deadlift in less than three months I mean it was it was just it was crazy and particularly when you consider the inputs or the total amount of time under tension and an actual lifting frequency and time it was did it really I've seen just given that we are cut from the same cloth and that we try to distill very complex things and and use 80/20 analysis and so on I've seen a lot of disproportionate outputs for inputs but it really just it really blew me away and the the testing of assumptions where in that particular case it's a deadlift based protocol that's using what many people would consider the weakest range of motion so from the floor up to the knees effectively really impressed me and then to highlight your a couple of the points you made earlier the the crushing with the grip and the the ABS and the glutes I recall when I did our kc1 and our Casey - for those people not familiar the Russian kettlebell certification one and two which was a tremendous a tremendously positive experience for me and we did - and encountering max-planck if I'm getting that that is his last name right uh Mike am I getting that right is that max big max he was a believable Eve that that's the fellow that his name is it's coming to mind but there were there were few people yourself included who I did not pass all of the tests for arm Casey to the first time around and one of them if I'm remembering correctly was cleaning and pressing a kettlebell that's roughly half your body weight and I I was I guess I ultimately made the three attempts and I failed on the first two attempts and with a few minor Corrections just as moving my weight slightly back towards the heels cleaning with my elbow closer to basically dropping my elbow a little bit lower and then really focusing on the grip I was able to press it and the third attempt was felt easy and it was just astonishing also some of the demonstrations that you've done in front of trainees where you've taken people out of the crowd and said alright who's somebody who would consider there and I'm paraphrasing here but your your maximum press X number of kilos and then you'd bring them up and in front of everyone in them in the within five minutes or so you'd increase their press by whatever might be five five kilos or ten kilos you once mentioned to me in a casual conversation I was I called you for some type of training advice or it might have been via email and correct me from wrong we said when in doubt train your grip in your core is that good could you elaborate on that because I think it's that's very it's not advice that many people have received well Tim there is such a thing is called the irradiation so the phenomenon of irradiation what it really means is if you contract a muscle the tension from that muscle is going to spill over to the neighborhood muscles so for your listeners I'd like to try this make a fist probably going to feel tense in your forearm now make a tight fist you're going to feel tension on your biceps triceps now make a white-knuckle fist you're going to find that tension is going to spread into your shoulder you latch it back and so on okay folks you may relax now and the same thing happens so certain areas of the body have this great great overflow of tension so the gripping muscles are amongst them why in part because they have such a great representation in your nervous system in your brain and as for the abs and as for the glutes that has a lot to do with creating your internal pressure so what is this mean exactly visualize your muscles as speakers and visualize your brain as the gadget that plays in music whatever it is these days iPad iPhone whatever and the record player doesn't matter and the amount of your pressure the pressure in your abdomen they drop down on the pressure that's the amplifier that's a volume control so by increasing the pressure in your abdomen it's like you're training up the volume and vice versa so when you're trying to stretch when increasing your flexibility if you see somebody they're trying to do is split and you see it's the person is creating high intra-abdominal pressure and that just increases the tension of the muscle instead what you need to do you need to now completely release and let go and bring it down so for strength we'll do the opposite we have special techniques where you increase that pressure and maximize your power so that's those are just a couple of the different ways we can increase his strength and that's what you've seen in my certification fYI I am no longer with that organization so right my company today is called strong first and SMD certification that's that same curriculum that you have that you have learned by that and the just to to touch on two points then we're going to jump into more training and ask about how you would rank certain aspects of what people would traditionally consider perhaps fitness the what would be a good what would you what would you recommend as good methods for developing the grip and core or abdomen for for those people listening if they wanted to take a simple protocol and perhaps experiment for the next few weeks what is is there any basic approach that you might suggest for those two things certain it can be done in conjunction with a full-body training regimen that uses let's say kettlebells climbing ropes and so on but if it is not then what I'd recommend that you do is you get some grippers so the company is called iron mind iron mind calm and they carry hen grippers one thing you need to understand is these are not those little plastic grippers you get at a you get at a store these are heavy-duty grippers they go up to 365 pounds there's a couple people in the world have done that and they also do have they also do have resources on how to do that but even without reading how I can tell you how to train so get yourself a couple of Gerber's use their chart the recommendations that are in mind offers and start training them in the manner that I referred to as grease the group grease the group is a highly simplified training methodology that's been derived from Soviet weightlifting methodology so in a nutshell this is what you do throughout the day every day whenever you feel fully recovered so you have to have at least 15 minutes of rest between sets you know maybe 30 maybe even more is you're going to do a set and you're only going to do about half the repetitions that you're capable of so for example you picked up a particular gripper you start squeezing and you probably could do it ten times but you only do five when you put it down let's say you later on pick up a gripper that's a little heavier maybe you could do three reps with it but you don't want and in this particular manner you accumulate reps and you keep going and going and going and everybody tells you that's impossible to get strong in this particular manner yet science and experience shows that this makes you strong this makes you strong fast this makes you strong in a safe manner and this makes you can apply this particular methodology again I called Teresa group to any strength exercise or any strength endurance exercise just to give you an example of its effectiveness my father-in-law former Marine at the age of 64 started following this routine he was able to do about 10 pull-ups at that point in several months he was up to 20 what he tested and he could not do that many as a young jarhead so you young bucks out there you can definitely get this done so this is how you guys are going to train your grip with these grippers carry through with you throughout the day you're not going to get sweaty just whenever you feel like it just take it out and squeeze as for training your abdomen there are many different methods of training the abdomen but you have to abide by the following rules you have to keep the repetitions to 5 and under no more than five reps anything more than 5 reps is bodybuilding and you need to make a focus and tension might make a focus on contraction as opposed to on reps and fatigue just to give you an example of the plank know the plank is a kind of a fashionable exercise in the core training circles and by the way we don't use the word core that's drawn first why don't we use the word cord because well because people use the word cord they do things we don't like we don't like it though so we just say we just say midsection and so the plank so traditionally they would put you in the plank and you're supposed to stay in this plan for a couple minutes and what's happening is you see this poor person who cannot have been assume the proper posture to start with and then s fatigue sets in other muscles wrong muscles start kicking and the back starts arching the bus start shooting up and what you're doing is what great coupe calls putting Fitness that type of dysfunction and what we do instead is if we do a plank we call the hardstyle plank we would do a plank for no longer than 10 seconds and when you do the plank you try to contract everything absolutely everything when I showed that everything I'm doing this shins your forearms your neck everything everything but your neck and face everything below your neck you're going to contract it's not for folks with high blood pressure heart condition and that's true for pretty much any type of training but for everybody else is an extremely powerful tool so you get down in a plank you make fists okay you can touch your abs you can check your glutes you can trench your entire body you pretend that somebody's walking in a walk by and kick you in the ribs which again somebody might be pleased with my course and Andy Bolton and other top power lifters still I've taught this technique they swear by this because this is the abdominal training for strength this is not just some nonsense that you do cranking out the reps so to sum up your abdominal trick find whatever abdominal exercises that you like it can be the plank it can be some kind of a setup it can be something from your book the 4-hour body it can be something from my book the hearts the labs it can be something else that's not important as long as it's a good actually size that's been recognized that it does work and three times a week do 3 to 5 sets of 3 to 5 reps ok folks just remember this 3 to 5 sets of 3 to 5 reps focus and contraction don't focus on fatigue don't focus on the wraps and I promise if you do these two things for several months you work your grip in this matter you work your abs in this matter everything that you do today is going to be stronger I don't care what it is it's a bigger deadlift it's a tennis serve it makes no difference you're going to be stronger and in the case of the the ab let's just the the the midsection and we're working with the plank if people decided they were going to keep it simple just so they can remember it and do three sets of three reps three times a week let's just say Monday well the plank loads through just three sets of ten seconds got excessive 10 SEC at 10 seconds three times a week yes and try to contract everything below your neck got it and I just is a as further exhibit Exhibit A I've always had and I'd be curious to dissect this just for a second but I've always had difficulty with I have a relatively strong poll from say the floor lay in large part thanks to wrestling and other types of strength training but also the barry ross protocol when it comes to pulling myself up to a bar though i can i can use weight for low repetitions but i've never been able to do higher repetitions very well and I did this greasing the groove walking around San Francisco for a few weeks where any time I passed construction scaffolding I would jump up and there enough crazy people in San Francisco fortunately or unfortunately that it didn't really raise any eyebrows or like I was just some crazy guy doing pull-ups with a backpack whatever and I would do two or three pull-ups and then I just continued on my way and it was it was astonishing I didn't really test my max repetitions but how how much my velocity I guess my the equivalent of bar speed increased over that period of time it really became much much more explosive it was it was just astonishing and but for people who have perhaps trouble with higher repetition pull-ups how would you troubleshoot that ultimate guess first of all depends on high repetitions mean if is if your goal is 20 or 25 strict pull-ups yeah let's let's lose then yes that's one thing because if you go beyond that and in Russian Lee in Russia they even have specialized competitions where they do strip clubs for some crazy insane wraps then training becomes so weird and so state-of-the-art then you better not even bother right but most people don't need to do that so if you want to be able to do 20 or 25 pull-ups you can achieve that level purely by training a strength which means that you never even have to do more than five reps and training and just whenever you go out and test then you're going to get those reps here's something yours and note about strength endurance the more resistance that you're overcoming in your endurance effort the more strength helps so what does that mean it means that if you're strong that is let's say you have a good debt that's going to help you carry beer kegs to the second floor but on the other hand it's not necessarily going to help you hammering a nail all day that makes any sense Rico's hammers light beer kegs are heavy so when you're doing a 25 repetition effort the weight is significant it's the significant percentage of your 1 rep max so that can be bumped up purely just by by getting stronger so that would be my recommendation for people who have a hard time doing pull-ups to start with I would recommend start by learning to get tight through their abs that's very important there's an article a couple years ago saying that women cannot do co-op switches of course absolute nonsense in strong first organization we have some ladies who can do you know we have a lady in Boston Amanda Perry who can do strict dead hang 14 pull-ups neck to the bar so the way we do pull-ups is no tipping no swinging pausing between the bottom and you have to touch your neck to the bar so she can do 14 for example she's my all molested at the edge it much better men than most men and just wait just for those people who have not tried this up having gone through some of this training with pop if you have just done if the difference between doing a strict pull-up or what you envision to be a strict pull-up where you kind of throw your chin up above the bar height versus pulling in to touch your neck slowly to the bar it is so different as to it's not a difference in degree it's sort of a difference in species but anyway yes I challenge I challenge everyone to try it it's really challenging well doing for people who offer people who have a hard time just to get started in pull-ups and again that's true for some ladies many ladies that's true for a number of gentleman as well a lot of the problem is they're unable to contract the abdominals strongly enough they aren't able to even assume the strong posture remember I told you earlier that I reverse engineer with a strong naturally so if you watchin gymnasts perform any kind of maneuvers and their rings let's say you will see something called the hollow position so what's the hollow position the hollow position is the body is like your tail is tucked in and your body kind of forms a it's like a dish your body looks like a dish pretty much so if you want to learn to do clubs first you need to master the hollow position it's very easy for you to type in it type it into your search engine the hollow position find a picture see what it looks like and just practice this hollow position this hollow Rock listen dexterous is called the hollow Rock I explained it in my book hardstyle abs but I'm sure you can find it anywhere else and so you practice this hollow Rock and this hollow Rock is going to not only strengthen your abs but it's also going to teach you how to acquire that position and then after that you can start working with assisted reps and that's a very big difference we're not talking about negatives we're not talking about four straps we're talking about assistance reps a sista traps so what's the difference the difference is an assisted rep feels like a moderately challenging rep that you do on your own so your training partner or your trainer is going to push you in your mid-back and enable you to do that with some degree of difficulty but definitely not make a struggle and when they've done the study on young gymnasts years ago in the Soviet Union and they use this type of methodology they called it artificial controlling environment where the partner allows you to do a perfect repetition but in a way that doesn't really kill you it doesn't make you struggle they found that the speed with which they progress was absolutely remarkable so practicing your hollow Rock don't forget you're at grip and then start three times a week with the help of your training partner do let's say three to five sets of three to five reps of assistant assisted pull-ups and I just want to reiterate again the low reps are key guys if you want to be strong you need to keep your reps at five and under and at five reps rounder is what you're really working on sort of the it's and I'll get out of my depth and into yours pretty quickly but the sort of neural pathways and the recruit the recruitment of motor neurons and sort of firing capabilities and so on pretty much you're going to have you're going to have a high level of neural adaptations and you're also going to build some muscle as well so you're going to build the high threshold motor units as well but not it's not a bodybuilding protocol you will build some muscle but it's not really the end then goal itself so you were trying to also you trying to avoid the fatigue you're trying to avoid the burn because when I restart experiencing the burn that's from something called hydrogen ions that leads to a whole lot of problems for you so one of the problems is it interferes with the command that your brain can sense to the muscle to contract and another problem that it creates these hydrogen ions literal or destructive so if you leave them around the muscle for too long they really start destroying your muscle so just keep those reps under and 5 3 to 5 don't worry about getting bulkier and I got a good buck it's not going to happen and approach your training as a practice so this is another very important point tip I think this is a super important point now I'm glad you're bringing this up I hate the word workout the reward workout does not exist in the Russian language we talked about a training session or we talked about a lesson we never talked about a workout just think of what does the word working out what is it what do you envision sweating and grunting and Doug see let's see let's see how much I can punish myself and drain myself so the goal is not to get stronger the goal is just to get get worn out and there are simpler ways of doing that run up the mountain okay so no the idea here is practice strength is a skill and as such it must be practice and if you approach it in this matter not only you're going to get stronger so much faster but you're going to truly enjoy your training process training should be something that should be enjoyed now I this this this ring so true to me and it was really a revelation just coming from the masochistic world of the few sports that I practice and certainly did not get to a world-class level but competed on a national level in a few different sports and the the mind shift from depleting your reservoir or reserves as much as possible to identifying the skills and practicing them even if you feel better at the end of a workout than at the beginning it was really a huge shift for me in a few places certainly in strength training I think that you bury Ross's protocol was eye-opening in so much as just like you mentioned put 100 I think it was around 120 this is all detailed in the 4-hour body so I'm losing the specifics but about about 120 pounds on my max deadlift through the exit through the full range of motion not just the range in which we were practicing in a short period of time and gained fewer than 10 pounds of additional muscle and you probably enjoyed your training loved it it was just amazing I mean felt on fire I mean partially because you're you're you know blowing a fog horn into your nervous systems ear let me to it but the the other area and I think this this is such a fantastic principle that applies to so many different areas was in the world of swimming and some people might recall if they followed my stuff for a while that I was not able to swim a lap in a proper pool until I was in my 30s and what what really shifted the mindset completely was going from swimming workouts and and hiring coaches who viewed it that way to looking at Total Immersion where they really focus on the skill of deconstructing the biomechanics of swimming challenging the assumptions of how swimming is taught and it became this really joyful wonderful experience and I was able to go from basically zero laps to sort of 20 laps per practice in less than ten days so it's it's such an important shift and I'm glad you brought it up which which kind of leads me to the next the next question that and it's about prioritization so when people think of fitness at particularly non athletes I think that there tends to be a very scattershot approach and there's a paradox of choice challenge that they have where they're they're fed a lot of recommendations from many different people and they have strengths let's just talk this strength not necessarily muscle gain but just getting stronger they have hypertrophy so increasing their the muscular size for lack of a better description endurance flexibility how would you rank these in order of priority and why Tim as long as the person has their required mobility and symmetry the priority is always at health the priority is always strength strength has to be first so the first step that you do is you I assess your mobility you find specialist who can do that FMS would be FMS would be a recommendation of mine very coups FMS functional movement screen functional movement screen is going to find out how mobile you are and also how symmetrical you are so as long as that is dialed in that is in place you have to get strong and strength is the mother quality of all physical qualities and that's not a statement by me that's a statement by participative the father of fertilization one of the greatest for scientist ever and greater strength increases your performance in absolutely everything so you can see of course okay of course yet being stronger is going to help you and let's say punching somebody harder lifting something but how is that going to help me if I am let's say a triathlete how's that gonna help me find a marathon runner it is going to help you in several different ways one is the perceived level of exertion is going to go down several years ago Norwegians did a very interesting study where they put elite endurance athletes some were bicyclist some were runners on a pure strength regimen does four sets of four reps of heavy squats it's about as pure strength is against and in the end of this study not surprisingly all these guys were stronger they could jump higher and so on but they were not impressed with that that didn't matter to them what did impress them is it ran faster there are times their race times went down because strength just makes enables everything else if you're trying to let's say lose weight being stronger is going to help you do that because you're going to have you're going to have have a bigger furnace you're going to train yourself much harder and the exercises that are fat loss exercises so it really doesn't matter what it is that you're trying to achieve strength is the number one attribute you need to address and that's why my company is called strong first you know yeah I love I love that the the you one of the things that I love about you probable is that you say what you mean and mean what you say and I I just it there's that there's this there's a degree of clarity that I inv and I might include it for people but the when we did our sound check I asked you to do you know to give me an answer so we could test the audio what you had for breakfast and what was your answer coffee and that was it that was the sound check yeah I love this the the simplicity now speaking of simplicity and also sort of undoing the confusion that a lot of people suffer from what are what are the most counterproductive myths or misconceptions about strength training that come to mind well the number one to my guess is the idea that you have to go to failure mm-hm every time you train right and I can tell you one thing that the Soviet weight lifters I I have done a very thorough analysis of the Soviet weightlifting methodology from through the 60s through the 80s the glory days and I found that they typically did 1/3 to 2/3 of maximal repetitions per set so what does it mean if let's say that you're using a weight that's your 10 rep max 10 is all you could do if you put yourself very hard they would do three to six consistently now you probably ask yourself okay I'm not a weightlifter and what does this so get stuff from the 80s have to do with today well two things first of all even though a person who is not at lifting athlete is not going to train exactly as a weightlifter a power lifter nevertheless the methodology has to be derived from the sports because these are specialist strength sports so if they just have to be adapted to your needs second of all the this particular Soviet methodology is still superior to this day this is very interesting but if you you keep hearing about all this new world records set in the sport of weightlifting well if you compare the world records of today to the world records of the 80s you will see that in most cases the records today are inferior to records in the 80s how can that be they accuse people of doing drugs and they changed weight classes twice since the 80s of course it's so wonderful I'm so happy that today nobody does drugs anymore it's just terrific if you look at if you look at the lifts performed by Soviet lifter ud Klavan young in 1980 at the Moscow Olympics this lifts have never been exceeded these lives have never been approached so this particular methodology does work extremely well it's still the best methodology period later on the Soviet power lifting team adapted this methodology for part of thing with tremendous success the Dinan a and the same particular methodology has been adapted to bodyweight training kettlebell presses and so on and so forth so it's the same thing that can apply for everybody because this is principle based training so the major misconception is that you have to go to failure so that if you just overcome that and if you make it a habit to do 1/3 to 2/3 of the repetitions they're possible and do more sets instead you're gonna make much greater progress you're going to do much safer and folks you can enjoy your training and how do how does the approach shift if your focus is maximal hypertrophy if you're after maxima hypertrophy it's Molly so they've figured out in the Soviet Union that there's a direct correlation between volume and hypertrophy so you just pretty much have to do more sets you're going to have to do more sets in like sixty to seventy percent of your max range and a whole bunch of sets of five and six just many of them and your rest periods might be compressed a little more but that's it if you do that do this a couple times a week many sets of five or six don't want to worry about how many just just keep going don't kill yourself enjoy yourself eat more you're going to get bigger it's unavoidable it's just as simple as that and if I've of course I've I've spoken with with fans and written about the app the applications of to failure training for primarily hypertrophy just because you're doing so much with the sarcoplasm and maximizing the sort of cellular volume that the the challenge is not so much the training with hypertrophy it's the eating it's just I mean you really you feel like the the Japanese hotdog eater called by Oishi after a while it's just waking up in the middle of the night to eat meals and whatnot it's a that that's by far the most punishing aspect of for me at least it is assume it is and any tricks there's nobody knows also nobody knows the other couple tricks but they're no I'll mention them in a second and nobody does know exactly what happens in the cellular level when you try to stimulate muscle hypertrophy now anybody who tells you that they know they you know it's just speculation at best there are a number theory some of the theories are more credible than others but the fact is we still do not know and what makes his Soviet weightlifting methodology of the 80s so spectacular is that was a purely empirical methodology they tried to explain what happens in the cellular level but they didn't try too hard it was pretty much a trial and error they would analyze the training logs of successful literature and successful competitions they analyze this data they made recommendations and it's kind of chicken-and-egg where does it start scientists watching what the best lifters do or the best lifters the best scientists telling the best lifters what to do it was kind of both and they kept narrowing down narrowing down narrowing it down and this is how it works but we still don't know exactly what happens there what is your I wanted I definitely want to touch on the the tricks for not making yourself nauseous all day when you're trying to to pack on pounds of muscle but before that what is your favorite pet theory what even if it's speculative at this point what is your preferred theory for muscular growth okay budget by thousand cuz theory makes most sense to me and according to this theory when the muscle comes the contraction comes to an end or close to an end when you have depleted the creatine phosphate in the muscle that's the primary stimulus for hypertrophy according to him and again what could that possibly well how can that possibly do in if the muscle contraction stops not as a result of mounting acidity and that's very very important but as a result of there is simply not not created phosphate supposedly the cross bridges no longer can really disengage properly so supposing my cross producers have met them the - that's right supposedly this is what terrorism apart suppose so that's what causes the micro trauma that makes it satellite cells do their thing so that's one fairly credible explanation I don't know if this is true or not but training in my experience that Protestants can practice on because approach to training were you gonna hit it pretty hard this set would probably be about twenty thirty seconds in duration if you're trying to target your highest partial motor units and then you're going to have to stop and you have to rest a long time between the between the sets so this it does make a lot of sense there is another theory that works fairly well with it professor Victoza Liana according to him the role of creatine phosphate here is once you deplete your creatine phosphate and you do have a lot of free creatine which is you know pretty much by-product what that does is makes the membrane of the cell permeable to the hormones anabolic hormones very interesting so what's he Leonov says there are four prerequisite to muscle hypertrophy one is obvious is that's the presence of amino acids the second is the presence of anabolic hormones which obviously has to do with the capacity or and the current system but also your training as well training stress does seem to do that and third is the presence of free creatine as again the same thing that free creatine is a lot of recruit and is formed when the muscle is pushed hard but not before it gets a city and finally the fourth one is the presence of hydrogen ions not not for too long so I get hydrogen ions it's again it's a something that you get out of muscle contraction any muscle contraction and the service that they do for muscle hypertrophy according to see Leonov is just like the free creatine they make the membrane more permeable to the hormones so then then what happens is this hormones which are pretty much messengers they go into the cell and as they go into the cell they have get the whole process of transcription translation you know protein synthesis is going the also very interesting element of Juliano's theory and cellulose methodology and again something that sits well with me I'm having observed training effective training is very long rest periods between sets so see leonov recommends 5 to 10 minutes of rest between the sets and that at rest has to be active so you pretty much have to move around so you don't just you don't just sit you just move you wave your arms you kind of shake your muscles shake your legs you walk and that's supposed to get rid of the clear out the hydrogen is as quickly as possible because having them there briefly is good having them there for too long it's not good because it literally destructive it's a charged particle that's what it is and so they're walking or are they on stationary bikes on like an Ariel ions you don't need a stationary bike you just pretty much want to walk there are there's a particular type of relaxation exercises Tim we're going fast and loose exercises to all the Russian athletes do so pretty much what they are is if you may remember my chemical certification I had people standing kind of shake out the arms and legs right so you just pretty much shake your arms and legs and you just walk around that's that's pretty much what you do so that's that is Giuliana's theory which also seems to make sense notice that in both cases where there's fantastical cursory silly Yanis you are going to push yourself much closer to failure to rep next so when you're training just for strength you don't need to do that you just do 1/3 to 2/3 of your maximum reps when you're trying to train for hypertrophy yes you can do just simply more submaximal sets but sometimes you just have to push yourself harder not to failure still but harder and Juliana falso has the most fascinating slow twitch fiber protocol as well I'd like to tell you readers about it because there a lot of misconceptions about training the slow fibers well if you think about slow fiber as well which most people associate with endurance yeah exactly and they do have endurance that's true but they're also people think well they're thin they're weak they're small and why should I do that why would any self-respecting power athletes you know demean himself training slow cars so and juliana has a very different point of view on this first of all if you look at back in the 6th in some studies done at the 60s if you compare the strength of your slow fibers and fast ones they are just as strong for the same cross-section so which means that if you have a bundle of slow fibers that's as thick as your finger and you have a bundle of fast fibers that's as thick as your finger they're equally strong just you know this lower bundle is going to have more Moeller fibers but it doesn't matter number one number two because their velocity of contraction for the fast fibers can be twenty forty percent higher for the slow fibers the presumption is well I need to move fast I can't afford that so but see Liana's work has found out that even in sprint fifty percent of the output is provided by slow fibers and he says even though in vitro that may be true that these fibers are contracting faster but in vivo in real life in sport activities you're not really going to go so fast so that advantage is no longer no longer valid he has put experienced printers on a training protocol that hypertrophied their slow fibers and these sprinters improved their sprint 400 meters on average from ten point nine seconds to ten point seven just formed just from this slow fast slow fibre hypertrophy and there is additional benefits of hyper drift for slow fibers something can discuss a little bit later if we talk about if you choose to talk about endurance is these sole fibers come pre equipped with mitochondria which means they have a lot of endurance so for other types of athletes that can be very beneficial so see Leonov has this fascinating training protocol for training for hypertrophy of slow fibers so here's how these skills he says the biggest problem that you have is typically people just try to go and burn them out well but all that does again that just the gig comes to an end because of the mounting acidity that's not the right stimulus right there you want to make sure that you exhaust at creating phosphate get that free creative long so how do you do that you create occlusion so he would have you do set a clear conclusion that means basically shut that with the contraction prevents the blood flow it's a constant tension what bodybuilders would call concept tension and what you would do is you would do let's say squats you go a little bit below parallel you go a little bit above parallel you're going slow the timeframe is 30 to 60 seconds that the duration and you have to come to failure close to failure now this is again this is what's really fascinating after that and this is what's so different from the traditional slow to his training is you have to take that same 5 to 10-minute active rest because he says if you don't that mounting acidity is going to mess everything out and on one day a week typically you would do four to nine sets in this matter and then three to four days later you do a second day where you do one to three sets so that's a protocol one more time super slow movement no rest thirty to sixty seconds in duration one day a week four to nine sets three to four days later one to three sets five to ten minutes of rest in between active rest by the way active rest can also mean work in different muscle groups that's that's very fine as well and just to tell you how effective this protocol is he put a number of athletes experienced athletes from different sports on who knew how to squat on a back squat protocol using these music things these types of reps and sets and so on and in eight weeks these guys increased more than added more than 25% of their back squat holy crap yeah yeah and you can realize these guys were not these guys were not your typical American College subjects you know the guys with very fast thumbs you know Facebook people know I'm talking I'm talking about athletes and what what percentage of their one rep max were they using for these thirty to sixty Seconds sets because that's it that's a challenging micro range of movement okay it the typical guidelines you have to find it for yourself because that depends on your butt on your fiber composition right typically it's about thirty to sixty percent for your lower body and ten to forty percent for your body so why is the difference and the difference is is determined by the fact that your upper body is more fest which so if you look at an average person an average person is going to have about 70 percent fast which fibers in that per body and the lower body about 50/50 but so you have to use a lighter weight relatively speaking for the upper body to stay in that timeframe I see got it but it's a trial and error to is just try a little no what would people what would you suggest they Google or search for to learn more about this nothing I'm afraid but I think that Shh and that that means don't search for quote nothing I'm afraid that means you can't search for it but I'm going to if you listen very carefully to what I said they should have no problem doing that I can give you a couple of exercises other exercises that you can do so for the lower body you can use the back squat or you can use the front squat and for the upper body you could use something like the Diamond push-ups for the triceps and what you need to do is you need to adjust the difficulty based on adjust the elevation let elevate your hands if you want it easier elevate your feet you want to make it harder but again the idea is to come to failure it's rooted thirty to sixty Seconds and for the push-up you're going to do work in the mid-range so you're never going to come to lockout you never going to come to the bottom you're going to slowly keep working keep working through that mid-range if you want to do this for the upper body it's probably the best idea would be some kind of a rowing machine and again you're going to be working through the mid-range or curls I hate to say it but yes curls silicon of sea Leonov has been extremely successful with athletes from very diverse sports he's worked with national team for judo full-contact karate a bicycle racing soccer and these guys have seen terrific terrific results from this so you guys may want to give it a try that's the the the fascinating the most unexpected aspect of that for me is the the five to 10-minute rest sets that's really fascinating and I should also add love to underscore one thing for people and please correct me Paul if I'm getting this incorrect but a lot of folks think about the burn as being a product of lactate or lactic acid but it's it's actually a byproduct where as a side effect primary effect of the hydrogen ions that you were talking about it is and I think that that has a lot of there are some swelling some nerve endings are yeah yeah it doesn't it really folks it really doesn't matter the only thing that you need to realize is this on this particular training protocol you go for this burn this burn is needed the important things that burn is over after 30 or 60 seconds and then you try to get rid of as fast as possible and for other types of training if you're trying to train for strength you want to trying to avoid the burn altogether the burn is the burn is your enemy it's a two to two questions on the details here the first is if if free creatine I guess that's just free creatine in in serum Bala and I could be wrong on that is one of the stimuli that that produces the the training adaptation can you accelerate that or even catalyze it with supplemental use of creatine monohydrate for instance yeah absolutely okay and then the second question is related to the what some people have called the golden era of steroids which was the 80s right so that I guess what I'm very curious to know is why have the why the Soviets changed their approach or what has caused the what is what has prevented them from attaining or surpassing the records of the 80s and understood obviously that athletes are still using many different types of performance-enhancing drugs but what has changed or and why did the change in Tim I think Dan Gianna has said it really well he'd work so well I got bored with it and I stopped doing it yeah and before shortly before their death not you know in the last decade both Vicey galaxies if it was a great champion and Akagi vibe UF was a great champion and the sport scientists they criticize these practices very very heavily alexei medev a Jif who also has done the same thing they said basically you guys are barking up the wrong tree right here so I just think that people trying to get fancy it's funny that's what's happening in Russia is probably reflecting that whole trend Western trend that's messing Talib to call new amania people loved in you yeah people just absolutely love the new there they're forgetting that what stuff that it worked much better you could consider the results the results were superior back then the same thing you can look at the powerlifting methodology the also going back to the 80s the classic American powerlifting methodology the classic cycling as exemplified by lifters like Edie cone and Lamar Gant and systematized by Marty Gallagher again people are saying well we have better training methods these days and they're showing you different numbers of the squats and the bench press and so on to which I said well in the squat on the bench press it has become impossible to really compare apples and apples because of all this crazy shirts and she's like you are wearing exactly but in the deadlift you're still seeing look at the record tables the record table is a number of the deadlift records are still set back in the 80's and 90's and they're still sitting these are old-time historic records and even the advancement of some assistance gear for the deadlift and advancement of the longer bars with their bars and so on yet improved some polls but still many of these records still do stand and the 80s is a fascinating era for strength I wrote a blog a little while ago that I called it forward to the past it was inspired by the upcoming 30th anniversary of the movie Back to the Future and the point and the point I made in there look you know if Marty McFly wanted to travel there plenty of reasons to travel to today's day but looking for strength advice that he would have been much better off staying home because it's so did not weight lifting with the knowledge of the 80s that American power lifting with the Dodge of the 80s this tool remains superior and that's not something you can argue yeah ed Khan even for people who are not familiar perhaps especially for people who are not familiar with powerlifting I think would just be fascinated by by Ed Cohn what was it he pulled god I'm blanking here 9:01 probably is used best a little button I will add as well Lottie wait those money I wanted to 20 those costs and edy has said at his cents I worked close to a hundred World Records in and he has competed in weight classes you know so many different weight classes over the years and he also had a remarkably injury-free career just really remarkably his hips gave him I mean he said these had hip issues since then do you think that's a result of sumo style deadlift I doubt it very much you do I doubt it very much I mean deep squat if you if you talk to somebody like great cook if you talk to somebody professor stuart mcgill you will find that deeper wide squats could pop probably to some problems sumo deadlift it's extremely extremely unlikely very interesting and one of the things that by the way Tim sorry to interrupt you how many people do you know who don't sumo deadlift anything heavier than the newspaper I have to go get get the against replace no exactly and this is actually something I was going to bring up which is when people see the Lyle Alzado knows of the world the bodybuilders should get cancer and they go oh my god you know the steroids cause cancer and it's like well you have to look at in the context of how many people out of a thousand would get cancer whether they're in the gym or injecting steroids or not to really have a fair assessment of causal factors right so I so your points well-taken the thing the the Freud job sure I'll interrupt you though I will say once now keep interrupting any of these guys many of these guys who competed a very high level in the 80s and the 70s are very healthy and doing extremely well if you look at Gallagher himself he's right now he's in his 60s he is very strong very spry fully healthy hikes in the woods you know every day if you look at weight lifters well forget the 80s let's go back a little farther a little bit of Brook failure he was at his soviet-german he was Olympic champion in weightlifting at the age of 37 and that's something that's never been doing Incred been replicated absolutely it is incredible today he somewhere in his mid 80s and every day as part of his training regimen he does jump squats with 200 pounds 90 kilos oh so he goes rock bottom the squat and jumps up and that's a guy needs mid-80s and in fact he looks so good some some journalists came to interview him and said uh excuse me sir may we speak to your dad that's amazing Wow something to aspire to I've been that stunt on the weightlifter point I've been spending time with an amazing gentleman named Jersey Gregor Eck not sure if that rings a bell but he is the best is a very nice man he is a polish or accomplished lifter very accomplished world-class weightlifter I think primarily in the masters division but he's I'm speculating here probably in his mix mid-60s I'm spending time with him and he can still you know throw I don't I went under the exact weight but he had two to three hundred pounds over his head in the snatch no problem Oh doesn't he still can do a full split uh he is amazingly flexible I haven't asked him to do any Van Damme type stuff for me but his his ability his his hamstring flexibility which of course is much more than hamstrings but what I perceived what a layperson would perceive as hamstring flexibility just blows my mind it's it's amazing how flexible this guy is so it's it that's I'm very interested in the long game so but increasingly interested you know the older I get I'm 37 I can't I'm certainly not going to be winning any Olympic gold medals anytime soon and weight lifts my father took up powerlifting at the age of 71 he's 77 today he dead lifted 413 pounds without a belt and he said you know several American Records in his age group and over training for five years so he put on 20 pounds of muscle if you look at my father if you look at him from back you will think that this guy's got to be in his 40s and he looks like a wrestler he has just been massive and Stu McGill when he examine it says he's got he's never seen such muscular development of a 70 year old and he started when you 71 would you consider the and please disagree if this is not the case but if you had to pick one movement for strength longevity would the deadlift be that move of that movement or is it not possible to choose one movement how do you try to answer that question if you were to choose one movement Tim yes I would choose the deadlift or I would choose the chemical swing obviously the kettlebell swing is not something you can compete in and something you're not it's not going to give you that same satisfaction lifting a heavy weight but those are the two main full body exercises the full body expressions of power that will go such a long way for you for longevity strength just the quality of life other what are the biggest mistakes that people make with the deadlift whether that's technically or in program and what are the the biggest mistakes and not not asking you to repeat things you've already said but is there anything that top of mind that well Tim I think the very big mistake is because they think okay I have picked up things from the floor this looks so simple it's not an Olympic lifts therefore it's very simple so let's just start filing on place and start training they delicate is a very technical lift and even if you're just a recreational lifter you owe it to yourself to learn to dealt correctly so that's that's as simple as that so I say that's that's the primary mistake and that mistake goes for every exercise that people do out there yeah and I would highly recommend people check out your book with now I want to say what with mr. Bolten Devin dynamite yeah really very very dense shifting gears just just a little bit dense and the best way possible no no fluff ah I'd love to shift gears and just ask you a few questions about it sort of your philosophies and your thinking not then not so much the the highly specific training questions but when you think of for instance the word successful who's the first person who comes to mind for you Tim I am fortunate enough to know many accessible people and I think that what separation from the rest is the CEO of strong first Eric for heart he put it very well he says balance with priorities balance with priorities so Eric yourself and many others are fortunate to know they exemplify success for me and the how do you have what is the best way what are the habits that you've observed that allowed people to have balance with priorities what are the the things they do that other people don't do alright or maybe the things they don't do that other people do well I think one is calm these people are calm because this people who are hyper they get sort of trapped in their reactive mode they get to trapped and they everyday minutia their work in their existence so they just do not pause and they do not think again Eric has a great quote from a vietnam-era seal which says calm is contagious calm is contagious so when the person has come that he or she has the time to meditate reflect set the priorities and set the balance Yallop that's certainly holds true from what I've seen and the opposite of course is true hysteria is why he's just chasing the tail absolutely Chicken Little this guy's fallen yes everything is urgent sounds like the Internet and a nutshell right there huh the UH what do you have any morning rituals what is you what are the what are the first what is the first hour or two of your day look like typically I like to ease into my day I will get up early 6:00 a.m. typically and my wife and I will just have coffee and read the newspaper and make small talk I really take my time i pointedly read a paper not watch TV not to get any kind of electronic news or radio I really appreciate the calm of print because whenever you're watching TV it's just the latest news there breaking news and it's again it's same tail-chasing asked after that if I if I decide to the train with kettlebells I'll go to the beach and do that if I do not do that this morning I'll just still go to the beach for half an hour what time I was willing that'll probably be about seven o'clock and I will take a dip I'll meditate a little I might stretch a little so it's against a time to time to be composed after that it's a time to do creative work so I will either write or I will do research and when I do that I very pointedly have the email down so my whole email application is down if I need to use the internet for some research you know the browser will stay up but not the email and my colleagues know to call me if they have something urgent and not a lot of people call me because I have my business card only as my email so that's good no I so does it have your email and it says please call if ur a virgin number no he doesn't know my obviously might count did you have that so and when I write I will sometimes change the environment I'd like to go to a coffee shop or go to a park or something and I do have a particular method when I when I write so I will just select some topic and I work in this topic and as soon as I hit the wall on this topic I just switch to something else I never fight the right at writer's block to noon I just absolutely I just have a lot of different things a lot of different projects chapters articles books whatever going at the same time and I'm very flexible about it and also do let my books evolve and sometimes they evolve in a very unpredictable manner the naked warrior started out as a book for strengthening the field for the military and then it evolved in a sort of a manifesto for reverse engineering the body language of the strong so I just kind of let that happen towards the end of the day it's make a call make a call with my coworkers take care of some business dinner with my wife and you know pretty much relax read some first read some nonfiction then read some fiction that's a pretty standard day what I like my days I like the sound of your days to the the do you listen to music and if so what type of music what are the most frequently played songs or albums on your iPhone or my my music tastes are I like the yin yang kind of like stuff in the middle so on one hand I enjoy 1980s heavy metal I like except our maiden Saxon these are my favorite bands on the other hand I will listen to Jackson Browne Carla Bruni Iman Tong so in my opinion music has to be either you know yeah it's all ideas on it's almost like everything yeah exactly seriously if you think a performance is the same say the art of physical performance is the art of turning on the switch and shutting it up for maximal strength you have to turn it a lot for maximal flexibility and endurance you have to turn it off and for a lot of sports is the ability to turn it on and off on and off back and forth back and forth attention relaxation so I do like these extremes in my music so right so you're either you're either Vivaldi or Pantera and no nope no pop music and know this stuff in the middle has no right to just and uh when you're writing are you writing do you write on a laptop do you write and if so do you use word or some other program or are you writing in a journal how are you jumping between these various articles that you're working on to my right and ward and what I do is I have a very peculiar type of organizational data in my mind in my mind I have many different shelves with many different projects and many different research studies and so on so I can kind of see in my mind what connects with what I see the pattern so I can go back and forth and I really think that the computer doesn't Nabal me to do that so much easier and I'm generally not a fan of technology but I have to say that the word processor it's one piece of technology that's have a very big fan I think on the page I don't think in my mind I think of a page yeah that's that's something that I've heard from a number of good writers is that they they have to write to clarify what they're actually thinking it's not they form the thought and put it down they use the process of writing to clarify their thinking do you do you have a private journal or anything like that you no you do not okay and just since I love talking about this but I won't take too long a recommendation that really was a game changer for me is using a program called Scrivener in place of word and Scrivener is as it sounds what that allows you to do it was originally designed for movie scripts I believe for screenwriting and what it allows you to do is have all of your various documents which would each otherwise be a separate word file in a table of contents on the left hand side of the screen which you can move around and modify and put into folders which I've used for all of my my last three books and then you can look at two different pieces of writing on the right-hand side so what I'll typically have is a folder that's all research documents and and I will have a split pane on the right side where the top is what I'm working on what I'm actually writing and the bottom right is the research document so rather than having a million windows open with different Word documents and as you've probably experienced once you have enough of this open eventually it just craps out on you and jumps off the cliff I don't think I've ever had in however many years I've used it Scrivener fail I mean it's big as it strips out a lot of the bloat but you might really I don't think you I'll definitely try it yeah it's it's a fun program to play with and I don't have the mental I have too many plates spinning it once in terms of articles if I'm working on a larger project like books so Scrivener helps me to to codify that which I find very helpful how do you change your do you change your typical routine on the weekends is there anything that you do differently on the weekends to decompress or otherwise not a lot go to church go out go for a hike with Moab Julie but otherwise pretty much everyday I try to have a balance of work balance of family balance of recreation and a balance of self-improvement speaking on the last point self-improvement what are what are what are things that you're currently trying to or would like to improve about yourself well about myself that that would be private Tim you know I think that it's just with just us girls just between us you know I think that over sharing is one of the major malfunctions of the modern world so I think I'm going to keep this one to myself but but I'm going to tell you what I'm trying to improve profession okay that's fine I have as I mentioned again I have been able to dissect the very successful weightlifting methodology of the 60s and through a 80s which is extremely complex methodology and I've been able to bring it down to the underlying principles and codify it and write up hugger ifs so what I'm what I'm doing right now is trying to bring this very sophisticated very amazing system of training to regular people who just want to get stronger so I am in this refinement phase got it and so to touch on that just is a segue I'd love to talk about flexibility because I get a lot of questions about flexibility I don't consider it my area of expertise so I constantly refer people to your work but uh I'd love to hear you talk about where flexibility fits into the picture or when it does because I think for me and for other people there's a lot of confusion around mobility versus flexibility one of the questions I get most often for instance is how do I get to the full side splits they want to go between the chairs like Van Damme and you know is that is that a a worthwhile goal is it a terrible goal this is a lot coming at you at one but how does flexibility fit into the picture or not for what types of people okay well first of all let me tell you about the goal to split whether each if you choose to achieve that it's achievable I will tell you a great success story is one of the strong first instructors and he is truly a product to the system the gentleman's name is Steve freebies and is a music professor he was severely injured his lower back was herniated very bad he spent eight or nine months in bed and percocet was very bad and then he decided to become a man decided to Train seriously for strength for flexibility training like a real athlete after getting the proper medical clearance and so on of course so fast forward to today Steve freidy's who is 59 if I'm not mistaken he holds a number of American Records for his age group in the deadlift and he deadlifts without a belt NST freidy's 59 year old man who used to have horrendously messed up back can do suspended sized planes just like when down so you big sis is out there thing that you're too old or too whatever alone you just got it you just got a shape up special all right such touching on the all right I will load it up I'll raise my hand I'm one of those sissies if and I've had this I think there are many to dues that are there's the nut there the nice to have things then the must-have things and for me it's been at least a decade maybe 20 years where I've had these suspended side splits on the to-do list and it just gets it gets renewed you know it's kind of like car insurance like I renew it every year but I never really make any use of it so uh we'll deal with that we'll get you there you know it's whether it's a worthwhile goal or not to pursue yeah obviously there's the obvious just because it is there and there's no way of judge that kind of go somebody climbs to the mountain somebody somebody learns to do a site split is that something that you need to do for your performance outside of several sports like Taekwondo or gymnastics no you really don't is that going to improve your well-being I do have to say that the sense of freedom that you have in your hips when you can system they can do a whole split it's really pretty awesome to have that feeling of freedom in the hips you can only know that freedom if you also have known what not to have it if that makes any sense right of course so I will periodically know for a while I kind of an odd trick to get too serious they take some time you know stretch very lightly kind of stay might keep maybe at 70% and I'll just make the push again and bring it back and I always really enjoy that feeling of freedom so that's it's a decision but let's talk about this mobility or flexibility business let's talk about how people should proceed about it so mobility pretty much we're talking about the full range of motion in the joint when the length of the muscle is not an issue so let's use an example of a full squat okay so if you're in a full squat you know not a whole lot of muscles are preventing you from hitting that range of motion so there may be a possible that you need to just pretty much get your joint moving smoother so what does that mean folks it just literally means just doing a whole bunch of squats very slowly and not very slowly just slowly and building up progressively range of motion I'm also a conditioned on most of the famous Soviet scientists who was a kind of health guru he would perform this movements every day he'll perform 100 squats every day and hundred other other things if you're not up for doing that you just simply hold down to the doorway so you just unload yourself partially you your weight more to the heels to make it easier in your knees and we start squatting and don't go to pain you know be very progressive go as deep as you can eventually go deeper just do multiple sets even and the same thing is true really for pretty much for all the other joints but obviously they have joints that's that's a big one and everybody needs everybody needs this type of training I like a very simple joint mobility protocol obvious you can make this as complex as you want seriously and many people have but like in my book kettlebells simple and sinister that's my latest book I give this protocol where they're just just a couple of different exercises you do one exercise you do is you just kind of a move the next to some of a weight around your head in a circle a halo listen up the shoulders and other exercise you do is a very particular type of squat kind of a prying goblet squad that's a terrific exercise so you can do search online prying goblet squad and just for people I remember the first time I heard you say that embarrassed myself at the certification because I thought you were saying goblin squat and I asked you what a goblin squat is so for pay it is a goblet like drinking out of a goblet goblet squad the name right and John and it's a terrific type of a squat that's literally squad for the people see the problem with the squat exercise is most people are don't know how to move well they're tight and you try to put the bar in their back and they just cannot do that so the goblet squat is kind of a squad for the people that then developed and the prying that is added to that is something that really allows you to increase your mobility and flexibility so what you need to do when you're trying to get get your flexibility increase let's say that's a mobility let's pick any exercise that you're doing any kind of stretch that you're doing whatever it is so there are certain rules that you need to abide by and I call these the 3s so stress your strength find space and spread the load use strength find space spread the load so what does that so what does that mean exactly - well let's use an example of the squad using strength for the squad means pulling yourself down into the squat instead of just dropping yourself using example of the split instead of a trying to drop yourself down into the split you're very actively pushing your feet out like you're trying to spread the walls apart so spreading the walls apart that means you're using strength find space so what does finding space me finding space mean just pretty much kind of a prying and moving your body into the position and trying to find more space in the joint and also try to loosen up the fascia that sheet that fiber sheet around your muscles it's a very good analogy would be trying to pull a post out of the ground so let's say you're trying to pull a post out of the ground it's a concrete post you pull out hard and it's not going to come out and I can tell you because I have tried then I just what are you doing down in Southern California I know that was not a girl vandalizing parking lot work oh and back in the past we had a house and we bought a house and there was some some things in the bag that I wanted to demolish so I'm trying to pull all this concrete posts so I tie a nylon rope to this post attach it to a crowbar get a nice strong sumo deadlift position I pull well what happens is the nylon rope rips and I do a backflip into the pilot dirt because I'm very smart I do this two more times and then my wife Julie walks by says you know you could just kind of wiggle it around pride I said oh that's right honey so the same thing is really with your flexibility so let's Tim let's use the and let's use the example of the straddle let's say you're trying to get to straddle instead of simply trying to force yourself down so push the straddle meaning side splits a side split but maybe lying on your stomach or maybe sitting out doesn't really matter either way so you look like a frog on its stomach pretty much so what you're trying to do is what you're trying to do is not just force your way in one direction but you're trying to kind of a pry and loosen up in every direction possible so let's say that you are let's say you are resting on your form so you're trying to get it to this this straddle so your first pushing your legs out but then you're also kind of tilting your pelvis back and forth then you're going to try to kind of wiggle your butt side-to-side then you will try to turn your body one way you're going to try to turn your body the other way so pretty much what you're doing is you're taking advantage of the fact that you're faucet that covers your muscles it runs in all sorts of different directions kinda like plywood so you need to loosen it up in a lot of different ways so if you keep going in different directions all around you will progress those goals so much faster so you use strength find space and spread the load and again spreading the load just pretty much means that you are not just trying to focus on that particular joint so you're just spreading it all around and relaxation is the absolutely absolutely sation and patience are the two things that are absolutely fundamental if you're trying to get a high level of flexibility like a split you see you get a recommendation let's say all hold this stretch for and they'll give you some duration 30 seconds or whatever like how did they arrive at that number I have no idea just somebody decided well that sounds like a nice round number let's recommend that but what you're trying to do it's disturbing how much of the world comes about that way well it's like how many glasses of water you're supposed to drink it it's just the same thing and so you have hold the stretch for 30 seconds but the fact is you're trying to wear out your stretch reflex you're trying to lick the muscle relax and depending on your fiber composition depending on your mental state emotional state training history injury history that can take different time so just don't worry about it so you just get in this position you kind of a pry a little bit for a while and then you just relax and when you relax you try to breathe through that tight spot when I say breathe through I'm saying just listen to my breathing you completely release the tension totally if you do this which is pretty much what most people do when they're trying to stretch you're tightening up the muscles you just have to completely let go you have to be patient and you have to spend you have to spend good half an hour 40 minutes in this type of practice that day if you really are serious about reaching that level how long I'm sorry about 30 or 40 minutes but even if you don't well if there are ways of doing it faster Tim but that involves isometric stretching and that's a little bit more technically involved to talk about here and the show but even if you do not pursue this extreme flexibility goal even if you just want to be flexible to whatever level you want to be flexible in understand that the idea of relaxation breathing and patience are absolutely fundamental you have to be patient flexibility training is not something you should ever do when you're in a hurry for some appointment it's something you should save for the end of the day let's say you're watching some TV show just and going stretch or you're reading a book one of my colleagues dr. mark Chang a strong first senior instructor he has these beautiful side splits the way he worked up to his side split is she would just sit and read a book hit a straddle on the ground and then at some point whenever he felt like he could he just tried to spread his legs wider and that's it you go back to reading his book so you see acquiring the flexibility it's an exercise in patience so if you do not have the patience or if you do not have the time I suggest to just give up and the the isometric just to touch on that is is that a a variant or press the same thing as PMF the pretty much like sequential sort of contractions and and and release so here's how this works in a nutshell imagine that you are let's say that you're stretched out far and it feels like I cannot go any farther the muscle cannot get any tighter then you slowly contract that muscle slowly it's important for safety and you build up the tension and you hold that tension for awhile and then you release that tension the important thing is again release and when you have released you'll see this contrast so in a way you kind of a climb from the fire into the frying pan is still hot but not as hot and you can eke out just a little bit more range of motion so these isometric contractions can be added to any type of stretching and the idea the very important thing about them is you need to make them steady do not make them jerky in any way the only thing about them that sudden is that release other way steady steady steady and when you're when you're holding the contraction and this is hard to quantify but the as a guideline what percentage of maximal contraction is that you know there are various there are various methods some of them attempt for you to bring the attention to a very very high level gradually still very gradually but 32i level to the point where the muscle literally shuts down something KO Golgi tendon organ just fires book so just goes that's an advanced technique it takes takes a lot of practice you can go or you can just go for a very steady tension of about thirty percent and just try to stay there for pretty much as long as you can handle it just the important thing is that the tension doesn't diminish you know whatever when you feel like the tension is about to diminish whatever level that you've chosen then you just release and then you pry a little farther private as well mark Chang has one of the most impressive Turkish get ups I've ever seen very impressive people who are not familiar with that move you could certainly do a search and see some examples that is a very very very technical move at the Turkish get up the beautiful thing about the Turkish get up that's someone like yourself who is a minimalist would appreciate is you get done so much for so little it's it's one of those amazing all-around wants Topshop exercises and some food for thought for people in general when you think about training earlier we talked about various trade offs what to do in the program is training is just like a budget budget for a person who has a regular paycheck so you have to decide am I going to buy a couch or I'm going to go on vacation am I going to get in debt and do bowls I'm going to buy really good couch and not go on vacation or buy cheap couch and take a short vacation you want point so there are a lot of choices a lot of trade-offs and these trade-offs have to do with both your time but also with a gap the endocrine system your endocrine system can only handle so much training right and all these different types of training that they they are added up and plus heels of the stresses of your life and so on so whenever you're deciding and what it is that you do for your exercise you have to identify really what's important stripped and under seneschal and make compromises and sacrifices somewhere now true for so many areas I wanted to come back to something you said about oversharing earlier and the because it was the the the flaws or the the dangers of oversharing in malfunction the malfunction even better of oversharing so that's that's kind of my my business model i guess but the the i'd love teaching as my opinion I'm not judging oh no no no no you could feel free to judge I think I think that oversharing is a problem although but I'd love to hear your thoughts on what Americans could learn from perhaps the culture you grew up in in the former Soviet Union or vice versa because I personally and this is not meant as a slight at all I've so much respect for so many people in the former Soviet Union most of my observation has been in the in the sports arena a sports arena I mean looking at people like Konstantin Konstantinov or dmitriy klokov or just these these amazing specimens but I have a very tough time when I meet some people from the former Soviet Union socially with getting through the cultural differences and I'm usually I don't usually find that hard unless there's a lot of vodka involved um but well that's that's the social lubricant it you just need to you just need to drink more vodka that did scare so what what could what could Americans learn from from the culture you grew up in or vice versa okay well first of all I'm speaking about the Soviet culture I'm not talking about the current culture the post-soviet culture because unfortunate this is my observation that often times when different countries learn something from America they choose to learn other things that worth learning right like I really would like to see for Russia to learn about free enterprise about fair competition about freedom and unfortunately the things they're learning or not these are like reality to that's what they're learning and that's that's not unique to Russia that's that's pretty universal around the world for some reason instead of getting the best from America people are just sort of getting the Las Vegas version America so and what people can learn what Americans can learn is they can learn to limit their choices you mentioned earlier the paradox of choice they is it Barry Schwartz book right that's right it's a very good book I enjoyed the book very much and I think that is I think that is very true when there are so many choices to exercise these choices are difficult it takes a lot of processing power there's a great moment in film Moscow on the Hudson Knoll film with Robin Williams where he walks into an American grocery store he sees coffee everywhere he says coffee coffee coffee he just passes up so what is very difficult in this country is exercising the choice because options are just so many and choices are difficult and in fact you will find out that a number of Eastern Europeans who have failed to assimilate or fail to make the life in America are the ones who just have a hard time making choices they're useful for a lot of choices being made for them and there is obvious downside to that in terms of freedom there is obviously an upside of it because there's there are fewer distractions so you personally not you Tim but the listeners you need to figure out how to limit your choices then make these choices and stick to them the Konstantinov and the clock event these other Russian athletes you mentioned these guys do not train with 360 degree but squeezing scott curl bench that you see in a typical gym these guys have the basics and they just hammer just absolutely hammer in the basics and the I'm a big admirer of the free enterprise system unfortunately as much as that's worked in so many fields and industries is completely failed in the exercise industry and fitness industry because it's constantly chasing its tell tale with the novelty the new the best or whatever and it's a fad that just goes away again but a simple fact is certain things do not change what I think also I think Americans could really learn is they could learn from themselves they could learn from the past I have a great idea lized image of America that I did when I was growing up and that came from my favorite film is the Magnificent Seven it's interesting that they showed that film when my dad was in the service and was came out first and I saw it many years later they showed it again and I was just very impressed with this ëthis that you can see they're these very strong self-reliant people who don't waste words who do not get stuck in a part of hierarchy push that are right into the sunset I think is very powerful I think if America were just a little bit more reconnect with what makes it makes it great it wouldn't have to search elsewhere we can talk about American exceptionalism there is such a thing as American exceptionalism because no other country has that same sense of freedom has the same opportunities and that same spirit of everything is possible no other place so even people who go out and start criticizing America that's usually it happens because of envy that's really all it is so maybe let's just go back to the older times maybe some of them didn't even exist Old West whatever it is we're just people had the pride in being pioneers the pride in just getting ahead or unless even looks Tim let's have a look in the 50s or 60s like today where do the brightest young people what did they end up doing they end up designing apps right well in the 50s and 60s they design spaceships right so the dreams were just so much bigger and right now here's this hot new app golly gee Martha so let's just try to go back to what made this country great to a grand vision and not just little petty little cap stuff who are some of the the people for you whether current day or hundreds of years ago or more who exemplify the best of what America has to offer if people listening we're looking for role map role models to revisit or to try to emulate who would you put on that list also the founding fathers Ben Franklin definitely there are so many great people in American history that worth emulating there's the great generation of the world war two these really quiet people we just went and got the job done and then try and complain about the lack of opportunities of life is hard and we're having it so tough there many I have a and just you know even people who are just even people who are younger I have a good friend Lee Stoney Stoney was a Marine he found a Vietnam and Gaston is just such a great person who is such a positive outlook on life he just is a true American you will not hear him complain he thinks that America is about great things and that's what seriously this is what disappoints me as an as a naturalized American because I think America is so much bigger so much better than its than it has been so just look back into it was before no I I'm of course born and raised here but very much feel the same way and it's been uplifting to me though to see that although the the the kids building apps as some of which are very world-changing I think but many of which are not and are very trivial if we look at apps is just the new software applications and mobile devices that is the new computers they're people changing the world but there there's also been a resurgence of of people aspiring to be like Elon Musk for instance who is building spaceships sure and that that's been really reassuring to me in some ways but the Ben Franklin example I think is a great one and for anyone who hasn't read the the Walter Isaacson biography of Benjamin Franklin it's a fascinating fascinating picture of a deep very capable but also hilarious figure I wanted to just in enclosing a few more questions but the first is how do you personally limit your choices to avoid the coffee coffee coffee experience and the data and the distraction how do you what are some ways in which you up you contain those choices in life tim professionally I use this I use the same technique that you use for voting I remember that you mentioned that you don't like following the current current affairs before you vote you just talked to a number of people whose opinion you respect and who vote the way who believe the way you do so I do the same thing in training pretty much so when I do when I do research most of my time is spent reading the classic Soviet texts and studies and once in a while I rise up on periscope and I'll talk to several people I respect in the industry and ask what's going on what's new and they will just brief me on that most of the time frankly nothing's going but so this is an example of this is an example of my technique I am very ruthless about limiting my communications I am very protective of my time too right overprotective my time to read and that's what it no that's I think this is a really important topic and I appreciate the answers and I also encourage everyone to think about how they can create their own choice minimal lifestyle so they can preserve their creativity and unique abilities for the store I think also you need to we need to we need to teach people around us need to understand that not to over communicate it's again it's an interesting modern phenomenon that it's play by play everything happens to be played by play it's like you know kids in the car are there yet are we there yet no we're driving we're on route and no so uh this has been really fun bobble I really appreciate the time I figured - how much what what are you up to focused on currently where can people learn more about you where would you suggest people look - to learn more about the things you work on thank you Jim my company's called strong first strong first calm is the website and we are about changing lives making the world a stronger place strewed through strength so we teach various skills through courses certifications and so on so just we stopped by at strong first comm and I also recommend you pick up a copy of my book kettlebells simple and sinister and I can assure you that this book definitely fits with the spirit of this conversation there's absolutely nothing fluff no fluff there whatsoever and just just to to to also add my my own two cents related to my direct experience problems methods your methods poeple and those that you've distilled from all the the minds and practitioners the operators that you've researched and observed a really do work so for those people who know me I obviously conduct hundreds and thousands of various experiments in my house right now just looks like a laboratory / pharmacy there's so much crap strewn about related to all the various odd a human guinea pig stuff that I'm doing and I've really run the gamut and and tested so many things available out there and in a world that tends to complicate to profit I think you really simplify to results and so I commend you for that and I've seen tremendous tremendous transformations in my own life thanks to a lot of your advice so I really encourage people to check it out and this was this was a blast so hopefully sometimes you can do it around to in person but thank you so much the time pawel and until next time thank you Jim man flower - all right same to you this episode of the Tim Farriss show is brought to you by 99designs 99designs is the world's largest online marketplace of graphic designers and I have used 99 designs for years including to get cover concepts for the 4-hour body which went on to become number one New York Times number-one Wall Street Journal it was a huge hit and here's how it works and you can check everything out including some of my competitions you can see these book covers and so on at 99designs com forward slash Tim whether you need a logo a car wrap a web design and app a thumbnail a t-shirt whatever you go to 99 designs com you describe your project and then within a week or less you have tons of designers around the world who compete for your business and submit different ideas and designs and drafts you have an original design that you love or you pay nothing it is fantastic I have used it I have mentioned it before including in the 4-hour workweek as a resource check it out 99designs com forward slash Tim and if you use that link you'll be able to see what I've done on the platform you will also get $99 as an upgrade for free which will get you more designs more submissions so check it out and until next time thank you for listening you you you you you you you you

Channel: Tim Ferriss

Views: 663,970

Keywords: tim ferriss, 4 hour workweek, 4 hour body, 4 hour chef, forbes, timothy ferriss, entrepreneur, author, writer, best-seller, public speaker, angel investor, ferriss, twitter, Facebook, stumbleUpon, evernote, uber, tim ferriss blog, timothy ferriss speaker, Pavel Tsatsouline (Martial Artist), podcast

Id: UGshHR1OjJ8

Length: 117min 56sec (7076 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 02 2015