Shawn Stevenson: Welcome to the Model Health Show. This is fitness and nutrition expert, Shawn Stevenson, and I'm so grateful for you tuning in with me today. I have this huge smile on my face right now, because I remember the first time that I stepped to the microphone to do this show, and as of this recording, this week is nine years ago, nine years. And the reason I'm smiling is, my son, my youngest son, Braden is 10 years old, and I remember him being a little baby and bringing him to the radio station, to the studio where we were recording. At the time, I was recording at iHeart radio in St. Louis, which was just a complete vibe in and of itself, and I was just like, I felt this overwhelming desire to teach and to learn, and I knew that something special was in store. I didn't know what. I couldn't have possibly known all that's transpired thus far, and the best-selling books and the number one podcast ranking and the award nominations and all that stuff, it's just been bananas. All I wanted to do was to teach and to serve, and I just felt this deep desire and drive to do so, and as of this recording, again this is our nine-year celebration, and I want to do something special for you. And a big part of our template here, because the Model Health Show, we're looking at all areas of health, creating a model and an example, an inspiration, tools, insight, strategies for all areas of health and wellness.

Health isn't just one thing. It isn't just nutrition. I'm a nutritionist, of course, I'm like, nutrition was everything at one point, but truly it's so much more than that, it's not just exercise, it's not just sleep, it's not just our relationships, it's not just our financial health, there's so many different things that add together that create our overall health and wellness, everything impacts each other as well, everything is feeding into itself when it comes to this complex life as a human being. And now of course, there's immense complexity, but there's also beauty and grace and simplicity within all of those things. And so being that fitness is a big part of the mission, and also right now, as at this recording, again, this nine-year celebration, we're vibing with the spring-summer-upon-us type feelings. For the average person, of course, they're thinking about fitness being heavily influenced by exercise, by training and it definitely has a big impact for sure, it's not the whole shebang, but it's a big portion of it. So, what I wanted to do was to celebrate these nine years, I want to provide nine of my favorite fitness experts that we've had here on the Model Health Show providing some key insights, some strategies, some tools, some mindset shifts for fitness and for helping you to achieve that physical fitness that you are desiring to have.

Again, these are nine of my favorites, there have been many others, alright, but I was also looking at specifically... Because we've had fitness experts who we then talk about other aspects of their profession, but I wanted to specifically target fitness, so application for fitness specifically. And I think that you're really, really going to enjoy this special celebration, and also because this is a celebration, I just did something and my team knows I was on the phone, I was actually delaying getting started here because I was trying to get a deal done for you, I was trying to hook up something as a special gift to celebrate for you. And hopefully you know that I've been advocating and talking about some of the science around how critical Vitamin C is for immune system function for the past couple of years when it's been something that's so overlooked, and it's so simple. Obviously, we know about Vitamin C for being a critical regulator of our immune system, but it also has a major impact on our sleep quality, on our metabolism, on our gut health. But in this context today, when we're looking at this phenomenon with this virus that just took over our reality, we stopped looking at the obvious, we stopped employing and advocating the obvious, but the obvious still emerged as critical and viable, although the average person wasn't given permission to really look at it and understand it and to utilize it.

But this study was published in the journal Pharma Nutrition, and it investigated the impact of Vitamin C in relation to the cytokine activity associated with COVID-19, they found that Vitamin C was effective in inhibiting the production of the cytokine storm. Now again, this is one of many studies that have affirmed this, but we have decades, literally decades of data demonstrating the efficacy of Vitamin C in relationship to our health and specifically to our immune system function. So, this isn't something new, we're just using new data to affirm what should be widely known by everyone. But also leaning back, when I mentioned gut health, it's specific to botanical sources of Vitamin C, not the synthetic garbage packets at the... With the sugar and all... No, I'm not talking about that. When you stack these upsides by side and you look at the highest botanical sources of Vitamin C, which again, I've got a special gift for you, so keep listening. We're talking about Camu-Camu berry, the highest source, botanical source of Vitamin C. And botanical we're talking about is a food-based source, a super food really concentrates of vitamin C, which with Camu-Camu berry, just under a teaspoon is getting 700% of your RDA of Vitamin C.

But the key is, does it actually show up in your body, is your body utilizing this compared to the synthetic stuff? Well, I got news for you. Listen to this, a study published in The Journal of Cardiology, it looked at 20 smokers, alright? People who are toking up smoking, they're doing the chain-smoking thing, 20 smokers who consumed camu camu berry over the course of a one-week study, versus people who are using... This was the placebo, using the synthetic version. Alright? So, using synthetic vitamin C tablets. So, this is a placebo-controlled study. Here's what the researchers found; the people who utilize camu camu berry had significantly lowered the oxidative stress and inflammatory biomarkers from that lifestyle behavior. So, they were looking at things like C-reactive protein, which is demonstrating systemic inflammation, really remarkable. Now, they also found no changes in the people who are using the ordinary vitamin C supplement, the synthetic vitamin C. For the researchers, this indicated that a combination of other antioxidants, not just the vitamin C concentration in camu camu berries, provided a powerful antioxidant effect that standard Vitamin C products simply do not have. Alright? So many wonderful aspects, camu camu berry. The next one would be amla berry, amla berry and then acerola cherry.

These are my three favorite vitamin C-dense super foods. The benefits are remarkable. The list goes on and on and on. But the key here is to make sure that it's organic and you're not getting any binders and fillers and all that crazy stuff. This is why I'm such a huge fan of the Essential C formula from Paleovalley and you probably know by now how much I love this formula. I utilize it all the time, but I reached out to them literally before the show, I was like, "I got to do something special." And just for you, just for a limited time to celebrate the nine-year anniversary of The Model Health Show, this Essential C formula is usually $34.99, so $34.99 formula. This product right now, for you, for this special celebration is just $4.99, alright? $4.99. Yes, $4.99. Take advantage of this, this is a limited time thing to celebrate the nine-year anniversary. If you've been wanting to take advantage and to try the Essential C Complex from Paleovalley, this is your chance to do it. You get it special for just $4.99.

Alright? So, I got it done right before the show, they agreed, they said, "Yes, we'll do it," but again, this is a limited time offer just for you. Go to paleovalley.com/9yearspecial. So, there's P-A-L-E-O-V-A-L-L-E-Y.com/the number nine, Y-E-A-R-S-P-E-C-I-A-L. Again, that's paleovalley.com/9yearspecial with the number nine. Alright, paleovalley.com/9yearspecial, limited time, $4.99, only $4.99 on this Essential C formula, this product that's usually $34.99. Take advantage. It's going to be up for a limited time, take advantage, $4.99 plus a little shipping and also, they'll have some other stuff for you there to get some other kind of cool bonuses, so hop over there and check them out. Paleovalley.com/9yearspecial. And yeah, we're just kicking things off right now, alright, we've got some gifts to give and it's going to be kicked off... Again, we're talking about the gift of fitness today, with one of the leading experts in the world in fitness and physical fitness and getting people ready for the big screen. This guy is training superheroes, the people that we see on the big screen. Ryan Reynolds, alright, Deadpool, this is the person who gets him in shape for these roles. The Winter Soldier, the list goes on and on. Wolverine, Hugh Jackman.

Alright? You want to go back to Hugh Jackman? Come on now. Don Saladino, celebrity trainer and just one of the smartest people that I know in this field. Man, he walks his talk. He is a scientist when it comes to shaping and sculpting the human body, but of course he knows that it's so much bigger than just the exercise component, but that's what we're focusing on today. Today we're focusing on fitness specifically, and I wanted you to hear from the best. And so, in this clip from our conversation, he's going to share with you the number one exercise that's incorporated into all of his celebrity clients' programs, plus secrets to six-pack abs from the man who's graced the magazine covers himself, and also who's put the best bodies on display on the big screen. So, check out this segment from the one only Don Saladino.

Don Saladino: Probably the most underrated of all exercises. I think a farmer walk... It's funny. Oh God, what publication was it? Did an article on all the superheroes I get ready for movies and they're like, "What's the magic exercise?" I'm like, "There is no magic exercise," but the one exercise that they all did in common was some form of a carry variation, so whether it's an overhead carry, or a rack carry, a farmer walks, a one-arm carry, a bottoms up carry. Every one of my clients, I have done a carry, and I just think that they're magic. A carry for me is a moving plank. It's a moving plank where you stabilize, and you create stability in the entire body. It's safe, we'll get people post-rehab when they're transitioning from their physical therapists, we can get them loading heavy, we've developed incredible shoulder-pressing strength by doing carries with someone who has an injured shoulder. So for me, you can go heavy. They're very safe. There's still things to think about, I don't want someone going and trying to pick up 800 lbs.

Shawn Stevenson: Can you detail... Give maybe two versions of carries. Detail what it looks like for people listening.

Don Saladino: Yeah, so I think a carry would be like a very basic farmer walk, so it'd be like if you were picking up two suitcases and you were walking through the airport with them, envision doing that with a dumb... Two dumbbells or two kettlebells. For really strong people, they might stand in the middle of a trap bar, and they might walk, and the purpose is to stabilize and keep your shoulders level and good posture and making sure that you're not arching your back, so it really is a full body exercise, but it's a moving plank, so you train everything from the ground up. And then there's different variations of them, you can do them one-handed. I can do an overhead where I have a kettlebell in my hand and I have to promote keeping my ribs down, now we're working on shoulder stability, now we have to really lock in that latent. As you're walking and you're carrying a 48-kilo bell over your hand, you tell me how your body's feeling, you're going to be like, "Oh wait, I got to correct myself and get myself into this position."

That's going to promote strength on one half of the body to stabilize. So, I hope that wasn't too confusing for the followers, for the viewers, but they are magic exercises. I think at the very minimal approach, start with a two-handed farmer walk. Pick up two weights, walk across your gym for 25 to 50 yards, or 25 to 50 steps, anywhere in that range, I like. And then in time, as you develop some consistency, go heavier, and go heavier, and go heavier, and then your heart rate's going to be working and you're going to be sweating and then you're going to focus on creating tension in the body, which is really important for strength building and body composition.

Shawn Stevenson: Well, I can't have you here without giving the people what they want, man, which is we got to talk... What are the secrets to the six pack, Don? We got to talk about it.

Don Saladino: Oh, man.

Shawn Stevenson: We got to talk... I mean, this is the thing again, when people are seeing the magazine covers, they're seeing Ryan Reynolds, they're seeing all these folks, and it's something that we aspire towards as a physical culture, we admire the physical culture of the Greeks and the Romans, even the ancient Egyptians. What do we do to access that physique? The illustrious six-pack, what are the secrets here?

Don Saladino: It's one movement. It's only one element, okay?

Shawn Stevenson: I know it's not going to be what people think. Please share.

Don Saladino: No, you want to know what? So first off when I'm... For the six-pack, I probably train my abs directly, maybe twice a week at the most on a good week, so maybe it's once a week, I have a couple of exercises I love to do. I love some type of a hanging leg raise; I love like a Copenhagen plank. I love...

Shawn Stevenson: Can you explain that?

Don Saladino: Yeah, Copenhagen plank would be where you're getting into a side plank position with your foot... With your leg elevated up onto a bench or a block, and you're almost taking one leg and putting it into a sprinter pose and you have to heavily engage everything from your serratus to your obliques to your core, so it's a way of training all of this from an anti-rotational standpoint, so I love... And I actually throw in a weighted kneeling crunch. I don't ever do crunches, but a kneeling crunch where my elbows will go to my knees, I actually believe in adding some type of resistance with our abs, because if we're just sitting here, I mean, I'm not going to grab a five-pound weight and do this 500 times. Why am I going to sit there and just... I like to develop my abs to be a little blockier and a little thicker, developing... I try and make my abs more muscular, and then through nutrition I'm able to keep my skin thinner and my fat levels lower.

So, when I went in for a DEXA, my body fat percentage around my mid-section was at 5%, so my mid-section is lean, my body fat was higher 'cause my legs might hold a little bit more from a lot of the power lifting that I end up doing in that type of training. So, I know a lot of my abdominal work doesn't really come from those abdominal exercises that I named. Ab wheels, I love ab wheels. It came from me dead lifting and doing some form of a squat and being able to run. In college, I was a little bit of a runner, I ran a 452 mile in college, I can move about 219 lbs. I was a big guy. I'm about 212 lbs. now, so I was heavier...

Shawn Stevenson: That's scary, that's scary.

Don Saladino: I can run... Scary. Three to five miles, I was like, I was fast for a big guy, but I don't run as much anymore. But going in and hitting my cardio, not over-staying my welcome and developing strength and hypertrophy, so going in and building muscle is how I get my body to be really tight in conjunction with a proper eating plan, so when I need to get my abs a little bit sharper, yeah, the macros, dial in and everything becomes a little monotonous from day to day. But my training all year long, I train hard. If I'm training at 20 reps, people are like, "Well, do you train light or heavy?" I'm like, "I always train heavy." "Well, it's bad to train at low reps," I didn't say that. I said, I always train heavy. If it's 20 reps, it's heavy. If it's 10 reps, it's heavy. If it's one rep, it's heavy.

It's always hard and heavy, and I have to adjust intensity according to how I feel, maybe how my readiness is, or if I'm coming off of a specific type of training that's a lot of power and a lot of strength and I'm starting to over-stay my welcome, I adjust my training and maybe work more on work capacity or muscular endurance, and then I'll maybe lose a little bit of strength, but focus on those other qualities. So, I think it's the fact that I'm always going into a program, and when I go into that program, I commit to it, and I try and be the best I can with it. But my nutrition is always tight and the ab trainings there and I just try and be strong. It's the combination of all those things, it's just all those things working together in time, I believe is what can give you a physique that's, as I call, cover ready.

Shawn Stevenson: The thing is, the formula is so simple.

Don Saladino: It's not sexy.

Shawn Stevenson: You didn't really... Most of what you shared was not about ab exercises.

Don Saladino: No.

Shawn Stevenson: So, I want to reiterate this because the truth is, our basic human template, like my son, my youngest son is nine, he's got a six pack, like you can see the definition. The muscles are there. We all have these abdominal muscles already there, but it can get covered up with some stuff, and you can specifically target, like you said, to make those muscles thicker. But in the reality, what we want to do is to reduce the body fat through all the other things that you said, and just have overall functionality, and all the things that tie into the abs. It's not just the rectus abdominis, it's the whole area around that.

Don Saladino: Yeah, from a functionality standpoint, for me, that's most important. If I can get up and I can get on a trap bar and pick up 700 lbs. and walk 20 yards with it, my abs have to be strong, my core has to be strong. If I'm doing a Zercher squat and I've got at least 315 or 365 in my arms, and I can hold that with a perfect spine, like my core is strong and my abs are getting a lot of work doing that. So, I still like individually touching... I always call it touching, like the abs and maybe hitting it once or twice a week, 'cause I like to feel like they're tight and feel like they're good, and I do believe it helps a little bit, but we got to get that other stuff right first. I mean, some ‘

Shawn Stevenson: All right, that was just the first one of the nine fitness experts that you're going to hear from today. Again, this is celebration for the ninth anniversary of The Model Health Show, and it's been quite a ride. By the way, did you take advantage of the gift yet from Paleo Valley? This is not something to take lightly. You need to pause this, take advantage. Again, you're going to get the Essential C formula for just $4.99 where it's regularly 34.99. Again, head over to paleovalley.com/9yearspecial. But again, Don was number one. Next up on this compilation of the nine favorite fitness experts on the Model Health show, this guy is a friend. He's somebody that shows up for me. I remember I was doing a speaking event in Vancouver, and I had never been to Vancouver, I didn't know nothing about Vancouver. I went up there to speak at an event and I was flying solo, riding solo, and coming from the mid-west when I still lived in St. Louis and Luka was like, "I'll drive up." He's coming from the Seattle area and my guy just drove up and hung out with me. He knew the lay of the land a little bit.

I remember getting some food with him and kicking it and him being there for me at the event and just a vibe. And also, by the way, whenever I eat with my guy, it's otherworldly, right? Of all the people that I've seen that can throw down, my guy Luka could do that. But man, I'm telling you when I'm talking about coaches and people training for performance, there's nobody better. His elite gym, Vigor Ground, in the Seattle area again, and also in his home country, Slovenia, he also has another location, but the big boys come through. All right. We got the Seattle Seahawks there a lot and you name it. Every sport is trained at Luka's gym and also by Luka and man, just so dialed in, so smart. He is the person who really encouraged me more than anybody, just by his example, to take my mobility work seriously and even if I don't "work out" I still do mobility drills every day, multiple times a day. It's just part of my life now. I'm so thankful for that. And so, Luka Hocevar is the next expert you're going to hear from. He's going to be dropping a template with all of the ideal ingredients to create a program for incredible fitness and longevity on you. So, check out this segment from the amazing Luka Hocevar.

Luka Hocevar: Maintaining and/or building lean body mass is one of the best things for metabolism. I sit here, if I have more lean body mass, I'm burning more calories. But it also is connected to so many health markers and not to mention people that have more muscle mass, they have a better body fat set point, meaning... One of the issues with weight loss is there's something called a body fat set point. It used to be a theory and now has been more confirmed. So, it just means that if you've stayed at a certain weight for a long period of time, your body is going to have a tougher time moving from that weight because that's what's safe, that's homeostasis. So, if you go up or down too much, but especially down, it's going to be like, "Whoa, survival. This is not good." And then the hormone Leptin is almost like a thermostat. It's a thermostat in a sense of if your drop, it's going to basically reduce the temperature so that we kind of come back. If we go up, and so it's going to regulate it 'cause it wants you to stay in a homeostasis. Exercise and strength training has been proven to be able to adjust that or should I say, help with that.

So, if you drop weight and you strength train, your body will have an easier time staying at that lower weight. And there's been a lot of studies done around that, enough to confirm, first of all, this is something you have to do. Right now, what does strength training look like? I mean, it obviously depends how much do you want to improve your performance and put on muscle but any person that wants to be healthier, lose weight, be fitter long-term, should be doing some form of exercise and strength training. That's been proven across the board. And a lot of times people would say, "Okay, Luka. If you had a template." And obviously everything is different for everybody but, "If you had a template," I had a great conversation with Dr. Andy Galpin about this, "What would it be?" And I said, "Well, one, you should strength train two to three days a week, so somewhere in that range. You should do something fast one day a week, regardless of your age, what your goals are." And I'm going to touch on that one because I think that's one that's missed out a lot on. First of all, the first thing that you lose as you age is not strength, it's power.

It's not cardio, it's power. First of all, things like agility, quickness, reactivity, when folks fall and break their hips, which is a huge number like one out of three people over the age of 50, that's power, that's speed, that's reactivity. And it's almost like there's this fear of it, right? "Oh, as I get older, I shouldn't be doing that." But it's actually like, "No, you should." Now, it might look different for if I'm doing box jumps and full-blown sprints and we have somebody that's 55, maybe even 60, they may not be doing the same thing, but you know what, they could be throwing a medicine ball explosively for them. They could be pushing a sled fast. We'll do card throws like I'll throw cards, and obviously they get all wonky, they're going to try to catch them. Tennis ball drills, speed ladder drills. For them, that's going to be fast, and they can still improve that speed and they can still, I would say, work on that so that they don't lose it. You don't use it, you lose it. And a great example is my dad has Parkinson's, the onset of it. He goes and he boxes. So, he does the speed ladder drills and the doctor was like, "I don't know what you're doing, but whatever you're doing, man, it's like keeping it at bay."

And so, speed is such an important factor of it. So once a week at least, you should be doing something fast. Once a week, you should get your heart rate up high for whatever that is for you. So, think heart conditioning. I like to do the heart rate monitoring... So do something fast, explosive for whatever that person is, get the heart rate high and let it drop back down. I know this is basics, but this is definitely a template of it. Once a week, do something for a longer duration of time on cardio but not as high of intensity, and I would say probably more like once to twice a week on that front. And always making sure that you work on quality movement. Even in the last show, we kind of dove pretty deep into that as far as movement hygiene, mobility. I mean, that's extremely important 'cause my philosophy is always: Move well, move more, move strong, move fast. But it starts with move well. If you don't move well and then you add more volume, you add more load on top of that, you add speed, it's just going to speed up dysfunction. So, if I have a horrible posture and I don't first improve my mobility and move well, guess what's going to happen? I'm going to load that and something's going to go off, my neck, my shoulder, my lower back, something's going to break down.

So when it comes to exercise, I really, really like that template because if you strength train two to three days a week, you do a little longer distance or should I say longer duration cardio, which can be a lot of different things, about two days a week, you do speed training once a week and you do one, maybe two, HIIT sessions with higher intensity heart rates, that's a pretty damn good model right there. And the reason I say this to this many times is because somebody that's just starting off, hey, two strength sessions and one speed session and one cardio session, great. And you can do it in the same day. For example, I could do speed training and then afterwards do high intensity intervals. Those couple together pretty well. I can do a strength session and then afterwards do some longer duration. There's ways to piece it together. It doesn't have to be somebody's going like, "Hold on, so I got to train eight days a week?" No, no, no. But I'm saying that type of stimulus, that type of stimulus. We live in an age where we only have so much time. So, if you have an hour, I could do a quality warm-up for 10 minutes, do strength training for 30-40 minutes and finish off with some type of high-intensity conditioning for 15.

And that's an hour and five minutes but I've now knocked out a couple of those variables inside of that training session. So, I think it's important to just look at what are the things that help us be more resilient, stronger? And longevity, we know cardio used to be a thing that we did to lose weight. We know that's not the most effective thing whatsoever, but it is extremely important when it comes to health, extremely. And I'm glad that one of my really close friends, Joel Jamieson, has done so much research on it. He put HRV on an app, was one of the first guys that did that. The co-relation of quality cardio and heart rate variability is I think that you end up... There are certain markers that show that you live 10% longer if you have quality cardio and you have good HRV. That's like eight years, seven to eight years. Could I sell you on that? "Hey, listen. Would you like to live 10% longer?" "Yeah." "Okay, great. Make sure you do your cardio." And like I said, there's different ways to do it, I think that's a pretty good template to do that.

Shawn Stevenson: All right, I hope that you enjoyed that segment from Luka Hocevar. Now, Luka mentioned long duration cardio as one of the key ingredients for a real fitness and longevity program. Well, this next expert is going to tell you all about the very best form of long duration cardio. Now, again, this is somebody else that I've learned a ton from. She's written all the books. Whenever I talk with her, she's working on another book or publishing a paper. And one of the smartest people I know as well and just such an inspiration. Up next, I'm talking about the one and only, Katy Bowman. Katy is, again, a best-selling author and a biomechanist who's really leading the field in understanding human physiology and how our bodies are influenced by our environment, really powerful stuff. And so, again, she's going to dive in a little bit deeper to disclose what the number one form of exercise for humans really, and also the very best form of long-duration cardio. Check out this segment from the amazing Katy Bowman.

Katy Bowman: Stop telling people just to walk more, period. Instead, I'll try to approach like you can actually get more done in many cases if you choose to walk because walking... Well, let's go with first why it's a nutrient dense movement. It really uses a lot of your body. It loads the bones. So, if you were to compare it to cycling, for example, walking, you are weight-bearing on your body whereas cycling, you're not. Your weight is really put upon your seat which is put upon the frame. So, it's you carrying your weight around, a good thing to do. We talk about body weight exercise; walking is a body weight exercise. It's where your limbs get to feel how much you move. They're also moving through a really big range of motion. Your arms are swinging front to back, much different than the computer position or even your arms affixed to a bicycle position where your arms are still sort of in a computer position, so you get the shoulder movement. Your legs are getting behind you perhaps for the first time that day. Even if you're cycling, your thigh bone never goes behind you. Yes, it's moving a lot but it's moving through a very narrow range of its potential.

So walking, again, it moves a lot of body parts and when you carry something too at the same time, there's a lot of core work, coordination, glute work that goes into walking. I mean, as simple as it is and as slow and boring as it can seem, your body doesn't feel that way. Your mind feels that way, but your body doesn't necessarily feel that way, especially if you can figure out like if walking hurts. And there's different ranges of ability but if walking is bugging you in your knees or your hips or your feet, you want to sort that out because, for this other reason why I recommend walking, walking really facilitates lots of experiences and transportation. Getting from point A to point B is a thing that humans do like moving around and it's a really... It's kind of hard to explain it now because we've become so car-centric recently that unless you are a walker, which I am a walker meaning I choose that as transportation, you don't really realize that we've given up most of the walkways for carways.

I mean, I've been walking and hanging off the side of a freeway before because there's no other way to get to a place anymore without a car, without a motorized transportation. And so, it's just one of the reasons that people don't move, it has a lot to do with their economical reasons, because time and economical reasons really go hand-in hand. This exercise Move More requires oftentimes that you have free time. And so, what they really understand is a lot of people don't have free time and so if you use an economical model, which is... It's called sloth. Have you ever heard of it? So, it says that humans are really... And it's an American model, I believe. You're spending your time sleeping, leisure, occupation, travel, and home. That that's the times that you're in and they all relate to the economy of your time but also that's relating to the overall economy of how much you're having to work to survive, really, financially. So, transportation is one of those places that it's very easy to add movement to getting to some other place where you need to do a task.

So, walking and even cycling, if you can't walk, or other forms of rolling allow you to add more movement into the transportation time, which because everything is sort of parsed and separated now, we spend a lot of time getting to a place to do a thing. How much of your time is not doing a thing but getting to a place to do the thing? Economically, it's a huge, wasted period of time. We try to fill it with podcasts to better yourself for learning, thanks everyone for listening, and then you try to fill it maybe with some reading, maybe some talking, maybe some relaxing, but movement can go in there too. So, this idea that active transport is a way that can really be a viable solution and walking to be such a whole body one, requires no gear, has a pretty low carbon footprint, it's got actual footprints. That's why I'm in favor of it. I'm not going to tell you to do it, but I am going to tell you all of the benefits that come from doing it and where it can fit in.

Shawn Stevenson: Up next in our compilation of the nine favorite fitness experts over the last nine years of The Model Health Show, we can't not have this guy. We can't not have somebody who's talking about pure strength, all right? Now, when we learn about strength and we learn about power, we need to hear it from people who've done the thing. And our next expert, Mark Bell, spent most of his 20s and 30s working on becoming a world-ranked power lifter. He was ranked in the top 10 all time power lifters with a total of 2628 pounds combined lifts. He squatted 1080 pounds, bench-pressed 854 pounds, dead-lifted 766 pounds. Bananas in pajamas. Are you kidding me? Squatting over 1000 pounds. Why would you do that? It's bananas. But why would you do it? Because you can. All right. So, when we're talking about all time strength and somebody who knows his way around these types of things, man, there's nobody better. But here's the remarkable thing about Mark. Remarkable thing about Mark, you see that? But Mark is also somebody who's pivoted. He's transitioned. Right now, he literally, he just ran a half marathon. And he's leaned out because being a power lifter of that caliber, he had to be big. He was big. He was thicky thick.

And so, he's a really big guy and he was just like, "You know what, I want to go for more of the aesthetics and functionality. I want to be able to do stuff, to perform in life." And I just spent some time with Mark not too long ago, I went up to his... Listen, he's got the best name as well. Listen to this gym. Super Training Gym. That's straight out the '80s right there. That's, "Oh yeah, brother." That's Super Training Gym vibes. And we went up there, I took my oldest son Jordan, and just had the best time ever training with Mark and his team. And of course, we recorded some stuff as well but to see the stuff that he's on and that he's doing and that he has, every time, it's something that you just don't see anywhere else, and there's a reason for that. And so right now... Again, by the way, this is in West Sacramento, California, Super Training Gym, and it's open to the public for free on the weekends. Every weekend open to the public for free, such a cool thing. And people come literally from all over the world to do some strength training, to do some power lifting, just to be in that environment. It's pretty legendary. All right, so in this segment again, we're going to hear from the one and only Mark Bell. He's going to talk about keeping the basics in mind and also some insights on muscle, power lifting and more, check out this clip from the remarkable, Mark Bell.

Mark Bell: There's so many different attributes of strength, I mean, you'll even hear somebody say, "Hey, stay strong," when somebody's fighting an illness or somebody has something happening in their life, they go through a divorce, someone will say, "Stay strong." There's so many different variations of strength and will power, and even just in terms of gymnastics. Like is a smaller gymnastics guy or girl who's holding themselves up on those rings, are they not as strong as I am? I can't hold myself up like that, so they're demonstrating just a different level of strength. And then someone like Usain Bolt, you might not think that he's powerful, but that's one of the most powerful people ever to walk the face of the Earth. Nobody has ever demonstrated to be able to produce more force than somebody like that. He's on the ground less time than anybody in history because he's able to produce so much force. He's able to basically projectile himself through the air faster than anybody can fathom, right?

And so, there's many different forms of strength, and I think for that reason, you do want to be able to demonstrate your strength in some different ways. I mean, it would be nice to be able to bench squat and deadlift something because they have great value in terms of like getting your money's worth type of thing. Those are kind of the exercises that you're going to get the most bang for your buck out of. Not a lot has changed in fitness when it comes to that kind of thing, so you got a bench, you have a squat, you have a deadlift, you have an overhead press, you have a bent over row, you got pull-ups, you got push-ups, then you kind of start running out of exercises that are super effective, then from there, it's not that a clean and jerk is not effective, all those are super effective, but those are variations of squats to clean and jerk and snatch, and the Olympic lifts and stuff, those are all still... It just becomes a giant variation, and then there's machines and they all have their place. But to answer the question very directly, yes, you should be strong in a bunch of different ways, and I think you should be able to demonstrate some strength through your upper body, you should be able to demonstrate some strength through your lower body.

You might hear somebody say like, you should be able to hip hinge, or you should be able to like do like a knee bend and knee bends to squat, hip hinge to deadlift, upper body strength demonstration could be pull-ups, it could be a bench press it could be push-ups. But yeah, it is great to be able to demonstrate some sort of strength in all these different avenues. If you try to pursue towards one thing too heavily, whether it's to be leaner or whether to be stronger than other things will fall apart. So, if you're trying to be really, really strong, you're not going to be great at tying your shoes, if you're trying to get really, really super lean, you most likely will not be very strong, and then you can try to find a happy medium between the two and that's... I think what most people are struggling with is, and most of the people in my world are struggling with, they like being strong, but they don't want to be fat, or they don't even want to be puffy, they want to be leaned out, they want to have the abs, and so they're like, Man, how do I have abs and lift heavy?

If it's kind of unnatural for you to have abs, if you have to really, really, really work at it, then for you to have abs, you are going to lose strength because you'll have to lose a significant amount of weight, and so it's hard to kind of find that balance. So again, kind of bench squat deadlift are going to be great because they're going to work so many different muscles at one time, barbell exercises are amazing because they're barbell exercises and barbell exercises are detrimental because they're barbell exercises. So, bench squat and deadlift are amazing because you can use so much weight in them, and normally when I do like a strength training seminar I'll say, who in the room has lifted 400 pounds, a couple of hands will go up, I'll say 500 pounds and eventually, usually it stops at 600 pounds, and I'll say, okay, what lift was that done in? And they'll say a deadlift, and I'll say, okay, does everybody kind of understand that this is going to be one of the better ways that we can overload the body, everybody kind of agrees, we can kind of move forward, 'cause overloading the body is going to give us a great stimulus, going to help with bone density, going to help with increased muscle mass, going to give us the most bang for our buck.

It's going to be really hard to get big and strong if all we're doing is like overhead squats, overhead squats it's a great exercise, how much weight can you use in an overhead squat? Probably not that much. So if we're trying to actually add muscle mass, which by the way, should be everyone's goal, I'll repeat that again, which by the way, should be everyone's goal, because the muscle pays for the party, you don't have to look like me and be stuck together and have trouble scratching your own knee or something like that, you can have more mobility than that, you don't have to get that muscle bound, but it is important to have muscle because the muscle is going to help shift your metabolism, it's going to help you to be able to eat more for those of you who love to eat. And I see a lot of people spending countless hours on a row or countless hours on a treadmill or something like that. Those can be effective ways to burn some calories, but it's nice when your body is actually working for you and you're not a slave to your own body.

When it comes to dead lifting or when it comes to any of these lifts, but when it comes to a dead lift, like... Let's just try to break it down a little bit. What do we need, well, we need a strong grip, and in order to have a strong grip, you're going to need strong biceps and a strong forearm, because the body is so intelligent and so smart, that if there's a weak link, your hands will no longer be able to hold on to it anymore? Your biceps are like, even though you're not trying to curl the weight, you're trying to let your arms be extended as much as you can, your body is going to say, this is not a good idea. You need to drop this. And same thing happens when your back rounds over, a lot of times your back will round over, and then the weights kind of go into your fingertips and your body is just sending this message like, dude, you need to let go of that, like you're too rounded over, you're going to get hurt, and so you usually kind of drop the bar, the best way to get strong and the best way to improve on something like a deadlift is to only go to a technical limit, so you want to lift and you want to push it and you want to work hard, but you don't want to go so hard that you're failing all the time.

You'll hear a body builder say, you want to go to failure and sometimes train through failure, and they'll do like spotted lifts. We don't really do that in power lifting, in fact, a lot of great power lifters, the best power lifters I've ever seen, they'll go to do a lift and they'll pull on the weight and then they'll just kind of shake their head and they'll stop and they might restart and they might lift it again or they might even decrease the weight, and that's really hard to do because our ego gets in the way, we want to always lift more, but it's not necessarily about lifting more. It's about lifting better. And the definition of what power lifting truly is, is you're trying to move throughout an entire range of motion while maintaining position.

And when you start to see people do that in person, when you go to a power lifting meet and you see a female do it with 400 pounds or 500 pounds, or you see a guy dead lift 700, 800, 900 pounds and their back is still flat, to me, it's like magical, you're like this guy and this girl, these are geniuses, because who else can figure out a way to organize their body in that fashion and be able to demonstrate that amount of strength and their ability to recruit that many muscle fibers at one time, it's just insane, and it doesn't always get enough credit, but the only way that those people are able to actually get anywhere is if they always are training through the absolute limit, they're not going to recover from their workouts. And this is where you and I line up really well with the sleep, I feel like I have power lifted everything in my entire life, powerlifting is you do a lift, you go at it really hard and then you recover. Four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, sometimes 10 minutes in between sets. The harder the lift the longer the rest is.

When you are in competition, it starts out with a squat, and you have three attempts on a squat, three attempts on a bench, and three attempts on a deadlift. And depending on how big the competition is, it's how long it will be until your next turn. It's almost always like 12 minutes in between each set that you do. Think about that for some of your listeners, some of the people listening right now, to have 12 minutes in between the set, that's excessive. But that's what happens a lot of times in the power lifting meets because they want to see those athletes have the absolute best opportunity to make that weight again. So, you're not going to be able to make the weight unless you recovered. The recovery aspect of it though, all starts with... 'Cause people ask me all the time, "What do you do for recovery? What do you do for treatment? What do you do for this?" I don't do much because I try to train the best that I possibly can, I try to train optimally.

I find weights that are optimal and not maximal. That's the biggest issue, is people are lifting too heavy. So, they think "I'm going to go to the gym... Alright, Mark Bell said I need to deadlift." And so, they're going to go to the gym and they're going to try three plates and they're going to barely make three plates and it's going to be really crappy for them. The next week they're going to try it again, next week they're going to try it again. They're not allowing themselves any room to really make any progress because the body is only learning how to do the lift improperly, not really ever learning how to do it the right way. And so, a great way to know what amount of weight you need on the bar, you should be able to talk to yourself while you're doing it. So if you're someone that lifts around 300 pounds, try talking yourself through 225 and try five reps and say, "Okay, I'm going to try to keep my chest up, I'm going to try to keep my back flat, I'm going to try to keep my stomach tight, and I'm going to try to continue this form all the way up until I lock the weight down and all the way back down to the ground, and I'm going to do all five reps that way, and I'm going to have perfect reps on every single thing that I do for the day." That's how you want to strength train.

Shawn Stevenson: Up next in this special nine-year anniversary celebration of the Model Health Show, and nine of my favorite fitness experts, we have another person... This is one of my friends. Birthdays, we hang out. He's one of the people who advocated to get me to move out to LA, then he promptly moved. He's been living here forever. So, we got a little grudge on that. My man was like, "Shawn, move here" and then... He's a guy... My guest... This guy gets people together, that's what he does, that's one of his superpowers, and it's so cool. You don't have to worry about it, my man just puts people together, creates great vibes, great food, and just... Man, one of the best people that I know, but also a brilliant human being when it comes to fitness.

He's been doing this, especially online, he's one of the first... I'm talking about one of the first people teaching fitness online, and I'm talking about the legendary Jay Ferruggia. Jay is a best-selling author and strength coach, and also again just one of the smartest people in this space, and he's going to be sharing the truth about less being more in doing exercises that actually match up to our ancestral lifestyle. So, check out this clip from my friend. Still my friend, even though he threw the deuces when it came to LA and me moving here, and he bounced to Miami. Shout out to everybody in Miami, but... I know he's going to be back. It's all good, but much love and of course, we got to have him back on. I got some things to talk to him about, some of the new things that he's been doing, but when it comes to tried and true, getting results with people, nobody better than the remarkable Jay Ferruggia.

Jay Ferruggia: Fitness has been huge for me ever since I was 12 years old, and growing up watching Hulk Hogan, The Ultimate Warrior and Stallone and Schwarzenegger on the big screen, so I've always been a meat head. And to this day, you look at Arnold, The Rock, they talk about, that's the foundation. Everyone that I know that I look up to, that's successful, that's their foundation, that's their anchor. And you can't be your best self if you're not taking care of your body, it's just a fact. LL, Dr. Dre, they're all doing it. And I think when I was younger, when we were younger, people who at 45 seemed like they were old and retired, you know what I mean? And I think there's still people that believe that 'cause I get messages sometimes like, "Oh, I know my best days are behind me." I'm like "What? No, you're just getting started." Like look at Will Smith, look at LL, they're 50 plus and they're dominating.

So, I think there's been a paradigm shift there for sure, and I don't feel definitely like I'm just getting started, but fitness is the thing that's got to be the foundation. And also, you have to be selfish. I think most of the time, you should be selfless and focus on other people, but you have to take care of yourself first. So, if I don't get my morning routine in, if I don't get my workouts done, then I can't be my best for you, for everybody that I see. Then I'm behind the eight ball, then I'm stressed out and I have anxiety. So, you got to take care of yourself. It's the best therapy, I think. Yeah. So, it's always got to be the foundation, and I put it like that because people complicate it too much now with Instagram in 2019, it's like, look, three to five days a week, lift some heavy stuff, do some basic exercise. You don't have to do all the crazy stuff you see on Instagram, just basic stuff. And just get it done.

Shawn Stevenson: Yeah, but in those basics, and even in this very short sentence, you said something that I don't think we talk enough about. It's not just lift, but you said carry. Why carry?

Jay Ferruggia: Well, I mean, that's basically the oldest form of strength training, right? It's just picking up heavy stuff and moving it to build shelter... Thousands of years ago. So, I think there's still value to that, it's picking up... You'll have to do that in real life. You're not going to lay down in real life and press a bar like this, but everybody's always going to pick up suitcases, bags, kids, people, whatever, and carry stuff. So, it's like that's the most functional thing you can do. And so, farmers walks, Zercher carries, whatever, you should always incorporate that in your weekly program.

Shawn Stevenson: Yeah. You know what's crazy, man, it's been probably the last three months, and I told you about my injury.

Jay Ferruggia: Yeah.

Shawn Stevenson: But I've been doing carries, I'll do that to warm up, I'll just get it... Nobody else in the gym is doing this. I'm just walking around with a heavy kettlebell in one hand, or in two hands and just walking around, walking back, they're just like, "Is he putting it somewhere?" You know what I saying? But I'm just replicating something that we would do normally in life, that we should be training for.

Jay Ferruggia: Totally, and it strengthens everything from head to toe. Your ankles get stronger and knee stability, hip stability, low back.

Shawn Stevenson: Obliques.

Jay Ferruggia: Obliques, yeah. Yeah, actually, the single arm one that you're talking about, your QL muscle, your quadratus lumborum is one of the muscles that people don't know about, that causes a lot of lower back pain. And Dr. Stuart McGill, who's the leading spine expert on the planet, he says, doing those is one of the best things that you can do to strengthen that, and thus prevent lower back pain.

Shawn Stevenson: Yes, so grab a heavy dumbbell or a heavy implement, heavy kettlebell, whatever it is, and carry one, just pick up 100 yards or whatever it is, just walk... Or walk around your gym. Do that, and switch hands, walk back. I think it'll be really helpful for everybody.

Jay Ferruggia: Absolutely.

Shawn Stevenson: That's great, man. And then also you said drag, that's another thing we don't really think about.

Jay Ferruggia: Right.

Shawn Stevenson: But drag heavy things.

Jay Ferruggia: Again, going back to building shelter or killing a moose or something and dragging it, that's one of the oldest forms of strength training, and that's what we had to do. And it just builds strength in a more functional way than just getting in a machine or just doing, like I said, a one-arm row or something like that, very functional, and great for knee strength too, and preventing or rehabbing knee injuries.

Shawn Stevenson: Yeah, yeah. Man, so good. Another one of these 45 lessons from 45 years is, less is more. Less is more. Why did you put that on there?

Jay Ferruggia: I've always been attracted to that. And I think most people, even if they don't think about it, when somebody comes in and simplifies something for you, you're like, "Oh, should I do this, this?" And you have a million options, and somebody's like, "Dude, those are crazy, just do this one," you're like, "Ahh," you feel such a sigh of relief. And some of my favorite books are The One Thing and the 80/20 Principle, and Essentialism. I think less is always more. The more you can reduce... That's why Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg and people have a wardrobe that they wear all the time. The more you can reduce options, the more your anxiety and stress goes down, the more you simplify things, the better it's going to be. No matter what it is, that's why I said, with fitness, everybody goes on Instagram and like, "Oh, should I do this, this?" It's like, just simplify, just do a push, pull, squat, a hinge. It's pretty simple stuff. So, I'm always looking for ways that I could simplify things.

Shawn Stevenson: Yeah, yeah. One of the things I talked about with Steve Weatherford was he's really been, I think in the last couple of years, shifting more towards eccentric training, just slowing things down. And he feels like... He feels that pump and the changes with his muscle and the soreness, but his joints don't hurt. He's not just hammered...

Jay Ferruggia: Totally.

Shawn Stevenson: Like he used to be, but he's still incredibly fit. So, it's just like... And he's doing less exercises, which it's very counter-intuitive because we think we should do more. We've only worked out for 30 minutes, we got to do 90 minutes. But the opposite is often true.

Jay Ferruggia: Dude, I think it's always true. Honestly, I think most people do way too much. If we're talking less is more specific to weight training and strength training, that's how I went from 147 pounds to over 220. That's how I got a lot of similar results with hundreds of people in my gym and online, is I really like working up to one to two top and sets on stuff. So, if you're doing a leg day, maybe work up to one heavy set of leg curls and do one heavy set of split squats, one set of squats, one set of RDLs. And... Or most people are doing, especially these days, they're doing rounds and they're doing four or five sets, it's like that's a lot of junk volume. I think the main thing that really makes a difference is setting PR, so if you can do split squats with 35s today for 10, you should be doing 11 next week, and then you should move on to 40s. Over time, if you just get stronger and an easy way to get stronger is to do less, 'cause that way your body's not so beat up, you're going to transform, you're going to feel better, your joints are going to be better.

Shawn Stevenson: Yeah, yeah. Love that, man. So good, so good.

Now, when it comes to training, yes, the tried and true are essential. We got the things that we know work, we've got time-tested performance on those things. But what's overlooked are the things that tend to get lost throughout human evolution, the training styles and strategies when it wasn't just about the aesthetic side but the performance side, and also understanding that life doesn't tend to come to you in some one-dimensional, two-dimensional, straightforward push-press kind of modality, life is coming at you in all directions, all angles, and we need to be able to move and respond to life and to engage with life accordingly. Because of that, our next expert, he's the person who really put, literally put these different tools in my hands to get me to think outside of this box of conventional training, and to engage in movement practices, and strength within those movement practices in a way that I didn't even know existed. And the health and fitness benefits that I've seen are just remarkable.

And man, it's just so cool to be able to put this together for everybody in a succinct way, can't do this and not hear from my guy, New York Times best-selling author and the founder of Onnit, Aubrey Marcus. He's going to be sharing some of the potential pitfalls with conventional training methods, and also some really cool things that we can do to make sure that our bodies stay in balance using more unconventional training methods. And so, let's jump into this clip from Aubrey Marcus.

Aubrey Marcus: Unconventional training is really taking a fresh look at how to adapt the body to the conditions of real utilization, so durability, longevity, performance, all of these things, and I think at a certain point, we got away from those fundamental principles and started going straight for aesthetics, like, "How can I build these muscles, really strong by contracting them and really linear patterns on these fancy machines with weight stacks," and all of these different ways that we've started to do it with Arnold Schwarzenegger being our model, let's get big, or let's lose weight, and we're not really looking at are we doing something that's healthy for the body, is this actually helping performance? And I think unconventional training really was something I learned from all the pro athletes I started to come in contact with. Like the ones who are performing at a peak level realized that you can't get stronger just pushing a bench press. You have to adjust, and you have to make adaptations. Even if you're a football player, there's never going to be a time where you have equal weight on your left hand and your right hand and a lot of us think we're pretty strong. You have a good bench alright, put a 45 lbs. plate on one side and nothing on the other side and then try to press it and then see how strong you are, see how strong your core is at adapting to different weight conditions which exactly mimic life.

And I think knowing the MMA fighters who are in a constantly evolving environment, they couldn't train with these linear weight systems and these linear patterns. They had to go back in some cases, to some of the older methodologies that used to train warriors and soldiers of the past like the steel mace, the steel club, the kettlebells, which used to be dock weights in Russia that they would throw around that allow you to move the body in kind of complex movement patterns with offset weight, which mimics reality, mimics life, and also mimics how the body was trained to adapt back... If you're doing real world things and the body is making adaptations, that's really what we're designed to do, and these unconventional training methodologies more mimic a real-world condition and so assist with longevity, prevents muscle imbalances from developing that can really short circuit your athletic abilities and career.

Shawn Stevenson: So, let's talk about something that the first time I had the opportunity to use this tool was here at Onnit HQ a couple of years ago, which is the steel club. Right, so what's the story behind that?

Aubrey Marcus: The steel club and steel mace were adapted from ancient Persia actually, and they mimicked, originally, they were designed to mimic some of the weaponry that the Persian warrior elite were using, 'cause they were using a mace in battle and using swords and things single-handedly like these clubs and what they realized was that, to train to be able to swing their lighter weapons faster, if they trained with heavier weapons and not heavier tools in the similar movement patterns, then of course, they would perform better when they had the lighter weapons to move. So, they developed these training methodologies to strengthen the shoulder girdle and these areas where imagine yourself swinging a mace or swinging, I guess the closest thing we have is a baseball but that's a very singular motion right, if you are a warrior and all you had was a baseball swing you'd be really predictable, people would... You have to swing from all angles, upper cuts, back cuts, straight up and down, all over the place and really moving these tools in an intelligent way, and that's really where the mace and the club training developed is how to get your shoulder and all of the finite muscles in your armpit and all of these things that you don't do with macro movements and get to really strengthen those.

And so obviously, we don't have warriors swinging swords and stuff anymore, but we all do these different types of movements. Imagine a golf swing, if you're taking a golf swing, you're only really swinging from one side to the other, and of course you're going to develop muscle imbalance. The same with baseball, unless you're a great switch-hitter or if you're the forehand to backhand in tennis, you want a pattern different movements and practice those then the club is a great way to get these multi-directional re-programming of the other side of your body and strengthen things in ways that you normally wouldn't be able to do, so they look kind of like giant juggling pins and they're heavy, and I really, really highly recommend it. Especially anybody who's a golfer out there, get one of these steel clubs and do the swing the other way of your golf swing and start working that side of your core muscles and that side of your hip snap and your legs, so that your body doesn't over time get so imbalanced that ultimately it breaks down.

This is trying to restore muscular endurance, balance, longevity, durability, as for most of us, the amount of pleasure we get out of our bodies is going to be a factor of the amount of time we're able to use it with the amount of fun we have while it's going and so we got to stay durable, we don't want to give this up, we don't want to be one of those people that used to be able to do the fun things and used to be able to play games with our kids or whatever, but we can't anymore 'cause our body won't let us. And the corrective steps can start now in training, and the great thing too is these tools are fun to use because you're learning new skills, like the Mace 360 is a really challenging skill where you're swinging the mace back and forth, and then you pattern the Mace 360 and then we get what's called the Infinity Flow, which is back behind your head out down in front of your body, back behind your head down in front of your body, and it's swinging in a seemingly effortless motion, but then you get one of your friends to try and it's like, "How the heck did you do that?" So, it's really fun to learn these new skills and test your body to adapt to these different changing conditions.

Shawn Stevenson: Yeah. The first... It was so humbling. The first time I did the Mace 360, I was blown away because I saw it. I'm like, "Okay, piece of cake, no, no." It was definitely humbling and it's something, it's a skill, you actually learned a skill, and plus, there are muscles firing that have had no experience in anything.

Aubrey Marcus: They've been hibernating like a bear, and all of a sudden go up like, "Uh... Oh, you're using me now, here you are."

Shawn Stevenson: But it's having these tools and today... And also, they look cool as part of it too, they're pretty fun. And this is just another tool that you guys have, but so you got the steel clubs, steel maces. What's the mace? Tell everybody what the mace is.

Aubrey Marcus: The mace was traditionally called a Gada and it's from the same kind of origin, but it's a long shaft, long steel shaft with a heavy weighted ball, so it's naturally one of the most offset levers that you have, so by sheer nature, remember what I was saying about the bench press with a 45 lbs. plate on one side and nothing on the other.

Shawn Stevenson: Right. It's just like that.

Aubrey Marcus: It's like that, but in a smaller, more portable version. You can't exactly swing around a barbell unless you're Hulk, but this allows you to utilize your core in almost every movement. And with all of these tools, you can get a complete body workout, depending on the movement patterns that you do, but you're always working that compensation to deal with the fact that the weight is going to be on one side and there's going to be lightness on the other. So even holding it straight, even just pressing it out in front of your body, you're adapting. The heavy side is trying to keep you... Keep pushing forward and holding it up, and then the other side is trying to keep your body stable, trying to keep yourself in line, so a very simple movement becomes a complex pattern, where your proprio receptors are firing, the things that keep your balance and everything is working at the same time. The small muscles in your feet are adapting and figuring out how to keep you in line, and so your whole body just gets lit up, whereas if you're doing something simpler, maybe you're just isolating, I go back to one of those machines with a weight stack, they'll show you exactly the muscles that it's working.

You'll look, there'll be a little diagram and it'll be like, "This one is pec and triceps." You're like, "Okay, great." Now, that's not like that with unconventional training. Your whole body would be lit up, from the top of your head, if you're holding the right head position and tucking your chin, to the pelvis that you're keeping in the right spot, all the way down to the small muscles in your feet that are grabbing onto the ground to keep you balanced, and so it's really lighting up your whole body and strengthening all of these fibers that keep our discs in line and keep our joints loose and mobile, so I really can't more highly, at least recommend supplementing unconventional training in there, if nothing else, for the durability, longevity, balance effect of it, and I think you'll find, too, that some days, that's really what your body wants, is just to get in there and swing some of these ancient tools around and get back to your more primal roots.

Shawn Stevenson: And I hope that you enjoyed that segment from Aubrey Marcus. Again, New York Times best-selling author and founder of Onnit, one of my favorite places in the world, Onnit HQ, down in Austin, Texas, shout out to everybody in Austin. And listen, if you come to my house, you'll find Onnit equipment, just kinda sprinkled throughout my house, whether it's going up to my roof or right out my back door, there's steel clubs and maces, and primal bells, we got battle ropes as well, we got so many cool things. And I picked up just a piece here, a piece there over time, and they've come in so handy in so many different ways in my life. And listen, this is exclusive with The Model Health Show, you get 10% off all of their fitness equipment. So go to onnit.com/model, that's O-N-N-I-T dot com forward slash model, get 10% off all their fitness equipment, their gear. At the gym, I'm often rocking the Onnit t-shirts. They just feel good. It's got a vibe, great designs, and also, they're incredible, and also their incredible nutrition, really bar none, they're in a league of their own when it comes to that. For example, their MCT oil, I literally use their MCT oil every day, every day. And of course, I've had other MCT oils out there and about as I'm out on the road, but nothing comes close.

They do stuff the right way, they're sourcing it the right way, and your body knows the difference. Again, head over to onnit.com/model for 10% off storewide, exclusive with The Model Health Show. Alright, now moving on, we've got somebody who actually I met in Austin. I was speaking at an event there when I first met our next guest, and he's become a friend and somebody who I've been able to spend time with and to learn from. And of course, he shares a story, if you check out his past episodes, that him listening to The Model Health Show inspired him to kick off his own podcast and to start to reach people through that domain, and it's just so cool to see all the universes colliding, the people he's interacted with through his own platform, and I'm talking about best-selling author and movement coach, Aaron Alexander. In this clip, he's going to be sharing some powerful insights on how we can reverse a lot of the kyphotic, kind of closed up posture that is so prevalent today with all of the time that we spend on our phones and our computers, we're just constantly closing our bodies off, again, using a simple insight, this one simple tactic that I literally, again, another thing that I do every day, and it was emphasized in this conversation that I had with the amazing Aaron Alexander.

Aaron Alexander: A really simple thing that people could add into their daily world, which is one of the principles that we break down, is just the value of getting your arms up over your head each day, so just getting a pull-up bar in your house, like, please, if you don't already have a pull-up bar, get a pull-up bar in your house. And not even... I don't even care if you ever do a pull-up, a lot of girls can't do a pull-up, it's great, no problem. They're a lot better rock climbers typically because they're forced to use their lower body in order to climb, whereas guys that can run through and muscle through and use their upper bodies, they end up lacking form, so I don't even care if you can do a pull-up. What I care about is that you get your arms up over your head and you just spend a little bit of time each day, in the book I recommend 90 seconds total, so that can be like 15 seconds, six times or whatever, hanging from that position, and you think of it as you're doing that, you're literally restructuring the shape of your shoulder girdle, which a common tendency is to go into impingement if you're always hunching forward, cell phoning, carpal tunneling yourself and computering in chairs and all that, so just that simple practice of just... Get lung, create that space in there, hang for a total of 60-90 seconds.

Whatever you'll do is what I want you to do. If what you'll do is 10 seconds, 10 seconds, like whatever you'll do, whatever bite is good for you. And within that, literally think of it as like, visualize yourself, it's like, I think, imagine if you had a wet blanket and you left the wet blanket kind of like crumpled up and it would start to kind of like fester and kind of get moldy and get all gross, you're like, "Oh, we might have to throw that blanket out, that's not going to work." Now, that's your lungs and your ribs and your intercostals and all this precious tissue, if it's not being breathed and expanded and contracted with regularity. When you're doing that opening up, imagine what you're doing, it's like you're taking that wet blanket and you're exposing it to the sun and you're kind of lifting it out and kind of letting that air blow through it. And now all of a sudden that blanket's starting to heal. So, by having that relationship of your shoulder girdle and your neck and your ribs and all that in a position that's most aligned, balanced, stacked, a really simple way to do that, like a shotgun approach is just spend some time hanging each day.

Another bullet point that would be supportive is recognizing we were talking about your central nervous system and gaining a relationship with your spine and your neck and your whole body really, but a continuation of your central nervous system is your eyeballs, so if you are staring into screens all day long, that's literally putting your nervous system, your autonomic nervous system, which I would say is a misnomer, because your autonomic nervous system is continually responding to your environment that you're consciously choosing, so when you are staring in that myopic vision, what do you do if you are in that fight-flight state? What do you do if a lion comes into the room right now, you go...?

You focus in on it, right, now we make action, so now we go in and we go through that, the whole adrenaline and the cortisol’s and all those things come online, gets you ready to move. And then what do your eyes do once you've defeated the lion or made it away or go into like you're over the... You're in the savanna and you're kind of just like just taking it... You're probably not focusing in on a lion anymore, you're probably just kind of spacing out and saying like, "Whoa, man, that was crazy." So, your eyes, the continuation of your brain, your central nervous system are continually feeding information back into your physiology saying, okay, are we focused? Are we executive function, fight-flight, make it happen or are we more in that panoramic vision where it's a calming, soothing, rest, digest, repair-type state? So if you're staring into your phone all day and you're wondering why it's hard for you to wind down and go to sleep at night, well, you're essentially sending the signal to your brain, especially doing that right before going to bed, think of it as like you're sending the signal to your brain that it's time to wake up, it's time to go into action, it's time to move, it's not time to be still. And so, if you want to be calm, you're feeling stressed out, say before...

And this... I'll just compound one little variable stack, if you're stressed out, you're going into a date with somebody you're nervous about or a business thing or anything of the sort and you're feeling like oh my God, my shoulders are clenched up and I feel like I'm clenching my jaw and I'm just like oh, panicking, emphasize calming your eyes, take the whole room in. So, when you walk in, utilize that panoramic vision by really feeling the whole room. You could even visualize like okay, what's the room feel like behind me? Do I have a memory of what's going on back there? Can I kind of feel the people behind me? Can I really take... And anybody that's ever gone bow hunting, which... I know people's beliefs around that, but whatever, the experience of hunting is really fascinating to have, even if you don't ever actually kill an animal, just the experience of stalking an animal, it's one of the most unbelievable experiences because your senses turn on in a way that will never happen in a Whole Foods, unless it was like there was some sniper came in and all of a sudden...

You're on. So, when you're out there hunting, you're hearing every little stick, every little twig breaking, wind, you're noticing the directionality of the wind 'cause that's going to determine the smell from me, you're taking distances, okay cool, that's 20 yards, 30 yards, 40 yards, 50 yards. So, your physical environmental internal map of what's happening goes...

And expands out and you become the forest. So, what is that at a neurological level? It's you coming alive, it's you engaging with your world.

Shawn Stevenson: Next up in our compilation, we've got somebody who just inspires me. Alright, she walks the talk. She's about that life. She's done the full spectrum of training, whether it's the power lifting side to the group training side, but just being a representation of what's possible and I'm talking about Lita Lewis. Now, Lita is a fitness expert, personal trainer, but also a little fun fact, when she recorded this segment that you're about to hear, she had it under wraps, still she had not announced publicly that she was pregnant, so she was here carrying a little baby. Alright, she was growing a little baby inside, this is probably maybe three months, three to four months into her pregnancy, so she had a big hoodie on if you see the video version of this episode, so nobody knew. I think I might have found out the next week or something, the next day. She kept it under wraps until everybody got the chance to find out, and so we've talked a lot during this time and a lot afterwards, and she's just been out there with her baby belly representing, doing her strength training, and teaching, and just again, showing what's possible, and she's got a spectrum of experience and just such a beautiful person just through and through, great heart, amazing teacher.

And again, just somebody who inspires me and inspires a lot of others. So, in this segment, she's going to be talking about the real meaning of survival of the fittest, and why we need to give ourselves permission to re-define fitness and consistency. Check out this clip from the one and only, Lita Lewis.

Lita Lewis: But if we step out of this universe, if we look at human life as what it is and how it's evolved, it really is survival of the fittest, and if you're not taking your health and your family's health seriously, you just won't survive. Now, I'm not saying that, say this virus, for instance, is going to kill all your family members, what I'm saying is, if I and my husband are very conscious about keeping our kids active, sharing a narrative around what it means to move your body regularly, exercising, performing, and then fueling your body a certain way that then... That gives you optimum results or execution of that body, then there's that narrative in the household, and there's the other family that perhaps are not taking that stuff seriously and are feeding their bodies full of junk and not prioritizing, again, not the crazy workout, so putting your kids in all sorts of sports, but just regular movement and encouraging that, who's living longer? Who's thriving? Who's got a healthier mindset that then leads to opportunities, to also wealth, if you will. Who's doing that? So, when I say only the fittest will survive type thing, I'm kind of thinking of it more metaphorically, I'm not saying you're going to die, so to speak, but who's living their best life?

Shawn Stevenson: Yeah.

Lita Lewis: Which family? Which group of people if you will? And I have always said I want to be part of those people that are conscious about how to literally honor the very vessels that we live in, because these are the bodies that are carrying us through this experience. This human experience of life. And that's, again, as you mentioned also, we have to pay attention to our mindsets, our mental, emotional, not just our physical health. Admittedly, and I think this is important 'cause I've always avoided talking about this, and I think this might be a woman thing, but I found that, I'm 38 years old, and I'm proud to be 38. I'm not one of those women that are too scared to say their age actually, which always makes me feel funny, that women are like, "Don't say your age." Why the hell not? I achieved this.

But my life from 28 when fitness was really big for me, meaning, I grew up always as an athlete then I started working and then I was doing that corporate thing, and that was very much a focus. And then I got back into regular exercise around 26, 27, by 28, I was really into it, and consistency for me then was defined really differently than what consistency is for me today. And I think it's important to say because a lot of women that I know, that are in their 30s, even 40s, had this idea that they have to maintain a level of consistency that they're defining back when they were in their 20s versus what that means for them today. That's important for me to realize, because as somebody that's in very much the space of a fitness influencer, age does matter because with... And I don't mean that from a limiting perspective, meaning you're older, so you should be more mindful about what you're doing in the gym and how often, no. Not the intensity, so to speak, but simply because lifestyle changes.

I tell people all the time, when I was 28, I was not married, I was single, I did not have four kids to take care of, or a mortgage or home, so I think it's really important for not just your physical health, but your mental health. Ladies out there, please understand your definition of consistency today is going to be very differently than it was 10, 15 years ago, and that is okay, that is fine. Let me tell you, when I was 28, consistency for me meant at least six days a week, four of those days were two a day, every single one of those six days involved at least an hour or 90 minutes of cardio, and I would lift for at least 90 minutes. That was consistency for me, meaning Sunday, I would rest, really rest, and then if for whatever reason I got five days, I'd be like, "Bad week." If I got five days today and was in the gym twice, Monday through Thursday, and then did 90 minutes of cardio, like throughout... I would be like, "Holy smokes, I'm superwoman."

So, I cannot live up to that, and it's one thing I realized, I cannot live up to the standards that I gave myself in my 20s, that I do today. 'Cause that is guaranteed like a mental breakdown. And I'm trying to live my very best life today as a 38-year-old married woman with four kids to be responsible for. So, I say this with a lot of passion because there's so many women out there, and I know this 'cause I've had conversations with them that are stuck on old definitions of what consistency means for them. So today, for me, Shawn, consistency is at least four days a week of doing my favorite hike that takes me about 70 minutes, seven zero. I know this 'cause I time myself. So, if I'm under that, I'm like, "That's a great day." And if I get to the gym twice a week and put in at least an hour, that's a fantastic week for me, and that is okay. I feel good, right? Sure, I'm not the beast mode girl that's squatty, out squatting the boys in the gym, and that's okay, 'cause I don't need to be that person. As long as I can still out squat the oldest son, which I can, I'm still good. But what I'm saying is, for me, ultimately the goal is to feel good in my own body. Right? And if that means a little extra pounds, so be it. If that means, I need to lose a little weight, so be it. But for me, I'm trying to live my best life, and that's what consistency that... My consistency has to be aligned to that.

Shawn Stevenson: Alright. To close out this nine-year celebration, hearing from nine of my favorite fitness experts over the course of nine years of The Model Health Show, we cannot have this guy. Alright? When we're talking about fitness foundational, this guy has been somebody who's inspired your favorite person in movement, they know my man. I've gone to different offices and different experts, and I consistently see his book, Supple Leopard. That's the name of his book, New York Times Best Seller, Supple Leopard. Now, this is a textbook. He's a Doctor of Physical Therapy, and I'm talking about none other than Dr. Kelly Starrett. In this segment, he's going to be sharing what mobility really means. From the originator/creator himself, of the most popular mobility series in the world the MobilityWOD, or Mobility Workout of the Day. Now, this is a big deal to be able to learn directly from him because he's going to be sharing with you some insights about mobility and position that puts this in a different stratosphere of importance. And so, let's jump into this clip from the amazing Dr. Kelly Starrett.

Kelly Starrett: The idea here is that WOD is a shorthand for Workout of the Day. And when we started, we used the word mobility workout of the day. First of all, is that the word mobility wasn't used at all. There was a reference to Eric Cressey, and they think he made a DVD called Magnificent Mobility a long time ago and as a physical therapist, I mobilized tissues. And so, what we found was that I wanted a word that didn't mean stretching, 'cause stretching had really come to mean something else. And what I'll tell you today is that mobility is a word that's now been convoluted a little, means like, it's like the word extreme or core. Like, "What are you doing?" "I'm working on my mobility." I'm like, "Okay." So let me define mobility first. First of all, mobility means that I have the requisite base range of motion that all of my tissues should be able to have. This means that the physiology, the structure geometry of the body suggests what normal range of motion is for each of us. And what turns out is that if you go into the experts, American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, American Academy of Family Practitioners, the physical therapists' Bible Norkin and White, if you look at all of these people who've studied range of motion, we have basically all agreed within a few degrees of what normal baseline function should look like in each joint. Joint based. So that's well and good, and in physical therapy school, I had to memorize all those things. Right?

Well, it turns out, what no one had done for me was compare what my body should do with what I was doing when I squatted, what I was doing when I got into a pistol. So, it turns out, for the average person, we don't have to memorize those body range of motions, because we have a language called push-up, air squat, squatting all the way down with heels on the ground, getting into a lunge, running, putting your arms over your head effectively, and what's nice is that gives us real benchmarks around what we're supposed to be able to do in terms of just straight raw tissues, there's also this software component to it. And what we know is that your practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent. That's how your brain is wired, that's why we practice skills, that's why you did all those crazy skill drills over and over again in sports, so that you can ingrain a pattern so that those neurons can literally wire together the oligodendrocytes, the Schwann cells would come in and lay the myelin in and reinforce that neural pattern so that it would be easier to do it.

So, what happens, it's so hard to break. It's so difficult to wire together to create a habit, it's also even more difficult to fire and wire apart, because we have to physically break down those myelin sheaths and create a new pathway. So, mobility is not only, "Do I have the joint capsule range of motion?" Or "Is my interstitial tissue, my interstitial... The fascia, does that slide? Are my muscles stiff?" But I also have this software that says, "Does my brain know how to put me into stable positions? Does my brain know how to organize the body and have the control that it needs?" Which means that's 50% of the score is skill. That's why we teach fundamental movements to kids, and they continue to build on 'em. So, like I said, one of the things that we ask about is, as we're having this conversation about mobility, but one thing is, "Hey, can your tissues get there? And then do you have control of your tissues?" And what we'll see is that, when we look at skills, we want to make sure that skills and training leads to open positions. That those skills and ability scale from kids to Olympic athletes. From children and youth athletes all the way up to my geriatric patients that the principles are the same for our adaptive athletes as they are for my MMA fighters. It is the same principles.

And when we suddenly can't derive consilience, when you're saying one thing and it doesn't jive with the principles of what I'm saying, someone has a problem in their thinking, because what's happening now is that there are lots of ways to get to the end. We know that all roads lead to Rome, and it's okay to have styles. You're the solder from Onnit, you're all about the kettlebells and great. And there's a lot of ways to be working on those... Get you to those shapes and positions, but the principles and the physiology remains constant. The environmental considerations remain constant, we just turn up and turn down. So, when you suddenly get to mobility, what we've found more and more now through the workout of the day is that, "Hey, we want position to be part of the conversation of the modern physical practice," and when I say physical practice, I'm not talking about just training for an hour, I'm talking about... Your physical practice starts when you go to bed, and how well you sleep and how dense you sleep, that's part of the physical practice. What you do first thing in the morning and how you prime yourself, the foods you eat, how much non-exercise activity you have during the day, your ability to down-regulate, did you breathe hard, all of those things, and then we can talk about training, all of those things constitute your physical practice.

But what we've tried to say is, hey, look the issue is that a lot of times, we can buffer poor positions for a long time until all of a sudden, you're like, "What do you mean I can't squat all the way down? What do you mean I can't put my arms over my head or take a full breath? What do you mean my shoulder comes forward in kimura." And so what we've done then is said, "Hey, let's put position and value position as much as we value strength, as much as we value speed, as much as we value cardiorespiratory conditioning," and really position is a hallmark of efficiency and ultimately, the way we train to think is that we say, "Hey, look, I hear your positions, you got it, you're solid, we're working on it, it's a moving target, it changes day-to-day based on who you are and what's going on, but can you maintain that shape and position under load? Under a little stress? When you're breathing hard? When you're going fast? When you got to do more than five in a row? What do you look like at the end of your 5k race? Do you look like at the beginning? Well, there is a really interesting diagnostic around your position," and what we've said forever is as long as you went faster, that was good enough, and now we know that that's short-term thinking.

And so, what we can really say is the skilled athlete can transfer the positions between sports, between training modalities, faster, and faster, and faster, and suddenly what you have is what someone else, and I'm blanking on the name, calls "repetition without repetition," and that's it. So that I never had... When I'm snowboarding down some steep face, I never want to be thinking about my feet, or my breathing. I want to be thinking about where the board's going, what's coming next, the inputs. I got to get back to no-mind. But that's why training is so important and why we need to take... Sometimes take the high intensity out now because we're here and put the skill and mindfulness back in.

Shawn Stevenson: Alright, I hope that you enjoyed this compilation, and this is again, celebrating the nine-year anniversary of the Model Health Show. And if there's a gift, I don't often ask for very much, but if there's a gift that you can provide, if The Model Health Show has provided insights and value and inspiration into your life, I ask that as a gift for this nine-year celebration that you pop over to Apple Podcast and please leave a review for the show today. That would mean so much. And also, if you're listening on Spotify, you can leave reviews there now as well, but again, if you're listening on Apple Podcast, please take a moment and leave a review for the show as a little bit of a nine-year anniversary gift. That would mean a lot.

Now, listen, nine years in, and I'm telling you, I'm just getting warmed up. We're about to make this the most epic year yet, so make sure to stay tuned. Be ready for what's coming. Epic master classes and special guests. And again, we're just getting warmed up. I appreciate you so much for tuning into the show today. Take care, have an amazing day and I'll talk with you soon. And for more after the show, make sure to head over to the modelhealthshow.com, that's where you can find all of the show notes, you can find transcriptions, videos for each episode, and if you've got a comment, you can leave me a comment there as well. And please make sure to head over to iTunes and leave us a rating to let everybody know that the show is awesome, and I appreciate that so much. And take care. I promise to keep giving you more powerful, empowering, great content to help you transform your life. Thanks for tuning in.