SHAWN STEVENSON: Welcome to the Model Health Show. This is fitness and nutrition expert Sean Stevenson, and I'm so grateful for you tuning in with me today. Our special guest today is going to share with you what he says are the two greatest workouts known to mankind and the history of humanity for burning fat. That's a big claim. That's a tall order. Now, where does he have the audacity to say something like this? Where does he have the evidence to be able to make a statement that profound? Well, it has to do with the fact that this individual is a former, I'm talking elite, top five in the country, triathlete in his younger days. All right. But just dealing with the wear and tear in the breakdown and all the metabolic impacts of that, he transitioned to something that was more sustainable. When you see him, you know that he's truly about that life because now at 60, he is one of the premier track athletes, short distance sprinters, and high jumpers in the country.

He's ranked number one in the US in masters level, 400 meter sprint number one is the number one guy and ranked number two in the high jump. Alright, so his level of performance, longevity, and also. He's shredded. All right. Shout out to the shredder. He's shredded, incredibly fit, and he attributes his physical fitness and just his body composition to his training styles and in particular, again, those two forms of exercise he's gonna share with you that are the most powerful for fat reduction throughout history in the history of mankind. That's his words, that's his language. And so without further ado, let's get to our special guest and topic of the day.

Brad Kerns is a New York Times bestselling author, former two-time US national champion, and number three, world ranked professional triathlete, and currently an elite masters track and field sprinter and high jumper. He's also the host of a top 10 ranked health and fitness podcast called the B Rad Podcast, covering everything from diet to fitness, peak performance, and of course longevity.

He's here to share what he refers to as the two best workouts known to mankind throughout history for fat reduction. Let's dive in this conversation with the one and only Brad Kerns. To say, I've got a legend here. I do not say that lightly. I've got my guy, Brad Kearns here, and we're gonna talk about fat loss to kick things off. All right, so obviously in our culture we see training and different training modalities. There's lots of different options to choose from off the menu of training, but what are the best forms of exercise for fat loss? 

BRAD KEARNS: Okay. Get your notepads out people. Yes. It's sprinting and jumping. These are the two best exercises ever known to mankind to stimulate fat reduction. Why? Because the penalty for carrying excess body fat,. When you are sprinting, I'm talking about sprinting on flat ground. Many times, the sprinting are great for fat loss, but the best one is sprinting on flat ground and then jumping up into the air and landing back on the earth.

These are tremendous stimulators for fat loss. It sends these profound genetic signals to reduce excess body fat in order to adapt. So when you're, when you go and practice and do a, do an athletic activity, you're training, your body adapts and comes back stronger, lifting weights. You get bigger muscles. You train for a marathon, you get better at running all the way around the park. But with sprinting and jumping the, you're carrying excess weight. It's gonna be a huge hindrance as opposed to running long distances with extra weight. You're not gonna be winning the race, but it's not as big of a penalty and not as profound of genetic signaling.

Using the body at maximum effort and a jump in the air is of course a one rep max for what you can do with your body weight and then sprinting for even short distances. Great research on this, showing that it has a payoff 10 times of a workout that lasts many times longer that's at lower intensity.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. When I'm asking you these questions, you know your stuff. All right. So recently ranked number one in the world, right? Masters, track and field in the 400. 

BRAD KEARNS: Age 60 plus. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. Okay. 

BRAD KEARNS: Yeah. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And ranked number two in the high jump. 

BRAD KEARNS: Opposite. Yeah. I got on the board there right when I turned 60. I hit a meet and, you know, the rankings come out and, I was very lucky to see my name up there. I was so happy to turn 60 to get into the different age group. Yeah. And then go compete with, you know, people of that age. There are some really, really amazing athletes out there, and. It's amazing to see, like I raced against a guy who was Olympic trials competitor in the eighties. He kicked my butt, but here he is at 57 years old.

Lee Bridges from Illinois running a 52 second 400 meter. That's crazy. He ran 45 back in Olympic trials and I'm like, so you've only slowed down seven seconds in 38 years or something. Amazing. Sue McDonald from up the road in Santa Barbara got 15 world records in Master's track and Field and the various distances and events, and it's really inspiring to see what people can do. Especially in sprinting and the power events, high jumping. The things that I'm interested in now are completely different from what I did before when I was an extreme endurance athlete, professional triathlete. But I think these are really directly in line with longevity. 'cause what do we lose as the hallmark or the fundamental aspect of aging?

We're hearing it a lot now. The last seven guests on your show have probably mentioned sarcopenia. That's the age related loss of muscle mass dyno penia is a term for the age related loss of muscle power explosiveness. And when you lose that, then you become frail and feeble and you fall. And this is the number one cause of demise and death in Americans over age 65 is falling an adverse related health consequences. People aren't falling and dying, but they're gonna fall, break a hip. They're laid up, they get weaker and weaker. They can't come back because of so much atrophy. So it's the essence of aging gracefully is to preserve some form of explosive power, strength, fitness. Nothing better than sprinting, jumping in terms of that. And of course, the side benefits is very strong signaling for building muscle, building strength, and then dropping excess body fat. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. This is so powerful. It's not an accident that it's tied together with longevity. Right. The capacity to build muscle doing these things and also supporting your, your lifespan of having power as well, right? And so the way you frame this is a game changer for me. It just actually clicked in a different way. There's a severe penalty for trying to, again, you gotta be able to actually do this stuff, right? So you gotta qualify, your body has to be qualified to do these things. And so carrying excess weight, excess body fat makes these things more challenging.

And so jumping in particular, right? There's, you know, it, you know, if you're carrying more weight around, it's a little bit more intimidating or scary or uncertain if you're going to jump, right? And so we want to be proactive at training your body to be qualified to do it. That's gonna help with fat loss and it's gonna help with longevity and increasing that not just your lifespan, but your health span, your fitness span. Your muscle span. Alright. And so with that being said, let's give people some insights and some inroads, some on-ramps for being able to add some jumping into their training on a consistent basis. 

BRAD KEARNS: Right. So you're, I'm touting all these wonderful benefits, and then how do you do it? You don't just go out there and start doing this stuff that you haven't done since eighth grade. And so, especially with sprinting on flat ground, that's a really, really challenging high impact exercise. So there's easy progressions where you just quote unquote, sprint doing anything for a short duration, near maximum effort, and there's all kinds of low or no impact options. So all the people that are engaged in a fitness lifestyle and they're going to the gym and they're doing their cardio.

'cause we've been told we need cardio. I wanna say right now that sprinting and jumping is cardio and it's a superior form of cardio in just about every way to just, you know, humping on the stair climber or the treadmill for 45 minutes at a steady heart rate. Because when you sprint and recover and do another sprint, you're getting a cardiovascular training effect the whole time. Now, can we start with a low or no impact sprinting and get almost all the benefits of running sprints on flat ground. Sure. Because you're getting the metabolic effects, the brain derived neurotropic factor and all the things they talk about where exercise makes you more alert and energetic and alive and over time.

Many people can aspire to one day trying to get there to run sprints on flat ground. Perhaps running sprints up an incline, might be the last place that you'll make it to. And you don't wanna mess with running sprints because you've had too many knee surgeries or whatever. But stationary bike, rowing machine, even a set of kettlebell swings that last for 10 seconds is a ten second sprint. And then you rest and recover and do another effort. So I think one thing that would be really good for listeners, viewers to take away is if you're doing this steady state type of exercise, that's great. That's better than being on the couch and not getting your steps in. But it's a small sliver of what it means for full body functional fitness for longevity.

And the hugest, most glaring void for almost everyone is that power, that explosiveness, that sprint type effort. And of course, we have another a slice of the pie here, which is strength training and working the machines in the gym and getting your muscles under resistance load regularly. But if we can really focus on that, that sprint aspect, that's where I see people. They haven't done it in years and decades. They forget about it. There's like an intimidation factor, but almost anyone who's in the gym can go on that bicycle and instead of going 40 minutes at whatever heart rate and burning this many calories, just hit it hard for 20 seconds and then pedal comfortably for a couple minutes until you, you gather yourself and do another one.

And you don't have to do sprint workouts frequently. The anaerobic system responds to low frequency. Low number of repetitions and high intensity. Aerobic system, the opposite, you gotta get out there and put in your miles if you wanna run the marathon. High frequency, high repetition and low intensity. So, we wanna hit that, hit that hard stuff, get your muscles working until they're burning, until you're breathing really hard. And that is a true sprint. And this is not to be confused with HIIT training, high intensity interval training. Very popular realm of fitness today. But in my opinion and many others, I think it's mostly being done in an inappropriate and overly stressful manner.

So you go to the spin class, you get on your bike, the instructor's full of energy or your home looking on the screen, Hey, it's Jeremy from New York City, let's get after it. Alright? And it's all good. The fitness world is great, but when you're doing these patterns of workouts that last for 45 to 60 minutes. The step class is Tuesday, and then your spin class is Wednesday, and then on the weekend you wanna jog six miles. It can easily turn into an overly stressful exercise pattern, chronic overproduction of cortisol, prompts the accumulation of visceral fat, right? Because there's too much stress in life.

Same with not sleeping well, eating poorly, and exercising too much in an overly stressful manner. So the key or the secret to sprinting is very short duration, very challenging, very powerful, extensive rest period between these efforts. So it qualifies as a true sprint rather than an interval session where you're going six times 30 seconds with a 32nd rest period. That's an interval workout. And those are often abused in comparison to doing a sprint workout properly. And I think maybe more amenable to more people who can't necessarily hang for that 45 minute spin class where they're pretending to climb the final hills of the Tour de France seven times. And you know, that's all great when you get to a certain really high level of fitness, but it's not for the novice.

It's not for the faint of heart. And a lot of people have breakdown and fallout. We see that in the CrossFit world where it's a great training modality. Everything's awesome about it. I think it's super cool, unless you go four days a week and you're going up to, you know, a different class and they're cheering you on and you're pushing yourself too hard. And then you come home and you sit on the couch and you eat Ben and Jerry's because the workout pattern is overly stressful. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Mm, mm. Thank you so much for this clarification, because again, there's so many different, there's, it's nuanced, right? 

BRAD KEARNS: Yeah. We use the word sprint improperly, generally speaking, you know. And call it, I we did a bunch of sprints on the bike. No, no, you didn't. You did intervals where you escalated your effort and then rested a little bit and escalated your effort. But a true sprint, we can get into a little exercise physiology here. The body is capable of truly sprinting at maximum output for around seven seconds.

That's the ATP creatine phosphate stored inside the muscle cell, asked to give your maximum effort. If you're running from the lion, you have seven seconds of energy stored in the cell. And if you insist on going all out for longer than that like we see in the Olympics in the hundred, the 200, the 400, they're recruiting other energy systems up the ladder in order to maintain maximum output.

So true Sprint is really only seven or eight seconds. The benefits, if we wanna recommend, how long should people really make that maximum effort? Craig Marker. Great member of the strong first community and a real great expert on sprinting. He recommends this window of 10 to 20 seconds. But up around 20 seconds is the most you should ever sprint if you're really doing a sprint workout, because if you go more than 20, you're gonna break down your cellular energy in a pretty destructive manner in order to fuel that fire. That requires a lot of recovery time. A lot of times you're gonna feel the burn in your muscles.

If you insist on pushing through that, your performance, your power output's gonna decline, and so it's gonna turn into something other than a sprint. And what it's often gonna turn into is a lot of recovery time. The next day, if you try and go for one minute sprints or all this nonsense, that is very popular in the fitness scene where people are getting pushed too hard, it's not really a sprint, it's a stressful interval workout.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. The quality, the quality of those reps. You know, the same thing is, is really emerging in the research with strength training as well. You know, there's been this paradigm for decades on volume, getting in enough volume, but what's left out of the equation so often is the quality of those sets that you're doing. Are you actually getting to that place? Right. Doing a set. And now we know that you can actually have far less value if you're actually working hard and getting to that place where your body is like, I'm good. Like I can't actually continue. Right. I can't get that extra rep. There's the reps in reserve paradigm.

BRAD KEARNS: Yeah. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: But if we're wanting to get maximum change in the shortest amount of time, we go to failure. Right? And the same thing with the sprint. You're actually pushing hard, but you're not going way past that. Right. And you don't need to keep doing more and more sets, more and more volume. It's really the quality. Can you get to that place where your body's like, I need to adapt and then not go too far past there. 

BRAD KEARNS: For sure. Yeah, I love great advice from I'm reading a book about a written by a masters track and field legend Earl Fees. The oldest guy to run his age in the 400 meters. He ran a 92nd at age 90, a minute 30 around a track. Go try that outside at your neighborhood high school track. It's moving. This guy's 90, around 90 and he says, train as hard as you can to not interfere with the next day's training. And I need to listen to that myself right now. So, sometimes you get excited, you get out there, of course, you have your competitive intensity going, and then you come with muscle soreness that lasts for a few days and that's not a great pattern to be into.

It's not necessary to get sore, tight damage muscles after a workout to be productive. You can kinda work under that radar. And then I think, again, thinking of the broad audience here, more appealing to more people to actually include true, properly conducted sprint workouts into their fitness regimen without the fear and the breakdown, burnout, illness, and injury that comes from grinding too hard and pushing too hard.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. A great example in the domain, just a step into resistance training. One more time really quickly. What do you think is gonna get the most anabolic or even physical change doing four sets of, we'll just say lap pull down where you have two reps in reserve every set. 

BRAD KEARNS: Mm. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Or doing one set where you are going to failure. Right. Just think about that, right. You're not giving your body that stimulus to actually change and adapt, and you don't have to go much further than that. What we tend to do is those who are really about their life, they'll do that first set maybe and get to failure, and then they'll do three more sets on top of that. Right? And you don't really need that. And this is just, yeah. Emerging data right now.

BRAD KEARNS: Yeah. Yeah.

SHAWN STEVENSON: So again, it's the quality working hard when you're doing the set. And so to pivot back to sprinting. How can we do this in a way that's safe and smart for us? We're gonna, because I have you here, we're gonna talk about how to qualify yourself to do sprints on flat ground.

But first I wanna dig in a little bit more on all the different types of ways that we can get in some of these inputs. And so you mentioned, for example, right, a stationary bike, right? Being able to pedal really quickly on a stationary bike. But what about, for example, a pool workout? What about if you're training in the pool and you're getting your body moving quickly, because again, you have that buoyancy. There's like a, it's like a safety, it's a safer environment to be able to move quickly. So can we utilize the pool to do some of this type of work? 

BRAD KEARNS: Yeah. Interestingly, like if you talk to Olympic swimmers or find out how they train, they busted most every day. They're sprinting, going all out and doing, you know, long volume of workouts because the physiologic stress is so much less in a pool than it is running or even doing anything where your body temperature's becoming elevated, which is one of the key, it's one of the key markers of fatigue and declining performance as we slow down 'cause our body heats up.

Yeah. But in the pool, they can go and go and go and swim for, you know, Michael Phelps swam events lasting from 47 seconds to four minutes was his longest event, and he trained for five hours a day for 20 years, whatever, because the body can get away with it. So swimming's great, especially for someone who's new to sprinting. You can, you can swim as hard as you can across that pool and then stop and rest and do maybe 10 instead of my i, my usual recommendation, I talk about the 10 to 22nd window. Optimal window for sprinting four to eight reps is all you need for a great workout. And then two years later when we come back and we check in, and you're doing great and you love sprinting, you're not doing 12 reps and you're not up to 16.

Now, that's completely flawed understanding of what this is all about. You're doing four to eight reps, but they're faster and more explosive and more powerful. So that's how you improve in Sprinting is not more volume, it's more performance, right? So it's four to eight reps, 10 to 20 seconds, and then a recommended rest interval is six to one, recovery to work ratio.

So if you're sprinting for 10 seconds, you rest an entire minute. If you're sprinting for 20, you rest for two minutes in between each 22nd effort. And the average person who's a. Likes to go to the gym and push hard and get sweaty, and you do a workout like this where you're sprinting on the stationary bike for 20 seconds, two minutes seems like an eternity.

Like, what am I doing? But this is now changing the mentality from this kind of struggle and suffer endurance athlete mindset where you just have to, you know, make the workout a suffer fest and try to hang on till the end. Now it's about. Proper technique and power output and not having your form decline. And if you do experience something of a form, decline your workout's over as a sprinter. You know, if your lower back tightens up on your six sprint, which happens to me frequently, I was gonna do eight, but today I am doing six because I just had a tiny little indication that my technique and things are, are falling apart.

So, it's a whole different way of looking at a workout as opposed to most people who are socialized in this, you know, this struggle and suffer culture that we see in exercise classes and in the endurance community. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. So this is, you have a different mindset as well coming into it, which is, for example, if you say, if you tell yourself for a lot of pe for a lot of us, I'm gonna do eight rounds today, right. For a lot of us, we'll start compromising. Right. And I hear Kobe Bryant's voice and just like I said, I'm going to do eight. This is no discussion. 

BRAD KEARNS: Yeah. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And so we have that part where somebody like you has a tendency to push through. And Right. So you gotta reel yourself back in. Because this is not about throwing yourself under the bus. This is about intelligent feedback from your body. Right. But some of us will start reaching for things and making excuses when we don't have them, versus like, if your body's telling you like, this is good for today. Right. We don't want to push through this. This is not, it's not necessary. We've got in some good work. Let's shut it down. And so it's like having that balance and knowing yourself, right. Know thy thyself when it comes to these workouts. Right. And so to go back to the pool. Well, actually, before we get back to the pool, you mentioned kettlebell swings is another way that we can get this input. We've got ski air. We've got the assault bike. We've got, what did Mark say? I think it was something with a rope. 

BRAD KEARNS: Versa climber. 

SHAWN STEVENSON:  Versa climber. 

BRAD KEARNS: Rope pull. The rope machine.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Rope machine.

BRAD KEARNS: The versa climber is like the ladder. Yeah. With the moving parts. He says that's the hardest and most amazing cardio workout ever. You can, when you recruit all the muscles, like on the assault bike where you're. Sprinting pulling the arms and the legs. There's nothing that compares. It's why like cross country skiers have the highest oxygen consumption when they're performing because they're cranking their arms and using the poles as opposed to a runner or a cyclist and not using their upper body. So those are all fantastic. Yeah. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. There's so many different ways that we can get this input. There's many ways is finding something that feels good for you, that's appropriate for you, and utilize it. And the, the best part about this is like one of the best buy-ins. This is, you don't have to do this very frequently. So it's like two, one, what would you say, one to three times a week? 

BRAD KEARNS: When you're talking about high impact sprinting. It's like once every seven to 10 days is fine for most people. And when you're talking about low impact, like doing the stationary bike, you could probably get away doing it twice a week.

But again, we're talking about four to eight reps, 10 to 20 seconds with huge recovery. Marker calls it luxurious rest intervals after your efforts. So it's a tiny sliver of your overall time commitment. And it's not an exhausting workout because it's so short in duration, but you learn that like, okay, now it's time to use my body and delay aging and become a much fitter person because I gotta throw down.

Yeah. And if you're not accustomed to that boy, it takes a little bit of socializing to go, Hey, is that all you got? Because I wanna see all you got next time. You know, the bike has those wattage meters on there where you can look at how many watts you're putting out and try to go from 300 to three 50 or whatever and realize what it means to use your body with you know, maximum intensity. 'cause most people just don't even go anywhere near that. So there could be like a little growth curve there. But you mentioned something really interesting. I think it's important to emphasize 'cause there's like, it seems like there's two camps of fitness enthusiasts and one camp is like the doling half committed person.

Oh, the Global pandemic shut down my gym. So I gained 20 pounds and it was really bad until they opened the gym up. Excuse me. Like, did they still have, you know, stairs in your community that you could, you know, people can get it done when they have that mindset. So there's the people that need that little boost and they can go listen to David Goggins about staying hard and he's influenced a lot of people and gotten 'em off the couch and believing in themselves and all those positive things. But like, if you wanna follow someone who's abused their body systematically for years and decades, you proceed with caution. And so there's a whole nother camp of people who are type a, highly motivated, goal oriented, driven. They pay their gym memberships, they go to the gym, they're trying to lose weight and all these things.

And they often get let astray by flawed, dated. Inappropriate fitness programming. A lot of it's people trying to make a buck. 'cause if I can make you sweat harder and really get my money's worth as a trainer, that's gonna elevate me as the most toughest trainer or the best guy on the screen for the Peloton as the guy who crushes the thing. We don't need that as much as people think. And there's a lot of fallout and attrition in the fitness world from people that bust up their bodies or they lose interest because it's just so painful and so torturous. And so to emphasize these really short duration sprint workouts, I think is a great awakening for people.

And you can feel positive and enthusiastic like, you got this, you can do it because it's only 10 seconds. Especially like the senior community. My mom just moved to a senior living facility and they have a gym there. It's not very crowded. I'm like, how many people are you saying live in this place? 486. And there's three people in this tiny little gym. Like, where is everyone else? Some people are walking around and getting their steps and that's great, but we have a huge void. And if we don't pay attention now, anyone who's over 31 watching listening to the show, you lose, what is it? 1% of muscle mass per year.

It's going man, it's going until you do something about it. And then when you write that course and get competent at strength and power and explosiveness and the anaerobic muscle fibers, that's when you can steer clear of this disastrous decline of sarcopenia and dynapenia, which we now come to think is the norm because it happens to so many people. It's not the norm to hunch over and shuffle along in the passing decades. And if you don't believe me, you can. I can take you out to the master's track, meet and watch a 57-year-old dude run what would be the best high school varsity guy in the valley right now. He'd come in and throw down against these guys.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Hmm. Phenomenal. Phenomenal. Wow. So being that you this, you're about that life. Alright. And so if we are, if we aspire to doing some flat ground sprints or you know, incline sprints, whatever the case might be, but to do some actual, like running sprints, maybe we're going to the track or to the park. What are some of your favorite exercise is to prepare the body to sprint? 

BRAD KEARNS: Thank you. Yeah. I mean, let's make sure that we don't mess this up and go and get injured because you got excited about a new fitness modality. Okay. So we have stairs, we have hills, we have pushing the sled at the gym or anywhere on the street. And then we have things like modified sprints, which I'm getting really good at this year, Shawn, because I've had this minor injury that inhibits my sprint workouts and I have to be very careful. So I do high knee sprints, so I'll go when the, when my 22 second timer. I'm doing simulated 150 meter sprints, so I go for 22 seconds, but I'm going with really high knee drive, so it dramatically minimizes the impact.

I could do these when I was healing from my Achilles surgery and anytime I got a ding up, I just do high knee sprints. Huge difference from running forward on flat ground, and then I'll modify it according to where I am in the recovery phase, like in 22 seconds, I might make it. 20 yards if I'm actually, you know, not ready for high impact sprints.

But then, you know, last week I did like 130 meters when I usually do one 50, so I just dialed it back a little bit. So it's a safe way to actually sprint. The safest would be running up the flights of stairs or a steep hill if you have that in your area or pushing the sled and getting really good at that before you try to go and do the next progression, which I would say would be wind sprints. That's the way I used to call 'em on the team where, you know, you'd start accelerate and immediately decelerate. So you're get enough to speed, maybe you hit near full speed for a couple seconds and immediately take it down. It's just to teach the body and see how things are feeling. When you execute proper sprint mechanics, they call those wind sprints.

You see the athletes doing 'em before games and before track meets. So those are pretty gentle because if you. You'll notice when you're trying to accelerate up to near full speed if things aren't working right and, you know, stairs, heels, high, knees, sled, most everybody can do that even if they have, you know, some issues with joints or lack of conditioning in recent years. But if we wanna start from scratch, let's first get into low and no impact sprints so you can feel what it's like to have your lungs and your muscles burning to dear maximum intensity. And then we can aspire to add a bit of load. Over time, why is sprinting on flat ground the best? First of all, the bone density, you need impact in order to stimulate bone density or preserve bone density.

And then secondly, that's where that thing we first talked about at the start of the show, like the penalty for carrying excess body fat when you're running sprints on flat ground is so extreme that you will adapt quickly. And as Mark Sisson says, nothing gets you ripped, like sprinting. And it's, we could put jumping in there too. So that's kind of the overall picture here. But if all you ever get to is being a badass on the stairs at the stadium, that's a wonderful sprint workout. It's anything that brings you up to that near max where the muscles don't seem to be able to go much more and you're breathing all the way and you really need to take some recovery and deserve that six to one recovery ratio.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, amazing, amazing advice. So, you know, me being from the Midwest, from St. Louis. I never ate food out of a food truck. Alright. It just wasn't a thing. Right. So coming here, there are these trucks all over the place, and, but of course to me, to my Midwestern eyes, it's like, this is sketchy. Like, you're just going to, and so you invited me to get some tacos.

You were like, these are the best tacos. Oh, yeah. And they, they lived up to the hype. And so you took me to this food truck. We grabbed some tacos, and then we took a quick walk. And just while we were walking, you started skipping. All right.

BRAD KEARNS: Oh, yeah, yeah.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Say I, I haven't shared this with anybody, but I noticed that I'm just like, this guy is, he's just, he's about that life, you know? It's playful, but also it's just like my bo let me give my body this quick input. Right. Yeah. So you're doing some sprint skips. 

BRAD KEARNS: Yeah. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So what about skipping, like, we attribute that to being. Like childlike. Yeah. Right. But what about skips when it comes to preparing the body for sprints? 

BRAD KEARNS: Skipping is the preeminent sprinting technique drill because it exaggerates the range of motion that you need to execute correct sprint form. And there's all these different variations of skips. So the sprinters call 'em A skips, B skips, C skips, high skips, long skips. And it's basically just like we did in on the playground as kids, it's taken off and landing on the same leg is the best way to describe it. Cue the B roll to see some sprinters doing their A skips, B skips, C skips.

You can find me doing a bunch of those on plu, a YouTube channel teaching you a beginner, intermediate and advanced sprinting technique drills. But the cool thing about skips is it's also low impact, like I talked about with my high knee sprints. And that is a great progression to start with. And in fact. It's such a tough workout. It's challenging if you do a 22nd set of a skips, for example, that sometimes that is my workout. 'cause if I'm not feeling fantastic, I'm not gonna do my main set as a competitive athlete, it might be weird things that I'm preparing for track and field event.

It might be a 400 breakdown, 400, 300, 200, 100, whatever. That's not of a big concern to someone who just wants to get started with sprinting and do the four to eight times, 10 to 20 seconds. But a progression for a workout would be a cardiovascular warmup to get the body warm, you know, the blood flowing the body temperature up, respiration up, heart rate up. Then dynamic stretches, then technique drills like skips, then wind sprints. And then you would go and do proper sprints. So that's kind of how we're gonna get to that point where we're ready to actually go and run fast on flat ground. And if you never make it to the final stage, you've done yourself a pretty good workout.

A cardiovascular warmup dynamics, dynamic stretching, meaning stretching while you're moving. And again, you're exaggerating the range of motion. So doing something like a lunge is an exaggeration of what running is. Running is a series of mini lunges. Run a marathon, that's 57,000 miniature lunges, right? That's what each step is. So after the dynamic stretches, then you can do these drills like. Like the general, a skip is just, you know, jumping up and landing. And then the wind sprints are those short accelerations I talked about. And then if the athlete is feeling good, then they can go in and do something that is really gonna represent the most challenging work.

Now, if you're gonna go sprint on stationary bike, rowing machine swimming pool, you don't need all this buildup, but you do want to kind of get the body ready, like on the bike, you can maybe hit those pedals hard for five or seven seconds, do a few of those, and then you're gonna start the watch for your first 22nd effort. Just getting ready to sprint is important 'cause again, high rewards, high payoff, 10 times better payoff than a shorter pace workout, but way more risk of injury, overdoing it, things like that if you don't do it correctly or you're not properly adapted. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, great advice. The biggest risk is just being inactive and then trying to go all out. Right. So I found, and I've seen this again across the board, the more active and you get a lot of movement in the day, the less you have to ”warm up”. Right? And so it's just that inactivity being chair bound, these are the things we have to kind of unravel our bodies just to be able to do something intense. And so big advocation for just being more active during the day.

BRAD KEARNS: Oh, for sure.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Have more movement inputs. You mentioned the Peluva YouTube channel. You've got some new Peluva's on your face. Always rocking. 

BRAD KEARNS: These are the Apollo golf shoe. Yeah, great for everyday style in the studio. 

SHAWN STEVENSON:  Those are fire. Those are actually fire. You told me when they were coming out, but I, this is my first time seeing them in purpose, man. I know. Why didn't I should have been one of the first. 

BRAD KEARNS: You don't, you don't have to be a golfer to wear the Peluva Apollo golf shoe. But if you're a golfer, what's interesting is like there's no other sport that requires this sensitivity to the ground as you transfer moving body weight through a powerful swing and the long drive. Guys, some of the guys use these shoes in the world Long drive championships. One guy hit it 380 yards, Jeff Garvey, and they are declaring early, early news flash that they can. Pick up a mile per hour or two of swing speed by using a barefoot style shoe while swinging because you need that tremendous.

It's called ground force Reaction is what the golfers call it. The more they can, the more energy they can generate into the ground while swinging. That's how they're gonna hit the ball further. So watch any golfer hitting a long shot, and you'll see you can visibly see how they drive their legs into the ground while the club is whipping around their body. And that gives them that stable base as well as the power to make the club like a whip. Go watch on the baseball diamond in the playoffs. Go Dodgers. The pitchers are using their feet to a tremendous extent to initiate the complex kinetic chain activity to throw a hundred mile per hour fastball.

Imagine if a pitcher, you know, when they're trying to check the guy at first base and their legs are standing there, they can't, they're not allowed to move toward the plate and they throw the ball over. You can't, you can't throw a hundred mile per hour pitch with your two feet standing there. No. Those legs and that hips, everything's moving and coiling. And then unleashing, fastball, quarterback, throwing the football like last night's game and all that fun stuff. So it all starts with the feed in sports in virtually every sport. Right? Forget about running, sprinting, and building the functionality for that.

You better have strong feet or you're, you know, you're, you're not gonna farewell out there, but it's a big deal. And that's what's so exciting to see golfers embracing these concepts when they're putting on a barefoot shoe and going, wow, this thing's, you know, I've never felt better. Same with for running to, to clarify like that impact trauma that I talk about with sprinting. You're not necessarily needing to go wear a barefoot shoe to do this. You might wanna wear a cushion shoe, however. As you asked, how do you get prepared and qualified to be an athletic person? That's when we wanna work on foot functionality throughout the day and when we're moving around barefoot as much as possible in the home, wearing five toe Peluva's shoe as you walk around and get your steps in, it's a actually a huge difference from wearing an elevated cushion shoe.

If we were to just go walk a mile down the boulevard after the show, someone wearing an elevated cushion shoe, the Achilles tendon is not fully lengthening on each stride, so it's becoming shortened, stiffened, and vulnerable to injury. This is a big comment about the NBA guys wear. Three of our best superstars on the planet all shredded their Achilles tendon with severe injuries during the playoffs from all that season load. Well, they're wearing basketball shoes with an elevated heel, so the Achilles is not adapted for that one pivot where we saw the closeup. Horrible. Jason Tatum, just making one pivot on the court. We talked about this with your son getting balling in a low heel shoe because then your Achilles, your arch, everything knows how to fully engage and fully operate.

Therefore, whatever shoe you put it in for a specialized need, like I'm putting on my high jump spikes to high jump, my foot's getting wedged in there and I have a steel plate completely different from a barefoot shoe, but my feet are strong inside there, so I'm not gonna be so traumatized by wearing a traditional shoe.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right. So their bodies had the capacity to do the movement that they wanted to do. It was a information transfer issue, right? And so having that information online, and this is what we're seeing right now, is a big change happening. NFL guys, uh, NBA guys, they're wearing these five. Finger or five digit shoes, they are wearing zero drop shoes. It's a change if not in the games of course, but in their training. Yeah. Right. Just spending more time like it's prehab and rehab. Right and then once you're in, it's kind, it's just like with anything, you're in a difficult or kind of uncertain circumstances, right. 

Wearing these other shoes, but your foot has been trained to adapt and to actually have this capacity. And so it's okay if you've, you know, venture into some time wearing this other stuff. Get that prehab time, the rehab time. And I'm saying that it is changing because even LeBron, I shared this with you, LeBron James. The notorious worst feat in the NBA will give you nightmares. Don't look this up.

BRAD KEARNS: Don't, don't Google it.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Don't look it up.

BRAD KEARNS: Oh, too late. I already said it. Yeah. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Obviously. Incredible, incredible athlete, but he was just training in some five digit shoes. Right? Now, he was. Now, here's the thing, of course, we've, you and I both have been on this for a long time, but there's something very remarkable about the Peluvas. For me it was the capacity to do athletic movements to train, similar to how, how I was already training without like having essentially some, some of these like have almost no cushion. Right. And so it just felt like it was a good pivot into athletics. So can you just share really quickly, like what makes Peluvas so special?

BRAD KEARNS: Oh, thanks. Yeah. I mean, mark Sisson, my longtime, writing partner and mentor and his son Kyle, were the founders of this company. And they spent years and years thinking about it and thinking about how could we evolve from the original rendition of the Five Toe Barefoot Shoe, which is a fantastic immersion into the marketplace around 2005, 2006. I wore those things and I thought they were amazing, and the people who adopted them were really, you know, big enthusiasts and there was this barefoot culture going, and then it kind of fizzled out because people were using 'em, like you say, and they went and ran six miles and got injured and like, oh, maybe I should get a pair of Hokas, which emerged right on the heels of how the Barefoot Movement kind of fizzled out.

It's a very extreme transition for someone who's been wearing elevated cushion shoes their whole life to go slap on a strip of rubber and five toes, which was by design the original five toe shoe. So when Mark and Kyle did all the r and d and were testing and everything, they put this strategic amount of cushioning, if I'm showing on camera, nine millimeters of nice soft EVA foam that's still bendable and flexible and still zero drop, which is the key feature of any minimalist or barefoot shoe, is you want the heel, the same level off the ground as the front of the foot.

Not that elevated heel. That's the single most destructive aspect of modern shoes 'cause it messes up your Achilles, your arch, your posture. Everything's messed up with an elevated heel, sorry, fashion people who are wearing elevated heels here. Alright? Oh, he's sitting. So it doesn't do anything to you. That's all you do is you wear him for style in the studio. Then we go walk in. He slips on his Peluvas. I've seen him anyway. we need that cushion in order to, for example, navigate hard, manmade, modern surfaces. So even the most dyed in the wool, ancestral living off the grid type of person. Yeah. You know, well.

You know, our ancestors walked on packed African Savannah. They walked on sand, they walked on dirt, they walked on snow, and they walked on natural surfaces. There were no marble floors, there were no gym floors, there were no sidewalks, and so we had these harsh, hard surfaces. We want to have that barefoot functionality.

So this is kind of the compromise is to have this nice strategic amount of cushioning, allow more people to do more fun things, especially working out and doing stuff active without that risk of injury or getting too extreme. And of course the purists, you know, once in a while we'll get an email like, Hey, are you gonna make a shoe with less cushioning sometime? 'cause I'm a real barefoot Joe. Yes we are. So just wait and don't worry about that. But for most people it's like, hey, let's make sure we do this correctly. We don't want anyone getting injured or, you know, waking up the next day after you walk two miles and your arches and are are sore and your calves are a little sore.

Hey, that's great. You pushed it right up to there. Let's back off next time and walk one mile and, you know, ease into it. And what's amazing and so cool to hear from people too is like. Your feet get stronger, you feel it so quickly, you can slide into these shoes so easily. Where at first you were having to like wedge your toes apart to try to get that baby toe in. And we're at trade shows, people trying 'em for the first time, like they just can't get 'em in 'cause their feet are shaped like this, minor shaped like that too, like a LeBron sort of. But they're slowly being able to, we call it relax, realign, and strengthen up so that you can wear a barefoot shoe comfortably and then do a bunch of stuff.

And now the weird thing is like when I put on a regular shoe, I feel so uncomfortable, and I'm so highly sensitized that this feels terrible. I feel my toes clenching together. Like when I'm wearing my cushioned shoe to do a sprint workout or something, I hate it. I can't wait to rip 'em off and go back into barefoot life. So that's the, there's no turning back. Once you go, once you go in the barefoot direction, boy does it feel good to, you know, get your feet, how they're designed to operate all day long. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. Yeah. The intelligence in our feet turns back on. Essentially, you know. 

BRAD KEARNS: The intelligence and you're not, you're not kidding, because I thought it was the most nerve dense area of the body.

And then someone corrected me involved in the human sexuality area. She said, no, there's some other nerve dense areas of the body, but the soles of your feet are among the most nerve dense areas of the body. You can think of some other areas that are nerve dense too, but they send that feedback to the brain.

Yeah. For how to organize movement with every step. And when we cut that off, the worst example is like the classic hiking boot that we've been brainwashed to think, oh, we're going on a rocky trail. You better get yourself some hiking boots. Make sure they're high top so you don't turn your ankle and make sure the sole's really rigid and firm so you can stomp all over the rocks and not, you know, not get hurt. What it's doing is it's inappropriately dispersing impact trauma throughout your entire lower extremities. That's why 50% of runners get injured every year. We talked about a little bit of that last time. You're wearing these cushioned shoes where they feel great, but it's the jarring impact that you don't feel because your brain's disconnected.

Now, when we, I do this with clinics with people. I have them take off their shoes and run barefoot down a pavement sidewalk. And guess what happens? You immediately exhibit perfect running form. You run gracefully like a deer rather than your usual shuffling, jogging form that you can get away with because you're wearing these shoes that cut you off from proprioception to determine how crappy your technique is. That is the story of running injuries in the running boom for the last 50 years. Strap on these shoes. They're very comfortable, they're functional in a sense, but they will get you injured and they will make your feet, feet weak and atrophied. So this is getting back to figuring out how to move in the most graceful and appropriate and safe manner to avoid injuries and avoid all this classic chronic pain.

83% of Americans complain of chronic foot pain, American Podiatric Association stat. So like, if you don't complain of chronic foot pain, you're an outlier. You are like, seriously? You don't have foot pain? Oh, it, it should be, it should be opposite, right? Yeah. But yeah, it's, it's a problem. We're, we're, we're trying to solve every day with PVA and, and doing a good job with the people who are open to it.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. There's a, somewhere around 200,000 nerve endings in our feet. And it's just that information, it's like a incredible gatherer. It's like the guy at the, in the van. Right. It's like the person who's getting that data for you and feeding you information about what you need to do.

BRAD KEARNS: Oh, the stakeout guy you mean with all the, yeah. The guy in the van, the guy in the chair. You see where he was going? People, the guy in the van on stakeout. Yeah. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And so what happens when you cut off that information and that's what we're seeing. So with Peluva, by the way, it's exclusive with the Model Health Show. You get 15% off when you go to peluva.com/model, use the code model. At checkout for 15% off. Alright, get yourself some Peluvas. Every single morning I slide on my Peluvas, go for a walk. After I leave the studio, it's my prehab and rehab. And you know, again, this doesn't take away your ability to wear your other fancy pants, shoes, and different things that you enjoy.

High heels, you'll probably whatever. But the thing is, you're probably gonna notice, like this stuff is uncomfortable. Once you're, that intelligence and your feet turns back on, it just kind of gives you that data like, you know what, this doesn't really feel good. And so, but not to scare you away, this is to. This is to encourage you to get that intelligence turned back on in your feet. And also you're just gonna enjoy how you move and how your feet feel by getting your feet stronger and getting that intelligence back online. So again, peluva.com/model. That's P-E-L-U-v-A.com/model. Use the code model at checkout. So I gotta ask you about this since we're talking about basketball and these injuries.

There might have been a prophetic statement years ago by Allen Iversson when it comes to injury prevention. Let's talk about that. 

BRAD KEARNS: How about that transition man? And we enjoyed that reminiscing. Everyone, most people are familiar with his famous practice rant. You can find that on YouTube still, where he hijacked a press conference and went off talking about how he didn't think practice was that important.

And it was so funny because at the time he was savagely criticized and it was already layered on top of, I think like he was the first guy who brought this authentic hip hop type of culture, whatever you wanna call it, the street culture of basketball, urban United States of America, basketball player. And he was, you know. Unapologetic. He was himself all the way through. He got a rough deal in high school where he was sent to jail for something he didn't do. And so like we have all these layers of like racism in America and how they singled out this guy 'cause he was a superstar athlete. Did you know?

You probably did. He was the number one. Now that we have five star this and five star that everything on the internet. But he was, back in the late nineties, he was the number one rated high school quarterback in the US in high school football. Number one was Alan Iversson. He was also the number one point guard. Of course he went to basketball. That's the loss for the NFL. But he had some highlight plays that were just like, anyway, so he, you know, he got his way to the top in the NBA and he had one of the greatest careers. He was my favorite player. Now he's tied with Steph Curry for my favorite player of all time.

But when he kind of behaved in a unusual manner during the press conference. Everyone just pounced on him. Like, what a disgrace, what a selfish player. What a, this, what a, that. But his, the essence of his press conference was that he was criticized by his coach, Larry Brown. They went head to head all the time because he skipped practice or something. And then he said, we're sitting here talking about practice. I'm the franchise player and we're talking about practice and all you guys watch me in the arena. You see me play. And I play like every game. It's my last, do I not? And everyone had to nod their head like, this guy had so much heart, like no other athlete.

And I think I said on one of my rambling voicemails back to you, like we will never again see in our lifetime a mediocre team with no other all stars. But Alan leading his team to the NBA finals at five 11 and 150 pounds leading his team to the finals and upsetting in game one. One of the greatest dynasties that we've seen in modern basketball, the Lakers. And they were trying to sweep the playoffs. And go 16, they were undefeated in the, they were undefeated 12.0. They're gonna sweep this lowly 76 ERs team with no one to match up to their Kobe and Shaq domination. And Alan goes 48 points in 51 minutes playing almost all of the overtime.

Game won in Los Angeles. Away from, away from home to, to take down the Lakers. Pretty much single handedly one of the greatest performances of all time in sports. And one of the greatest quotes at the press conference after that game, when they said, Alan, you know, you played, you played the whole entire game and overtime, and it's only game one.

Do you think fatigue's gonna be a factor in this series when the team's counting on that much? And he goes, man, I've been waiting for this moment all my life. I'm not thinking about fatigue right now. Fatigue is army close?

SHAWN STEVENSON: Oh yes.

BRAD KEARNS: Can't top that man.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Incredibly incredible.

BRAD KEARNS: Oh, but we did talk about him for another reason, which was. He was, you know, kind of discounting the importance of practice, how dare he? And now here we are, 25 years later, 23 years later, and as you mentioned, some of the evolve, you know, training modalities in professional sports. Now they're finally realizing that these athletes are like thorough bed horses. They need to be cared for very carefully. They're not to be ridden hard and put away wet like a mule in the Grand Canyon. They have to constantly monitor for inflammation and signs of injury, and they need to recover and they need to work on their diet and their one on trainers in the new strength and conditioning protocols that they use.

And so now in the NBA, a pro top guy skipping a game is nothing. It's routine. Greg Popovich did it with the Spurs, maybe the best NBA coach ever one of 'em. And he got fined $250,000 for yanking his big three old guys when they were trying to make a run for the playoffs. But now we're finally starting to realize not enough, I don't think. Because they're still ripping their Achilles tendon in the playoffs, playing a hundred games in an explosive, high performance sport that also turns into an endurance sport. It's too much. So Alan was spot on saying, look, you know, we can't be worried about practice right now when I'm the franchise player playing my heart out every game.

It was absolutely brilliant. I wanna find someone who could disagree right now and say, that was still stupid, because they're not a sports enthusiast at all. They have no, no clue what they're talking about.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. So again, with the intense season and whether this is college, you know, even lower levels, professional, that intensity, you know, when you've got a basketball game three, maybe three through the week, having a hard. All out practice in the mix of that, or maybe multiple. Yeah. We are finally realizing like, that's not ideal. We need to focus on these other things. And so again, it's just having not to negate the value of practice, but it's having it in the proper context. Yeah. And not doing a certain thing just because we've always done this certain thing. Right. And so again, just keeping that in mind and looking at all those other inputs so that we can have the longevity that we are seeing, we are seeing. Traces of this.

BRAD KEARNS: LeBron.

SHAWN STEVENSON: When we see Steph Curry, when we see a Kevin Durant, when we see a LeBron, right? These guys invest a lot of their time and energy in prehab and rehab for their bodies. Right. And these guys are not being asked during the season to have these all out crazy practices in addition to three or four games in a week. Right. It's focused on recovery, but you know, again, it's a paradigm shift that's happening. We're kind of in the midst of it, and it's really fun to see, and it's fun to see what people are accomplishing right now. And so this is a perfect segue back to jumping. 

BRAD KEARNS: Mm-hmm. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: All right. Because we're talking about the greatest jumpers, you know, and in the context of sport and competition, right. And dealing with other people. Right. So it's an added thing than running down a runway and jumping, which not to negate that I was a long jumper. In high school as well. And so I love long jump, high jump. This is jumping ver it's focused on vertical jumping with people around you. Right. It's a whole different domain. So there's a lot of body intelligence required. Mm. And so with that said, we started off this episode. You shared that, if we break it all down, the two most valuable forms of exercise for fat loss because of the penalty that it carries, carrying excess body fat. If you're doing these things, your body's gonna be like, no, we, we can't have this much weight on them. Let's get rid of some of this sprinting and jumping.

So if we want to qualify ourselves for jumping and doing further exercises with the jumping, let's talk about a little bit of what people can do. So we've got obviously box jumps. We've got like deceleration type of things where we are like maybe jumping off of something and then explosive jumping up. We've got bounding, right? So like single leg jumps, jumping from leg to leg. Now this is what I wanted to add in here and take us back to the pool one more time is jumping in a pool. Because yeah, we had the incredible Gabby Reese, here sitting in that chair. You know, Gabby. 

BRAD KEARNS: Pete, what is P-P-X-P-T training. Yeah. And so in the pool. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So she's working with these NFL athletes. Yeah. These NBA athletes, you know, and these we're talking about the superstars in the sports. And when they're recovering from a lower limb injury, that confidence is rebuilt in the pool. 

BRAD KEARNS: Mm-hmm. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right? So being able to like, jump in the pool and to just let your brain and your nervous system know that it's okay. Right. And so that's another thing that we can do. We can jump in the pool. Right. So let's talk about jumping. What kind of things do you recommend for people to do. 

BRAD KEARNS: To get started, you can also use that popular rebound trainer. That's been a fitness device for decades. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yep. 

BRAD KEARNS: And, I got one. Yeah. And, they have found a lot of benefits to those including like the bouncing on the thing and also jumping on ground. But like, anyone can get into jumping even if you're not, you know, even if you don't have much vertical off the ground, you can get on the rebound, that's a minit trampoline, the round mini trampolines that you're familiar with, and get this stimulation in the body.

And it, one of the things it does is it stimulates the lymphatic system. This is the system that runs kind of parallel, separate from the bloodstream to clear toxins outta the body. And lymphatic function needs that, that stimulus. It's like a series of one-way valves. So when you jump, it like opens up the lymphatic flow throughout your body. It stimulates the vestibular system, the balance system. So you get really good at balance from jumping on a rebound trampoline. You get like this endorphin rush from that challenge. And it's a cool, fun different workout from, let's say sitting your butt on a bike after sitting your butt in a chair all day at work.

Still good on you for going to the gym, but mixing it up a little and trying to build some new skills in a safe manner. That's a good place for the trampoline or I feel like just jumping off the ground, jumping up in the air and jumping down. Almost anybody can do that with a pretty good level of safety and we have to remember that. The injuries occur from the landing, right? Not the takeoff. And so you can do something like jump into a beanbag chair or a high jump pad and have the landing be nothing. But the landing is where we get a lot of benefits of learning how to balance and getting that bone density stimulation and all that.

So, you know, I call 'em pogo jumps. That was one of my rehab exercises for my foot. Surgery was just jumping up and down. And, you can do it like trampoline style where you're going without interruption, boom, boom, boom. Or you can also jump up, kill the landing, and then jump up again, making more difficult, you understand? So I jump up and instead of using my own leverage to spring off the ground quickly, I kind of land, take some time and then jump up again and I'll do, you know, 30, 30 kill bounces followed by 20 bunny hops. And what's cool is like, how long does it take? Less than a minute. When you're done with a workout like that, it is, it rocks your world, but in a really good way.

Not an exhausting way, but you just feel like, wow, I just accomplished something. It took me less than a minute. I'm wide awake, I feel great, and I just had a great fitness stimulation to my body. So wherever starting point you're at, like jumping for one minute is, you know, the takeaways from the show here.

You don't have to reorganize your life like getting in shape for the next adventure race that's nine miles and has barbed wire and flaming flames and mud pits and all that. That's great. Go have fun, do that if that's what turns you on. But like we're talking about a six month commitment of, well, I'll meet you out at the barbed wire, Shawn, and we'll train for more barbed wire before the big event. Just jump for a minute in the middle of a workday. And it makes a big difference. Same with, I didn't mention this about sprinting, but like a staircase is a prime opportunity for sprinting. You saw me skipping across the street, man, when I hit stairs of any kind, it's like a rule in my life is I fast feed up the stairs.

I don't just walk upstairs and grab the handrail. Like I don't, I don't wanna do that till I'm a hundred right now. It's like, oh, stairs. Here we go. Go, go, go, go. Maybe it's 'cause I didn't make the football team in high school. I gotta get that Go. Go talk to myself on some stairs in an office building in Los Angeles. Oh, who's that guy in the yellow suit? What's he doing? Where's he going? He's going up 11 floors watching. So there's always these opportunities because the nature of building sprint competency and jump competency is very, very short duration, low volume, super, high intensity. It's within reach of anybody with any time schedule.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. This is so good, man. Thank you so much. I love stairs, love stairs, and also. One of my favorite tools. Super inexpensive and you can get the hit dynamic or the sprinting dynamic from it. But also the jumping dynamic from it is a simple jump rope. All right. So you'll frequently catch me with a jump rope, you know, multiple times a week doing, just doing a session.

With that, I'll either start my workout and or end it with jump rope and there's so much you could, you could skip obviously, but just jumping up and down. You can change the pace. You can go really quickly. But I can also run in place as well with that jump rope, fast af. Alright. Just, wow, really putting in some reps like that.

We can do single leg jumps as well. Right. Just to get those different inputs. There's so much that you could do. It's creative. It's giving you that, the proprioception as well. You know, the different things that you could do with the rope to kind of, you know, move it around your body and just being aware of the rope in your body and space. It's a great tool to utilize, but you don't have to. Right. You don't have to, there's even an invention where the jump rope doesn't connect. You just got these two and they got like a little bit of weight on each side. But just kind of simulating, right? Yeah. If you're not comfortable jumping over the rope, but I love my jump rope.

I pretty much keep it with me all the time. Jump rope. Yeah. And a rope flow rope. So again, this is, it's accessible. It's just about putting it into action. We've gotta make it a mandate for longevity and to support fat loss, sprinting, and jumping. These are the foundation. And my guy, again, you teach people a lot about, like you said, like you've got videos on this stuff about even the drills that you're doing. So where can people follow you, get more information, just get more into your world. 

BRAD KEARNS: Well, you could go to the Peluva YouTube channel and, and see a lot of good fitness videos and of course find the shoes@peluva.com and people, people are using that code, man. So if you've been sitting on your butt watching the Model Health Show wondering, Sean's changing the world right here, we appreciate you. 'cause it does take some. Education and spreading of the word and welcoming people to like this barefoot mentality and transition away from elevated cushion shoes and billions of dollars of marketing messaging, especially like in the running shoe world. Like, well, it looks like you're a pronator, so you need some pronation control.

No, no, no. Pronation, go look it up on exercise physiology texts. That's what the foot is designed to do in order to absorb impact, balance, moving body weight and generate forward propulsion. Pronation is a very, very important good thing. So when you buy a pronation control shoe, you're denying your humanity. I mean, I can't, I can't emphasize it enough. It's like our feet are what make us human. You know what the last area of the body to evolve was one of the last areas. The big toe became an aligned big toe rather than an opposable toe. Opposable thumbs are great for using tools and dominating the world and rising the top of the food chain.

But when you have that opposable toe, you're really good at swinging in trees, but not so good at walking on flat ground. So when humans evolve that aligned big toe and shortened those joints on our foot and developed a really strong, powerful Achilles tendon. We were able to ambulate far more than our ape cousins, and that's what allowed us to rise to the top of the food chain and be where we are today. It was our feet, but we stick 'em in these elevated cushion shoes and it's, you know, it's a travesty in many ways. So there's our, there's our plug for Barefoot scene. So yeah, go, go check out Peluva and I have the B rrAD podcast. You can start with the Shawn Stevenson episode where this guy got down and personal and told that great story of growing up and having to overcome all those things and get, you know, embrace health and sleep.

And I thought that was a wonderful show and I enjoy connecting with guys like you on my podcast and just spreading the word and trying to make change. Amazing. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: I appreciate you, you are truly an inspiration. You don't know this, but I speak about you quite a bit and I've mentioned you.

Here on the show several times since I've seen you last. And you know, like we stay in touch. We send these dynamic voice messages as well. And I just appreciate you so much because again, you are demonstrating what's possible. We need you now more than ever. And not only that, you're fly as well, you know, so people, if you're not watching the video version of this episode, pop over to the YouTube channel. Check out Brad's check it, Brad's Fit Rocking the Peluva's on top of that. And, you're just amazing, man. I really do appreciate you. 

BRAD KEARNS: Thanks for having me. It's the greatest fun to be here, and you're doing great work. I love listening to your shows. We were talking about, I just listened to yesterday was the air quality show, and it's like, I'm so enthusiastic about health and fitness and doing everything I can for longevity.

And I kind of like, until I met the Jasper folks, I wasn't fully, you know, I had filters going in my house, but like that was a compelling show to learn that indoor air pollution is five times worse than outdoor, you know? And, we don't, we don't think anything about it. We just think, oh, the fires in Los Angeles, the air was really bad for three weeks.

Yeah. It's worse inside your house all the time, even now. Oh my goodness. So I'm renewed enthusiasm for firing up that Jasper to full speed. Getting another one for my kitchen, another one for my bedroom. And keeping, keeping clean air inside is one of the, one of the objectives. Yeah. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. We were talking about this before the show, and this is a true story, and I haven't talked to Mike, the founder of Jasper in months. Alright. We were talking about him and I showed you my phone, he texts me at that exact time. Alright. That's the power that we have. What you, what you think about tends to manifest. We're all connected, right? So sending out positive, affirmative thoughts to the people that you care about and you wanna uplift and support.

And also sending out some love for the people that might get on your nerves as well, you know? Because people feel that stuff. And so, you know, just to have that little magical moment. I know many of us have these every day. Pay more attention to those synchronicities because my belief is that they're tending to let you know that you're on the right path. Keep going. Yeah. Pay attention. Life is magical. It's beautiful. Yeah. And there's so much opportunity. And one of the greatest gifts is the good people in our lives. So I appreciate you so much for coming to hang out with us today. 

BRAD KEARNS: Oh, you too, SHawn. It's, uplifting and that, like on that last comment, I'm, I'm working on that myself. 'Cause the other person you wanna be really kind to is yourself. And sometimes as a hard driving athlete, I push myself too hard. I, I run into an injury. I, uh, you know, I get disgusted that I made this mistake, how stupid. And I beat myself up over something that I beat myself up on to get the, you know what I mean?

Yeah, of course. Instead of like, Hey, everything's okay. Yeah, it's part of the sport. You're gonna make mistakes. You're gonna learn from 'em and telling yourself that everything's gonna be okay, is really important. Especially like in our position, we're influencers and we're trying to help other people, and we gotta make sure that, you know, we're coming from that good place.

And sometimes the people who are giving, giving, giving, sometimes they forget about taking care of number one. You know, wear the mask first. All that. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. Yeah. That's another affirmation, right? Yeah. So love yourself, love others. Thank you so much for coming out with us. The one and only. Brad Kearns, thank you so much for tuning into this episode today. I hope that you got a lot of value outta this if you did. If you're watching on Spotify or listening on Spotify, you can leave a comment below this episode and share your thoughts, and of course sharing is caring, so you could share this episode out with the people that you care about directly from the podcast app that you are listening on.

You can take a screenshot of this episode of course and share it on social media. Tag me, I'm @Shawnmodel on Instagram, and tag Brad as well. Show him some love. Again, I hope that you enjoyed this episode. We got some amazing masterclasses and world-class guests coming your way very, very soon. So make sure to stay tuned. Take care, have an amazing day, and I'll talk with you soon.